As we are turning out to be busier and busier, coping with the growing competitive world and getting exposed to different kinds of professions with the involvement of new and hi-tech gadgets taking over as tools to simplify work, this diversification has given rise to a completely new way of thinking.
But is our mind ready for such change in such a short time?
We have changed the way the world functions more rapidly in the past twenty years starting from the eighties than we did in the past hundred years. The change thus brought more challenges for the intellect and as the intellect, being one of the faculties of the mind, had to function better, it became the cause of accumulation of stress. Now this unavoidable reason of stress demands a development of the mind in order to keep up with the pace of life.
Development of the mind means a mind which is tensionless, calm, clear and clean of all the tensions.
The Three Major Forms of Tension
Muscular Tension
This state of tension is related to our physical self. In our busy daily life, we tend to go through various forms of physical movements – movements of our body which are natural like sitting, walking, bending, turning, using our limbs to function at work. All these movements at times are not proper and at the same time some of the movements are taken for granted by our minds. Hence creating a lack of awareness and misalignment, this results in muscular tension.
Emotional Tension
In our daily routine, we go through emotional ups and downs which the mind experiences as love/hate, profit/loss, success/failure, happiness/unhappiness. There are times that a negative reactivity of our self surfaces itself and we are somehow unable to control and manage. At other times, we are unable to express certain emotions freely or openly. Thus we repress and the tension gets to be deep rooted. This results in emotional tension
Mental Tension
In addition to the muscular and emotional imbalance we face in daily life, we as human beings put our mind into constant activity in order to manage and tackle our daily situations. As our mind is in constant activity, the mind experiences fantasies, confusion, oscillation, resulting in negative thought patterns. These experiences constantly get registered by our consciousness and are accumulated in our mind. From time to time, these experiences become the very reason for unhappy situations in life. This results in mental tension.
In the modern times, tensions have become part and parcel of life. What is and has become the need for today’s individual is to seek a state of true relaxation by “resting more efficiently”. True relaxation is not a state of normal sleep which we have in our daily life. The experience of happiness in the form of inner calmness and peace of mind and body is what true relaxation is .
This state of relaxation can only be achieved when we dissolve our physical, emotional and mental tensions.
Yoga Nidra – Resting more Efficiently
The ancient technique of yoga nidra has been one of the best tools for yogis and practitioners to have adequate and efficient rest as one hour of yoga nidra session is equivalent to four hours of conventional sleep.
As we have understood the ways and reasons of our tensions now, we will understand how yoga nidra can be the remover of our deep tensions. All that we accumulate as tension gets stored in the unconscious. At the same time, the reason of all that we are, as in the form of impressions received as archetypes from our ancestors and our parents, the conditioning which we go through is all in the unconscious and the subconscious minds. These impressions are of positive and negative in nature, which give rise to normal and abnormal behaviours in a person. This change in human behaviour is the cause of all tensions. If we are to remove deep rooted tensions from our mind, then we have to learn to dive into the deep recesses of the mind so that we can allow these tensions to dissolve and completely remove them from the mind. Not only do we remove the tensions, we also get rid of past phobias and fears as the fearful and phobic impressions get exhausted during the meditative state which one can experience during the practise of yoga nidra.
Adopting a habit of practising yoga nidra daily gives us the ability and experience of a clear and receptive mind. This nature of mind being confident and clear has a positive influence on our personality, making us and our lives much happier and blissful, filled with inner calmness and eternal peace.
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