How to wake up early without effort?

In your childhood you must’ve heard over and over again ‘morning shows the day’. Maybe your caregivers were just like my parents who understood the importance of being an ‘early riser’, and tried to install this good habit in you.

I don’t know if it was a smooth for you, but for me it was a challenge. I have always enjoyed being lazy in early hours of the day and to spend time under a warm blanket in the winter mornings.

Life took a 360 degree turn when I went to ashram. For the very first time I was not forced to wake up early, yet I was waking up every morning earlier than 4 AM; eventually it did became a habit that I cherish a lot till date.

So the alchemy that worked to bring this transformation was not any ‘short-lived-inspiration-or-motivation’ rather simply ‘yogic science’ which was strategically applied to the body and mind.

Whether you will wake up fresh and energetic largely depends on the your evening rituals.

Here are three simple ‘evening rituals’ if you truly want to be the architect of your mornings.

Body

Relax your body. I mean not just lazing in the couch and scrolling social media, or Netflix-ing! I am talking about 10 mins of mindful physical stretch/ couple of simple yoga postures to loosen up the exhausted body parts. This is must do in the evening, all the more on the days you totally exhausted to move your fingers.

Mind 

A distracted mind is never a relaxed mind. Mental relaxation is not distraction oriented. From my personal experience as a yoga student and as a teacher I have witnessed great impact of simple breathing practices/ pranayama. An investment of 5 mins on breathing practice can offer you a long lasting relaxation/calmness. (I will share the techniques in the following article)

Emotions

Never ever take unprocessed emotion lightly. My evening ritual includes few mins of ‘processing/ contemplating’ time of any ‘undigested emotions’ that I gathered during the day. This is usually the last thing I do before I start enjoying my horizontal time!
(Again more on that technique in another post).

When I started doing these three simple rituals I noticed my sleep was deep and I didn’t crave for longer hours in bed.
There are several other tools to hack the code for better sleep which I cover in my the workshops and courses. Just note till you don’t understand the your unique configuration of body-mind-emotion you will find life transformation as challenging. Just like if you try to operate a complex machine without reading the manual first you can have unpleasant surprises!

Train your brain not to fire the CEO

Imagine a company which fires its CEO every day.

It’s insane, right? If we think of the loss of the company direction, the internal fights and confusion, the loss of clients and business partners trust, it’s an absurd thing to do. But what if I told you that almost each of us is doing the same thing not once, but even several times every day? Yes, each of us is firing daily the most responsible, balanced, informed part of ourselves, the CEO of our decisions, actions and results: our prefrontal cortex.

Who is responsible for such a decision? Well, in our case it’s more like a program, coded in our instinctual, reptilian brain and called “FFF” or “fight-flight-freeze”. Don’t imagine that you need to see a bear in your office or a lion at your dinner table to activate this program. It takes much less than that: a colleague undermining your expertise or highjacking your meeting, a car cutting in front of you, higher targets than last month. It’s enough for your Amygdala, the emergency task force, to raise the alarm and cut the CEO’s (aka prefrontal cortex’s) links with your action parts of the brain.

The good news is that the state of alarm will pass soon and the CEO will come back. The bad news is that your actions in the meantime are … well, let’s just say not the smartest ones – what can we expect for our reptilian brain. So someone needs now to clean the mess, the CEO of course. Why have I yelled at my colleague or said those mean words in front of everybody or why did I honk back and swear in front of my kids? And the story can go on, with multiple neuro-mechanisms which explain scientifically our most stupid actions.

Now let’s focus on solutions. The science also proved that after only 100 min of training your self-awareness and meditation measurable changes are produced in the brain: Amygdala shrinks and it becomes less connected with the prefrontal cortex, therefore it can not fire the CEO that easily. This means that in stressful situations, only after 100 minutes of training your mind to meditate and be aware of the body, we will be able to take better decisions and do less stupid actions under stress.

