Stress management: getting to know yourself

The stress imposed on us by our Western societies is harmful to our health.
Learning to control it, to regain a harmonious and balanced form of being in action, will be one of the present and future challenges in achieving a balanced life. Indian yoga techniques are particularly well-suited to resolving this fundamental issue.

FIRST KEY: Levels of existence

Ancient Indian texts teach us that we can vibrate on several levels of existence:
let's recognize them!

1/ MUDHA :
A dark level, a thick state where something in us expresses suffering. The possibility of access to happiness is hidden by a heavy, conflict-ridden life, or there's a projection onto external causes to justify this state. This state is accompanied by a lack of voluntary dynamic activity, lack of dynamism and lack of practice... we suffer and feel victimized by other people...

2/ KHISIPTA:
A somewhat excited, scattered state where there is activity in agitation, urgency....the future constantly pushes the present into chaotic disorder ...little ethics ..we seek to compensate for a life as pleasant as possible without worrying about the consequences on the psyche in the long term...we justify our desires... it's a more active state of life, limited but we don't know other levels of existence...

3/ VIKSHIPTA:
The individual has made an effort to reassemble the scattered rays of the mind...we begin to struggle to master and return to the base.... there is an average level of concentration...ups and downs....but we get glimpses of the possibility of "getting out of it".

4/ EKAGRATA:
the mind is better mastered...there are fewer trips to other levels...and when this happens, we know how to get out of it...the techniques are known.

5/ NIRUDHA:
Mastery of the mind.... knowledge of causeless happiness...the "Self" is known and there is a kind of felicity in this experience. We realize that the mind vibrates on several levels, and this enables us to locate ourselves and the levels marked in others, and thus to act accordingly.