#19: Yoga Is Mental Health with Dr Anuranjan Bist

TANIA COTTON

Welcome to the LifeWise Show where we explore the things in life that make you feel truly alive. Today I’m sitting on the banks of the river Ganga in India, with Dr Anuranjan Bist, an experienced psychiatrist and founder of the Mind Brain institute in the US. Anuranjan lead a workshop here, at the Sattva Summit, that highlighted how traditional medicine often does not deal with the cause of our disease or our dis-ease, anxiety, emotional pain and suffering. He went on to reveal how ‘we are the medicine’ and that ‘yoga is mental health’.

Anuranjan, thank you for being with us today.

DR ANURANJAN BIST
Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be able to share my experiences and thoughts about happy living. And yes, I've been trained as a psychiatrist and I've been in private practice for six years, and I've been trained in the traditional Western model of allopathic medicine that is a very reductionist model. And so, everything is seen as a chemical imbalance, and especially in psychiatry.

For example, if you have depression, then ‘your serotonin levels are low’. And if you take certain medications which are supposed to increase the serotonin level, then ‘once the level is back to normal, the depression is gone’. And of course, I was trained with that and I believed that but when I started practicing, I found out that it was not true.

And a lot of traditional antidepressants, their effectiveness is around 20% to 30% and studies have shown that. And then, of course, they never treat the underlying cause, so it's more like a Band-Aid. So, you take the medication, it helps sometimes and then you do have to take it for extended period of time, and that has its own long-term effects and actually the long-term effects have not even been studied.

So, I did feel that this model was very limited, and we are not solving the patient’s problems by just prescribing them medications and seeing their depression or their suffering as just a chemical imbalance.

TANIA COTTON
Now, in the context of us being here at the Sattva Summit - I'd love to know how you changed your mind. What actually made you look at other possibilities? I come here at the summit as a complete beginner. I've done some yoga classes. I've been through some movements and I understand that Yoga has the capacity to help me calm my busy mind.
But beyond that, really, I am a beginner. Tell me your experience of coming here as a beginner.

DR ANURANJAN BIST
So maybe let me just go back all the way and let me tell you the full story. So, I'm born here and actually not far from here, Dehra Dun, which is like a hour or two drive from here, and that's where I grew up. And so growing up here in India, I mean, it's an old culture, very old tradition.

And sometimes that can also bring a lot of superstition and dogma with it. And so when I was growing up I saw that, and that sort of turned me off Hinduism and Yoga - at that time I just considered it a part of Hinduism, so I didn't want to have anything to do with it. But you're always searching for answers.

And our brain is designed to always be seeking for bliss and happiness. And so, with the seeking, I turned more to psychology. I studied the traditional psychology literature, studying Freud and Jung and then moving on to modern therapies like CBT. Aaron Beck who came up with the cognitive behavioural therapy; Albert Ellis who came up with the rational emotive therapy; and studying those and applying those I still felt that there was a need where these therapies or these stories which defined the mind weren't really doing it either for me or for my patients.

And so that search continued, and I happened to meet a master yogi who is my teacher now, Anand Mehrotra. At that time, I was in USA and I was practicing in Las Vegas and I happened to see him online. I saw a documentary in which he was featured, and I saw him speak and he spoke about the mind in a way that resonated with me.

And so I sought him out, and I had a meeting with him. We had some discussions, and he advised me to come at the end of the week on a retreat he was organising there in the US, and he asked me to come and be a part of it. And being from a science background, I still have that scepticism in there. As I said, from a young age, I had this sort of aversive reaction to anything related to what I thought was Hinduism. But later I found out yoga was totally different. It's not a part of Hinduism but at that time I didn't, you know, I didn't know that.

And so I did decide to go, because talking to him I felt as if he knew what he's talking about. I thought, okay, let me go and do the weekend retreat. I mean, it's not much of an investment from my side. And I mean, what could go wrong? And of course, I had never done it before. I had never done yoga or meditation or any of those practices. And so I did go there and went there with this very sceptical mind. I wasn't very convinced that it would do anything. And so I was there, and we practiced, and you practice in the morning and you do meditation, and you do breathwork, and you do the Kriya yoga.

Anand Mehrotra specialises, through his lineage, in doing Himalayan Kundalini Yoga where the Kriyas are the primary focus. And so we did some Kriyas during the first day, and by the end of it, my thinking mind just shut down and I got a glimpse of what they say is your true essential nature, which is this unbounded consciousness. There were no thoughts. Everything was just spaciousness around me. And there was this bliss emanating from deep inside me. And just experiencing that bliss was such a profound experience that tears came to my eyes and these tears continued for like three, 4 hours. And the scientific mind, part of my mind is saying, what's happening? And I was trying to generate an explanation of what was happening, like a scientific explanation of what was happening: maybe it was a technique where my oxygen level is high or low or whatever, but it was much beyond that. I knew that it was the practice and that this was my true self I was seeing after all the searching I've been doing.