So don’t think that “zen” is only for Buddhist monks, you can also invite a needed zen dose in your daily life not after 100 days but after 100 minutes of mindful practices.

A holistic approach towards corporate wellbeing

As they say every coin had two sides. Being born in an traditional Indian family and having a close contact with Yoga and spirituality since early childhood surely blessed me with multiple skills that gives me a deeper perspective of life beyond its surface reality. The down side is though I get see and sense the superficiality of our being-ness and the chronic unhappiness that many are hiding behind the momentary joy, excitement and pleasures moments.
Before I go any further, I don’t intend to shower advises on wellbeing and happiness. Happiness and wellbeing is an inside job, all I intend is to co-design with you a wellbeing plan that gives you sustainable joy and long-lasting state of balance. So the first thing first, I think it will be important for you to know who am I and why I am passionate about wellbeing in general.

It’s been a little more than 15 years since I passed out as an electronics and communication engineer and promised myself to never step into a corporate world and work as an engineer and to follow my calling to share yogic knowledge with people to increase the quantum of wellbeing in them. (Why I have decided that I will share with you in a moment). Once said that in the past 10 years my karma got me into various multinational companies, where I have offered yoga classes, workshops and retreats on mindfulness, postural correction, art of relaxation and research on various stress related parameters etc. These courses lasted between few hours to few months and we dived deep based on the commitment and the duration of the course. 

The reason I follow my passion to bring wellbeing in peoples life is I have personally struggled in my early years to find ‘sustainable-happiness’, I have also witness enough people who are materially well-off yet happiness is an alien concept to them. Over those years when I was looking for how can I contribute to the society I live in, a realization evolved within me to share the various tools that I learnt from my association with Yoga over years and living in Ashram (Sanskrit word for monastery) with the people who are also like me, searching the same joyfulness in their lives.

My association with the employees from various industries and countries gave me the experiential understanding of what is missing out in huge proportion from most of multinational corporate culture.

I will share some of my findings and insights which I find fascinating.

THE HAPPINESS DISORDER

You read it correct. Generally speaking more than majority of the corporate employee suffers from some form of ‘happiness deficit disorder’. Happiness deficit disorder is that symptom where an individual is not connected to their calling/purpose and experiences an inner void and often confuses short term pleasures with sustainable happiness which again amplifies frustration, anger and loneliness.
Needless to say the collateral damage it does within a corporate is huge and cancerous. Often it goes unnoticed till it reaches the breaking point.
Only a person from Human Resources department will understand how hard it is to work with a work force which is ‘emotional malnourished’ and experiencing ‘motivation deficiency syndrome’. There is also a ripple effect of lack of purpose, which reflects in reduced ability and willingness to learn new trends and skills.
Agility and adaptability are the key word in any evolving corporation. The ability to adopt newer understandings and making oneself aligned with it pays well in long run and ensures the progression of the company.

Solution:

Information is not enough, or let’s say information should be followed up with experience. PowerPoint presentation and some statistical information on what to do and what not to could be a starting point, but not the destination. Transformation is not instantaneous and effort has to be made to bring training programs which takes baby steps in helping a the employees to initiate a soul search at their comfortable speed and rhythm. An active individualized mentoring should be offered to clarify and support this journey. East is well known over thousands of years to offer the needed tools of soul searching. Meditation/mindfulness is just the tip of the ice berg and there exists a wide spectrum of body-mind tools that works fantastic too. Happiness is not absence of conflicts or challenges, but the presence of the skills and wisdom to overcome them.

THE FEAR FACTOR

A lot many of us are product of a fractured education system, where failure is shameful and we lost the contact with our inner vibrancy. Unconsciously we have programmed ourselves to not to engage in any such activity where we might not shine. Avoidance towards trying out new things is the best way to not to invite criticism and to be in any uncomfortable shameful situation.
The constant effort to try not to fail in any endeavor shrinks us and limits us within the four walls of our fear.
The evolution of human race happened through trial and error. A child is not fearful to fail. He/she embraces failure with a grin in his cheeks where as an corporate executive can have a panic attack with a thought of failing to deliver a task. During most of my one to one session with corporate executives and mindfulness courses, participants confess that the predominant emotion that they experience at work is ‘stress’. In the corporate world stress in the synonyms of fear. Fear when remains unaddressed it becomes the thick shell which confined us and suffocated to mental emotional and eventually physical agony.

