Take it to the Next Gear – Engineer Yourself Out of Stress
We were riding in my friend’s old blue minivan close to our destination — which was just a mile away. The light turned green at the intersection and…
“Hey man, the light just turned green,” I mentioned.
“Dude, I know! But this piece of junk isn’t moving!” he exclaimed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I think my transmission went out again…” he responded.
To give some context to this event, my friend and I recently graduated from college. We both continued to work on campus after graduation. A few weeks prior, he asked me to join him for a yoga program. My response was, “me? yoga?” Initially, I thought it was some ploy because he was interested in a girl or something. To my surprise, he was serious. He then went on to explain that there is a man from India who went around the world teaching yoga programs. He heard that the program was ‘legit’ with many physical and psychological benefits. I thought about it for a few days and decided to give it a shot.
Back to the story － we were finally able to get his car moving. Unfortunately, this delay caused us to be late so we rushed into class, sitting at the back. Though it had a different name back then, this class is currently and aptly named Inner Engineering. Inner Engineering — what does that mean? The experience with my friend’s vehicle emphasized the importance of good engineering. And ‘inner’ refers to doing this engineering within ourselves. Yoga and meditation are tools to help us engineer ourselves from the inside.
We often hear about the benefits of yoga and meditation. Is this just hype or are there real documented benefits? One study by Muralikrishnan et al showed a significant difference in the cardiac autonomic nervous system by measuring heart rate variability (HRV) between yoga practitioners and non-practicing healthy controls. Here, non-practicing controls had a more dominant sympathetic (fight or flight) response while yoga practitioners have a more dominant parasympathetic (rest and digest) response. Both sympathetic and parasympathetic responses are parts of the autonomic nervous system which controls vital involuntary responses such as breathing, heart rate, and digestion.
Autonomic responses have become increasingly recognized as an indicator of health as mentioned in a health blog published by Harvard Medical School. How does this impact health? When your sympathetic nervous system is activated and you go into ‘fight or flight’ mode, it impacts the way your organ systems function. Some of the things that happen are: heart rate, breathing, and sugar levels increase while digestion and sexual arousal decrease. All these things are needed if you’re going to do something strenuous — that’s why they call it ‘fight or flight’ response.
In a way, we can look at the autonomic nervous system as your internal transmission system. When there is an urgent need or your system needs some extra power, it utilizes the sympathetic nervous system. When the urgent need is no longer needed, it switches to the parasympathetic nervous system to encourage functions for normal living. Now, what happens when you’re stuck in the sympathetic nervous system in normal living situations?
It’s like a vehicle which is trying to go onto the freeway stuck in first gear. Similar to my friend’s old van, many people have an inadequate transmission system. It may not be at a point where they’re going to stall in the middle of the intersection. At the same time, it’s not at a point which allows a person to go at higher speeds smoothly. When someone is stuck in a ditch or climbing up a steep slope, they have to use the first or second gear. Once they start speeding up, they need to switch to the third, fourth, and fifth gears. If those gears are not present or if someone is unable to switch to the higher gears, what happens? If they try to go at a higher speed, the vehicle’s rpms increase and sustaining a high speed would lead to engine burnout.
This is the impact of stress. Similar to premature engine failure, running at a high speed without shifting the gears would result in stress/burnout. So, will yoga relieve stress and/or prevent burnout? Maybe, but to get a better idea, it’s important to understand what is happening to your system. When people think about yoga and meditation, they think about being calm, peaceful, etc. They see it as a way to get away from stress or their problems. However, this is a somewhat misguided notion. It’s more about aligning your system in such a way that its responses are more appropriate for the given situation. If a car is stuck in first gear on the freeway and then suddenly, it is able to switch to higher gears, what would you think? You’d most likely think, “finally this car is working like it’s supposed to!” It’s not that it’s getting away from the problem — it’s just that it’s able to more efficiently handle the task at hand. So yoga is not just about peace. Peace is more of a consequence of your system handling things more efficiently.
Having better efficiency — what it really entails is that you have better engineering. Most people don’t think of mental health that way － I certainly didn’t. My thinking was that positive emotions like peace, joy, and happiness came from avoiding difficult situations or engaging in some form of entertainment. If we look around us, many people are forcing themselves into being more productive and this process itself has been a source of considerable stress. With better engineering, we can live more effortlessly.
Many others have benefitted from Inner Engineering and the program’s effectiveness is backed by scientific evidence. To learn more about research studies related to Inner Engineering, click here.