I knew that the search ended there. I mean, the search didn't end, but I knew that was the path I needed to follow to bring that into my life. And then hopefully within people I interact with and people I train.

TANIA COTTON
For me, when I first heard you tell the story, it was such a message of hope for me. I mean, I found myself in Rishikesh at the Sattva Centre that has been founded and set up Anand Mehrotra, and I suppose I wasn't here by chance. I had come to speak to Gurmukh Kahlsa, a well-known yogi, just before her 80th birthday. I am making a documentary on how we can age successfully and be fit for life and I wanted to know, what did that really mean? And I knew that somehow here in the East, there were answers. The answers begin within ourselves, and within our minds. So then coming here as a beginner, hearing about your journey made me feel it was okay to be a beginner at the age of 56.

It gave me great hope because I am interested in and I feel that everything begins with mental health. The fact that you said yoga is mental health made me realise, ‘Oh, so it's not about an exercise class, it's something much deeper than that’ and that actually yoga is a way of living. And it is a way of life.

I think it's very nice to also understand a little bit about Anand Mehrotra and his background and why he is in a place of understanding and knowing of this. Could you share that for us?

DR ANURANJAN BIST
We can talk about him or we can talk of him and of course he's been my teacher for about ten years now, and from time to time he does share his stories and his upbringing and his experiences with his teacher. And so he did happen to grow up here in Rishikesh, which is the yoga capital of the world.

And of course, when he was born 40 years ago, it wasn't as well-known maybe in the West, but in India it has been a seat of pilgrimage for thousands of years. And all the yogis have been coming up to Rishikesh from all over India, and then they would move up to the higher areas to do their meditation, to do their practices. So it was a really a gathering place for a lot of yogis on the banks of the river Ganga. And so, for thousands of years there has been a tradition of different lineages, different schools, different yogic practices, of people coming there - sharing, learning and growing.

So, what I know of him is that when he was born, a master who had been teaching kriya yoga all over the world, actually came to his house and this was even before he was born.
At that time, Rishikesh was a small place, and so his parents knew this great master. And so the great master said that, ‘you're going to be having a son soon, and he's going to be my disciple’ and he was the one who named him Anand. So Anand says that he grew up playing in the lap of his master, playing with his beard, basically. And so, he was trained from a very young age by that master. And of course, then the master passed on and dropped his body. Then people can teach you about yoga, people can point you in the right direction, but you still have to walk the walk.

And so he had to have his own journey and he spent a lot of time in an ashram, uh, where he felt that's where he was meant to be. And I think he was there for some time and he realised that mostly the ashram, like a monastery, is just a microcosm of what is on the outside. So he then rejected that and then spent some time in solitude being by himself for like two, three months at a time where he had profound experiences. And in his meditation, he had a deeper realisation. And one day he felt there was a calling, that he needed to teach. And he started teaching in Rishikesh.

He's coming from a lineage, from a Himalayan, Kundalini yoga lineage, and he's taught this specific type of yoga, which includes breathwork and Kriyas and meditation. So, as we understand in the West, as you had mentioned, that yoga is not just about the poses and the hatha part. I mean, it's just a part of yoga. But most people only know that part.
They think it's a series of different poses you have to do. The room might be hot or it might be cold, or there might be props and people might be hanging from the ceilings and doing it. I mean, that's becoming popular these days too. But yoga is much more than that and to understand it we have to listen to Patanjali, who is one of the great writers who wrote or who compiled yoga, which was being practiced even before Patanjali was born, and eventually he wrote the yoga sutras maybe around 2000 years ago. So, he just compiled what was already there. He's not the father of yoga and he didn't invent yoga. He just compiled what was around him. And his definition of yoga is ‘chitta vritti nirodha’, which means cessation of the mind, yoga is cessation of the ego.

And what is the ego? What is the mind? It's your conditioned self. It's the stories, it's the beliefs, is the ideas, Is the thoughts which have been planted in you from the outside. Be your parents, teachers, society as you've grown up. You were told certain things, or you heard certain things and you sort of ingested this and mentally it became a part of you or it became a part of who you are or how you view the world.

And so yoga is basically telling you that you don't have to identify with that story of yours or with that conditioning of yours. And you are beyond that. You are pure consciousness And so, the practices which help you get to that point in yoga are not just the poses.

TANIA COTTON
You know, I love the way you describe your first experience of practicing yoga, of experiencing spaciousness as you put it, and a new clarity.

