A practical path to calm, clarity, and happiness
Introduction
In a world where stress is the product of too much to do, too little time, and no energy, meditation emerges as a beacon of hope.
There is a beautiful human being inside everyone. What makes one different is the stress that covers the beauty. When the stress is gone, you become your original, beautiful self. Meditation removes that stress. It makes you efficient & energetic, stress-free, and joyful. It’s a practice that offers a means to rejuvenate the spirit, appreciate beauty, and live with happiness.
Anything you do in your life, what do you do it for? To have more happiness. And happiness can only happen when you are free from stress.
What Is Stress and How Does It Affect Our Lives?
In this modern world, stress is inevitable. You face it in everything you do, whether it’s your personal life or professional life. The formula is the same – too much to do, too little time, no energy.
When people are stressed, either they hurt themselves or they hurt others. Just remember the times when you were so stressed you were mad at people, and did it hurt others? When we are not normal, not in our senses, we tend to do things that hurt our dear and near ones. So, in stress, either we are hurting ourselves, or we are hurting others.
When you are stressed, you cannot appreciate beauty. In fact, you cannot enjoy anything. You can be in very beautiful surroundings, but if your mind is preoccupied, or you are stressed, or you are tired, then you cannot experience beauty.
So what can be done? Either you increase energy or reduce your wants and your responsibilities. Either you reduce the workload, which is not practical these days, or you increase the time. That also doesn’t happen. When you are tired, even if you have time, you cannot do much. So the only visible option that is left is to increase your energy level.
How Does Meditation Help Relieve Stress
Every night we go to sleep, and we wake up energized and rejuvenated because during sleep the mind, body, and breath come together into one rhythm, eliminating some of the stress of the day. But there is another way of resting which is much superior to natural sleep – and it is called meditation.
In meditation, you are relaxing consciously. This conscious rest, or restful alertness, removes stress from our system in a short period of time. It brings clarity to the mind, makes our skin glow, and our heart glow as well.
Meditation is the secret to your energy. It calms your mind down. When you meditate, you are able to get rid of stress by bringing more energy into the body. Meditation releases the lesions in the brain and brings freshness, and this has been proven scientifically in many parts of the world. Regular meditation practice is linked to reduced cortisol levels, the body’s primary stress hormone. [1]
When the mind is disturbed, our perception is also disturbed. When our mind is calm, we can make better decisions, thus creating a more harmonious and positive atmosphere around us.
Explore detailed benefits of meditation here.
Common Misunderstandings About Meditation
Some people say that for them it’s hard to meditate because they have the idea that they have to completely empty their minds. Usually, when people hear the word meditation, they think it is contemplation, it is concentration, or something religious or spiritual meant for certain kinds of people. These assumptions often prevent people from even trying meditation.
But in reality, meditation is not about doing anything; it’s a deep relaxation. You simply have to let go. It is the skill to move the mind from a state of chaos to a state of bliss, from restlessness to deep restfulness, and to tap into the source of intuition.
In this process, we sometimes make use of sound, the primordial sound, some of the ancient sounds called mantras, to allow the mind to settle into silence. You can also follow along with instructions in guided meditations.
The Role of Breathwork and Energy
You can talk for hours about love, but a little dog in your home will convey to you what is love in just two minutes or even one minute. We convey more by our vibrations than our words. You experience this in the world – some people you meet, you want to talk to them. Some other people, for no reason, you just want to avoid them. You don’t understand why but you want to resist them. When your stress has created such vibes around you, people are repelled. That is the energy, the vibrations that are speaking. We all carry vibrations. The point is to make this vibration positive.
For this, we have to get rid of all the stress and negativity that we keep collecting. Suppose you sit and just listen to negativity for one or two hours. This causes changes in your physiology. Your brain, the hippocampus part of your brain starts getting lesions, wrinkles there. And if you allow it to be there, it gives rise to many types of illnesses in life.
So the question comes – how do we reverse this process? How do you increase your energy level and make your vibrations positive? Through proper food, little exercise, and through meditation and breathing. Meditation just gives you enormous energy. By doing pranayama breathwork like Sudarshan Kriya, we can make our lives so positive. This has been proven scientifically in many parts of the world. Regular practice of Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) significantly lowers the body’s stress response. Studies show SKY reduces sympathetic “fight-or-flight” activity and boosts calming parasympathetic tone, restoring optimal autonomic balance. [2]
How Quickly Can Meditation Relieve Stress?
