Sri Anand Yoga – 4

Sri Anand Yoga  –  4

…….. Originally written on 25 March 2004

The response of our body to external threat can be compared with how a country responds to the threat from across the border. At the time of war, the country’s economy, social system, political system, fiscal system, all system go into a war mode. That is the normal conditions, normal functioning is suspended. And the whole energy of the country is focused on winning the war.  May be the parliament is suspended, may be the hot debate in which the opposition and the ruling party fight each other – that is suspended so that we have to show unity to the enemy. Similarly, taxes may be raised, common man is expected to contribute more, so that the war machine required to fight the enemy can be purchased. Similarly, the supply of essentail commodities is reduced for common man and diverted to the war effort. All essential requirements like electricity, food etc, all those essential requirements are curtailed and diverted to war- so all these things take place. Because our sole object during that time is to win the war. This is similar to the response of the body when it is having a external threat. Another example can be given of a factory manufacturing goods. When the power supply is cut, we start the power generators. However, the power generators do not produce enough energy to meet the full requirement of the factory – because it is not economical to have large capacity in generators because it is not a usual situation of continuous power cut. Power cut happens only sometimes. So the limited power generated by the generators is utilised on essential functions. Like computer room for example where data is not lost, so some supply is given, or depending upon the manufacturing activity, power is given like pharmaceutical industry sufficient power is given just to see that the chemical composotion, chemical compound which is already in the process do not get spoiled so the essential processes are kept continuing, or in the case of hospital for example, the power is supplied to ICU, or to heart patients so that the minimum survival functions are ensured. This is what is being done when it goes – either a hospital or a factory – during power shortage or a country during the situation of war – this is what happens when there is an external threat or there is a condition of a crisis.

Now in the case of human body, a similar thing happens. During the state of external threat we mobilise massive amount of energy. We have got increased cardiovascular activity, our digestive process is suppressed because the energy which is used for digestion is diverted towards your muscles in fight or flight situations. Similarly the muscles, the cells which do activity for growth or reproduction – this is also suppressed and that energy is used for fighting the enemy. Similarly the immune response of the body which is required to fight the germs inside the body to protect the body from the environment – that also is suppressed because more essential at the time of external threat is to fight the enemy outside the body rather than to fight the enemy within the body in terms of germs. Similarly we need to have a quick response, we need to have the alert mind so that we can watch the moment of the external threat, may be an animal and give a quick response, so that our survival is ensured. All these activities take place. This is in a special – we can call it an alert mode, survival mode, during that mode these things take place. And it does result in our survival. It does help in our survival. So it is very essential part of it. Again I am stressing, it is not an error to have these type of responses  is very very essential part of our responses. However, what we have to note is that in a continuous state of such external threat when our body is in this alert mode or in a survival mode, there is a cost to pay. I tdoes not come just without a cost. Our survival is ensured. But survival at that particular point of time have result only by paying I would say high cost. We will see how.

For example, the increased cardiovascular activity, the increased heart rate, the heart pumps more blood to give more energy, the cost of this is that, though at the time of threat it gives us extra energy, but subsequently stress induced hypertension. Similarly a suppressed digestion results in alceration – ulcer. Suppressed growth results in psychogenic dwarfism. Suppressed reproduction results in impotence, cause of libido that is sexual drive, interruption of menstruation – monthly cycles of women, this is as a result of suppressed reproduction. Similarly suppression of immune response results in increased risk of disease. Extra mobilised energy results in fatigue, muscle destruction and also of diabetis. Sharpening of thought and perception – being alert – results in neuron damage or even death. These are long term consequences of stress. So short term at the time of threat, we gain our survival. But long term we have to pay the cost. All these responses taken together result in aging.

