Yoga & Mental Health
Yoga and mental health are closely interrelated. Persons practicing Yoga
experience tremendous changes that result in a deep effect on their mental
health. Reduction of tension and restoration of flexibility are some of the
mental health benefits derived from Yoga. Yoga helps in freeing the mind from
mental disturbances. Yoga also steadies the mind. Decrease in nervousness,
irritability and confusion, depression and mental fatigue are some of the
other mental health benefits experienced from practicing Yoga. The benefits
accrued through Yoga differ from person to person as the degree of involvement
differs.
Restoration of pliability is another advantage of Yoga. Yogic exercises help
in renewal of mental agility. Yoga possesses the magical power to revive the
capacity for alertness, attention and willingness to tackle problems. Through
generation of boundless energy Yoga rekindles enthusiasm in you almost
throughout the day. Yoga provides a backdrop or mood of well-being and
assurance that one naturally enjoys. Thus, Yoga possesses a great healing
power which proves beneficial for physical as well as mental well being of the
individual.
Those
practicing
yoga
experiences a number of factors that results in a profound effect on their
mental health. These can be classified under:
-
Reduction of
tension and
-
Restoration of
pliability.
-
"Personal" and
-
"Social."
1. Reduction Of
Tension
Many people who
practice yoga speak of "freeing the mind from mental disturbances," "calming the
spirit," or "steadying the mind." Reduction of nervousness, irritability and
confusion, depression and mental fatigue are some of the benefits experienced.
One experiences a relief from the pressure of his "compulsions." His
nervousness, especially any jitteriness, should subside or disappear.
The extent to
which these benefits may be expected will depend in part upon whether or not one
can approach and participate in them willingly and wholeheartedly; for one who
tries to practice postures with anxiety cripples his chances for very much
benefit.
2. Restoration
Of Pliability
"The positive
side of the benefits from a full round of yogic exercises may be described as
renewal of mental agility. Both mood and capacity for alertness, attentiveness
and willingness to tackle problems revive. One may not be able to rekindle
boundless enthusiasm late in a working day; early morning, or even noonday,
efforts to recharge mental energies can revive a full measure of willingness.
Traditional phrases, such as restored "spiritual vitality," intend to convey the
complex idea of mental spryness, agreeableness, resiliency, and feelings of
confidence and self-sufficiency. Some even testify to attaining feelings of
buoyancy and euphoria; these then provide a background or mood of well-being and
assurance such that one naturally more fully enjoys both his ability and the
worthiness of being more tolerant and generous."
Personal Values
a. Avoidance
of fear: Yoga is said to result in the reduction of a variety of mental
ills. These may range all the way from vague feelings of frustration,
persecution, insecurity, on the one hand, to acute and specific types of
insanity, on the other.
Yoga is not a
cure all for all conditions. But its attack upon, and diminution of, some basic
mental ills may indeed be just enough to pay dividends that grow in magnitude.
If, through use
of yogic techniques, we can merely halt and reverse some mental cancer, some
compulsive complex that keeps us chained to unrelenting, omnipresent and
gradually increasing anxiety, we may reset a course which will bring us around
to a healthier adjustment. We are all at times insane. We are all, in some
degree, insane. Overwhelming waves of tension and stress, which may catch us in
periods of physical and mental exhaustion, can produce a spiritual explosion
which leaves us so helpless that we are at a loss to know how it all came about.
By recurrent,
regular efforts to reduce tension through yogic exercises, we may stay and
finally reverse our tendencies toward insanity.
Most of us
succumbs to fears and anxieties – some valid and some purely imaginary. For
example, as one gets older, he begins to fear that his life has not been
sufficiently worth while, that he has fallen short of his goals, that he has
failed to attain his proper ambition, that he has lost out in the race to keep
up with the Joneses or in his attempt to measure up "in the sight of
God"-however he happens to conceive his shortcoming.
Thus, when
Ramacharaka, in his ‘Hindu-Yogi Science of Breath’, says one may, by controlled
breathing, "practically do away with fear and worry and the baser emotions," he
refers to the growing ability of a devoted practitioner to diminish the power
which both momentary and permanent fears have over us. One seeks to develop
habits of resistance to the disturbing effects of excitement, ambition,
antagonism and frustration.
The long-range
goal of yoga is not just momentary relaxation, but the living of a relaxed life.
b. Acceptance
of Faith in Life.
The goal of
yoga is confident living. Its aim is to replace pessimism and its varieties such
as cynicism with a "Yea-saying" appreciation of life, not only on any given day,
but as a gracious, wonderful whole. When you achieve the yogic spirit, then you
can say with the Stoics, "I accept the universe."
If you cannot
accept all of it, because some problems remain unavoidably troublesome, then you
will accept the troubles which you have as (1) yours and (2) enough for you,
without wishing you had still more troubles.
Poise,
serenity, contentedness, patience, assurance-all of these are positive mental
values attainable by anyone who has achieved a willingness to be at peace with
himself and the world. The confidence desired is not just enough to do the day's
work but enough to live one's whole life and one can do his day's work more
confidently if he has already predisposed himself to living his life with
trustful serenity.
Thus a person
seeks through yoga not merely momentary mental agility, but an agile life; not
just momentary pliability, but a continuingly pliable existence; not just
momentary relief from disturbance, but a permanently peaceful perspective.
Although not
everyone who undertakes to experiment with yoga can expect to achieve or
maintain the goal described by Shri Yogendra, Yoga: Personal Hygiene, as
"exuberant and exultant health, he should notice the sun more often when it
shines. Swami Sivananda pictures the goal as "ecstatic joy" (Yoga Asanas).
Dechanet, a
Roman Catholic monk who was led into yoga by his Catholic predecessors, gives a
vivid account of how he uses yogic techniques as aids to worship. He describes a
"euphoria that pervades the story of my experiment. I wish to make it clear that
this euphoria is real and lasting and spreads through the various levels of my
daily life, physical, Psychical and spiritual" (Christian Yoga). Even though few
of us will achieve anything like perpetual exuberance, ecstatic joy or euphoria,
attainment of a more trusting outlook on life provides a spiritual soil from
which spiritual roses have a better chance to grow. The pragmatic
experimentalist will say: "Try it and see."
| 
House
of YOGA