Stress

[Sriram]

Hi everyone,

A short video about stress by Sadhguru.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlfJlC_X6bw

Interesting.

Cheers.

Sriram

[floo]

The guy talks a lot of sense. I have always suffered from stress since I first drew breath and don't manage it very well.

[Sriram]

The guy talks a lot of sense. I have always suffered from stress since I first drew breath and don't manage it very well.

What he says is sensible.....but also somewhat simplistic.  I agree that if we could manage our mind and emotions well we could reduce stress significantly. But that is like saying, if we could manage our  population or global warming our lives would be better. It is easier said than done.

Managing our mind and emotions requires great control and distance from oneself that is nearly impossible for most.  If it was so simple the whole world would be happy and joyful.

That is why most people require religions, deities, temples, rituals, external controls, chanting, meditative techniques and so on to help regulate their minds and find peace. Others require loads of physical labour and effort to keep themselves occupied and regulated. Others require myths, stories and legends to fire their imagination and to help them be happy.   

[Shaker]

You seem to think you have a handle on what people require.

[floo]

What he says is sensible.....but also somewhat simplistic.  I agree that if we could manage our mind and emotions well we could reduce stress significantly. But that is like saying, if we could manage our  population or global warming our lives would be better. It is easier said than done.

Managing our mind and emotions requires great control and distance from oneself that is nearly impossible for most.  If it was so simple the whole world would be happy and joyful.

That is why most people require religions, deities, temples, rituals, external controls, chanting, meditative techniques and so on to help regulate their minds and find peace. Others require loads of physical labour and effort to keep themselves occupied and regulated. Others require myths, stories and legends to fire their imagination and to help them be happy.

Religion made me even more stressed when I was young.

[Bramble]

Managing our mind and emotions requires great control and distance from oneself that is nearly impossible for most.   
 

And thus self-consciousness creates a divided being, with the host of impossible dualisms that proceed from the bind: higher and lower self, controller and controlled, mind and body, spirit and matter. The very stuff of religion. Tell me, if the controlling manager-self turns out to be too weak, incompetent or lazy to deal effectively with the stressed self it seeks to control, who manages the manager? After all, he's clearly a feckless hippy. Maybe a few more ideals would help?

[floo]

I suffer from health anxiety, inherited from my father, who in turn inherited it from his mother. Every ache and pain might be something serious. Fortunately for my GP, I don't like visiting the surgery unless I really have to, unlike my late father whose GP thought he had a good week if my old man hadn't put in an appearance! The Internet has a lot to answer for where people like me with health anxiety are concerned. I read an article several years ago, which I have taken to heart, and try my best to follow it, even though it is inconvenient. It probably has no merit at all; my GP dismissed it, but I can't. I try not to read health articles now, because I can think myself into the symptoms within minutes! YE GODS what a sad case I am!

[Sriram]

And thus self-consciousness creates a divided being, with the host of impossible dualisms that proceed from the bind: higher and lower self, controller and controlled, mind and body, spirit and matter. The very stuff of religion. Tell me, if the controlling manager-self turns out to be too weak, incompetent or lazy to deal effectively with the stressed self it seeks to control, who manages the manager? After all, he's clearly a feckless hippy. Maybe a few more ideals would help?

You are in fact highlighting precisely what I said. Managing stress is not as simple as it seems. It is very complex and will be different for different people.   

Stress is born of conflict between our natural needs and our environment. If our environment dos not suit us or provide for our needs we are stressed.

We have a natural tendency to try and change our environment to suit our needs thereby reducing our stress. In most cases this will be impossible or difficult and certainly not permanent. So people would have to live with their stress. In some people this could result in psychopathic reactions or anger and distress leading to psychological problems. Many others could resort to drugs, drinking or some other form of escape from it.

The other way is to adjust our needs and desires to suit the environment. This cannot always be done directly by managing our thoughts and emotions. Only very few people can do that. For most others the way forward is to trust in some supreme power to take care of them. Some others find suitable work or interest to occupy the mind and thereby reduce stress.

