How Yog / Pranayam/ Food helps to conquer depression

In today's world of modern science we consider a person who feel depressed to be suffering from mental illness. What are the symptoms of a person who is feeling anxiety and depression? He/She feels suffocation, dry mouth, feels shaky, their body shivers, feels that his/her heart is shrinking, they cry, well these are exactly the symptoms which Shri Arjun mentions in "Bhagwat Geeta" in front of Shri Krishna, but unfortunately most of us don't learn from history.

Shri Krishna makes him understand his responsibilities and also make him understand that how he should develop his thought process so that he doesn't feel the pressure of  various relation or say various emotions by means of Yog. Along with all these things Shri Krishna also tells Shri Arjun to do Pranayam ( Meditation) and to have the right food, he assured Shri Arjun that if he follow these ritual which are actually very easy to follow and not as tough as the institutions of religions  make them to be, than he can conquer his depression and live a joyous life again.

Modern medical science has a word for describing depression that is called Chemical Imbalance and  in Ayurveda there is a word called "Vayu" which means air or say some kind of gas, now please don't go to any ayurvedic doctors because 99.9% of them are thugs similar to doctor of Modern Medical Science and the figure I am giving you is mathematically derived so no need to check on it  :)  .

The chemical imbalance which the doctors speak of is nothing but actually the air or gas, it may be little hard for you to imagine, but let it understand it in this way that our organs works with the help of the nutrient absorbed from food in our gut, so whatever the nutrients are secreted in our guts are transferred to our organ, similaly our brain needs continuous supply of many things in order to work, now suppose (just an eg) the pipe which was supplying your brain with water gets some air or gas trapped in it, then there will be fluctuation in the supply of water to your brain and hence it will affect the activity of your brain too.

Initially when I suffered from depression I was not having too much issues with digestion, I mean I use to have fart and it use to smell really bad, but I use to think I can't do much about it, but I had lot of issues with my emotions ( my initial symptoms ), medicine were able to reduce the intensity of depression and increase the time interval between the two episodes, but later on even after taking medication for depression I was unable to digest the food, there were issues related to bloating, acidity, cramps in stomach, legs, pain in eyes, hairfall,  medicine were increasing so were the different health issues. Now understand this when I stopped eating gluten i.e. I cut wheat, the other grain which I now prepare is pearl millet by Sourdough Method, also I apply a little bit of cultured ghee over 3 to 4 chapatis, now chapatis made of sourdough breaks easily in my stomach as they have already been broken by the micro organism, so the sourdough grain doesn't causes gases or bloating as it use to happen, secondly I have cut milk, coffee or tea with milk but I take curd, if you will observe milk when you heat it, it inflates as a ballon, it doesn't boil as water but it rises as a surface, but surface of curd is broken by the micro organism hence again curd is digested with ease in my guts without producing any gases.

Pulses or lintels which I eat are also a little sprouted, so again here also my little friends "the micro organism" reduces load on my stomach, secondly I switch to fresh vegetable diet every alternate day as well as I replace the grain flour after every 6th day with buckwheat flour or amaranth or water chestnut flour, so again I am cutting any extra load on my stomach, I add very less oil say about 1 teaspoon for two people in lentils, too little oil will give you hard time in your bowel movement while too much of oil will lead to less residence time of food in your stomach  :) , along with the vegetable oil in lentils, I am also applying little bit of ghee over chapati as ghee i.e. animal fat is requirement for our body.

Now comes the point of Pranayam, how it helps, frankly speaking I don't know the exact answer, but I will share my idea on it, some people will tell you about chakras and all this, but it is all nonsense, just relax no need to panic, it is helpful and that is for sure. Pranayam doesn't mean deep breathing, or inhaling more oxygen, your body knows how much oxygen it require, you don't have to think about it, but during pranayam our back should be straight and we should not be doing any other activity that includes putting tension on your any body part.  Now if you observe that it is during this position of your body when the neck is not bend or your back is not bend, some thoughts will strike your mind making you to loose your attention and not concentration, you don't need to concentrate but you should be alert you will divert your attention back on to your breath so you will be channelising your breath in a better way or say that you will be channelising the air which is wide spread in your body in a better way and hence will result in your better overall health. :) Om

I am not a Psychiatrist.

