Although I am not one to discount the importance of any year in my life, the past year has been a huge learning experience — professional, emotional, and physical.

Realization point

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” — Rumi

4 am (Friday, 13 June): I wake up with an unbearable stabbing pain around my ribs — it feels like a needle prick inside my body. As if the pain wasn’t enough, the entire experience was accompanied by nausea and vomiting.

The location is Mattancherry, Cochin, Kerala — a relatively small town with few hospitals and I am on the bed, in a dingy depressing hospital, waiting for the doctor to come. I would call this stage — creeping anxiety.

I urinate blood and the doctor confirms that the symptoms look like I might have kidney stones. It is clear by now that I will have to go through the excruciating pain and nausea for the next few days until the stones go out of my body.

It might take a lot for kidney stones to actually kill you, but it definitely makes you wonder about your mortality. Caused by lack of enough water content and adequate physical exercise to enable the body to continuously remove toxins, the pain is so overwhelming that it just feels that you would do anything for it to not happen again.

So, all this brings me to the past year. After having been through enough downs, it just felt that it was time to seek some well being. It was different from all the other times — I was seeking more than just physical wellbeing.

Be Healthy

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. — WHO

Fitness is many things to many people, but discipline and action is integral to being fit. I, like most people, had a love-hate relationship to the discipline that comes with fitness. I associated it with dad splashing water on my face early mornings and fainting in the school cross-country. With enough negative reinforcements, it just felt awesome to not be disciplined. It was liberating! (but, I guess you must have realized ‘only for a short time’)

Every idea, through its stages of evolution, goes through what I call a ‘realization point’ — when you adopt it as a belief or discard it as just another thing in life.

If you haven’t gathered the seriousness of the situation yet I can remind you — with kidney stones pricking my insides and “just getting on by” professionally it felt like I didn’t want to push this any further. I mean it was bad enough that so many blows were required to “adopt” a belief. Health became priority — physical, mental and social. At the risk of a cliche “Health really is wealth”.

I added yoga to the my daily routine — just a few surya namaskars to start with. To my surprise, surya namaskars (sun salutations) were enough to build endurance and aerobic strength. A few fast salutations and you feel that each cell in your body has squeezed enough sweat and precious energy, but the effects feel almost immediate — the temporary pain in muscles that you didn’t know existed and of course the spring in your step throughout the day.

Life started changing and it just felt better. Can you imagine finding yourself coming up with quick solutions without getting too caught up in the problem? It is euphoric!

Thursday, 13 Nov : I feel much better than my 26; not that my troubles have vanished. I have my troubles and its severity is a year older now, but I have changed, my approach toward such situations has changed. For better? Well, I feel better. I understand well-being better than a couple of months back — physical fitness combined with mindfulness, and empathy towards my surroundings.

Science of well being

The how and the why

The science works on evidence. We all have felt it. Some of us have read it in more complicated words or disconnected articles. Here is my take on the three aspects of well being.

Optimal state : An optimal state is just that — the most favorable state, the best option, the perfect situation, not good not alright, but an excellent state. I believe everything must have an optimal state, the Shangri-La, the Utopia, and the best that we can.

Trinity : The trinity and the likes of it is cited in religions across the world. While we can have a whole different conversation on that, in its true essence the trinity ‘works inseperably towards one will/goal’ — part of the same and working towards realizing the same. To be truly well then, the world says, we must be physically, mentally, and socially fit. It then becomes natural to seek clarity on this fitness — what does it mean to be fit in each of these three aspects? Is it even achievable?

While it might look complicated, the last thing we need is another unachievable goal on our list. The self is three things — the body, the mind and the spirit. Each of us is these three, we can sum our entire individuality and existence within these three.

Considering all that has preceded this line, fitness to us now becomes the optimal state for each of these three faculties — the most suitable state for the body, the mind and the spirit.

The three faculties are driven by certain subtle energies or let’s say their manifestation or their expression in the outside world.

The body moves to get things done and is driven by emotions. Emotions in their crudest forms are only of two types, namely love and fear. Thus, in its optimal state the body is physically capable or fit or healthy to experience love all the time.

The mind reasons and is driven by thoughts. In its optimal state the mind is calm and focused on a task to allow us to churn out reasons of quality.

The spirit feels, it breathes and is driven by what we call these days “vibes”. It is this aura that we emit and if that is too complicated to comprehend, it is something which people around you can feel in your presence. In its optimal state, the spirit is happy. You remember the healing and happy feeling you had the last time you were in a garden or surrounded by trees? That is the spirit’s optimal state.

The drivers are responsible for making the faculties reach their optimal states. I have summarized the trinity in a table.

We all have experienced these optimal states at some point or the other. Anyone who has ever hugged someone they love knows the healing and happy vibes I am talking about. Physiologically speaking, the experience is associated with the subconscious release of certain neurotransmitters (popularly and rightly known as wellness hormones) that have a healing effect on our body.

A quick look at the science and relatable optimal states.

Strictly scientific and for the purposes of measuring, well-being is a state when the above neurotransmitters are released in balance in our bodies. So, if we do enough activities in a day that help a balanced release, we can experience well being.

We now have enough information on well-being and on the optimal state of each of the three faculties and the three aspects of health. What do we do with all this in our modern lives? We have so much happening around us while we live on our individual islands. The trick is ‘balance’. As simple as it may sound, to be well in our busy lives all we need is balance.

This is where I have personally found yoga to be beneficial. It is an art of well being. Forty minutes of physical exercises followed by meditation can help us keep the ‘wellness hormones’ in balance.

The art of well being

Modern day yoga

Remember reading the word ‘discipline’ somewhere in the beginning. Assuming “a bit” of discipline, the path to well-being is an evolving process for the self. You and I go through the following three stages:

Stage 1 :

Physical well being/ healing the body — when endorphins are released after physical exercise.

Stage 2 :

Mental well being/ healing the mind — when dopamine is released because of focus on the moment.

Stage 3 :

Social well being/ healing the spirit — when oxytocin and serotonin are released because of being emotionally overwhelmed by focusing on a positive thought.

I believe that regular practice of the art not only ensures our well being but also our environment’s well being.

Tuesday, December 30 : They say only two days are really important in your life. The day you are born and the day you know why.