The nervous system receives signals from the environment and sends them to the brain, which processes these signals based on memory, emotion and intelligence and decides on a course of action. Pain is a way of telling the organism to avoid an experience.  What if it reads pain signals wrong?

EPISODE 2 - SEGMENTS

1. The Danger Alarm
2. The Brain Needs To know
3. Avoiding The Pain To Come
4. The Root Of Mental Disorder

How real is pain? One would say quickly, very real. On exploration, it seems that a lot of pain is created, and therefore avoided. A key to this process of unlearning is dealing with fear, that seems to go hand in hand with pain, especially our chronic pains. When it comes to experiencing chronic physical pain, it seems so much part of the very functioning of the body, that healing looks like a huge mountain to climb. In part 2, we discover that even pain is learnt and therefore, unlearning is the key to healing. 

EPISODE 1

What is the difference between physical and psychological pain? What is their relationship and how do they affect our wellbeing? We begin Part 2 with addressing this important distinction between the sensory and mental aspects of pain. 

EPISODE - SEGMENTS

1. A Time Without Horizons
2. The Speech
3. Being Heard
4. A Different Reality
5. What Is Pain
6. Pain .. The Physical And The Psychological

Yoga For Mental Health - Asana

Part 1: Shades Of Illness

What does it take to be mentally sound? Can we eliminate the very possibility of stress? ‘Dukha’, mental, emotional pain is the result, whatever the disturbance. Can we discover the truth of this? Because to heal, we need to know the disease. 

In this final episode of Part 1 we conclude with understanding the importance of knowing the signs, in their every form. So that we can see for ourselves the entire phenomenon of this illness.

In Part 2, we study the physiology of mental pain and how to deal with it. 

EPISODE 3

Understanding Mental Illness

The How And The Why 

Stress: A Costly Response

Summing Up So Far

The Idea Of A Pill

Getting A Handle 

Ignoring Signals 

Part 2: Shades Of Illness

Have we ever noticed our mind, about its tendency to fluctuate, waver between two states, like pain and pleasure, like and dislike, if we have, then have we watched these states close enough, the fluctuation close enough to know if they are real? Are we willing to notice the small disturbances? Maybe our mental imbalances are more like keys that open the doors of our psych.  

EPISODE 2 - SEGMENTS 

Mentally Ill .. Or Just Very Different

Living The Mental Side 

The Willingness To Notice

You Are The Sea .. Ship .. And Anchor

The Scattering

Mental health,  so personal and yet a topic we would rather avoid. To just think of someone or oneself as unwell mentally can be difficult for many. Yet, if there is one pandemic that has been rampant for many decades now, it is stress. 

What does it mean to be mentally well? Is stress a form of mental illness? 

The big insight about these questions is that it's important for each to ask them, dwell on them, because taking a pill, doing a workout, is not enough. Nothing less than happiness seems to be the answer. 

People are also recognising the cost of being chronically stressed. It’s enormous. It can be summed up with a single image. You achieve your highest goal, standing at the peak, you are unable to enjoy the success. One asks “what was all this effort and sacrifice for?” 

If being happy is the answer to stress, it seems quite apt to understand the causes of unhappiness. Reading or listening to a blog is not a shallow intellectual exercise of gathering information, it’s about making sense of all the data you already possess from the richness of your life-experiences. This is what we will attempt in this four part series, where Dr. Bharat Thakur explores the psychology and physiology of mental illness and how Yogasana fits in. 

We begin our understanding of Mental Health with the simple experience each individual, child and even the pet knows too well - disturbance. A fascinating question arises - are we well when we are disturbed or in a bad mood of any sort, is that a state of mental illness, though it might be temporary. If ‘yes’, is that at the very root of illness? If yes, then is the real solution for mental problems to be found in the mind itself? Is every imbalance a sign of mental illness or can there be some that are inbuilt and natural? What does yoga have to say about it?

Let’s begin our exploration.