In most people, hope and anticipation of a better future is possible through religion and faith in a fair and just God. The belief that 'better days are coming' is enough to reduce stress. Their belief in a heavenly  future also helps them handle the present. Following religious dictates faithfully can reduce stress significantly.

In fact, the entire journey from lack of faith to faith and realization is one of moving from stress to peace. Spirituality and religions are precisely about this. Some religions like Buddhism even talk of Dukkha (sorrow) as a natural condition that can be eliminated through certain methods. Almost all religions stress happiness, joy and peace as the goal.

Saying that some specific  path did not suit someone does not help. The idea is to find a suitable path for oneself. Otherwise we will end up distressed and ill, both mentally and physically.   

 

[wigginhall]

I found the opposite.  I used to be quite taken with paths and journeys, but through one adventure and another, which need not detain us here, I came upon the idea of no path, and no journey.   Ah, bliss.   Well, not exactly bliss, but certainly more peace.   I don't have to follow anything, nor measure the gap between what I should be doing, and what in fact, I am doing.   Nor do I have to anticipate either a bright future or a dim one, since right now is good enough.   Of course, 'no path' is a well-known Zen saying, but that doesn't mean you should follow it, ha ha ha.

[Sriram]

I found the opposite.  I used to be quite taken with paths and journeys, but through one adventure and another, which need not detain us here, I came upon the idea of no path, and no journey.   Ah, bliss.   Well, not exactly bliss, but certainly more peace.   I don't have to follow anything, nor measure the gap between what I should be doing, and what in fact, I am doing.   Nor do I have to anticipate either a bright future or a dim one, since right now is good enough.   Of course, 'no path' is a well-known Zen saying, but that doesn't mean you should follow it, ha ha ha.

Yes...but that has been possible only after following those paths. It means your mind has found a balance. Fair enough. It often happens that way. Search the whole world and finally find peace at home.

Doesn't mean the various paths are meaningless. They could be meaningful for many others.

[wigginhall]

Yes...but that has been possible only after following those paths. It means your mind has found a balance. Fair enough. It often happens that way. Search the whole world and finally find peace at home.

Doesn't mean the various paths are meaningless. They could be meaningful for many others.

No, I don't think paths are meaningless.   And I don't think I have found a balance, that would be another path, I think.   It reminds me of the old slogan - what is to be done?   Ha ha ha.

[Dicky Underpants]

And thus self-consciousness creates a divided being, with the host of impossible dualisms that proceed from the bind: higher and lower self, controller and controlled, mind and body, spirit and matter. The very stuff of religion. Tell me, if the controlling manager-self turns out to be too weak, incompetent or lazy to deal effectively with the stressed self it seeks to control, who manages the manager? After all, he's clearly a feckless hippy. Maybe a few more ideals would help?

Very good points there Bramble. Everything is God, apparently, and Atman (the human soul) is also Brahman (the divine soul). There is supposed to be a primordial unity - but who then caused the division? We are enjoined to 'look within' to discover that our thoughts, attachments and sense of ego are the source of the problem - but whence came these, if everything is divine?

[Bramble]

Very good points there Bramble. Everything is God, apparently, and Atman (the human soul) is also Brahman (the divine soul). There is supposed to be a primordial unity - but who then caused the division? We are enjoined to 'look within' to discover that our thoughts, attachments and sense of ego are the source of the problem - but whence came these, if everything is divine?

I'm not fond of these convoluted theologies either, but perhaps they are, in their own clunky mythological way, just trying to express something universal and very simple about human experience. Perhaps Sriram will tell us.

The poet John Burnside once wrote beautifully of 'the absence of ourselves from our own lives'. Isn't this at the heart of human longing, a homesickness for the home we have never left? There's a lovely Welsh word hiraeth that has no direct English translation but means something like an incompleteness born of unattainable longing for that which may never actually have existed. Don't we all instinctively know this feeling? Basho said it best of all:

Even in Kyoto
Hearing the cuckoo's cry
How I long for Kyoto

No doubt all this has nothing to do with the yearning for a lost God, but it's the best I can do 

[Rhiannon]

Somehow this reminds me of a story that I read as a child, which I think must have been a retelling of a moon-gazing hare legend. I *think* it was by Enid Blyton but I could be wrong, and I can't find it on the net.

