Most of us are inces­santly bom­barded with ran­dom thoughts. We end up con­nect­ing these ran­dom thoughts to cre­ate a story. We cre­ate an iden­tity for our­selves based on these sto­ries. We don’t even real­ize that we derive our iden­tity from these sto­ries. The sto­ries could be com­ing from feel­ings of dejec­tion, rejec­tion, defeat, fear or those of ela­tion, hap­pi­ness, vic­tory and courage. Still they are thoughts. Some we label as good and oth­ers as bad. We do not real­ize that our true iden­tity is not, “I am happy, I am sad, I am coura­geous, I am lonely.” We iden­tify our­selves with our work title. We con­stantly tell our­selves, “I am Direc­tor, I am VP, I am Soft­ware Engi­neer.” We tell our­selves, “With­out me the work would stop.” By being bur­dened like this, we build up stress. This is another rea­son which gives rise to ran­dom thoughts and we build sto­ries. Then, to escape from these sto­ries and this con­stant men­tal chat­ter, to escape from our­selves, we get immersed in work or some exter­nal activ­ity which would take us away from our­selves. We rarely pay atten­tion to our inner world, because we feel scared to do so. We end up in a catch-22 sit­u­a­tion. We blame our jobs and the stress, sup­pos­edly caused by it. We prob­a­bly blame our col­leagues or our man­agers for caus­ing stress. We want to change our jobs. We find a new one. After some­time, well guess what, we are back to square one. But, we do not real­ize that we cre­ated all this. It is we who have cre­ated this stress for our­selves. By cre­at­ing our iden­tity from the work we do, from the sto­ries we have cre­ated from our thoughts and feel­ings, we cre­ated this suf­fer­ing. But, our true iden­tity (if we can call it that) is, “That I am” sO ham (see san­skrit translit­er­a­tion scheme). “That” is the very essence we are made of. “That” can­not be given any name or any form. “That” is what you are. “That” is what I am. “That” is what the entire cre­ation is.

This state of real­iza­tion is the state of immense “peace and joy.” Use of these words really does not do jus­tice to that state. You do the work, but not attached to it. You do not derive your iden­tity from it. You are not the Direc­tor. Being a Direc­tor is a role you play. You are not a sci­en­tist. Being a sci­en­tist is a role you play. You are not the VP. Being a VP is a role you play. When you get home you are not husband/wife/father/mother. It is a role you play. How­ever, this detach­ment is not indif­fer­ence. In fact, it is to the con­trary. What­ever you do, either some work or help­ing your kid with home­work, you do it with full atten­tion. But, you are not wor­ried whether the end result will be as you expected it to be. You love uncon­di­tion­ally with­out expect­ing to be loved back. Your detach­ment is with your thoughts, not with the world, for your thoughts cre­ate your real­ity. So, in this state of full atten­tion, you actu­ally pro­duce results that are of high qual­ity, than you could achieve under stress. Thus, when you know your­self as the essence (“That”) that ani­mates the body and thought processes, you will see your­self in all cre­ation. Then, where is the room for stress?

How do you come to this state of real­iza­tion of “sO ham?” You could use the tech­nique of yOga nidra or yOgicRest and/or breath­ing and visu­al­iza­tion tech­niques for self-healing that I talked about ear­lier in this blog. But, you may not have half an hour of time to spare in your busy sched­ule. I will dis­cuss a few tech­niques you could use to quiet your mind and reduce the stress level; to detach from the thoughts that are caus­ing you stress at that very moment. How­ever, if you have time, then prac­tic­ing tech­niques dis­cussed in the above men­tioned arti­cles, in addi­tion to the those dis­cussed here, would be very helpful.

Some Do’s and Don’ts

1. Accept­ing All Thoughts—First thing in qui­et­ing your thought processes, is to accept all thoughts in their entirety and accept­ing them to be just that. Don’t label them as being good/bad, negative/positive, etc. They are just thoughts, energy. I know it is dif­fi­cult, but once you stop label­ing them, you will get some relief.
2. Non-Judging—One thing I found to be the “most dif­fi­cult” thing to do was to replace the so called “neg­a­tive” thoughts with so called “pos­i­tive” ones. It does not quiet the mind, but only replaces one form of thought with another. And, it actu­ally becomes very painful. It did not help me. Remem­ber this tech­nique still entails label­ing the thoughts. When you do not judge your thoughts, you will stop judg­ing your­self. When you stop judg­ing your­self, you are less likely to judge others.
3. Non-Control—Do not try to con­trol thoughts you have. There is a story that goes like this. There was a sign in front of a med­i­ta­tion room in a tem­ple, “Do not think of Pink Ele­phants while med­i­tat­ing.” This was kind of a les­son, for the begin­ners, in the process of “let­ting go.” The begin­ning med­i­ta­tors would read this sign and say to them­selves, “I should not think of Pink Ele­phants.” They sit for med­i­ta­tion. They keep get­ting thoughts of Pink Ele­phants. The more they try to push them away, the stronger they become, even­tu­ally they start see­ing Pink ele­phants danc­ing around their heads.

So, do not push them away or judge them. Instead do one or both of the fol­low­ing tech­niques. These tech­niques can be per­formed any­time that you can devote a cou­ple of min­utes with­out distractions.

Tech­niques for Detach­ment from Thought and Reduc­ing Stress

I prac­tice the tech­niques dis­cussed below and they work for me. I am dis­cussing them here in hopes that they may help you as well. Con­sis­tent prac­tice will help you calm your nerves, reduce stress and access inner peace and joy. When this hap­pens con­sis­tently, you will rewire your brain cir­cuits to expe­ri­ence more and more of inner peace and joy.