It's interesting how many of the ways we are brought up, particularly in education, for example, especially with a medical education, as I know we have both had, that this focuses on training the conscious mind that is like 5% of our mind.

Our subconscious is like 95%. But a lot of our training actually brings us out of our heart and into our heads to really get stuck there. And so together with the conditioning of society, yes, we forget almost how to feel. Could you just talk to us a little bit how important it is for us to get out of our heads and into our heart and to begin to feel, and that this perhaps allows us to listen better to our patients.

DR ANURANJAN BIST
So, you see, the model of education we have right now is the industrial model of education where we are being prepared to work in an industry. And in this day and age the cognitive abilities are highly prized. So, if you are a professional, be it a doctor or a lawyer or engineer that is highly prized by society, all this cognitive work is where you have to use your mind.

So, from a young age, everybody is trained to use their mind more and more and to suppress their intuition or suppress their heart and what they feel. It's more the thinking part, the planning part, which is encouraged and developed; and the feeling part, which is fine intuition is suppressed in a way or is not paid attention to. And when it's not paid attention to, I mean, it doesn't die down, it's still there, but we lose the ability to really hear it. But we are finding out that if it's just the cognitive ability we're using without using our heart, our essential sense of being, then there is a perversion there.

So, what's happening is that engineers are designing nuclear weapons, they're designing missiles which can kill millions of people at one time, and they are not bad people, but they are just using their mind and using their engineering degree or their engineering understanding to build these destructive machines. And even corporations, there is no such thing as a corporation, it is just a bunch of people running a company and they're not inherently evil. They are nice people just trying to lead a normal life and bring up their families and do the best they can. But because there is a general lack of being in touch with their intuition and with their heart, they are taking these steps without being able to think about others or being able to see what long term impact an action is going to have, and that is lacking.

And even in the medical field that is lacking. And that's why in medicine, a lot of people have very negative experiences. I hear a lot of people say here that they went to a hospital and they went to a doctor and the doctor didn't hear them out and they were just too focused on, okay, this is the problem, and this is the prescription. And you take it, which is unfortunate, because we are human beings, we are social beings. I mean, we do our best when we feel connected or when we feel that, ‘okay, I'm being heard’ or that the other person really cares about me. So, I think with the yogic practices, it's important that we get out of our minds and into our hearts.

And a mind is a useful tool, but it's just a tool. I mean, it's not you, so you can use the tool when it's appropriate, but it doesn't have to be used all the time, you know? So, we need to get out of the head and get more into our heart. Some of the ways we can do that is through yoga practices.

With the mind there's always this sense of me against the world. And so you always want to control things, you always want to plan things, you always want to manipulate things, manipulate people to get the desired result, which you think is the best for you or what you think is going to make you happy. So, getting away from that and allowing things to flow, going with the flow, not always fighting. Like when we have a goal, sometimes it's good to have a vision, but too much of a goal with too much planning is not good because then we will get tunnel vision and we can only see that goal and we don't see what's around us. And there might be excellent opportunities around us to be of value to society and help people.

But because we are so focused on the goal, we lose that humanity in the way that we just want to achieve that goal and we are not looking at the consequences. I mean, that there could be hundreds of other opportunities to be useful and to be helpful to other people. So allowing things to happen and not getting too focused widens our vision. And then we can see more clearly. We can, instead of just seeing through a keyhole, the door is open. Then the whole world opens us to us and then we are more human and then we are more kind because we see the long-term consequences. We see the bigger picture. And one of the ways to have this spaciousness is meditation, because meditation is a tool in yogic practices, which is non-negotiable.

The meditation has to be done every day. And the reason for doing the meditation is again, that creating that spaciousness, getting away from that web of thoughts which we are entangled in all the time, the story of us, which you are entangled and thinking about over and over again. So, when you have that spaciousness and the story might still be going on, the thought might be still be going on, but it's just a small part. You are much wider than that and you can see the bigger picture and that's why you are then, as you said, working more from the heart. The other thing we can do is be more spontaneous - not have too rigid of a plan and not sticking to an ideology or a belief too rigidly.

That is what all the chaos in the world is, people from one ideology fighting another one be it democracy and communism, or be it a religious ideology, be it even a national ideology. I mean, it's like the nations fighting each other. That's the biggest source of human misery and biggest source of people dying. So being spontaneous and not being too rigidly attached to any ideology or to any belief system is very important because the nature of the universe is much more than that - infinite variables are there. So, if we attach to a personality, we suffer and then we make other people suffer too, when we are attached to one position or one belief too rigidly.

