YOGA FOR STRESS MANAGEMENT

Week 01_Module 03: Stress according to Western perspective

My dear brothers and sisters, we had learnt about the hazards of stress, how stress has
become a biggest challenge. Today, we will try to understand what is stress, first according to
the modern medical science. We will start with our prayer. laye sambodhayet chittam
vikshiptam samayet punaha Sakashayam. samapraaptam na chaalayet . When the mind
goes into stagnation, goes to sleepiness, drowsiness, we must see that it comes back, we have
to awaken Laye sambodhayet When we awaken, the mind gets distracted called vikshipta
then we have to calm down the distractions. Then go to the deeper and deeper levels of mind
where stresses are hidden, to recognize the deep rooted stresses, sakashayam vijaniyat, and
release them also. How? By stimulation, relaxation, stimulation, relaxation, stimulation,
relaxation. Finally, when you reach state of purity, balance, stability, state of wonderful
happiness and bliss, stay in that state. That is a wonderful commentary given by Gaudapada,
the great teacher of Adi Shankaracharya on the Mandukya Upanishad, called Mandukya
Karika. What is stress? According to experts, Dr. Selye and Levy, stress is a response pattern,
how we respond to demanding situations. Every one of us has many, many demanding
situations and each one of us respond therefore, it is non-specific, conventional, it is common
to everybody, everybody is going to respond. But it varies from person to person, the way it
responds. This is called phylogenetic response. We all have different demanding situations.
We have invested good money in a particular business and there is a big loss. The company
goes bankrupt, terribly shocked, you know, and what is going to be your response?
Somebody who is very near and dear collapses unexpectedly, what is your response? Young
students, you have prepared very well, done good in exam, but you did not expect the poor
grade that you got and you are disappointed. So the negative aspects bring responses, also the
positive thing, excitement. So this response is called stress and not the demanding situation.
Take for example, a person who is very near and dear, maybe your friend, maybe your wife,
maybe your husband, maybe your father, maybe your grandfather, die prematurely. Everyone
will get upset and we are able to forget it, maybe in a day or maybe three days, maybe a week
or maybe 15-20 days and occasionally you may remember and feel bad about losing your
very near and dear. But there are some people who cannot forget it. I remember one of our
neighbours, a wonderful family, five children, they all got very well settled, they are in good
jobs, everything going very well. Mother at the age of 67, she got into some kidney problem
and at that time in early 60s, 1960s, enough medical interventions are not available and she
got aggravated and she died. I remember that day very clearly, August 14, 1961 and
everybody got so upset. And after all the normal kriyas to be done, the children all started
going back to work, got to normalcy. But the husband could not come out of it. He started
getting worse day by day, getting depressed and acting haphazardly and he became almost
schizophrenic, neurotic and children did their best with the available medical interventions,
psychiatric treatment, unfortunately nothing worked. He went on and on, started wandering in
the street, lonely and not talking to anybody and coming back in the room and all dirt, started
eating filthy things and after about and coming back in the room and all dirt, started eating
filthy things and after about one month, we started seeing him smoking and going. He could
not come out of that at all for 18 years, only he died in 1979. Look at, so the response varies
from person to person. According to, it is the genetic, it is called phylogenetic response, it is
from person to person. So what we have to understand is, stress is that response pattern and
not the demanding situation. How we all respond is stress. What is the objective of stress?
