Measurement of Situational Awareness

Recap – Yoga, having its roots in the word yuj, meaning “to yoke” is the weaving our conditioning with our behavior to enable us to build a cohesive personality. Raja Yoga is considered to be the Raja (king) among Yoga Shastras (a text of experience) because the king works at a material level and hence this yoga is more attuned to normal living without having to go deep into spiritual life. By design, it has two levels- a beginner’s level for self-improvement in daily life (Kriya Yoga) and an advanced level (Dhyana Yoga) for one who wishes to delve deep into the esoteric.

The world has become smaller and success lies in our ability to handle rapid change. This change could range from diversity issues in the form cultural, racial or sexual biases to assimilation of technical and business information; or issues as mundane as handling jet lag and cross cultural food.

The process of confronting, accepting, assimilating and responding to reality is not easy, especially when each experience is new and traditional/ “ready recipe” responses are inappropriate/ inadequate. This continuous need for “ground up” response tests our entire value and belief system and stresses us.

Example: Consider time. We constantly plan our lives to the clock, but does the Sun care? Do the winds and tides work to a schedule? What happens when we are engrossed with something we like? We forget time which for us, becomes the gap between when we remember starting the activity to the moment we became conscious of ourselves again. We had become so engrossed us that our consciousness was completely merged with the subject, achieved the state of Yoga. Therefore, time can only be defined as “the gap between two states of consciousness”, the time when we are completely aware of ourselves.

It stands to reason that should we be able to maintain single point focus (ekagrath) on any subject, we would be able to operate in any situation with clarity and balance and with far lesser confusion or passion. This will increase our level of consciousness or awareness and allow us to realize our full potential. This is Situational Awareness.

Measure of Progress:

How do we know that we are succeeding in our efforts? From first principles, we know that stress occurs when we perceive a lack of congruence of the stimulus with our conditioning and the ability align our conditioning with our behavior to manage any situation.

There are four stages of consciousness in the road to Situational Awareness. They are Jagrat (wakeful or transactional state); Swapna (conceptual or dream State); Sushupti (formless state) and Turiya (State where no guna exists – nirguna state). Clearly, the Turiya state is meant for mystics and not for daily application. However, the other states can be used as metrics for judging progress.

How do we judge these states?

Jagrat (transaction or awakened state) is when we are conscious of what is going on around us. It is the kinesthetic element of our existence.

Swapna (Dream State) is when we see images and intentions, the visual element.

Sushupti (Awareness State) is when the consciousness needs no form to support existence, also known as formless or nirrupa. Here audio impulse is the only conscious Situational Awareness stimulus.

The three states will manifest as shown in the matrix below. These are nine combinations of Situational Awareness which can be evaluated in a matrix shown above. The first name decides which level predominates.

Anecdotes, experiences and situations to help understand…

(Wikipedia extract) After a day at work, Rosa Parks, a 42 year old African America boarded a bus on 1 December 1955, in Montgomery, USA. She paid her fare and sat in an empty seat in the first row of seats reserved for blacks in the “coloured” section, which was near the middle of the bus and directly behind the ten seats reserved for white passengers. As the bus travelled along its regular route, all the white-only seats in the bus filled up. At one stop, several white passengers boarded.

In 1900, Montgomery had passed a city ordinance for the purpose of segregating passengers by race. Conductors were given the power to assign seats to accomplish this; Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the practice of requiring black riders to move whenever there were no white-only seats left to seat whites.

So, following standard practice, the bus driver, seeing that the front of the bus was filled with white passengers and there were two or three whites standing, demanded that four black people give up their seats. Three people moved, but Rosa Parks did not get up to move to the back. The driver asked “Why don’t you stand up?” Parks responded, “I don’t think I should have to stand up. The driver said, ‘Well, if you don’t stand up, I’m going to have to call the police and have you arrested.’ Rosa said, ‘You may do that.’”

