What is stress?
Stress is anything that brings mental and emotional pressure that leads to fear, anxiety, worry, apprehensions, anger and even excitement and the body responds in a prompt, speedy and inefficient way. According to medical professionals, 90-95% of illnesses in modern era can be blamed on psychological forces; 98% headaches originate due to stress and stress also manifests itself into many other physical ailments like indigestion, acidity and life-killers like heart attacks.
How stress develops?
Stress comes in all shapes and sizes, and has become so pervasive, that it seems to permeate everything and everybody. Stress and Tension occur because of the uncontrolled flow of thoughts relating to our future or past that keep our mind in constant turbulence. These thoughts deviate us from working in the present - which only is the reality. It is usually these thoughts related to our excessive thinking of future and past which makes us tired and not the hard work.
Effects of stress
Stress causes real "wear and tear" on our bodies as we adjust to our continually changing environment and so it has numerous physical and emotional effects on us.
Physical Symptoms:
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Change of facial expression and bodily postures
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Withdrawal from social relationships
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Low task performance (sometimes its opposite also manifests –i.e high productivity but which is highly detrimental for our physical and mental health
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Impediment of speech
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Sighs & continuous fidgeting
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Nervous laughter
All the above symptoms originate because of stress but their causes are also described by their sufferers & medical experts as:
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Anxiety
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Worry
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Sleeplessness
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Emotional Disturbances
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Aggression
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Tension
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Phobic Disorders, etc.
The eventual result of all the symptoms or their causes (as defined by our modern-day terms) leads to many physical problems like:
How to overcome stress?
Medical science has nothing to offer to combat the dreadful effects of stress except tranquilizers, habit forming toxic drugs, etc. Every & any event we face can bring us into a challenging and a threatening situation. Thus stress is an inner reaction rather than an outer phenomenon. To be really stress free we have to develop SELF-AWARENESS – The knowledge of our self: Its likes and dislikes, its harmony and conflicts. The key for gaining self-awareness lies in a process of shifting one's focus from the external environment to internal makeup, including physical, emotional and spiritual system.
How to achieve Self-Awareness to overcome stress?
Meditation – is the best relaxation technique and the accepted solution all over the world to combat stress effectively. Sahaja Yoga a highly developed and unique system of meditation that enables the person to reach onto a level of complete self-awareness.
Help through Sahaja Yoga to overcome stress
Sahaja-Yoga works on awakening of primordial energy within us called Kundalini. When the Kundalini rises and crosses the sixth energy centre, it brings us into a state of thoughtless-awareness - no distracting thoughts from future or past are bombarding the mind. All conflicts residing in the mind that create stress, evaporate. We enter into a state of peace within, remaining completely in the present and aware of everything around us.
Sahaja-Yoga meditation brings us into balance.
As mentioned about the human subtle system, we have a subtle body within us that consists of seven energy centres and three channels. In our daily life, either one of these channels can be more active leading to a certain state of our behavior. If we move to the right channel, we become overactive, restless, stressed and tense. If we move to the left channel, we become depressed and lethargic. But if we remain in the centre channel, we become dynamic, energetic, moral – all leading to an integrated personality. The regular practice of Sahaja-Yoga helps us to activate the centre channel.
Finally, Sahaja-Yoga connects us to the All Pervading power. We become one with the energy source, which creates, manages and nourishes the nature and is the primal spring of the energy that is called Kundalini. As we are always connected to the source of the energy, our energy centres are constantly nourished by this All Pervading power. So we always remain fresh and cheerful and do not get fatigued, tired and stressed out and completely enjoy every activity we are involved in.
Medical Research on effects of Sahaja Yoga on Hypertension
Medical Research conducted by physiology department of the Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi, India and Sucheta Kripalani Hospital on varied groups of individual Sahaja-Yoga meditators has revealed that the practice of Sahaja-Yoga is accompanied by a decrease in tension, stress, anxiety, depression and hypertension.
These studies were conducted upon 10 people in the age group of 35 to 50. They were from the department of Physiology and had no previous training in any form of yoga, meditation. They were given two days training by a qualified Sahaja-Yoga teacher in the physiology department. Thereafter they practiced it 20 minutes daily, for a few weeks, under the watchful eyes of the tutor
At fixed intervals doctors studied the effect of Sahaja-Yoga on the heart rate, blood pressure, the level of the blood lactic acid, VMA in urine, which indicates secretion of adrenalin by the body and the galvanic skin resistance (GSR), which shows whether the patients were tensed or relaxed. All 10 were patients of hypertension; some of them were on drugs. As the Sahaja-Yoga practice progressed, the medicines were reduced and finally stopped. In the 12 weeks the diastolic blood pressure dropped from the 100 to 80 and the adrenalin flow, also dropped. The GSR in the group changed from 43.9 kohms to 164.7 kohms; Mean level being 103.9 kohms
Many people practicing Sahaja Yoga regularly had already reported empirically what has now been confirmed by medical research. The outcomes of the research have shown that practice of Sahaja yoga has had various healing effects on the mind and body leading to improvements in quality of life. Various other benefits of Sahaja yoga on all living things including plant growth etc are being considerably researched around the globe.
Man is the culmination of evolutionary process that has been at work for thousands of years, and has been given extraordinary powers compared to other living organisms, to regulate and control the environment around him. But the ultimate frontier, and one which acts as the source and suffers as the receptor of stress, is the human mind. Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi has given the mankind a unique gift in form of her discovery of Sahaja Yoga, which should be utilized fully by the being for achieving peace and harmony in his/her daily life while remaining free from stress and tensions.