Stress prepares our mind-body complex for physical action to cope with the demanding
situation. Imagine that we are all sitting and hearing a beautiful talk in an auditorium and
suddenly there is a fire alarm. What happens? Every one of us will respond. Two types of
reaction. Some people would like to see where is the fire originating from. Let us go there
and quench it. That is the fight reaction. But most people want to go away from the
auditorium. They start running away from the doors that are available. That is the fight
reaction. Either you flee away or you fight. That is the normal response that we all have. So
for doing this, more energy than normal is needed. Whether you want to fight or you want to
run away. How to get more energy? We have to burn more glucose. So the sugar level in the
blood increases and we need oxygen. Therefore our breathing rate increases. To supply more
oxygen in a single breath, our bronchodilation takes place. Then oxygen is supplied and the
reaction has to take place. Sugar plus oxygen gives you energy plus carbon dioxide. But that
reaction takes place in every cell. Therefore the sugar and oxygen have to be carried to
different parts of the body, all over the body. It has to be taken very fast. Therefore we have
pumping station here. The heart starts beating faster. Heart rate increases. Dab, dab, dab, dab,
dab, goes on increasing. The heart rate increases and the blood pressure increases. And as a
result, the sugar and oxygen are taken throughout the body. And the reaction takes place in
the cell site and you start getting more energy. Using the energy, you start running, you start
fighting. What happens? Your muscles will be very stiff and your pupil will dilate. You are
able to see things better. You are able to hear things better. You are able to sense. All our
sense will get into a state of heightened awareness That is a wonderful thing that happens and
you run out of the auditorium or you fight it out. Then you find it was a false alarm. And you
come back, you have a big sigh of relief. How all these things are accomplished? A
wonderful mechanism is set in our body known as stress reaction and some demanding
situations come in the brain, in the higher centers of the brain. There is the triggering of the
centers, the fear, the tension, the anger, greed, jealousy, all these emotional things will
trigger. And these things, emotional cortex are triggered, then it stimulates hypothalamus,
which in turn brings about two sets of reactions. One is called the autonomic imbalance,
another is called the endocrine imbalance. We know, we all have our system responding, our
nervous system. One is the voluntary nervous system, another is the involuntary. When I
want to raise my hand, do things, walk and others, it's all voluntary action. While the
functions that are going inside the body, the flow of bile, digestive things, all such internal
functions are governed by our involuntary nervous system. That's called autonomic nervous
system. So the ANS will get triggered. ANS has two parts, the sympathetic and the
parasympathetic nervous system. Sympathetic as the name indicates, sympathizes with us. Ok
, you want more energy, I will help you, and sympathetic stimulation takes place and we have
all the changes that we have mentioned. First the sugar level increases, the breathing rate
increases, the heartbeat increases and the blood pressure increases. So sympathetic
stimulation is the one that builds the stress reaction. So big imbalance, that is sympathetic
becoming more than the parasympathetic. So the conclusion, when you find everything was
normal and you come back, your whole system starts coming back to normalcy. It is the work
of the parasympathetic at that time. It's relaxing, it slows down the breathing, reduces the
sugar level and the heartbeat reduces, the blood pressure reduces, there is a decreased
metabolic rate. All that happens wonderfully well and the system is brought back to balance.
It's the beautiful mechanism set within us automatically to deal with the stress, called as a
stress reaction. Along with that, the endocrine system also works in complementary phase.
When the stress part of this triggered, there is the release of the stress hormones, the growth
hormone, the prolactin. hypothalamus triggers, the pituitary, the master of the endocrine
symphony and that brings about the hormones which are produced to a greater measure than
normal. They are called as the stress hormones and the thyroxine, adrenaline, noradrenaline,
cortisol, prolactin, growth hormone, THCA, all these hormones are produced more than
normal and what is the purpose of increased secretion of these stress hormones? To bring the
same changes as the sympathetic stimulation takes place. That is, the blood pressure
increases, the heartbeat increases, the sugar level increases, the breathing rate increases and
all senses will get into a heightened awareness. If the autonomic imbalance essentially is in
electrical in nature, the endocrine imbalance is essentially chemical in nature. The two
systems work harmoniously, synergetically to bring the desired changes. That is the
wonderful mechanism that is set. Therefore, these two working together bring about the
disturbed homeostasis, a big imbalance. Initially the sympathetic imbalance and then
parasympathetic takes over and you come to a balance. So this is the wonderful mechanism
that has been built into our system. So therefore, there is nothing wrong in the stress reaction.
In fact, it is a mandatory reflex for the very survivor. Imagine, supposing you don't have the
stress reaction the fire is coming nearer to you and you stay there. Then we know what will
be the result. You will be burnt up. Therefore stress reaction is built within our system for the
very survival of the human system. Earlier in the first talk we said that stress is the biggest
challenge and it causes the problems on various fronts including non-communicable diseases
and we have no solution to stress, stress is very hazardous he said. Now we are telling that it
is good, it is necessary in fact, it is a mandatory reflex. What is this? Which is right? Stress is
bad or stress is good? If you do not allow the system to regain its normalcy, then stress
becomes bad otherwise stress is good. You get into the stress reaction then come back to
normalcy but if you again trigger and then do not allow the system to come back to normalcy,
you have the problem. That's what is happening in modern life. There are a lot of demanding
situations, one after another, one after another. In the morning you have to take care of your
children and you are rushing to prepare the food, having the breakfast and you have to take
care of the entire household thing and you are stressed up. And when the children go away,
the husband also leaves, the wife also is working, she stopped going and she finds that the
whole street is loaded, terrible traffic again you are stressed up. With great difficulty
somehow you reach the office in time and there you want to just relax, maybe a cup of tea.