EPISODE 1

Is mental illness an overnight phenomenon? Hardly. Like most things, it begins as a trickle. Can we learn to notice the small signs and nip mental illness in the bud?

EPISODE 1 - SEGMENTS 

1 - Illness Is A Disturbance 

2 - The Brain Of The Researcher And The Mind Of The Yogi

3 - Noticing Small Things 

4 - Story Of The Mood

In the fourth and final segment of this blog, Dr. Bharat Thakur dwells on the healing effects of asana. You know now, that muscles play a much larger role than just providing structural support  and generating energy for motor activities. The heart is a vital muscle of the body and what asana can do for the heart is simply, heart warming.  

EPISODE 4 SEGMENTS

What Stretching Does To The Body 

Healing Of Blocks

Asana Keeps The Heart Happy 

Muscle Injury And Hypertrophy

The body’s physiology is impacted in different ways by the different modes exercise. Understanding a little about the physiology of exercise, and how yoga effects the body deeply, Bharat talks about a source of joy that is embedded in our bodies - stretch.

EPISODE 3 SEGMENTS

Maximum intensity is produced in isostatic exercise 

Maximum muscle fibre are used in isostatic exercise

The right kind of muscle fibre get used in isostatic exercise  

We reach peak muscle performance in isometric exercise 

Stretch - the joy of life 

What makes muscles the source of our physical power and how does asana approach them? What kind of exercise does asana provide support to and why? 

EPISODE 2 SEGMENTS

The Anatomy of muscle power

Actin myosin - the power couple

The Three types of exercise

Asana is isostatic exercise 

Why does asana employ isostatic exercise?

From the moment we were conceived as a single cell our bodies have never ceased to change and it never will till we are alive. Our bodies are so sensitive that even a smell can trigger a cascade of memories and can get the heart to beat faster and even holding still for a few minutes creates powerful changes in the body. 

We rarely hold still actively, but if we do so, in a well balanced posture, it would be one of the most powerful moments of your day. From aiming at the stillness of a posture to losing all kinds of excess, to healing mental afflictions to physical pain to experiencing the deepest states of joy, asana is the ultimate art of the body. 

Beyond fitness and health, discovering the body’s incredible sensitivity, to enjoying its immense receptivity, to experiencing the great delights that are packed in it, to using it as a powerful means to enter subtler and inner dimensions, asana practice is a complete form of friendship with the body and its inseparable twin, the mind.

In this series on asana, Dr. Bharat Thakur explores the many dimensions of yogasana, and dwells on the science behind it. 

EPISODE 1

Asana might look like any other exercise, but it feels very different to the body. How would you feel if you were being treated that you are not one, but five of you. In segment 1, Dr. Bharat Thakur presents asana as doing precisely that. 

Following an introduction to ashtanga yoga in episodes 1 and 2, and a dive into the vibhuti, the powers and attainments in episode 3, Dr. Bharat Thakur now talks of the bridge between a practice that is all about losing any traces of ‘modification’ of the mind to one where the mind manifests great powers. How can these two possibilities co-exist? Or is that the real point of it all. 

Episode 4 is a fascinating deep dive into the facets of application of the skills one has gained in the pursuit of the exalted states of deep absorption and integration, and in the process discover the deep link between what you realize on this journey and what is it that supports this realization.

With this we come to the conclusion of Chapter 1 of The Yogi Diary, “The Field Of Possibilities”. In Chapter 2, we will take a closer look at the powers.

EPISODE 4: SEGMENTS

9. A HUNGER FOR THE BETTER SIDE OF LIFE 

Samyama … the deliberate application of the knowledge gained out of a beautiful journey … the fulfillment of Nature’s will 

10. POWERS …  BASKING IN THE GENEROSITY OF NATURE 

Transformation is never easy .. the journey can seem devastating before one has transformed. 

11. THE BIRTH OF THE EXPLORER 

Why would someone want to live for 100 years. There’s a good reason. 

12. THE PERENNIAL RESEARCHER  

In the end, the exploration is done to be consumed by it.