And then of course, being curious about life, one of the things you said, you're working on a documentary about successful aging. And so, one of the things that happens, which really affects the aging is that we lose our curiosity. If you see a kid, the kid is constantly happy and they're constantly curious and they're constantly engaged in this thing, like what is this? What is that? How can I do this, how can I do that? And they are constantly asking those questions and then the curiosity stays, but we lose that curiosity as we grow older and older and we tend to label things as just things. And so, once I've seen something and I've labelled it, next time, for example a flower - a rose flower, you see it, okay, this is a rose that smells nice.

Next time you see a rose, the label just comes in in your mind. Okay, It's a rose. It's this thing and that's how it's going to be. And then you don't pay attention to it. And each rose is different. I mean, they're not the same, but the mind tends to label. And that's why we see older people get ‘set in their ways’ they've had these experiences and they're saying, okay, I've done this and I've experienced it and I've seen everything.

You see that cynicism, and with this cynicism their vision becomes very narrow. Then life becomes very, very narrow and very defined because they label everything and they label everything as good and bad, and they're just living in those narrow parameters, that they define for themselves. And that becomes a prison and so the older you get, the more you get yourself into the self-defined prison of labelling and judging. You've already labelled and judged, and this is stored in your mind and you're not curious about life anymore. And so, one of the things for successful aging is keeping that sense of curiosity alive. Even if you know a person and you have already labelled the person, the next day when you meet them, you need to stay curious and see where the person is at that time.

And so that curiosity keeps the energy moving, keeps us going. We are not living in that small bubble anymore; always having your heart open to new experiences and exploring the same thing. Maybe because nothing is ever the same, the only thing constant in life is change. And so everything is changing all the time. If you're curious and say, ‘Hey, what am I going to learn today?’ ‘What I am going to experience today?’, having that curiosity when you get up, that is the life force that keeps you going; that vital vitality life force, which a kid has.

So that curiosity is important. And then also not taking life too seriously, as we said in our yogic practices, we are sincere in our practice, but we are not serious. Having that playfulness about life, that not taking everything too seriously because we know that we are here today and will be gone tomorrow, and everything we see and hear or experience or own is just there for a short while. And from a yogic perspective, we say life is a lila. What does that mean? It means that it's just a play. It's not to be taken too seriously. Of course, you need to engage with it.

I always like the example of watching a movie. So when you're watching a movie, you have to engage with the movie. You have to engage with the plot to enjoy it. You have to identify with the characters to enjoy it. But deep down inside, you know, it's a movie and it's going to be over and you'll go home soon. So, it's important that we see life through these eyes. And when we start feeling that we are starting to get too serious, that we laugh at ourselves and we laugh at ourselves a few times a day so that we are not taking ourselves seriously and then we don't take the whole thing seriously. We do our best and we accept whatever happens that that playfulness is important too. It keeps us in our heart.

TANIA COTTON
It's the thing that surprised me most when I arrived here. With Anandji, the teacher who has brought us all here and has so much experience, this whole summit began with laughter, and it's been like opening a window and letting the oxygen in, and he just keeps opening the window. At one point he goes, well, come on, let's face it, we are all just a sneeze within the whole of the universe. I mean, we are such a small part. We mustn't take ourselves too seriously. And it's been such a joyful experience.

And one of the big questions I came with, I think it's one I've taken with me throughout my life, is why do people have to suffer? Often really good people tend to suffer, and it seems so unfair. Yet Anandji really reframed that, that we can choose to suffer, but we also have a choice not to suffer. And I'd like you to talk about that. You had this wonderful story that when we're in our groove of suffering, how we can change that groove and the beautiful story you shared with us of the fabric in Rajasthan and that I will hand over to you, please share.

DR ANURANJAN BIST
So, you are right, when he said that suffering is always optional. What we mean by this is that the challenges are there. I mean, if you're born in this body and you are born in this world, there will be challenges, you will experience pain. Everybody will. There's no person on this earth be the Christ, be it Buddha. Everybody experiences pain. But then why suffering? So, when you have challenges and you are facing them it creates a story, why is this happening to me? Other people are okay. Why does this keeps happening to me. I am the only one who this thing happens to. And so, when we have that story in our mind, the story is creating the suffering, not the actual event itself.