Anyway, the story is that a rabbit sits by the pond and sees the moon reflected in it. He keeps reaching in to pick the moon up, but every time he does so it breaks into thousands of pieces, but when the water becomes still he can see it again. So he tries again and again, but can never pick up the moon, and is heartbroken.

I spent so many years putting my hand into the pond to pick up what I thought I could see only for it to slip through my fingers. Thankfully I don't even look any more. At least I don't think so.

[Harrowby Hall]

Stress is a difficult word. It is used by everyone in an infinite variety of circumstances. Everybody has a working understanding of what everybody means when they use it, but not everybody uses it in the same way.

To an engineer, a stress is an outside event which has a measurable affect on some object or other. I attended a talk being given by a physician on "stress" and he considered it to be hypertension caused by over consumption of salt. People may characterise stress as an event or influence external to them or as their own reaction to an external influence.

Many years ago, I worked for a short time in an academic research unit investigating "stress". There were at least two other similar research groups investigating stress, but neither using quite the same approach that we did. Our model of stress was an internal one - stress is an experience resulting from an individual's perception of the demand of an external event compared with that individual's perception of his or her ability to cope with that demand. An imbalance between these perceptions leads to the experience of stress.

This view of stress can be used in therapies like CBT.

I rather liked Sriram's statement:

Stress is born of conflict between our natural needs and our environment. If our environment dos not suit us or provide for our needs we are stressed.

It is not very far from my own group's approach.

[ProfessorDavey]

That is why most people require religions, deities, temples, rituals, external controls, chanting, meditative techniques and so on to help regulate their minds and find peace.

Really?!?

Not in my experience - I think rather few people require these things. I would have thought top of the list for peace of mind would be love, family and friends and security. And I think 'external control' would be one of the last things people want for peace of mind - to be required to act in a particular manner, whether or not it aligns with personal conscience, is exactly what causes stress and anxiety rather than peace of mind.

[Sriram]

Well...Life is complicated and there are no easy options for anyone. 

All of us choose some philosophy that makes most sense to us and our experiences.  No point in fighting over them.

[ProfessorDavey]

Well...Life is complicated and there are no easy options for anyone. 

All of us choose some philosophy that makes most sense to us and our experiences.  No point in fighting over them.

I think there are many people who wouldn't think of themselves as 'choosing a philosophy' a bit like choosing a brand of coffee - rather their experiences lead to them to have certain views and ideals.

[Dicky Underpants]

The poet John Burnside once wrote beautifully of 'the absence of ourselves from our own lives'. Isn't this at the heart of human longing, a homesickness for the home we have never left? There's a lovely Welsh word hiraeth that has no direct English translation but means something like an incompleteness born of unattainable longing for that which may never actually have existed. Don't we all instinctively know this feeling? Basho said it best of all:

Even in Kyoto
Hearing the cuckoo's cry
How I long for Kyoto

No doubt all this has nothing to do with the yearning for a lost God, but it's the best I can do 

I certainly recognise the feeling, Bramble, and respond to it when others express it in words and music.
Regard 'hiraeth', there is of course that beautiful song 'Mae hiraeth yn y mor' by Dilys Elwyn- Edwards. (but I have to confess that I felt a slightly less poetic response when I realised that the birdsong referred to was the call of the cockerel).

I think Housman evoked this 'hiraeth' quality perfectly in his poem "The land of lost content":

 

Into my heart an air that kills
 From yon far country blows:
 What are those blue remembered hills,
 What spires, what farms are those?

 That is the land of lost content,
 I see it shining plain,
 The happy highways where I went
 And cannot come again.

I think he was writing about Shropshire, where he apparently never lived, so your words " unattainable longing for that which may never actually have existed." are particularly appropriate.

[Bramble]

I remember hearing that beautiful Housman poem for the first time as a teenager while watching the film Walkabout, in which it was read while the youthful Jenny Agutter cavorted naked in a river. Ah, unattainable longing!