Solution:
Negative imagination limits us where as positive imagination boosts us towards limitlessness. Neuroscience is echoing the same effects what yogic sages said over thousands of years. Power of positive visualization has immense power to train our mind to gear up to face any challenges, weather a board meeting or presentation or fear or public speaking.
Yoga teaches us to develop clarity over confidence. Once the mind is clear and we can see our strengths, confidence is just a byproduct of knowing what we know.

THE TOXIC ENVIRONMENT

‘The zen you find in top of the mountain, is the zen that you carry with yourself’.

Needless to say we the humans are negatively biased as our default setting. We don’t need any special skills to connect with the negativity around and it often happens spontaneously that take immense pleasure in complaining and criticizing anybody and anything but ourselves.
We do have a symbiotic effect on others, and vice versa. An unmindful person might often find themselves encapsulated in a negative cloud at work place which deplete the energy level within us.

Solution: In case we are nurturing a limited perspective about yoga can only be practiced on a mat in front of a wall to wall mirror, it’s time to melt this myth. A huge component of classical yoga is lifestyle management. Yoga offers tools to convert a space which naturally inspires one to be mindful and counterbalance the chronic attention deficit syndrome. It also offers practices to connect with the positive dimension of life. Life is more than ‘glass half full or half empty’. Yoga shows way to refill the glass in case you find it empty!

To conclude I would say an individual within every organization should think smarter to engage their body, mind and energy in order to get a wholesome benefits which more than body tone and six packs will offer the competency of developing a better mind, emotions and energy management.

Your energy matters and will shape you today

Before diving into the topic, let me make one thing crystal clear – your energy can be converted to matter and vice versa. In other words the material world around you is the manifestation of your energy field.

Intellectual minds usually has a huge appetite for information. If you are one of those who are hungry for information, let me serve you with some facts that are pronounced over thousand of years by Himalayan civilization through yoga and various other eastern philosophies. Now if you are skeptical and have trouble in digesting oriental information then know that even the modern neuroscience is echoing the similar phrases post research on mind & matter.

‘Yatha drusthi, tatha shristi’

This is a Sanskrit verse from Puranas, oldest scriptures from Indian subcontinent, meaning ‘we become what we think’. And this was not promoted as tag line for positive psychology ten thousands year back. This was a practical philosophy practiced since age immortal.

Let me walk you through how you can make this info soluble into your consciousness. One of the easiest way to comprehend the meaning of any Sanskrit verses is to look deeper into the nomenclature of the words.

A key word used in the verse is ‘Drusthi’, a casual transition will be focusing/ gazing on the goal.
Please don’t confuse Drusthi with casual imagining/ thinking. Drusthi means holding visualization without any form of mental oscillation for an extended period of time when the visualized object becomes as clear as an object we would see with our eyes open.

In eastern spiritual philosophy there is a concept where the meditation symbol ‘manifest’ in front of the meditator and we call it – Darshan.

Darshan takes place as an outcome of concentrated prolonged focus on one object.

Now leaving the philosophy aside, can we simply find a way to implement a version of this technique or similar technique to create our material reality?
The answer is of course yes!

So how do we go about it?

Well, I am sure you understand or at least you are aware of this simple fact that our thoughts are shaping our reality. But we must also understand it’s our emotions which has even an upper hand in influencing our reality. Often an untrained mind revolves around those thoughts which supports the present existing emotions. Our emotions in other words keep our thoughts in an orbit which might be a familiar pattern of perceiving life or behavior.

A transformative progressive approach needs to be implemented if the intention is to refine the emotions so to influence our energy investment in creating our reality.

