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| World Mental Illness Awareness Week: Listening to what people are not saying | | We need to assure the youth that they are not alone | | Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Due to the pandemic, mental health concerns are growing across the globe. While people can openly talk about being diabetic or having hypertension, the same is not true for mental health disorders. There is a stigma in society regarding mental health and people do not open up about it, making it little harder to deal with. If you are intuitive enough, you can see it in their faces and observe the behavioural changes. That is where we need to stop and check on them.
Be Available
This simple act of being available to people around us opens up their hearts and minds, gives them a sense of security of being looked after. In 2014, our volunteers conducted a Happiness Survey that was designed with a unique purpose. While taking the survey our volunteers and teachers connected with people and gave them a sense of security, a feeling that they are not alone.
Focus on the good
There are many triggers for stress– mental worries, emotional stress, financial stress, problems in relationships, and so on. If you look a little closely, it is not the problem itself, but the body’s reaction to the problem which brings about stress, negative emotions, depression and anxiety.
I have been receiving many distress calls in the last few months. For example, a businessman recently called me and said that he feels suicidal because of the current scenario. I asked him to wake up and see that he is not alone. There is so much humaneness in the world that still exists. People are willing to help each other everywhere. In the lockdown, so many people organized help, food and medicine for ones in need.
Taking care of the youth: Raise the Prana
We need to pay attention to the youth. They have to be assured that they are not without help.
They are often unable to express if they are feeling low or anxious and they plummet into depression and aggression. We need to help raise their prana level. Prana or Chi, the subtle life force energy, is directly related with the state of our mind. When the prana(your energy level) is high, you will notice there is a feeling of expansion and well-being. When the prana level becomes low, for example, when someone has insulted you or you are depressed, there is a feeling of contraction or shrinkage.
Prana can be increased through meditation. Exercise also increases the prana and brings about a sense of well-being, but it also brings tiredness in the body. Music, dancing and spending time with a happy group of people also have a role in increasing the prana. Meditation and Yoga are the easiest ways to increase and sustain the Prana level.
Mental hygiene like dental hygiene
Our education system has incorporated meditation in engineering colleges for first year students. This is something that needs to be implemented in institutions world over. Those students are now more mentally resilient, calm and happy. Introducing meditation in schools and colleges will equip our youth with tools to handle mental stress. These practices are akin to dental hygiene. Just like we brush our teeth twice daily, mental hygiene should also be practiced on a daily basis. Love is kindled in you when you meditate. You just need a little commitment. That is where most people falter. Like the gardener while enjoying the fruit of his tree, if he forgets to water the roots, the fruits will dwindle.
Forty years back, Yoga was such a taboo in the West and even in India. People thought that it was not for normal people. Now there are 2 billion people practicing Yoga – a third of the world’s population.
The extensive research done on the physiological, mental and spiritual benefits of yoga has widened its acceptance among people. Similar studies about the impact of meditation and breath-based interventions are underway in institutions like Harvard and Yale. Research in schools showed 87% students experienced an increased sense of well-being and happiness after practicing the Sudarshan Kriya, a powerful breathing technique.
A strong mind can carry even a weak body over the long run, but a weak mind cannot carry a strong body even for a short while. In the lockdown, we conducted live meditations twice daily where millions of people joined us every day. Many of them reported feeling calmer, happy and more settled about the situation around them. |
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