Rosa Parks was arrested and jailed for not giving up her seat. Rosa Parks is often called the “Mother of the modern civil rights movement”. She exhibited valour without anger, violence or fear.

• What were the changes to Rosa Parks state of awareness in the above situation?
• What is the role of fear in situational awareness?
• What were the fears that might have been experienced by Rosa Parks?

Share your opinion and experiences;

• How close is the concept of Situational Awareness with Theory of Relativity? How does mass, time, light and space affect Situational Awareness?
• How can one assess progress in his or her awareness levels?
• Why is it so difficult to remain in the present? How can one improve one’s awareness of the present?
• How can one improve one’s focus (ekagrath)?

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Stress and Yoga

Recap:

SvaTantra is colloquially known as independence. It is a compound word (Sva = self + Tantra = weave). Weave?

Weave here, is the weave of Siva with Sakti... Isn't that religion? Not at all!

Siva = sense of personal identity & Sakti is the manifestation of that identity. Simply put Tantra is the weave of our sense of identity with our actions.

So, SvaTantra is our ability to yoke our sense of identity with our action in any situation. Yoke? Yes, yoke is the English term for the Sanskrit word, Yoga... both words come from same background.

We take and implement decisions all the time. This causes stress. Isn’t stress a result of a negative outcome? Actually, we experience stress all the time. Whenever we wish to get things done, we make an effort. This causes change, to which there is resistance. The effort to effect change and overcome resistance to the change, both result in stress.

Any stress situation has two elements: the stressor and our coping action, out of which the only the latter is truly in our control. Our ability to cope effectively is limited only by our capability, our ability to assess the situation, decide on what to do, effectiveness in implementing the decision and dealing with the consequence of our action.

Elements of Situational Awareness;

Situational Awareness is a stress management tool which addresses solutions at two levels; an intervention to manage the immediacy of the situation and a developmental aspect where the lessons (vijnana and jnana) are imbibed, resulting in us being able to either avoid the situation in future or to deal with it more effectively.

Intervention. In many new or difficult situations we often feel overwhelmed, experiencing a kind of psychosomatic hijack characterized by a feeling of being out of control. We need some tool that clears the clouds of confusion and brings a sense of clarity and balance.

Development. This solution is used in the following cases:

Often, we react without fully understanding the situation. This results in a stress residue after the situation has passed. These stresses need to be purged in order that we remain in reality and at peace.

Some situations are long-term and need continuous attention. This means continued focus on incremental improvements to bring the situation under control.

Finally, all experiences result in learning at both, vijnana (transactional) and jnana (value) levels. The faster this assimilation occurs, the better will be the capability of the person to manage a similar experience again.

Any stress management tool we use must cover the following areas related to us:

• Ability to interact with our environment in such a way that we retain our sense of peace and keep the peace with our environment.
• Ability to digest and assimilate inputs from the environment, extract and assimilate the essence of our experience, reference and understand concepts and build a base for better interaction with the environment.
• The opening up of the world has thrown up many opportunities and challenges. The cost of assuaging ambition is often very high in terms of health, relationships and other lost opportunities. The ability to prioritise and balance these requirements is very important.
• As we move to extract more from life without losing our sense of peace, a key requirement is our ability to retain emotional integrity, dual brain operation (left and right/ logical and creative) and high oxygen absorption. The reason is that without such a balance, thinking can become polarized, leading to stress.
• Finally, our ability to process data needs to be enhanced. The ability to handle multiple situations, each with its own demands, is the key to the effective utilization of our time and energy.

Situational Awareness is an exercise in capability building, directing our energies to generating maximum effectiveness for the time that we are alive. This means understanding the objective of what we are setting out to do, putting together a plan that has measurable milestones, eliminating waste in the form of frittered energy, fear, etc., in our operations, communicating effectively, learning continuously and being aware of what we are doing.