There is a practice originating in yoga that I noticed works very well to offer this desired outcome – Antar Darshan.

Often we avoid rolling ourselves and get our hands into our own emotional mesh. For many it’s an uncomfortable experience where the past traumas and rough memories surfaces or we feel blurry in a cloud of mixed emotions and feelings.

Antar Darshan is a simple meditative practice where we learn to witness the emotions without any active engagement with them. You might wonder, if I am not actively involve in my own emotional soup then how can I resolve them.

Well, our emotions just like muddy water need to be precipitate not stirred up. This is the first stage of the practice. Eventually when we learn and can experience an emotional state where the turbulence has reduced to an extent we move to the second stage of the practice – ‘positive rumination’, reliving those unprocessed or disturbing emotions that we accumulate from day to day interactions. But this time with more observation skills and getting biased by our ego or emotional filters.

This practice brings us an understanding about our favorite emotion and how we add filters in majority of interactions.
In advance stages of the practice which is where alchemy takes place – we learn our own emotional response towards ourselves.
Once we get to know how we connect with ourselves emotionally, our own emotional vocabulary, reprogramming becomes an easy task.
A reprogrammed emotional flux influences drastically the thought current in our mind. A mind which is synchronized with the emotional flux becomes as powerful as nuclear power to fuel our focus/ aspirations. Such a mind can manifest matter, recreate their own desired reality. Even the universe becomes an obedient servant to such mind.

All it take few mins of regular practice to become the writer of the destiny.

If you wish to give it a try you can download this meditation from my site – www.satyanandayoga.ro

Invisible Yoga, harder than a headstand

I name this article ‘invisible yoga’ not purely to attract the attention of the readers. I mean it. There is a form of yoga which is not visible through our eyes and I want to share some insight about it.
Just like life in general even yoga has a visible and an invisible dimension. We the humans, being sensorially obsessed it’s easy to perceive anything that we can see, touch, hear, smell and taste. This is what we are noticing around us as well. Yoga is redefined by ‘insta-yogis’ in their leggings through the HDR pictures. In the same way various components of yoga which can be perceived by any sense organs are getting due attention. Though we must know that there is another dimension which is beyond these sensorial perceptions.

I am referring to the yoga of feelings, the attitudinal yoga and beyond.

Feelings are not to be confused with thinking, or even an infused or induced sentiment that we cultivate on a yoga mat or in general once we try to get ‘spiritual’.
By the way, my Master will define spirituality not as set of holistic practice but simply a way to connect with the positivity within and around us.
You might wonder at this point then how to practice invisible yoga. I don’t know much on this as I am still a seeker in finding my way into it, but I could share 3 principles which worked for me.

Go beyond the surface.

As they say, truth is one but reality can have many shades, shapes and forms. Every coin has two sides and life do have multiple dimensions/ reality. A questioning mind which is curious to perceive life beyond the surface reality pays in long run. Often it set us free from any ‘sticky attachment’ to a superficial reality.
Next time you ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ something or someone, go a bit deeper within and look for the roots. An attempt to differentiate between surface/ personas with the essence/soul is the work needs to be done.

Silence speaks loud and clear.

Become friend with silence. Install a ‘Noise Reduction’ software within you. Give yourself the permission to unplug form the external stimulus and enter your silence. In east we promote and practice meditation to reach this state. ‘Meditation’ is not a problem solving ritual, rather it’s just creating the much needed space where we can hear the inner wisdom whispering to us.
Start with a minute or two of silence time, and if you enjoy the silence feel free to increase it.

Observe nature.

There won’t be any greater teacher than nature, yet nature is ignored and most of the time abused or tailored to suit our needs and whims of our mind.

If you can find a way to bypass the egocentric mind and connect with nature you will be surprised even the simplest act of nature is potent with infinite wisdom.
But then again to bypass the sensorial dimension and to connect with the subtle & unseen is not the easiest task to accomplish.