It should be noted that we can not continue in a stressed state for a long time. It is like a sexual activity. The actual sexual activity is a very short term phenomena. We can not ramain in that state for a long time. Because body will exhaust itself. Similarly in the stressed situation, we can not ramain in that situation for a long time. the body starts aging. And our response to stress deteriorates. Our body fails to respond as it should to the external threat if the threat continues for a longer time. It is interesting to note that as we age, as we grow older, the eficiency of our response to stress goes down now gradually but in exponentially. Like when from the age of 30 we go to age 40 – the ten years are added, but the response to stress – it does not go down by 10 years, it goes down by 20 years. It goes off exponentially. In other words, in older people, the response to stress is very very little. A small stress can cause a great deal of harm to older people.  – than it would cause to younger people.  In case of very old people for example, a small event can result in their death because they can not cope with stress, than they would have 3 years earlier.

I have mentioned that we can control the stress response by having a cultivated mind. A higher mind can take charge of our body and its response to stress. Because the stress response is basically  a mental response, it is a reaction towards external threat.  Earlier it used to be by physical mind during our animal days , now the same thing continues for most of the people. – but for use who are on the path of Sri Anand Yoga we can take charge, we can control our mind and very much reduce or eliminate the cause of stress and also the response of our mind and body toward stress. This is possible. and I will give you one example of what scientists have done experiment on two monkeys.

We should understand a hysical – chemical process happening in our body.  At the time of stress our body release glucocorticoid. These are called stress hormones. At the time of starvation our body break down the muscles tissue and from that we generate energy if we do not get food from outside. However, this results in our aging and ultimately in our death.  When scientists made experiments with tow monkeys, they stopped giving them food.  – and these monkeys started starving. As a result their body reacted, as expected, by releasing glucocorticoid, that is stress hormones. And this resulted in monkey’s body breaking down their muscles and generate enough energy for survival. Upto this point it is fairly logical. We know that stress has resulted in this response of the body and we are tempted to conclude that this is an automatic response . It is a chemical response one can say. That it just happens that during starvation we generate stress hormone called glucocorticoid and our muscles are broken down and generate energy. But it is not so. It is not as simple as that. There is still an element of choice between the stress and the body’s reaction to the stress in terms of generating glucocorticoid which ultimately result in breaking down the body muscles and aging and death. We have got a choice between these two events. 

We do not exercise this choice because basically we do not know that there is a choice. It all happens automatically and it was fair enough. During jungle days it was fair enough because then we did not even have developed mind to exercise this choice, because this choice is exercised only by a developed mind.  It did not exist during the jungle days.  Naturally it functioned automatically and it was good.  – for the survival o fman at that time.  Even though it might result in – our ancestors payd a very heavy price in terms of ageing and earlier death, that is why the average age was very low during that time, we used to age fast. Probably our jungle man survied not above 40 years of age – 40 is highest, they used to survive  may be 25 to 30 years of age at that time because of these stress situations.

To illustrate further, what scientists have done in these two monkeys, they have selected one monkey and given this monkey artificially sweetened water. Now this water had no nutritional value. It was artificially sweetened water. It did not even had sugar. As this water did not had any nutritional content we should assume that the body’s response of this monkey will be the same as the other monkey because both the monkeys are equally starved of nutrition of food.  But it is not so. The monkey who has been given sweetened water  - his levels of glucocorticoid did not rise.  In other words he did not breakdown the muscles in order to survive. That is he did not age or he did not die out of that situation. Now this is beyond the normal logic. This was indeed a very shocking finding for the scientists.Because in the scientifically system of explaining things logically, mathematically, they could not give an explanation to this. The explanation is beyond the scientific terms. What happens to the monkey who gets artificially sweetened water is that he perceives that his situation has improved , though actually it has not improved because he does not get any calories or nutrition. And it is enough to signal his body that the starvation period has gone.  Perception is our mental response. It may need some cause – in this case it is sweetented water -  which generate a ‘feel good’ factor.  And because of that factor he has got better management of his stress. This proves that there is a choice.  We take this clue from this point and see that what happens to this monkey unconciously, we can mange consciously – that is our body response to stress.  This is what we are trying to achieve in Sri Anand Yoga .

……. To continue