Friday 29 April 2016

When stimulus is received, the first locus of impact is the senses. Depending on the awareness of the senses or cognition of the environment (vijnana), the information is processed by one’s conditioning which decides on the quality of response. The impact on the conditioning is called jnana and niyama is the practice of disciplining this aspect of the individual.
What do people mean when they say someone is acting? Do they mean one is saying something that one has no intention of doing? Or are misrepresenting the truth? Or being artificial? Is it possible for a person to portray consistent behaviour when one’s behaviour does not match one’s conditioning? Can such behaviour inspire trust in others? Will such behaviour stand under pressure? What about the resultant stress that is generated?
To achieve svatantra (sva = self + tantra = weave) or independence, one’s behaviour must be integrated with one’s conditioning. This is niyama and the foundation of yama. Niyama increases internal awareness, better assessment of reality, leading to balance in management of situations and lower stress.
Niyama means rules or laws for personal wellbeing. Niyama refers to the attitude one adopts toward oneself & his or her actions. When niyama is followed, the ability to interact with the external world in a harmonised manner is enhanced, stabilising one’s relationship with one’s environment. Niyama is a key component of conditioning.
Inward focus increases vijnana (awareness of the environment) and jnana (awareness of one’s identity) so that conditioning and behaviour harmonise with each other in each experience, resulting in an integration of one’s conditioning with behaviour, called Svatantraintegrating personal thoughts, words and deeds into a cohesive whole, resulting in clarity of focus, understanding of requirement and peace in actions.
Niyama has 6 elements: Soucham (cleanliness), Santhosham (contentment), Svadhyeyam (referencing), Sahana (patience) and Shraddha (sincerity), Sharana (surrender).
Share your opinion and experiences
  • How often do you reflect on your actions?
  • How does one exhibit the values espoused by Niyama?
  • What is the difference between faith and surrender?
  • How does one experience contentment when not receiving just due?

Tuesday 26 April 2016

Some rules for eating that should be followed are:
Eat in a pleasant atmosphere – For correct absorption, the enzymes need to be thoroughly mixed with the food. In stress, there is an acids and enzyme imbalance resulting in poorer absorption.
Eat at regular intervals – The body needs nourishment at regular intervals. Very often, trapped in the rush of digestion and absorption. Therefore, for maximum efficiency, set time apart for eating, eat in a pleasant location and eat silently or in the company of people one is comfortable with.
Always sit down and eat – When eating, blood is redirected from other parts of the body to the stomach facilitate digestion. When one moves around, then the body is forced to supply blood to other muscles, reducing blood supply around the stomach resulting in poor digestion.
Eat right – Eating should be according to one’s energy requirements. People doing heavy physical labour should eat food that gives them the energy and strength to do the job. People with sedentary jobs must eat appropriately as, young people who need more concentrated nutrition rich food.
Chew the food – Eating is meant to ingest nutrients in the body. Swallowing without chewing makes it harder for the stomach to break down the food for nutrients. Chewing reduces food into manageable portions and ensures proper mixing of saliva, a key element in digestion.
Never eat to a full stomach – The stomach is designed to pulsate in order to move the food inside it to achieve breaking and mixing action. The muscle has some stretching capability in order to do this; but if fully loaded, the mixing action is reduced. Also, there is always some gas in the stomach that needs to be vented. Space in the stomach ensures room for the movement and exhaustion of gas. The recommendation is that one must eat to 75% capacity of the stomach.
Never eat between meals – The stomach is most comfortable handling a single batch of food. Once food enters the stomach, enzymes act on it to begin the digestion process. Partly digested food is then moved into the intestines to complete the process. When food is ingested between meals, the stomach, unable to differentiate between old and new food either adds enzymes or moves food out,  defeating the purpose of eating… to provide nutrition. Leave at least 3 hours between meals.
The water balance – 85% of the human body constitutes water. Imbalance of this critical constituent will lead to illness as water is the base for blood, enzymes, hormones and acts as shock absorber. Water imbalance can cause a variety of illness like fatigue, kidney stones, constipation etc.
  • Drink at least 2 litres of water every day.
  • Sip warm water. It massages the stomach muscles and aids digestion.
  • Usha Panam (morning drink): Drink water on an empty stomach. As soon as we awaken, we should drink at least 2 glasses of water, slowly. This will flush the entire alimentary canal and keep it clean.
Share your opinion and experiences
  • How do you eat? Do you follow any discipline?
  • How much water do you drink?
  • Do you eat junk food regularly?
  • Do you eat prefer alone or with others? How does it affect your eating?