While there are many Yoga techniques, these have their base in the liberation of the soul and are not compatible with the demands of managerial stress situations. The most appropriate Yoga technique is Raja Yoga or Ashtanga Yoga (King of Yoga or Eight Limbed Yoga). Raja Yoga has two main sections – Kriya Yoga (Activity Yoga) and Dhyan Yoga (Merger Yoga). The latter section refers to liberation, but the former is very relevant to managers.

This discipline is one of the most comprehensive and complete tools in situation awareness.

Kriya Yoga has 5 parts;

• Yama – Transaction Control – How to interact with the external surroundings. This is based on managing transactions or managing response to stimulus.
• NiYama – Conceptual Control or inward discipline– How to manage the turbulence generated by conflict and change within our personality.
• Asana – Managers need to be physically fit to be able to take effective decisions and put in the effort to affect change. Asanas, in addition to increasing fitness levels, help in managing the fallout and reduction in stress levels.
• Pranayama – This compound word simply means – discipline in breathing. This discipline has two objectives- it increases oxygen intake, thereby reducing the level of toxins in the body which accumulate as a result of stress and it balances left and right brain activity. Both are critical to effective decision making.
• Pratyahara – colloquially, this is meditation. What is does is akin to the effect of stress on a prism. A prism breaks down white light into its constituent colours, somewhat like what a manager does with information, breaking it down to its constituent parts in order to take decisions. A prism becomes dysfunctional if is dirty or stressed – its crystalline structure is disturbed, when its ability to breakdown the incoming light is compromised. Praytahara brings back the crystalline ability to process information and data.

Share your opinion and experiences;

• How do you cope with Stress?
• What do you know of Yoga?
• How do you build capability?
• What is learning? How does it affect stress?

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Resolutions to Stress

The root cause of everything is our sense of identity. Our sense of identity can only exist if we manifest that identity and if someone acknowledges that manifestation. Unfortunately, our manifestation is never perfect and neither is the feedback received by us on our manifestation from the other entity, so there is a gap between what we are and the feedback which people give us on what we think we are. This is maya or farce and is the base of our conditioning or svadharma, constantly getting updated with each experience, resulting in changes to our behavior or svabhaava. This results in a constant and continuous weave of our conditioning and behavior which is the foundation of our personality and is called SvaTantra.

SvaTantra is colloquially known as independence. It is a compound word (Sva = self + Tantra = weave) and is our ability to yoke our conditioning with our behaviour in any situation. Yoke? Yes, yoke is the English term for the Sanskrit word, Yoga... both words are cognate, from the same root.

We take and implement decisions all the time. This causes stress, we experience stress all the time. Whenever we wish to get things done, we make an effort. This causes change, to which there is resistance in both, others and ourselves. The effort to effect change and overcome resistance to the change, both result in stress.

Any stress situation has two elements: the stressor and our coping action, out of which the only the latter is truly in our control. Our ability to cope effectively is limited only by our capability, our ability to assess the situation, decide on what to do, effectiveness in implementing the decision and dealing with the consequence of our action.

Elements of Situational Awareness

Situational Awareness is a stress management tool which addresses solutions at two levels; an intervention to manage the immediacy of the situation and a developmental aspect where the lessons are imbibed, resulting in us being able to either avoid the situation in future or to deal with it more effectively.

Intervention. In many new or difficult situations we often feel overwhelmed, experiencing a kind of psychosomatic hijack characterized by a feeling of being out of control. We need some tool that clears the clouds of confusion and brings a sense of clarity and balance.

Development. This solution is used in the following cases:

• Often, we react without fully understanding the situation. This results in a stress residue after the situation has passed. These stresses need to be purged in order that we remain in reality and at peace.
• Some situations are long-term and need continuous attention. This means continued focus on incremental improvements to bring the situation under control.
• Finally, all experiences result in learning at both, vijnana (transactional) and jnana (value) levels. The faster this assimilation occurs, the better will be the capability of the person to manage a similar experience again.

