Feedback from a 70 year old patient of my daughter Padma Sripada M.D:
“The ‘Focusing on breathing’ technique has helped me tremendously. Seven years ago I lost my daughter and I went into a deep depression and chronic anxiety, in spite of medications. I started to use the breathing technique and I got to say they were very helpful. For the first time in 7 years I feel my depression has lifted.”
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Another success story “I stopped antidepressants”
I go to the nearby Walmart store often for fresh milk and vegetables. As soon as I enter, I pull out a cart from the train of stacked carts and go into the aisles, to pick up the stuff. Occasionally, after pushing the cart for a few feet, I realize that wheels are not in alignment, pulling it slightly to left or right. I am not happy with its condition. But having walked a few feet ahead, I am reluctant to walk back to the entrance to replace the defective cart by a good one. So I go ahead and continue the shopping.
If I remain passive and allow the cart to move as it tends to, my cart will soon hit another shopper or the shelving. I silently curse the defective cart and the people who should have have taken such carts out of circulation. To prevent any mishap, I periodically adjust it to go straight ahead. With a number of grumbling adjustments, I complete my shopping and walk out of the store, without any mishap.
One day it occurred to me that my mind sometimes behaves like that defective cart. I am aware of my mental bias pushing me to obviously unwarranted judgments of people. If I go by its dictates, I will definitely regret my judgments and consequent actions. Taking a clue from my experience with the defective carts, whenever I am aware, I ignore the wrong tendency of my mind and make a deliberate effort to judge and act correctly. Due to such repeated efforts, self correction of my mind has become natural and spontaneous, with less regrets.
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We see this situation often. Consider these scenarios.
(1) Sufism is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a Sufī.
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We constantly get thoughts in the mind – mostly negative ones and rarely positive ones. Most of them are random thoughts and vastly vary in content and rarely relevant to the task on hand. Often we get carried away by the content and message of such a thought, without questioning its validity. We do not raise the question “Is there any truth in this thought? Do I believe it?”
A thought has no impact on our mind or behavior unless we believe it.
We can visualize a thought entering the mind as a balloon without air. We don’t have to blow air into every balloon we get. We can decide which balloon we need now and only blow air in those balloons we want to use.
Similarly we can decide which thought being delivered int our mind has any relevance or significance to us at this moment, examine its validity and decide whether to believe it and act on it. Believing in a thought is like blowing air into it, giving it an attractive look and utility. Not believing in a thought is like leaving it lifeless and insignificant, as good as discarding it at this moment.
Related article: Is it a snake or rope? on the importance of correct perception, in saving one’s life and in not missing a potential opportunity.
Parent page: Thoughts are like………
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There were a row of plants by the side of the road leading to my office in the big paperboard mill I worked. The purpose of these plants was to show off their green leaves and colorful flowers, giving relief to the eyes from the drab concrete buildings and roads.
The plants were about 6 feet high. They looked absolutely drab most of the year with woody stems and hardly any fresh leaves. In the flowering season, beautiful yellow flowers would be seen but as soon as that season was over the plants were an eye sore rather than a relief. This was in spite regularly watering them. Watching them many times a day on my way to and from my office room was a pain for me.
As an experiment I told my people in the civil maintenance department who were maintaining the plants, to prune only one these plants drastically, leaving only a foot of the trunk from the ground. This was done promptly. I was worried whether I destroyed the plant and created a bigger eye sore. I watched them eagerly every day for the results of the experiment.
After about 2 weeks, small green shoots were coming out of the trunk. I was relieved that at least the plant was not dead. Every day the number of vigorously growing shoots increased dramatically. In a few weeks there were hundreds of fast growing shoots. In about 3 months, hundreds of shoots with fresh green tender leaves had grown 3 feet high. This born-again plant was a feast for the eyes.
We repeated the process with all the other plants with similar happy results. This dramatic and unexpected transformation of an otherwise totally lifeless plants set me thinking …
Those plants were looking lifeless and as good as dead. I was in half mind to uproot them and plant new ones in their place. They looked as though they had no energy to grow new branches and leaves. But then what happened after the drastic pruning?
A giant dormant power was unleashed when the plant was pruned drastically. That power was so big and readily available that it could quickly initiate hundreds of new shoots and sustain their vigorous growth to several feet. The plant did not need any extra inputs for it’s rebirth – no extra water, fertilizer, insecticide or attention. It had all it’s requirements in abundance.
Could this phenomena be true for individuals, teams or whole organizations? Can the drastic stoppage of the routine, ritualistic, dull and meaningless activities unleash giant dormant powers in them? Could it be that their lifeless performance is due to blocking of their powerful energies by life killing activities? Can getting rid of these responsibilities and activities unleash the hidden giant powers and give birth to lively new activities, like those seen in the born-again plants? This great transformation may be possible without giving them any additional rewards!
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As a maintenance engineer in a continuous running plant, I had to face sudden stoppages of continuous running machines due to mechanical defects. I had to answer the management for the consequent losses to the company. The persons responsible for avoiding the unplanned stoppages of the machines would tell me that the machine was running fine yesterday and even a little while back and it failed suddenly. They claimed they could not have detected and prevented the failure. Of course this is not true for mechanical parts. But how to drive this point home without arguments? I used to practically demonstrate what might have been happening this way.
I pick up a paper weight and place it in the middle of a small table. The table is clear of any objects form the paper weight to the clear edge. I move the paper weight intermittently in steps of a few inches. After the first move I stop, look at them and say “Nothing happened!”. Again I move it a little and say “Nothing happened”. Again I move an inch and say “Yes, nothing is happening”. I keep on moving the paper weight inch by inch till it falls on the hard floor with a thud. Then I shout and say “The paper weight has fallen suddenly. It was OK a few seconds back!”.
People watching this demo invariably smile and admit that something adverse or unusual was happening gradually before the failure that they were not observing carefully. Or they were seeing some unusual symptoms but felt they were harmless, not worth any corrective action. The gradual deterioration from the healthy condition has to lead to total failure some day, there can be no escape.
This could apply to many aspects of life - sudden burst of reactions of people, sudden crisis of some kind etc. We ignore the preceding symptoms and underestimate their significance. These accumulate over a period of time and one day result in a (sudden?) failure of some kind.
If we keenly observe what is happening around us in things and people and know what is a normal and healthy situation and what is a significant deviation, we can predict where this gradual negative change will ultimately lead to and what could be it’s consequences.
If we take corrective actions in the early stages when we see the adverse movements taking place, the adverse event can be aborted. The so called sudden developments can only happen when we close our eyes to what is happening gradually or choose to ignore or underestimate their significance.
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