Mental Balance – Sadhana
Amrita Ma Devi
Away from the kitchen sadhana: I work with my coaching clients on how to integrate Ayurvedic health into their daily relationships and daily life. These age-old methods of balancing the three gunas (the subtler aspects of the mind) are based on understanding the complexity of human minds. Working with Ayurveda in this way has brought needed adjustments and alignments in their behaviour. The Tantric concepts we practise at home, and in our retreats work on the subtler aspects. They are transformative and are meant to reach us at the core of our consciousness, which is all there is. These spiritual practices are tools that increase the understanding of the minds ability to grow and change are called neuroplasticity. And this happens only by witnessing, allowing and releasing the problem to a higher good, back to the origins of the Earth.
One common distortion that affects us all, every mother and her child, is in a relationship of manipulation and dependency. It’s really not our fault, it’s the way we are wired. This is why Ram Dass exclaimed, “ If you think you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents”. Furthermore, this type of distortion repeats and enters many of the ways we engage in behaviours set on making people like us more or appreciate us to make us feel safe and secure. Many live in the projection of wanting to fit in, of wanting to feel safe, never looking at what makes us feel unsafe. Once we become aware of this it’s time to learn how to find peace and comfort in our own skin.
Karma
When others cause a trigger in us, it is to the extent that something affects us, this becomes our karma. Karma is action, think of it only as action. In any situation, it is our opportunity to take transformational action from the way we are affected by something we might consider as someone else’s “wrong” action. We may be making other people into something they are not, the same way they make us into something that we are not. We feel they do not appreciate us or love us the way we want them too. We first have to become aware of the reactions which come up. Are we engaging in behaviours because we want to be seen and appreciated by others? The times’ when we felt we were not met, seen or heard, did we react by putting up our armour? Is their reaction a response to our armour that is being thrown up? I experienced this myself many times and had to take a look at how my chosen path can give me the answers to cope and come back to a place of peace and harmony. I have realised over the years how the body stores stress in the cells creating blocks and reducing your bodies ability to flow. Tejas our inner power and intelligence to discriminate gives one the ability to see clearly and process our responses. If we have low Tejas one becomes confused, and this decreases agni and our ability to manage. Ama builds in the body and mind and wreaks havoc on our health and disease arises.
Deepak Chopra said, “In life, all experience’s are either an interpretation of an experience or is a choice.” We have free will about the way we choose to react in any situation. So, for example, when we feel we have our back against the wall, here are some ways in, which generally, we react:
1) You can throw the reaction back at the other person, get angry, or act out of an uncentred place.
2) You can abandon the other person and the situation and run away. Although the wisdom of choosing our battles applies here, these two reactions are of a lower vibration and keep us stuck in the same patterning as the first reaction; both these actions will cause pain and suffering.
3) Or, we can look through a window of compassion and understand that our past way of reacting is showing up as armour. This armour was formed from previous reactions, after years and years and layers upon layers of feeling a need to protect one’s self.
We can make a sacrifice of this past way of being. Offering it up to the primordial powers of nature for transformation. Ask the subtle energy of fire to take this and roast these karmic seeds. Light a candle or make a fire and offer something sweet into the flames, such as nuts, rice, chocolate or coconut anything which is good to taste, You never taste or smell the food before making the offering.
This practice has been used for thousands of years in yoga and is called a Homa – The god agni is the first to be worshipped in the Vedas and is part of you. Decide what you want to offer up, what you want as an outcome and be sincere about the practice. Ask the etherealized being to align with your intention, then start the fire. Making a ritual over this process of recognition to our limitations sacred, all our emotions, as the voice which is often in the shadows, matters. Your truth matters and you offer it up to the light, as everything that is witnessed can be transformed, for us to respond in a mature, more surrendered way at the junction time.
To Create Balance
Don’t forget we are working out our “stuff” with those we are in closest relationship to. It is also in our higher nature to love and care for others. Quality relationships create greater longevity and better communities. What we are seeking is clarity and compassion in our relationships sisters, and brothers, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives. When we are on the vibration of the heart we change and release the hormone oxytocin known as the love hormone. Whoever is bothering you or triggering you, try to think of one thing you can appreciate or love about them. Transform that feeling of irritation, anger or disappointment into love and acceptance. This will bring you clarity, you will feel lighter, you will be living in truth that everything is really perfectly, imperfect. Surrendered into a more wabi-sabi way of living…From there you can create a new way of relating to those you are close too. Those that have come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. We are here to open up and feel safe and peaceful within ourselves first and foremost. Only then others around us will feel that then they can also open up and become able to connect with that love inside we radiate forth to shine.
The ways in which we can create inner harmony and bring ourselves into a state of peace, means we need to regulate these things:
Balanced diet: We are what we eat, well more specifically we are what we digest. Eating the foods which will be less stressful to digest, build fewer toxins in the digestive tract. The foods that cause imbalances in the mind are toxic forming foods. When you eat incompatible foods on a continuous bases they clog up the channels.
A moderate amount of sleep: Tamas is responsible for inertia deep sleep and one wants quality sleep or sound sleep for around 7-8 hours to be fully rested. Modern research now shares with us now important it is to get quality sleep.
Moderate activity: Rajas is responsible for movement but we want to create the right conduct of movement which is not going to overly stress or punish the body by depleting it.
Moderate meditation: Samadhi or absorption is a state of balance between the gunas into Sattva. They merge into Prakriti (cosmic consciousness) which merges into Purusha (awareness) which is the awareness of True Self. Meditation has been known to reduce stress and reduce anxiety and allow our emotions to flower. It gives us the time to honor our feelings with kindness and let emotions be without judgement.
These are all the mental constitutions (Sattva, Rajas and Tamas) when the gunas are balanced they are said to be in a state of Nirguna. When a person forgets their true nature or true self it is because rajas and tamas in the mind, are causing an imbalance. These emotional disturbances occur when we need to cultivate Sattva through proper lifestyle.
If you are struggling to manage certain states of mind or to find the balance so needed for wellbeing, how about jumping in on a free transformational call with me. For Ayurvedic guidance, or to keep evolving and pushing past one’s self-limitations and extinguish self-sabotage – call to connect. We expand and heal our journey faster when we have support.
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