Thursday 21 April 2016

Traditional belief is that we are what we eat. Food is a major source of nutrition. Nutrients that are absorbed by the body can only come from diet. Therefore, it is important that in order to preserve health, one adopt not just the right foods but also the correct eating habits. Poor food habits lead to ill-heath and contribute to stress.
It is important to understand the process of digestion.
  • Food is broken down into manageable pieces in the mouth and mixed with enzymes for digestion. This is why chewing of the food and mixing it with saliva is so important. The food is then swallowed and goes into the stomach. As the food enters the stomach, signals are sent so that more enzymes are released into the stomach. Additional blood is sent to the stomach muscles to enable it to churn and mix the food and enzymes completely. So, the stomach should not be overloaded with food, there should be adequate space for gas to come out and sufficient water for elastic movement when the stomach muscles squeeze, churn and break up the food.
  • The half-digested food then moves into the intestines where the nutrients are absorbed while food break up and churn continues. Food with adequate roughage ensures that food does not stick to the walls of the intestines but moves forward for absorption and evacuation.
  • Expulsion of waste is a very important element of digestion and often determines the health of the person. Ensure that choice of food keeps this requirement in view.
Most religions prescribe a benediction before a meal is started. In what is now called Hinduism, the meal is started by a benediction which translates to “let food be consumed for ingestion (prana), let food be consumed for excretion (apana), let food be consumed for the circulatory system (vyana), let food be consumed for awareness (udana), let food be consumed for assimilation (samana) and let food be consumed for alignment with the source (brahman)”.  Very pragmatic benediction…
Share your opinion and experiences
  • What are your favourite foods?
  • Do you dislike any food?
  • Are you allergic to any food?
  • When eating at public places, does anything turn you off?
  • How important is manners in a shared meal?
  • What is your view on wasting food? Do you eat everything on your plate even if you don’t like all of it?

Monday 18 April 2016


Ability to react evenly in any situation ensures lesser extremity of reactions, thereby ensuring easier recovery from a situation.

Aparigraha means “hands off” or “not seizing opportunity.” On an extended scale, it can mean equanimity. The human safety system is designed to evaluate any situation on the basis of “Do I like this or not”/“Is this good for me or not”/“Is he friend or foe”. This evaluative system then takes a position based on the data available and prepares a coping action. In many cases, the brain decides based on previous information available with it, and this may not be appropriate to the situation. This is why equanimity is important.

Equanimity is the non-judgmental attitude that we take to ensure that we are fair to ourselves and others when taking a decision. It removes bias, hasty, ad hoc and ill-considered decisions

Anecdotes, experiences and situations to help understand…

(Wikipedia extract) Maximilian Kolbe was born in January 1894 as the second son of Julius Kolbe and Maria Dabrowska. His father wasethnic German and his mother Polish. In 1907 Kolbe and his elder brother Francis joined the Conventional Friciscans and junior seminary in Lwow. In 1910 Kolbe entered the novitiate.

In 1918 Kolbe was ordained a priest. During the Second World War he provided shelter to refugees from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews whom he hid from Nazi persecution in his friary in Niepokalanow. He was also active as a radio amateur, vilifying Nazi activities. On 17 February 1941 he was arrested by the German Gestapo and imprisoned in Pawiak prison, On 25 May he was transferred to Auschwitz.

In July 1941 a man from Kolbe’s barracks vanished, prompting the deputy camp commander, to pick 10 men from the same barracks to be starved to death in order to deter further escape attempts. One of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out lamenting his family, and Kolbe volunteered to take his place.