Any stress management tool we use must cover the following areas related to us: 

• Ability to interact with our environment in such a way that we retain our sense of peace and keep the peace with our environment. 
• Ability to digest and assimilate inputs from the environment, extract and assimilate the essence of our experience, reference and understand concepts and build a base for better interaction with the environment. 
• The opening up of the world has thrown up many opportunities and challenges. The cost of assuaging ambition is often very high in terms of health, relationships and other lost opportunities. The ability to prioritise and balance these requirements is very important. 
• As we move to extract more from life without losing our sense of peace, a key requirement is our ability to retain emotional integrity, dual brain operation (left and right/ logical and creative) and high oxygen absorption. The reason is that without such a balance, thinking can become polarized, leading to stress. 
• Finally, our ability to process data needs to be enhanced. The ability to handle multiple situations, each with its own demands, is the key to the effective utilization of our time and energy. 

Situational Awareness is an exercise in capability building, directing our energies to generating maximum effectiveness for the time that we are alive. This means understanding the objective of what we are setting out to do, putting together a plan that has measurable milestones, eliminating waste in the form of frittered energy, fear, etc., in our operations, communicating effectively, learning continuously and being aware of what we are doing. 

While there are many Yoga techniques, these have their base in the liberation of the soul and are not compatible with the demands of managerial stress situations. The most appropriate Yoga technique is Raja Yoga or Ashtanga Yoga (King of Yoga or Eight Limbed Yoga). Raja Yoga has two main sections – Kriya Yoga (Activity Yoga) and Dhyan Yoga (Merger Yoga). The latter section refers to liberation, but the former is very relevant to managers. 

This discipline is one of the most comprehensive and complete tools in situation awareness.  

Kriya Yoga has 5 parts; 

Yama – Transaction Control – How to interact with the external surroundings. This is based on managing transactions or managing response to stimulus. 

NiYama – Conceptual Control or inward discipline– How to manage the turbulence generated by conflict and change within our personality. 

Asana – Managers need to be physically fit to be able to take effective decisions and put in the effort to affect change. Asanas, in addition to increasing fitness levels, help in managing the fallout and reduction in stress levels. 

Pranayama – This compound word simply means – discipline in breathing. This discipline has two objectives- it increases oxygen intake, thereby reducing the level of toxins in the body which accumulate as a result of stress and it balances left and right brain activity. Both are critical to effective decision making. 

Pratyahara – colloquially, this is meditation. What is does is akin to the effect of stress on a prism. A prism breaks down white light into its constituent colours, somewhat like what a manager does with information, breaking it down to its constituent parts in order to take decisions. A prism becomes dysfunctional if is dirty or stressed – its crystalline structure is disturbed, when its ability to breakdown the incoming light is compromised. Praytahara brings back the crystalline ability to process information and data. 

Anecdotes, experiences and situations to help understand… 

Mohammed Ali was born as Cassius Clay and began training in boxing to channelize his anger at discrimination. At age 22, he defeated Sonny Liston to become the world champion and shortly thereafter converted to Islam to become Mohammed Ali. Two years later he refused to be conscripted, preferring to go to prison and be stripped of his championship titles. Resuming after four years, he regained the title and defended it twice, but the hammering he received in the ring resulted in the debilitating illness of Parkinson leading to his retiring. His unflinching stand on discrimination made him an icon of his people. 



• How did Mohammed Ali’s identity develop and change? 
• What was the stimulus in each case which prompted change? From Cassius Clay to Mohammed Ali, from free-man to convict and champion to patient. 
• How did he cope with the change? 
• Trace the changes to his interaction with his environment, within himself, his coming to terms with himself and his situation. 

Share your opinion and experiences; 

• How do you cope with Stress? 
• What do you know of Yoga? 
• How do you build capability?  
• What is learning? How does it affect stress? 

