#11: How to Manage Stress
Did you know that stress is recognized as the #1 proxy killer disease today? The American Medical Association has noted that stress is the basic cause of more than 60% of all human illness and disease.
Statistics are cruel: 77 percent of people experience stress that affects their physical health. 73 percent of people have stress that impacts their mental health. And about 33 percent of people report feeling extreme stress and 32% said they had had suicidal thoughts and feelings because of stress.
In many cases depression and anxiety follow the longterm stress. Anger and violence caused by stress fructify in uncontrolled attacks and school shootings like recent Boulder massacre, that shows how destructive the stress and constant pressure can be.
Unfortunately we cannot change the stressful world around us, BUT we can find a secret spot where there is a shelter (even in the eye of the storm). With the process of meditation originating from the yoga tradition we can dive deeper – like into the depth of the ocean where there is always peace and balance – even if there is a storm or Tsunami on the surface, divers are safe and peaceful in the depth. So if we will dive deep enough into meditation, even big problems of life will become just like a blip on the radar. But it is up to us if we want to try, if we want to take this step.
Highlights:
- (8:17) We can’t avoid stress in life, but if we go deeper, then they don’t affect us that much; story of divers during a tsunami
- (21:24) Because we are spirit soul we can only be satisfied by spiritual energy,
- (23:29) Stress comes to us in many different forms; Balakhilya gives an example of why a wild animal kept in captivity has a greater life expectancy than in the wild
- (37:11) Why we have seen an alarming increase in rates of suicide in the last year
- (55:42) To solve the problem of stress we have to know what the root cause is; Why am I stressed or feeling lonely?
- (1:06:56) We find arguments to justify where we’re at, so we can do what we want to do; story of Ruben’s vegetarian friend
Recorded on March 29, 2021. Read episode transcript on https://breakingtrail.life/podcast/11
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