How to master Meditation

Pranayam is only one aspect out of the few others, in order to attain blissfulness

Pranayam is made from two words first is Pran, now what is Pran? You can search for it on web and there are plenty of meaning for the same, but though they differ in meaning they don't differ by much, some say it is source of life and some says it is the respiration and some say it is just the breath that we inhale, this difference is due to the fact that sanskrit though was a popular language at one time, but it is also a sort of lost language today and also when we translate from one language to other language we sort of loose its actual meaning b'coz different people interpret the same thing in different ways.

Pranayam is one of the important step in the art of seeking blissfulness, some people try to complicate it by putting everything on pranayam, by saying by means of pranayam you can achieve moksha or achieve perfectly healthy body or will be free of all your miseries, but shri Krishna tells in Geeta that only by means of bhakti i.e. devotion you can get moksha, now what is bhakti, just repeating few sanskrit word is not bhakti, just enchanting names of god is not bhakti. Shri Krishna says that my best bhakt i.e. a devotee, is a person who understand me i.e. a "Gyani", and its eventually a seeker i.e. a "Gigyasu" i.e. who has the curiosity to know me ultimately becomes a "Gyani".

Now how to master the art of Pranayam. It is not a big deal but along with pranayam you will also have to practice yog i.e. balance eating, that means food that suit your stomach, your health as well as your mind, and balance thinking, excluding anything will make you miss all the buses, as most of the people know Pranayam means sitting straight, you can also sit on a chair if you feel uneasy or uncomfortable sitting on the ground but care should be taken that your legs don't hang in air rather they must be resting on the ground, also the surface of the chair on which you are sitting should be flat and not too fluffy, and if it is not cushioned, place a cloth on the chair and sit over it, now close your eyes but it should be little bit open, just don't move any of your parts other then the lungs which will move in order to respirate :), you will have to be alert while meditating.

Now some processes will be simultaneous, you will have to observe that non of your body part move or is under tension,  you shouldn't get lost in your own world of thought & even if you get lost in your own world the moment you remember that you are lost, you have to focus back on your eyes that they are open and not closed and your body i.e. your legs and hands are not tense or moving, your senses are in your control, this act will be repeated again and again the process of repeating the same act again again is nothing but remembering god, also when you will master this art you will start to focus on your breath by itself, b'coz even when you are not doing anything you are breathing, you will feel calm.

This act you should perform regularly and you shouldn't attempt to sit for a hour or two, just give few minutes. Why this act has to performed regularly is because first few days when you will be doing this you will put extra effort but slowly things will change you will become casual, now each day will be different, some day you must have had a fight with your boss, or on some day you saw a sexy person of opposite sex, some day you will be annoyed with your colleague, so each day when you will meditate these thought will struck your mind and you might get lost in them and it will result in anger in you or maybe lust and at that point you have to relax your senses which ultimately will let to relaxation of your mind. 

You don't have to concentrate on your hand posture and all those stuff, only thing is that there should be less noise, you don't require to go to himalayas or under some banyan tree in a jungle, do it with ease in your own bedroom or drawing room wherever you feel comfortable. I hope I am able to explain it you, if anybody has any doubt they can ask me, here itself . :) Om

Significance Of OM

OM is for Everyone

OM has a mystery attached to it, I never use to understand that why God will be so attached to a word. I use to wonder why in yoga classes they tell us to recite OM & they use to give very interesting argument in favour of it by saying that the vibration it generates is very helpful. Similar argument they use to give it for other matras that were in Sanskrit, but I was never satisfied with these answers as I use to argue that after all they are just words, and what will be the effect of it if I don't know its meaning for eg: if I say that " I am a Dog" in sanskrit how the hell will it create positive vibrations in me.

Later on with time I realised that OM is the sound produced in the process of completion of a complete cycle of breath, if you observe closely, the moment you inhale your breath sound "O" is produced and when you exhale sound "M" is produced it is the only word in this world which can be produced inside your mind without disturbing the entire process of breathing, it will become more clear when your breath will become "Pran" i.e. the air that you are inhaling while reading this para, i.e. when you will be able to concentrate on your breath without putting any effort in pulling your breath and your exhale will become "Aapan" i.e. the air that you are exhaling at the moment without pushing you breath.

OM is of great help while mastering the process of "Pranayam" i.e. mastering your concentration over your “Pran” & “Apan”, try out "RAM" or any other word in your mind while mastering the act of  “Pranayam”, the flow of breath will be missing.

The very act of finding such a word shows that how advanced our ancestors were, the word Meditation doesn't justify the meaning of Prananyam, it is not even close to it in terms of it origin & dictionary meaning, Pranayam is a creation of very advance thinking, what we are doing today is just maintaining the legacy of our ancestor in a pretty distorted form.