So, if you see the event as like, okay, this is a challenge and I need to face it and this is what I need to do. And this challenge has been sent so that I can grow more, be it spiritually, be it mentally, be it physically, then your relationship with the challenge changes. But now if the challenge comes and you're like, okay, why me? And why am I the victim? Then the suffering starts. So the challenges will always will be there, and the challenges are always there to help us grow and mature. And if you look back on your life every time you were challenged and you overcame it, you were in a much better position. So I'm a psychiatrist and I've worked for so many years, so I've seen people over the years and a lot of times I see people and they come to me and they're like, ‘Hey, you know, I mean, this is the worst time of my life!’ I'm getting divorced or I lost my job or somebody died. And then of course, we talk and then I see them two years later, I mean, I see the same person and they say, ‘Hey, that was the best thing that happened to me. I lost my job and then I started my business and I'm doing this…’ or ‘I got divorced, and now I'm doing this…’, or ‘I met this another wonderful person…’. So we don't know what's right and wrong for us. Our mind is very limited, and it can project into the future in a very limited way. It only projects into the future what it has known in the past, and that's really limited. So it's important that we don't create the story around any challenges. We see that, okay, the challenge is there.
It's something which has been sent to me so I can learn something and grow from it. And if you're there and you face it, you come off in a much better position.

Some of you may be familiar with a state in India called Rajasthan in India? It's a desert state, but it's a desert that has a very beautiful palaces and fortresses and they use very colourful fabrics that are very famous. Those fabrics are very famous because of the colours are dyed fast, they don’t fade. And so the way they process it is that they will take a white fabric and dip it in colour and then they take it out and the dry it in the sun and the sun is strong and it fades the colour. So, they take the fabric again and dip it in the colour again, and then they put it out and it again fades, but not as much as the first time. And so they keep on doing it, like dipping the sheet in the colour and drying it until there comes a time when they put it out to dry, the colour does not fade and then the fabric is done. So similarly, in our life we have these challenges and so the challenges are just there. So to keep practicing will make you stronger, and that will hopefully, if you're moving in the right direction with the yogic practices, there will come a time that you are very centred inside and what happens on the outside does not disturb you at all.

You are always in that inner peace and no matter what challenges come, what people say or what things happen, it does not disturb your inner peace in any way. So, we all want to get to that point because that's the only thing we can control. We cannot control the environment. We cannot control the world. We cannot control what other people do.
The only thing we can control is what we do. And that's where the yogic practices become important, because all the practices are designed to bring you to that centre, to that peaceful state within you from where you can take the right action, not to take action out of fear, but the right action at the right time.

TANIA COTTON
If I'm a beginner listening to this, which I am essentially, although of course I have had some incredible exposure this week, my question is, wow, so how do I get started? I mean, it seems all a little bit overwhelming at the start. So while there are a few simple things, if I'm going to begin something every day, what are some simple, sustainable steps I can take now to learn more about this or to put something into practice that can allow me to have a sense of what you're sharing.

DR ANURANJAN BIST
Let me first talk about how we can embody these teachings and these experiences. So it happens at three different levels. First, it happens at the level of the mind of the brain. We hear things from our teacher. We might read something in a book, or we might hear something or see something like a video. And so when we are understanding, first we have an understanding at the level of the mind or the level of the brain. We get the information. But that's just the first step, because just the information by itself is not going to change anything because it's just at the level of mind. Then the second level is at the level of the heart when we experience something. So we experience it. You experience it at the level of the heart, it becomes then a memory in you, this thing. And then if you have enough experiences, then we say it's at the level of the soul, ‘atmagyana’, then it’s always with you.

So, for example, like gratitude. These days it's a word that is turned around a lot, ‘Hey, be grateful and have a gratitude journal’. And, and that's understandable. That's a good thing. But that's at the level of the mind. So, we write down I'm grateful for this and I'm grateful for that. But it's still just at the level of thought, at the level of the brain. Now, if something happens, for example in your busyness of daily life, you suddenly look up and you see the beautiful sunset and then your heart fills up and you might even have like, tears in your eyes - that's an experience of gratefulness. So, you're not saying, Oh, I'm grateful for the sunset, you're just experiencing it. It's not a word, it's then an experience.

Everything is an experience we tend to reduce it to a word. So, experience it. And through our practices we have more and more of those experiences. Even the simplest of the things that happen, we realize how profound it is that it is happening in our life or through us. And we stop and we experience that gratitude and the more experiences we have, the more they become a part of us. It becomes part of our neural network in the brain. It becomes part of our experience of feeling, because when you experience it, there are certain chemicals released in your system which make you feel in your body and in your mind. So if you experience it at the level of the heart, at the level of emotions, at the level of feelings, when you have these experiences over and over again, it becomes more sustained. So then you're just grateful that it's nothing you're grateful for. You just have that gratefulness all the time. So that's the state we want to get into. So that's why it's important that we work with some teacher and then we hear it, we understand it intellectually, but then we practice it so then we can experience it.

And once we experience it, and stay with a consistent practice, then when we experience it consistently, then it becomes us. So, then you're not grateful for anything. You're just grateful all the time. And if your experience of gratefulness is that all the time, then you cannot be in a bad mood because deep down you are grateful. And so, you're always, deep down, centred. You are at peace and you are at bliss.