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Stress and Situational Awareness

Anatomy of stress
Homeostasis, may be defined as the tendency towards a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes. This means that the body works with a certain set of parameters for proper functioning, like body temperature etc., and when this parameter is disturbed, the body takes compensatory action to bring it back to equilibrium.
In any stress situation, this state is disturbed, resulting in a psychosomatic imbalance. The primary impulse/stimulus is received by the amygdala, a small pea sized organ behind the eyes and between the ears for evaluation of threat. When the amygdala perceives threat, it triggers the hypothalamus which, in turn, transmits the threat to the adrenal glands through the pituitary gland. This input releases adrenaline and cortisol into the blood stream, activating the sympathetic nervous system, allowing the body to react to meet the threat.
Since all stimuli are potential sources of stress, all stimuli gets evaluated by the amygdala for threat. The amygdala is a repository of experience or anubhava. Both good and bad experiences are stored here and this is called conditioning or svadharma. Conditioning is the source of our behavior or svabhava. Our relationship with our environment is a weave of our conditioning with our behavior and this is called svatantra or self-weave or personality.
All stimuli cause change. Change causes confusion which is known as tamas. This stimulus enters the amygdala and is compared with the resident conditioning. This leads to a response which is raajas. The response and feedback leads to better understanding of the stimulus or homeostasis or sattva. This balance is ever changing and the process is called guna or attribute.
Tamas (Inertia): This aspect is characterised by fear, laziness, indolence, confusion, delusion etc. A person with a predominance of this state is generally vacillatory, lethargic, prone to giving excuses and indecisive.
Raajas (Passion): This state governs nearly all forms of passion and is driven primarily by emotional and intellectual stimulus. Raajas is characterised by a predominant focus on personal achievement and gratification. A person in this state would typically be result oriented, dominating, driving, aggressive, impatient etc.
Sattva (Harmony): This state is characterised by harmony. It is demonstrated when a person tries to balance result with resource or process, task result with quality and relationships etc. A person in this state avoids confrontation, but in a conflict situation, is calm, absorbs emotional outburst and avoids personal or judgmental remarks.
Stress is experiential and very personal. Only the person experiencing it knows the discomfort of stress. Time, place, situation and capability, all could trigger a stress reaction. A situation that stresses one person need not stress another, even those who are genetically related. Also, that which stresses one at any point in time need not affect the same person in the same manner at other times.
Finally, as propounded by Abraham Maslow, when, in any situation where safety and security are endangered, stress in these issues would take precedence over other issues.
The best way to deal with stress is to manage it as the experience unfolds and as the stress begins to manifest itself; to be aware of the stimulus and test it against ones conditioning before responding. Keep an open mind to learning and be sensitive to impact on others.
This ability to manage stress as it occurs is called Situational Awareness.
Situational Awareness may be defined as the degree of accuracy by which one’s perception of his current environment mirrors reality.
Anecdotes, experiences and situations to help understand…
Example: A person is using an ATM (Automatic Teller Machine) for the first time. The person has been issued an ATM card by the bank and has to now go through several actions before being able to use the account, starting with registering the PIN (Personal Identification Number).
Imagine the person’s state when for the first time he/she has to work with the ATM. First is confusion “How am I going to do this?” or anxiety/ fear “What will happen if…?” This is Tamas.
Next comes anger or irritation - “This is ridiculous! How do they expect me to operate this machine without training?” This is Raajas.
Finally, there is acceptance and ownership. “Let’s see what we can do”. The person then hacks around and finds a solution, either by doing it himself or by asking someone. This is Satva.
Then comes success, an awareness of having found a solution. The person will rarely experience the same anxiety again. The stress of this particular situation has been overcome!
Share your opinion and experiences;

• How do you recognise your value system (svadharma)?
• How do you recognise that you are stressed?
• How do you recognise that your coping actions are not adequate?
• What would svatantra mean for your team, your company, your state or country.

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