QnA with Sri Sri
Wednesday, June 17, 2015 

 Q: I get angry very soon and not able to come out of it soon. Can yoga help me? How? 
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: I am not saying that you should not get angry, upset or feel jealous; it is okay! You can shout, get angry, be upset, but that should not stay for more than a few minutes; only then it is healthy. Getting upset is normal, but to carry those emotions for months or years together is not normal. You should be like children; have you noticed when children are crying, it takes children just a few minutes to smile back. But as adults, if you have cried, it takes us maybe, one month or two months to bring the smile back; actually, we don’t even know how long!

 How is it possible, how can we bring the smile back as quickly as children? I will tell you a secret! Have you noticed how you feel when someone gives you a lot of compliments, or when you are happy? There is something in you that expands, right? And when you are given an insult, how do you feel? Something in you crashes. This something in you that expands and contracts with every external stimulus, is consciousness. The consciousness or the mind in you has the ability to expand and contract. If you know this, and if you understand and experience this, then nobody can take the smile away from you. In big words, they call this self-realization, but I tell you, it is very simple!
 Breathing techniques, meditation, all these are aimed to make our vibrations positive.


 Have you seen how children see things? When they look at you, their mind is 100% there. But if you look at somebody, your mind is thinking about something else. When we kindle the life force in us, we become like children again.


 Every child is a yogi; every child does all the yoga aasanas (postures); we have all done it as babies. If you observe a baby from the age of three months up to three years, you won’t need a yoga teacher. Anywhere, any baby, whether it is in Argentina, Mongolia, Japan, China, every child does all the yoga postures, and they breathe differently. The way a child breathes is different from the way an adult breathes; this is because a child is free from stress.


 Neither in school, nor at home does anyone teach us how to cleanse our vibrations, how to cleanse our mind, how to be peaceful. Don’t you think this education is necessary?

 We were all taught to brush our teeth; this is dental hygiene; it is part of our culture. Similarly, we need to learn mental hygiene, i.e., meditation. We must teach our population how to get rid of all the anger, greed, jealousy, and hatred from our mind. It is through breathing, meditation that we can keep ourselves lively, loving, caring, compassionate, and intelligent. What do meditation and the spiritual practices do? They bring out the four ‘I’s - innovation, intuition, inspiration and intelligence.


 When we get stuck with something in life, often we remain stuck in a position; it is the intellect that gets stuck, and this is called prejudice. Similarly, the memory tends to hold on to the negative. If you are given ten compliments and one insult, what do you hold on to? You forget all the ten compliments and hold on to one negative thing. You need to reverse this; that which reverses this tendency of holding on to the negative, to becoming positive, is yoga and spirituality. So, the memory tends to hold on to something negative. But that is not the case with children; they live in the present moment. We can reorient our mind; reorient our brains, to be in the present moment. We can become very creative, and very happy. A violence-free society, disease-free body, confusion-free mind, inhibition-free intellect, trauma-free memory, and sorrow-free soul is the birth right of every individual.




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