So, of course it sounds very daunting when we are starting out and everybody has started out. Everyone who is on this path has started out. And it's important to start out with some easy practices and one of the main practices we use in yoga is meditation that is always non-negotiable. I know a lot of people hear this and they've tried meditating and then they feel frustrated. They feel like, ‘Hey, if I'm meditating, I need to sit in a certain way, my mind should be completely blank, I should have no thoughts’. And they say, ‘Oh, I had a bad meditation’ and people give up after a few weeks or maybe after a few months because the thoughts keep coming. And sometimes people say, ‘Hey, my thoughts even got worse when I was trying to meditate’. It's not that the thoughts got worse. You became more aware that you are having all these thoughts. And actually, the key to the meditation is that awareness that that I am having these thoughts, I realise how my mind works or how the thought loop works, how the story works, because we all have that story going on in our mind. And we have something that we call the default mode network in our mind, which is an ongoing circuit of thought in the mind that goes keeps going around when you're not actively engaged in a task and this is usually like around 60% of the time. And so, it's going on and it's usually negative - there's a negative story going on. And if you observe your mind for some time, you'll see there two or three stories that play over and over again that come from your past memory and past conditioning.

And so the whole process of meditation is creating that spaciousness. So we are not trying to stop the thoughts, we're just trying to be able to see the thoughts. And even if we can say, ‘I see myself having this thought’, even once during our meditation, that that's a victory, that's a successful meditation! So there are different techniques we can use for meditation. And sometimes if you've never meditated, then maybe start with 5 to 10 minutes of guided meditation and gradually build it up. And there are different meditation techniques, like watching the breath and mantra-based meditation, and you can find one which works for you or you can work with a teacher. There are teachers who can help guide you, train you how to meditate and answer your questions.

It's always a good idea to go with somebody who knows a teacher so that your questions can be answered and you know that you're following the right path and the path to meditation. Of course, it's not like, you start meditating and in a week everything is okay. Of course, you do notice some difference, but the regular practice and the more you practice it, the results will be more, so at the end of six months you'll see bigger results. At the end of a year, the results will be much, much more. So, it has a very cumulative effect the longer you meditate. It snowballs into more and more spaciousness, more and more being able to see your thoughts, more and more not falling victim to your belief system, to your conditioning, and you move beyond the conditioning.

And when you move beyond the conditioning, that's where you rest in your true self, which we call pure consciousness. And that's where the peace and the joy and the bliss is. And then from moment to moment, you're enjoying your bliss and the practice which really helps us calm down. So the whole process is also calming your nervous system because the calmer you are, the better you think, the more spacious you are. Because if you are under some sort of a fear, it just narrows your focus. It's just a survival mechanism of the brain that if you think there is a threat, you'll be very focused on that threat. It's just what the brain has been developed to do over millions of years of evolution. And so you lose touch of the bigger picture. So the calmer you are, the better you see the bigger picture, and then you're more clear about what is the right action to take, what you need to do.

To calm our nervous system, we have different practices and one of them is breath work. When we slow down our breathing and we take a deep breath in and we exhale very, very slowly, especially when the exhalation is longer than the inhalation, it sends a signal from our vagus nerve to the anxiety centre in our brain, which is the amygdala, that everything is okay, it's okay to be calm. And so the brain just calms the body and the nervous system down. And the calmer you are, the more you are in touch with what's really happening, or the more you are in touch with what we call the universal intelligence. So, you can do simple breath work – by that I mean, five, 5 minutes, 10 minutes of breathwork. There are four parts to each breath - you breathe, then you hold it inside, you breathe out, and then you hold it outside. So the different breathwork techniques manipulate these four parts to get the desired result, to get the get the nervous system and our brain in the right condition or optimal state we want to be in. With the breath work daily practice is very, very important.

It's always good, of course, to be physically active. You can exercise, or if you want to do the poses too that helps ground us and distribute the energy and stuff we have in our body and keep the channels open. This is useful too but start with the meditation practice.
We don't want to set up too lofty of a goal, and then get frustrated with the failure. So you start with 5 to 10 minutes. In a month or two, we want you to meditate for at least 20 minutes, once in the morning, once in the evening. And even with the breathwork, you want to be doing at least 15, 20 minutes of breathwork each day to keep your nervous system optimal and to manage the daily stresses we accumulate during the day from work, relationships, family etc…

TANIA COTTON
The self-awareness side of it, I think for me, seems like the first step because how can we listen to others and treat others well if we're not listening to ourselves and treating ourselves well. And when you start taking a breath it's like the power of pause, that pause at the top of the breath and at the bottom, the breath and slowing it down and coming from your fight and flight sympathetic system into your parasympathetic calmness.