During the time in the cell he led the men in songs and prayer. After three weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe and three others were still alive. He encouraged others that they would soon be with Mary in heaven. Each time the guards checked on him he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell and looking calmly at those who entered, while the others lay moaning and complaining on the ground around him. Finally he was killed with an injection of carbolic acid. Some who were present at the injection say that he raised his left arm and calmly waited for the injection. He died soon after.
 

Father Kolbe was beatified as a confessor by Pope Paul VI in 1971 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 10 October 1982.
Equanimity in difficult situations is not easy, but each of us has an experience where we kept calm in difficult circumstances. Write about it…

Share your opinion and experiences

  • How do you keep your equilibrium in any situation?
  • How do you recover your equilibrium if you lose it?
  • Is it possible to remain calm in any situation?
  • Is ability to remain calm hereditary?
  • Why are some people naturally calm?
  • Can prayer help our ability to remain calm? Why?
  • What is the impact of equanimity on others?
  • Equanimity and emotional intelligence - How are they related?
  • How do you maintain your position without offending others?
  • How do you handle fear when opposing authority?
  • How do you reconcile to the reality of any situation? How do you know when to stop pushing?

Tuesday 12 April 2016


Brahmacharyam is sexual countenance in Patanjali yoga sutra. But in today’s environment, this is not enough. Ability to respect and imbibe dharma or conditioning of people of various gender cultural/religious/colour/ countries, etc., ensures acceptability of ideas and reduces stress.
With business crossing borders, one person’s actions could be interpreted as another person’s insult, resulting in disharmony and stress. Sensitivity and awareness to the other’s cultural, racial background is one of the most important requirements today. Ability to remove sexual bias in business relationships is an important personal development requirement. Correct interpretation of verbal and non-verbal signals is the key to peaceful relationships and lower stress.
Diversity is being able to work with other people’s conditioning and value system to a common goal.
Share your opinion and experiences
  • How do you adjust to other people’s opinions without creating discord?
  • How do you adjust to diversity in food?
  • Diversity in dressing and its impact on people, their opinion of others & relationships.
  • How do you adjust to diversity in religion and value systems?
  • How do you adjust to diversity in age?

Friday 8 April 2016

Asteya in yoga sutras is non-stealing. In this section, it has been expanded to team work because teamwork includes not taking credit when not due. Ability to develop a common dharma (team conditioning) and ensuring that the common objective is met is a critical element of yama.
A team is a collection of people with a common purpose. What makes this entity so important? How does the performance of a well-trained and led team make a difference?
Ability to develop a common conditioning or value system from the conditioning of different people and ensuring that common objective is met is critical for success of any venture.
Anecdotes, experiences and situations to help understand…
Example 1 – Let us compare two different football teams, one of novices and another of professionals. Novices normally never play in any single position. In any game, one person would kick the ball and everyone would run after it. As a result, everyone wants credit for the goal and this gives rise to prima donnas, who never pass the ball. On the other hand, professional team members are specialists who maintain their own positions. Though each team member has his own characteristic style of playing, the team operates on the principle of give and take, with one dharma (conditioning or value system). As a result, the team wins.
Teaming is not confined to physical possessions but also includes the ability to share thoughts, information, credit and criticism.
Example 2 – How loss of teamwork can lead to disaster…
  • On 23 June, 1757, at the battle of Plassey, Mir Jaffar was bribed by Robert Clive to remain out of battle. This lead to the defeat of Siraj-ud-Daula, starting British rule in India.
  • Similarly, on 4 May 1799, at the battle of Srirangapatna, Mir Sadiq was bribed to withdraw his soldiers from battle, resulting in Tipu Sultan’s death, and the consolidation of power by the British in India.
Share your opinion and experiences
  • How do we integrate different team requirements to a single objective?
  • What is the role of the team leader? Why is he or she important?
  • How does one resolve intra-team conflict?
  • How important is communication in a team?
  • Is hierarchy important in a team?
  • Is structure important in a team?
  • What is the impact of a prima donna (one who constantly hogs the limelight?)
  • What is morale? How important is it to team dynamics?
  • How do you motivate a team in difficult situations?
  • How important is giving due credit to team motivation?
  • What happens to a team where politics & favoritism impact decisions?

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