QnA with Sri Sri
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2014

Q: What is stress? How to overcome stress?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: One of the definitions that you can give for stress is, when you have a lot to do and have very little energy and time to do it. This creates stress. Today it is not practically possible to reduce your work. Time is constant, you cannot increase time. So the only other alternative that we have is to increase our energy levels. And there are many ways to increase energy:
Food; eating healthy food. In the SAARC countries, we eat food that is not very healthy, and that is low in nutrition. We only eat carbohydrates. Our food is very imbalanced. The vegetables that we eat are potato, tomato, brinjal and onion. That’s it! There’s starch in potato, starch in our roti (Indian bread) and in our dal (pulses). This is an imbalanced diet. We don’t consume nutritious food in our day to day life. We need to bring back the awareness about nutrition and healthy food habits.
Good sleep. Sleep also gives you energy. Sleep helps more than medication. I cannot undermine the effects of medication, but if you give someone medicine and don’t let them sleep then even medicines will not work. So, sleep is very important.
Insomnia is a big issue today, and lack of good sleep is also another big issue. People are unable to sleep well. Nightmares have become a common phenomenon. There are techniques in yoga which help people to sleep better without medication and sleeping tablets.
Hygiene. We need to create awareness about it. This is what The Art of Living Foundation has been doing through its 5H program (Health, Hygiene, Homes for people, Harmony in diversity and Human Values). We are all different people. In India there are 600 different dialects, and so many different religions. So what is most important is to live in harmony. So these are the 5 issues that we are looking into in our 5H program. We must see how we can prevent diseases by helping people to attend to their environment.
Breathing is another source of energy. Fresh air and clean air is essential. Sometimes in big cities when we walk around, not just the petrol fumes but also the electro-magnetic garbage affects the body. If you watch television for 8-9 hours, it will definitely cause illnesses. Many people don’t open their doors in winter, and when you get inside, there is stale air in the rooms. In many houses there is no cross-ventilation. I heard from a very well known oncologist that one of the main issues of cancer is that people don’t breathe enough. If you oxidize (take in a good amount of oxygen) your body then it flushes out toxins and helps you to heal yourself. Deep breathing definitely helps prevent cancer. I have seen hundreds of cases where breathing exercises, meditation, yoga and some changes in diet have helped people with cancer overcome this disease. People didn’t have to go through chemo as they found that their body had started healing itself.We need to take care of the health of society by looking into our lifestyle management and see what we can do to reduce stress.
We need to educate people to honor this beautiful instrument that nature has given us called the body. We need to honor the body and honor the mind.

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