And many of us have fallen into the trap that locks us into this prison, telling ourselves that we can't do this, we can't do that, and we're not this and we're not that. And the freedom that comes with then setting an intention and paying attention to something that is a much more meaningful way forward, that gives us a sense of freedom. I think this is very important. Even just realizing how much we are telling ourselves we are not enough, which doesn't allow us to have the expansive feeling that everything is possible and the realisation that really it is up to us.

DR ANURANJAN BIST
As you said, it is very important for us first to know what's right for us because most of the time what we think is right for us or what we think will be good for us is not necessarily so. Anything we are doing is to make us peaceful and happy, be it a job, getting money, be it a position, be it a relationship. Having an ultimate goal is ok but what most of us are pursuing for happiness is something which has been planted in us - an idea that, ‘Oh, if I do this, it will make me happy?’ Most of the time, what's society tells us will make us happy might be contradictory.

What society is telling you will make you happy is more useful for society than for you. So that is why it is very important that we are able to understand our conditioning and come into a peaceful state. Society tells us that the peace, happiness and joy is always in the future, it is never now. It is always like, okay, when you achieve this, then you'll be happy. And then you get there and it's not.

If, for example, society says, ‘Hey, if you have, $5 million in your account and then you'll have everything and you’ve made it’ - then people will work, work, work, and somebody might get the $5 million and they're happy for a few days, a few months, and then, like, now what? And then they're back into state of mind where they are thinking okay, maybe five is not enough. Maybe I need to get $10M, maybe I need to get $50M. And so it’s a never ending cycle, but somewhere in the future we believe it will make us happy. And then there's advertising. The brain is always wired to look for happiness. And so that's where advertising comes. And so then you see this advertisement that, okay, if you buy this car or if you have this house or if you're taking this vacation, then you'll be happy and then you're buying into that and then you're sort of okay chasing this and choosing that… This is why the yogic practices are very important.

Happiness is never outside. It's a state within you. And so, your only job is to actually arrive to that state. And from that state, when you take the action, then that's the right action. You're not taking an action and saying ‘okay, this will make me happy. And you're not chasing an object outside of you saying, ‘When I get this object, it'll make me happy tomorrow or whenever I get it.’ You're saying that I'm getting into that peace and happiness now, and from that place I am acting. And when I'm acting from that position, then I'm not trying to get this thing or achieve that. I'm not trying to manipulate the situation so I get to my goal. I'm already happy. Only then can the right action come, because otherwise your actions are creating more and more bondage for you. So it's important that we first correct our intellect, correct that understanding, and then we act - because if we are just chasing, then we are just on that the hamster wheel of this is what somebody else has told me will make me happy.

If we are chasing, chasing, chasing then we will get into a depression. Uh, we see that a lot of times with the Olympic athletes when they win a medal and after they go into a depression because they've been told all their life from a very young age, ‘okay, this is your goal, this is your goal, this is your goal, and the world will be yours when you have it’.
And even if they win the gold medal, once that's over, what next?

People often retire having been told, you work hard, you work hard, you work hard, and when you retire, you enjoy life. And then suddenly they retire, and they have this big void, a big vacuum, because they've been working like eight, 10 hours a day every day for 30, 40 years. And suddenly they don't know what to do with their lives. And they're actually going through a depression. So, it's never external. It's never in the future it is always that is the youngest philosophy. And all the techniques and all the practices are designed to centre you, to understand yourself and for you to find that deep peace, joy compassion and lovingness right now, not somewhere in the future.

TANIA COTTON
Thank you. Now, I always ask my guests to share with us a favourite film, a favourite book and a favourite quote. The film I'd actually like you to share with us and talk about is the one that introduced you to Anand. Was it not The Highest Pass? Tell us about that.

DR ANURANJAN BIST
The Highest pass is a documentary about Anand and a few other motorcycle riders. Anand loves to ride bikes. They all decided to go on a journey to the Himalayas in Ladakh, very high, to the highest pass in the world, in around 2008, 2010. And so my first introduction to him was through this documentary, and this was on Netflix in 2013, and I was just sitting at home and flicking through the titles on Netflix and I saw this one about a journey through the Himalayas. And I'm from the Himalayas, so I was really interested.

I watched it and Anand talked about the journey and he talked about the inner journey about the challenges. And like any journey, that's what makes the journey fun if you have challenges, because if it's just a smooth ride, then what's the fun in that? So the challenges were there and the riders were challenged, and he talked about how to face the challenges, how to look at the challenges, because the way you look at things makes all the difference, and how we can refine our ourselves so that what I, what we experience, is just joyful.