When you are so stressed, you begin thinking, “I want to get this stress out of the system.” This hurry in trying to get rid of it becomes an even greater stress. When you are stressed, just embrace the stress, accept it and relax. Relaxation, rather than struggle, is what will allow stress to dissolve.
Meditation takes at least 20 minutes for you to calm down, and during this time, the stress in the system goes away. You are able to tap into the source of creativity.
Researchers at a university in Sweden studied stressed students who practiced a simple breathing-based meditation for 15–20 minutes daily. After six weeks, participants showed significantly reduced anxiety—up to 31%—compared to those who only relaxed without guided breathing.
Scientists today say that if we meditate 20 minutes twice a day for eight weeks, the grey matter in our brain increases and the structure of the brain changes. This reaffirms our ancient experience of many years with many people around the world. [3]
What are other things that help with stress relief?
- Broaden your vision: Happiness can only happen when we are free from stress and wise enough to see the world from a broader perspective. To get rid of stress that has already come, we need a technique. To avoid stress, we need wisdom. Things happen through a different law in the Universe. You might have noticed that you had been very good to people, and still, there were people who suddenly became your enemies. Your friends became your enemies. And the opposite happens too: someone whom you have not done any big favor for, they help you when you really need it. So friendship or animosity happens through some special law of the Universe, and it is called karma. When your times are good, your worst enemy behaves as a friend, and when your time is bad, then your best friend behaves like an enemy. So, understand things from a bigger dimension.
- Embrace your emotions: You simply have to embrace every aspect of yourself, including your emotions. It’s okay to have an upset mood sometimes. It’s okay to be angry. When you keep agreeing with all that is happening to you, then you’ll be less stressed. If you resist it, it will stay longer.
- Not your first challenge: Remember, you have faced many challenges in the past, and you have overcome them all. If you are alive, then everything else is secondary. Know that there’s nothing more important in life than life itself. If you are alive, only then can anything else be important. If you are alive, then there is business, there are relationships. If you are alive, then there is fame or whatever you wish for. Don’t put life at risk to get these other things. You must give more importance to life itself.
- Cost of Happiness: Why do you do anything that you do? It is because you want to be happy. And if you achieve something at the cost of happiness, it is worth nothing at all. You achieved what you wanted, but you lost happiness; then that achievement is null and void. You must keep this in mind.
- Little Things: Small techniques like head massage, eye exercise, taking proper food, taking a walk, sitting and observing sunset…maybe in KL, you don’t get to see the sunset because of tall buildings all around! Being with nature, playing with kids, etc., will also help. Unfortunately, we simply sit on the couch, watch television, and keep eating all the junk food. This has taken a toll on the health of society. We need to change our ways for a healthy society.
When stress and tension start, become aware and do pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and get rid of it. Practices are there to get rid of stress, and wisdom doesn’t allow stress to come. Practices alone won’t work because more stress will come again. Wisdom alone won’t work because it will be only a set of ideas. Both are required.
Start Your Mental Hygiene
Meditation is mental hygiene. Just as nobody compromises on dental hygiene, we should not compromise on mental hygiene.
Take 20 minutes every day, morning or evening, sit and relax, and meditate. In that short period, your body gets deeper rest than the deepest sleep.
Acceptance and letting go are powerful. This doesn’t happen just by reading books or listening to talks. Experience is more important than information.
That is why Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar created the Happiness Workshops, where people are given real experience through meditation, breathing techniques, and practical wisdom. This combination is the secret of the Art of Living Happiness Workshops.
Meditation can eliminate stress and bring out the beauty in you. It will tremendously benefit you and the people around you, because each one of us impacts everyone around us.
So let us all meditate and make the world a better place.
Recommendations to get your mental hygiene habit started:
- Guided Meditation For Stress Relief
- Happiness Program With Sudarshan Kriya
- Sahaj Samadhi Dhyana Meditation
Let Gurudev’s soothing voice take you inward to a peaceful state of meditation.
References
[1] [Koncz et. al. 2021] Impact of meditation on cortisol
[2] Sudarshan Kriya impact on anxiety and depression.
[3] [Tang et. al. 2020] Impact of meditation on grey matter in the brain.
