Are you stressed? Don’t you get tired of keeping up with the joneses? In spite of all the gadgets in your home don’t you feel empty inside? Doesn’t the same daily routine bogs you down sometimes? Don’t you think your workplace stress is spilling over to your home life or vice versa? Do you keep on worrying about your children’s future? Do you feel you need more power, more energy in your life?

It looks like the majority of us are divided in two categories. Either, we are so busy – over tight schedules, meetings, deadlines, targets and so on resulting in a totally disoriented family life where we find fathers who don’t even know in which class their children are studying.

Or, on the other hand we have the couch potatoes for which Hollywood & Bollywood Production Houses make Daily Operas showing totally artificial values – black and white people. Either the characters are saints or they are nothing short of devil’s direct agents on Earth. The couch potatoes keep on lapping up these operas to the point that no creativity and light is left in the mind. They don’t even realize that they have become addicts. That they are totally hypnotized.

This kind of imbalanced living has created a havoc in our society. It is an outbreak of a proportion of an epidemic which has not even spared the children. Surveys after surveys are coming to the same conclusions. The truth is out. It is none other than Stress and the other lifestyle diseases namely heart problems, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, back pain etc.

Every day we see even young people being taken to the emergency wards with a stroke or heart attack. And the relatives talk among themselves outside in utter awe how come he(she)? He had no problem earlier. How did it happen so unexpectedly? Surprise! How did the disease develop?

Of course, a disease of such magnitude cannot be an accident. It’s only that we have become so unconscious that we don’t heed to the early signs.

I hear so often from our elders, “In our times the children were so simple, a new born won’t even open his/her eyes for a whole month. Today’s children are so smart.” And I would reply that how much impressions did the child use to get in earlier times. Nowadays, even in his/her mother’s womb the child is bombarded with all kind of impressions from TV, radio, traffic noise, etc. etc.

The other times they would say, when we were at your age, we were so energetic. Today’s generation is so lousy and weak. Now you see the quality of air, water, food and impressions we receive in our daily lives has changed drastically in the last 30 years or so.

Our lives have become so complex. Our desires, competition have multiplied many folds. The simple joys and happiness has no place in our lives today. Their place is taken up by stress, disease and depression. One wise man said:

“It’s so simple to be happy, but it is so difficult to be simple”.

And that sums up the whole problem of the modern life. The more complex the life gets, the more less joy, the more less happiness, the more stress, the more disease and more depression.

The fact is that in the race to become more modern we are constantly discarding our ancient wisdom. We have lost touch with the Nature, in fact we are hell bent on destroying it. But how can a society be healthy when it wants to destroy its own roots? How can we live a healthy and happy life until we are not in harmony with Nature, with one another and with our own inner selves? Our ancestors in the vedic age taught us that to lead a happy life we have to live in harmony with ourselves, with others and with Nature. Here I list a few steps that can help us in our journey back to harmony, health and happiness:

Slow down

“…You better slow down.  Don’ t dance so fast.
Time is short.  The music won’t last….”
So goes the lines from a child’s poem. Life is to be lived. Live it. Savour it. Don’t just let it pass you by. When we are in a hurry, we lose awareness. We become robots.

Respect Nature

Let’s save our environment. If we have to go back to harmony, our environment needs to be healed. Let’s not add to the woes of an already injured mother earth.
But it is a fact that scientists (who did not got influenced by influential govts. and vested companies) have already proclaimed that irreversible damages have been already done to the environment. So, it looks like prayer would be our last resort.

Exercise

Even a moderate light exercise done daily is much better than a heavy dose of hatha yoga once a while. Exercise is like food, you cannot get results by eating a lot once a month. You have to take small quantities at regular intervals. Same with exercise, it gives much better results even if done for 5 min. daily. And no need to do any strenuous one if you are not the gym type person. 2-3 rounds of jogging, or even five-ten minutes of simple full body joints movements gives excellent returns on time invested by saving you from a lot of illnesses. No exaggeration there.

Balance

Moderation is the key to good health and happiness. Stomach is the root where most of the diseases are born. Balance in eating, sleeping, work, love and entertainment is fundamental to a happy existence. Neither too much, nor too less. Like the salt in your curry. Do not over-furnish your rooms. Be simple and you will be happy.

Meditation and Relaxation

To be at peace with ourselves. To release all tensions from our muscles and body. Scientists are now finding that meditation is a good brain food. And that too much thinking is really bad for our brain cells. What yogi knew so long ago. Scientists really need to catch up with the ancient wisdom!!

Kick that couch

Scientists have found that meditation boosts performance more than even sleep. So an extra one hour of sleep can be easily exchanged with a 10-15 minute meditation. If you cut hour an hour of TV and instead spend 10 minute in exercise and 15 minute in meditation, it will give a super boost to your daily energy level.

Correct Breathing

This one is really a gem.  Almost 90% of the grown ups are inhaling only 30% of oxygen-prana because of their wrong way of breathing. Shallow breathing or chest breathing starves the lungs and the solar plexus. So what happens is an accumulation of negative emotions and pent up energy in the region of solar plexus which is scientifically proven to be our second brain. Again here yogis took a 5000 year old lead from scientists. What scientists proved 5-10 years ago, yogis knew 5000 years ago. Now this is a major cause of stress and lack of energy in most of the modern people. We need to learn deep abdominal breathing and reverse our habit of shallow breathing.

Give and Grow Rich

Become the masters of your destiny. Whatever you sow, so shall you reap. So whatever you want to have, give that to others. You need to be more loved, love others. You want others to understand you. Understand others. You want to be rich, tithe. Give 5-10% of your net income in charity. That is the law. Give and you shall receive.

These are very simple principles. That is why they are so difficult to practice. As the wise man said, “Its so simple to be happy, but it is so difficult to be simple”. So mainly to conclude, happiness comes where there is simplicity. So let’s strive to be simple. And happiness and harmony will follow.

To your health, happiness and harmony….

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