But suddenly there is a call from your boss, come on, come on, there is something urgent,
you have to go, you run again and the thing goes on. Throughout the day, one after another,
one after another and you are very sensitive, you are very sharp, very brilliant and a small
suggestion, a little comment by any of your subordinates or your boss, it will upset you. Then
you are a perfectionist and you want everything to be done, spic, span and perfectly well,
fine. But you find that your subordinates are not coming to your expectations, again you get
upset, again there is a big imbalance and targets to be achieved, target for the year, target for
the month, target for the week, target for the day and one of my friends who was building the
checking process for the pipeline being built for the transfer of gas, petrol from the Andhra
Pradesh to Gujarat. So when the pipes are getting welded, no leakage should come out of it.
So it's his job to check any leakage and he should give the report and he has to give the report
within 10 minutes. If he doesn't give, then he'll be fined, heavy fine so 24 hours he should
continuously work on that and whole night he's always tensed up whether everything is okay
or not. So target to be achieved so one after another, one after another, the modern way of life
continues and in the evening you come back home and you want to relax, but the children
who have come back, they want something and then they're all naughty and your husband
comes, you're also there and both of you in a state of tension and the whole day from morning
till night is full of demanding situations. Therefore what happens? The system which has
gone into a big imbalance, trying to come back, but again you are triggered one after another,
one after another. So you are not allowing the system to come back to its normalcy. Therefore
what happens? System stabilizes with the habit of muscle stiffness, muscles become tight. So
you have back pain, you've got spondylosis, you have muscle problems and so on and what to
talk about the gastritis, GI disorders and the blood pressure which has gone up, you become
hypertensive. The sugar level which has gone up will get stabilized at the higher level and
you have diabetes and because of the use, joint aging takes place and they have, rheumatoid
arthritis osteoarthritis coming up and a host of the modern non-communicable diseases,
asthma, diabetes, hypertension, heart problem, epilepsy, migraine, irritable bowel syndrome,
neuroticism, schizophrenia, cancer, HIV and what not. So this is the one becomes hazardous
therefore when you come back to your normalcy, you have no problem. But if you don't
allow the system to come back to normalcy, you have all the problems Stress is good for
meeting the demanding situation, stress is good to see that you achieve things, heightened
awareness, sharpness, brilliance, everything comes up. But if you don't allow the system to
come to normalcy, because of all these points that I mentioned, you have a problem. So the
remedy will be to bring the system back to normalcy by strengthening our parasympathetic
nervous system and see that the autonomic balance takes place at the dimension that has to
do. So in general we can say as we understand stress, stress is an imbalance. Imbalance in the
autonomic nervous system, imbalance in the endocrine system is called disturbed
homeostasis. When this disturbed homeostasis continues for long, stress becomes bad, stress
becomes a hazard and stress becomes the biggest challenge that we are seeing today. So the
root cause for that is modern way of life in which there are large number of demanding
situations and other aspects which I mentioned and we are not allowing the system to come
back to normalcy. So the whole remedy is to see that you bring the system to normalcy. The
whole essence is to learn as to how you can quickly bring the system to normalcy that is
where yoga comes into picture. It's a process of managing ourselves. That's why I call it as
self-management and see that we learn to relax. So in the stress management we are going to
learn the process of relaxation. As we prayed in the first prayer, we have to stimulate and
relax, stimulate, relax. You train our entire system to get triggered, to take it to an imbalance
and bring it back to normalcy and even go little deeper in relaxation. Stimulate, relax. If you
do it once it will not suffice. You have to do it punappunaha, punappunaha again and again
you have to do. Therefore the imbalance is created voluntarily and is brought back to
normalcy voluntarily that is the training that we get in yoga. That's what we are going to learn
in this entire presentation and in the modules that we are going to give you. Yoga for stress
management, we will let you know the theory as we are understanding and we also give you
the techniques, practices to see that you learn this art of relaxation. This beautiful ways by
which you relax quickly, fast and even when you are in the office, when you are in a working
phase, can you learn to relax, to create the imbalance, no doubt because of the demanding
situation, because of various factors that I mentioned. But soon after that can you come back
to normalcy. Can you restore the homeostasis? That's the demand. If you learn that, you have
the solution. So the clarification is stress is not demanding situation as many people think.
Stress is our reaction, our response to the demanding situation that should be made clear and
this response can be changed and yoga is a way of life. Yoga is a science of holistic living
which can help us to restore our normalcy, to learn as to how we can quickly bring back the
system to normalcy. So in our next talk, we are going to understand what is stress according
to yoga. In the present talk, we understood it is an imbalance at the body level, the autonomic
imbalance and endocrine imbalance and we will see how yoga brings about a more
comprehensive understanding of stress. With that, thank you very much and I wish you all
the best. Thank you.