And we see it always as a learning experience, always a growing experience. And we just enjoy things more. So that is definitely, I would say this is the favourite movie. So it's The Highest Pass. I don't know if it's available on Netflix right now, but I'm sure on some online platform it will be available.
And you said a book?

Osho was a great philosopher, a great yogi, yet he never wrote a book. I mean, he spoke a lot and his speeches got translated into books. I think he's very deeply misunderstood but you really have to read his work and his philosophy to really understand him and what he was saying. He talks about different texts like the Vedas, the Bible and the Koran along with philosophies from Lao Tzu and other great philosophers – he talks about them and he makes their ideas very accessible. His commentary on the Bhagavad Gita is something I liked and I enjoyed. He is a mystic in yoga at heart, and he really talks essentially about the same things, like not being too serious and being curious, being open and living more from the heart that we spoke about.

A quote, so a couple of quotes: one from Osho and that's what he talks about. He also talks about not living in the head and living in the heart. ‘More and more you live from the heart. And when you live from the heart, then you experience God. And the more you experience God, the less thinking you have, and when you are completely silent, you are not there. You, as a person are not there. Only God is in complete silence.’ I like that quote because when we are really silent, then only God is existing.

And then another quote I like is from Anandji, which really inspires me to stay with the practice. He says ‘Greatness is not about planning. Greatness is about refining’. So you're just fine tuning yourself. You have this nervous system, you have this body which is like an antenna, and you just need to fine tune it so that you can catch the frequency of the universe or God or whatever you want to call it, because you really don't have to do anything. Everything happens through you. You're just a vessel. You're just having a good time and good things that are happening are happening through you. So the only thing you need to do is refine yourself and become the vessel through which God can speak and do the work. What needs to be done. And I see him doing it. And so that really keeps me inspired and keeps me staying true to my practice. The only thing I need to do is practice and just refine myself. And then whatever needs to happen will happen through me.

TANIA COTTON
I would like to give our listeners some resources.
Do you have any that you recommend or even those you use for your own practice?

DR ANURANJAN BIST
Sattva Connect is a good resource. I can only speak about what I have done and have experienced, and I have done the Sattva yoga practices. So Sattva Connect is a good resource because all the practices are there and there are teachers explaining each one and even the breath practices that people can do every day.

There is also a list of teachers, the master teachers from Sattva who are all around the globe and you can find one which is nearest to you. I think it's important to work with a teacher. And that's why in yoga, the guru is something that's called the thread, the golden thread is coming from the guru to the student. And in the end, the thread is like everybody's a student. A good guru will always be a student. Having the right teacher and finding the right practice is important because no two people are the same. I had certain experiences and another person will have a different experience and the universe expresses itself very uniquely through everyone. It's important to remember this when you are on this path and you're exploring

It's just a technology – like an iPhone. You don’t have to live in Silicon Valley to use the iPhone. You can be anywhere. It's just a piece of technology. You only have to know how to use the technology and how to apply that technology. So similarly, with a yogic practice, it might be modified a little bit for you, what kind of yoga you can do or what kind of breath practices you can do. So that's why I think a teacher is helpful to guide you and then you get the feedback and you can modify your practice. And it's always good if you're answerable to someone that gives the practice more consistency.

Find somebody who's near you and practice with them because having a group of like-minded people is also very, very important. Because sometimes when we are on the path, people around us won't understand, be it friends or family members, and they might be supportive, but most of the time it is difficult for them understand. So having like-minded people who are on the same journey, who understand you, gives you that support which you need, at least initially, to stay with the practice and stay consistent. And if you're having a down day, you can support each other. And that's where the teacher is also helpful.

TANIA COTTON
Anuranjan, thank you so much for sharing and for inspiring me and helping me. You have been one of my teachers on this journey this week. Thank you so much for joining me on the banks of the river Ganga.

DR ANURANJAN BIST
Well, thank you for having me. And, as I said, in the end we are all the same. We are all looking for the same thing. We all want to be happy. We all want to enjoy it, find joy and peace. And if I can share my experience and if more people can experience the same thing and find it within themselves, not somewhere outside, the world will be a better place.
So thank you for having me and thank you for giving me the chance to share my journey and share my practices with you.

TANIA COTTON
And I hope you will all come along with us on this journey. Thank you all for joining.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the LifeWise Show. In our next episode, I will be talking to Gurmukh Khalsa, a world-renowned Kundalini yoga teacher who caught my attention when she talked about the importance of developing both inner and outer strength. At 80 years old, Gurmukh is a shining example of both and she will be sharing with us, her secret to living life to the full.

I look forward to meeting you there.