1. prANAyAma—A breath­ing (and med­i­ta­tion) technique
   1. Close your eyes.
   2. Watch your breath as it goes in and out, in its own nat­ural rhythm. Do not force it. Just observe the way the breath moves through you. Be a watcher/witness of the breath.
   3. If you like you can add the fol­low­ing men­tal chant, “sO ham” (O as in the Eng­lish word “So,” ham as in “hummm”).
   4. You men­tally say, “sO” as the breath goes in on its own accord and men­tally say, “hummm” as the breath goes out on its own accord. “sO ham” means “That I am.”
   5. This is also Pranayama (Breath­ing, Breath, prAna or Life force con­trol) tech­nique. If you get dis­tracted by thoughts, don’t worry. Just bring your atten­tion back to breath.
   6. You can do this for 1–5 mins or more. You can do this as many times as you like dur­ing the day.

   As you become bet­ter at this tech­nique, you can do this by keep­ing par­tial atten­tion on your breath dur­ing your daily activ­i­ties, that “do not” require your 100% atten­tion. CAUTION: Do this only when you are sure that you will not cause any harm to yourself.

2. dhyAna or Med­i­ta­tion—After the above tech­nique, you can add 1 to 5 mins of this med­i­ta­tion technique:
   1. Close your eyes.
   2. Start watch­ing your thoughts.
   3. Let go of the “sO ham” chant and stop focus­ing on your breath
   4. Now, just watch the thoughts as they come and go, like lug­gage on a con­veyor belt. How­ever, none of that lug­gage is yours. You are just watch­ing the thoughts as they go by. You are not even focus­ing on your breath.
   5. You are not focus­ing on any of those thoughts.
   6. This is a tech­nique called, “nEti, nEti,” (I am not that, I am not that). In the begin­ning, as thoughts come, you could say, “I am not this thought, just let go.” Just relax into it.

   This is a very dif­fi­cult tech­nique to do, though it sounds easy. You can start with one or two min­utes and then build up.

These tech­niques will help you become detached to the ran­dom thoughts you get and use only the thoughts you want to use. You can do them when­ever you like. You don’t have to do both, one or the other is fine. Per­son­ally, I pre­fer the breath­ing tech­nique to do more often since it is eas­ier than the med­i­ta­tion tech­nique and will result in the same. Even one minute of it will help you.

Other Tech­niques

Apart from the above tech­niques the fol­low­ing tech­niques will also help reduce stress and move you toward inner peace. Prac­tic­ing these tech­niques will help you access the joy and hap­pi­ness within you. By con­sis­tently expe­ri­enc­ing the inner peace and joy, you will break the old brain cir­cuits that repeat­edly caused stress and rewire them to expe­ri­ence inner peace and joy.

• Laugh­ter—Set aside some­time for laugh­ing. Laugh from Belly, chest, throat and head in suc­ces­sion. Laugh in such a way that the mus­cles and bones in the region you are pro­duc­ing the laugh­ter from just shake up. By shak­ing the mus­cles and bones this way you are releas­ing any stress and ten­sion accu­mu­lated as tight­ness or pain.
• Read and Tell Jokes—Read­ing and telling jokes helps you access laugh­ter and joy within you. Make sure that the jokes do not con­tain thoughts of prej­u­dice or of closed mind­ed­ness, and are healthy and pro­vide hap­pi­ness and joy to you and every­one who is lis­ten­ing to you.
• Watch Com­edy shows—Again, watch­ing healthy com­edy shows helps you feel lighter.
• Lis­ten to Peace­ful Music—I find any form of clas­si­cal music to be very sooth­ing. You can lis­ten to nature sounds as well. Many CDs and audio cas­settes are now avail­able with such music. Make sure that music you lis­ten to helps you calm down and achieve a med­i­ta­tive state. The music you lis­ten to should not agi­tate you. Of course, there is time and place for such music as well.
• Learn to Sing—If you like singing, most of us do so at least in the bath­room, then why not take up voice lessons. They will put you in touch with your body and help you inte­grate body, mind and spirit.
• Learn to play a musi­cal instru­ment—Pro­duces same results as singing.
• Record your own voice and lis­ten to it for fun—You can get a Karaoke machine and have singing night with your fam­ily and friends who might enjoy such activities.
• Become a child—If you notice chil­dren, they are always curi­ous to know and do new things and are fas­ci­nated by every­thing they see. Develop a curios­ity for new things.
• Read Widely—Read on var­i­ous sub­jects. Do not restrict your­self to one sub­ject. Read­ing about var­i­ous sub­jects, expands your hori­zons and thought processes by acti­vat­ing more of your frontal lobes of the brain.
• Be with Nature—Take long walks in Nature. Do not think dur­ing that time. Just have focus on your breath, look around and absorb the view around you. An earth­worm, a snail, a bird, an ani­mal or a tree can teach you to be calm, mind­ful and be present, if you only pay atten­tion to them. Plus, walk­ing will also make you phys­i­cally fit.
• Exer­cise—Take up exer­cis­ing. It has proven to help reduce stress and help you calm down. You can pick up body-mind inte­gra­tors such as yOga, if you are so inclined. Any form of exer­cise has its ben­e­fits. So, you have many choices.

I hope that these tech­niques will help you move away from try­ing to find hap­pi­ness and joy in the out­ward mate­r­ial things, and move you inward to access peace and joy that is always within you and essen­tially you.