Stress Management

In daily life we frequently face difficult situations that bring mental and emotional pressures. The body then responds in a prompt, speedy and inefficient way. Stress is anything that brings mental and emotional pressure that leads to fear, anxiety, worry, apprehensions, anger and even excitement. 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.

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.

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.

• Change of facial expression and bodily postures
• Withdrawal from social relationships
• Low task performance (sometimes its opposite also manifests, i.e, high productivity but which is highly detrimental for our physical and mental health
• Impediment of speech
• Sighs & continuous fidgeting
• Nervous laughter
• Anxiety
• Insomnia
• Emotional Disturbances
• Aggression
• Tension and Worry
• Phobic Disorders, etc.

Medical science has nothing to offer to combat the dreadful effects of stress except tranquilizers, habit forming toxic drugs, etc. Every and 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.

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, enables the person to reach a level of complete self-awareness.

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.

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 or 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 thousand 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.