Spirituality is a practice of soul consciousness.
Many will wonder why or how come dietitian / fitness coach is talking about spirituality.
Many feel spirituality is for retired stage of life. Also it's misunderstood as religious practice.
After studying yog philosophy, reading and listening to spiritual coaches; I have started understanding that, to improve health and to reverse diseases, knowledge of spirituality (Gyan Yog) is very important.
I have tried to explain here notes / points taken from books and videos of spiritual coaches like BK Shivani Didi, Sadhguruji, Gaur Gopal Dasji. A year back I did Raj Yog Meditation course.
I want to say here that this topic was most difficult and took time for me to pen it down.
Read it not as expert's blog but as someone is telling you to go and learn yourself what has been benefitting to her.
Concepts that I found beneficial for developing healthy lifestyle.
1. We are soul. Happiness is our original virtue.
Unhealthy eating is outcome of emotional dependency on external factors. For both joy as well as sad feelings, we use food to elevate and ignore respective emotions.
It's absolutely fine to occasionally indulge on food for joy. But our happiness should not be depend on food.
Food can give temporary "feel good factor". Mindful eating is a result when we are happy from inside. Healthy choices becomes our easy habit when we understand the difference between Being Happy vs Doing something for happiness.
2. Soul has two entities i.e. Intellect and Mind.
Mind has a tendency to go behind our sensory needs, while Intellect helps to make decisions. Which one is leading us to make choices is important. Choices we make each time develops our habits and eventually shapes our personality.
This is described in image portraying mahabharat chariot on bhagawatgeeta.
E.g. Today my intellect reads blog on importance of sleeping early at night. But my mind is going behind watching something on OTT.
- My mind gave reason it's ok one day. Mind overpowered intellect. Made choice not to sleep on time. This gets repeated for some more days. And now even if there is nothing to watch, I will simply scroll the screen. My personality becomes like Owl and I'm lousy, sleepy during work.
- My intellect ignores mind and decides to sleep early. It tells mind to postpone the time to watch OTT during day time on weekend.
With repeating couple of days more, sleeping early become easy.
My personality is early to bed and early to rise. Energetic throughout day.
Intellect needs to be powerful to take control of mind and thereby our senses.
3. We are a composition of 5 koshas/ layers i.e.
Outer layer, the first layer is annamay kosha (physical body), second layer is manomay kosha (mental body) , third layer is pranmay kosha (energy/emotional body) , fourth one is gyanmay kosha (spiritual body) and fifth one the innermost anandmay kosha (bliss body). Here we can understand that these layers are interconnected and energy flows through them. What happens at inner layers gets reaction or response at out layers and what happens at outer layers gets reaction or response at inner layers.
Effect of our thoughts, emotions (mental & emotional body) appears on physical body. Therefore to prevent unhealthy mind and body, as well as to improve healthy mind and body; working on our believes is very important.
Our believes, our emotions, our thoughts have energy. Blockages at physical and mental body don't get resolved, unless energy is healthy and freely flowing.
4. Body Consciousness and Soul Consciousness
Spirituality is about awareness of self as soul, a spiritual being. Being soul, we already are peaceful being, happy being, pure being.
When we get aware of these qualities, we feel contented and satisfied. We accept and respect our body and want take care of it with healthy lifestyle.
We learn to accept challenges and learn to "respond". External stimulation is not required.
But when we are unaware about our identity as soul, we are body conscious. We constantly seek sensory/body pleasures from external factors.
It leads to attachment to external factors like body image, people and food. This attachment is then a cause of hurt, guilt, stress, anxiety. We "react" to problems.
Ignorance of problem / challenge is one of the way of Reaction. Eg. Processed food, alcohol, smoking are generally taken for feeling that kick/ stimulation and ignore the challenges.
Body consciousness also leads to low self-esteem towards body that cause desperation for either gain weight or lose weight which further leading to poor eating patterns.
Self awareness brings mindfulness.
5. Seven Chakraa and Shadripu
There is an energy in universe and as we are also part of universe there is energy (prana) inside us. There are seventy two thousands of nadis (subtle energy channels) in our body through which prana flows. These nadis meet at seven different junctions, they are seven chakras. To relate this philosophy with modern science consider seven endocrine glands.
Frequency at which energy flows decides our wellbeing and connects us to related energies in universe.
Shadripu refers to the six enemies of the mind in Hindu philosophy: Kama (lust), Krodha (anger), Lobha (greed), Moha (delusion/attachment), Mada (pride/arrogance), and Matsar (jealousy/envy). All these emotions trigger further related emotions. Eg. Jealousy further leads to fear, over consumption of commodities, possesiveness and unhappiness.
I'm "Feeling stuck" is common word we say. What this mean, these negative emotions don't allow free prana flow. Nadis get blocked and then chakras.
Lifestyle diseases are now proven as psychosomatic disturbance. Considering all above points diseases are first starting at psycho/ mind level. Blocked Chakras affects related gland and then disturbs rhythm of organs system around it. And we feel DisEased.
Spirituality teaches us to get aware of "I being Soul and everyone around is also Soul".
Once we accept this philosophy; Accept, Respect, Gratitude, Love which are powerful tools for unblocking prana/energies becomes easier for us to follow. Dependency on food or any other vices is no more needed as emotional comfort.
We get mindful to chose content consumption as well as food, because we now know that it will not immediately impact, but my soul will have these impressions that create emotions and further affect mind and body gradually.
Once we understand energies/ prana, we become wise to know why am I not getting desciplned towards healthy eating, why am I not losing weight, why I suddenly got heart blockages even if I eat home cooked food, why my blood sugar is not under control inspite of medication, why am I falling sick frequently and why for some sickness becomes a part of their family.
Once we are humble to understand this, Fit and Healthy life is forever companion. Or if currently anyone has any disease, now knows how to get back on health.
No comments:
Post a Comment