Episode 2: Mental Hygiene Techniques For Stress Management

Welcome to Mental Hygiene, a space to care for the mind like we care for the body, daily, gently and with love. Posted by Yogi Churu and Susan Hoo, this podcast brings ancient Yogi wisdom into modern life, offering practical tools to cleanse the mental clutter, restore inner stillness, and reconnect with your true self. Take a breath, you're exactly where you need to be. Welcome to Mental Hygiene. Hi everyone, welcome to Mental Hygiene, my name is Susan and I'm here with my great friend and teacher, Yogi Churu. Today we're going to talk about stress. Yeah, stress is one of the norm of society, everyone has stress. Welcome to all our listeners, I am pretty sure all those who are listening and us in who are discussing today, Susan, everyone on the planet has some form of stress. It is all pervasive around the globe and there are many forms of stress. We're going to look at mental hygiene techniques and how they can help us to relieve the stress that we experience in different aspects in our mind, body, organism. Amazing, I feel like stress is definitely something every single one of us, every single day we all have to deal with, but stress, they don't necessarily have to be good or bad. Stress, they are just ways of different force, that's bringing awareness to our life so that we can make some sort of adjustments. We have different types of stress, we have physical stress, emotional stress, societal stress, so much more, but maybe let's go a little bit deeper, go back to look at what is really stress, yogi chai, what's your understanding of stress? So like you said, stress doesn't always have to be negative, because now when people hear the words stress, it carries this negative connotation, I'm for the most part it does, but stress can also be positive, so stress from the yogic point of view and is understanding our mind body is a micro environment and if it changes that environment, if it gets placed in another environment from outside, which is different from the inner environment, changes create the stressors, or I need to adapt to the change, so mind body is engineered with adaptation, so when you're cold, you can put on a jumper, put on a sweater, and then you get warm, and then that stress of being cold goes away, so that allows you to understand, oh yes, I am cold, if we weren't engineered to recognize that our body got cold, we would have died, oh the environment has changed, let me adapt to it, so in the summertime, our brain, mind, nervous, it's hot, so because we can recognize there's a change in the environment, oh I need to be in a cooler room, I need a room at AC, or I need a room on the, on the there's a shade of a tree, so let's change, and so we know, this is what stresses, then the positive, oh it keeps us alert, so you're studying for an exam or something, and you have to still alert, alert so that you finish, and when you take the exam finish, then you can relax, so there are different levels of, but the basic understanding is knowing that environment change, our mind body organism recognizes the change, and then we have to adapt to the changes, and that changes triggers the stress, the stressors in our organism. Beautiful, so basically stress could be our friends, stress is a way of helping us recognizing the need to adapt, then we can make changes, and then we can find a new balance within a body, within a mind micro organism, and there are so many different types of stress, but some of the stress that you're just talking about, when we recognize it's cold, it's warm, it feels more of a short-term stress, ideally when we are able to adjust that stress, we should be able to adapt and let go of that stress, but these days in the age so often we hear, I have experienced myself, and I've seen people they're just constantly chronically stressed. Yeah, so it's a good point that there are different levels of stress, right? It's a broad, broad, broad band of stresses, so the acute stresses are the ones which are, you go through them for a split second, and you get rid of them, like if you're walking in your yard one day and you see a snake, "Oh, for that split second, you stressed out," and then the snake disappears, runs and disappears, and a little change of environmental shift for the nervous system and the mind and the body and the intellect, that's an acute stress, and we all experience that all the time every day. And which is also necessary, because again, if we work as we will not take actions when we see that snake we might get harmed, so stress is just there to bring our attention to certain things that we need to pay attention to. Yes, yes, and then there is like episodic stress, right? A episodic acute stress, I think it's during where it's those little stresses, but they happen repeatedly again and again, so something like a better example of that would be like you have to get to work, but every day, train is late, or every day your bus is late, or every day you get into that traffic jam right there, and you know you might be a little late, a minute later, just a minute early, and it's happening every day, because every day you go to work, so it's like, "Oh, so that creates episodic acute stress." And everyone goes through some of that every day in their life, right? Out of me. Those are the different, but over time if you have too much of that in our lives, then it turns into chronic stresses, and chronic stresses is the long-term stress, right? Those experiences which we get, it just affects us so much, or nervous system starts to break down. The sympathetic nervous system is constantly, the nervous system is constantly related, right? And we need to learn how to release that stress. The longer stress is otherwise easy-skicking chronic diseases. Yes, yeah, Yogi Shari, before we continue, I want to maybe talk a little bit about the nervous system, as you mentioned that when we are constantly in that state, we're having different acute stress, but we don't let it go. We enter into that state where your nervous system is constantly being triggered, especially your sympathetic nervous system. Can you tell us the story of that bear the fight or flight mode that most of us, unfortunately, in this day and age, very often live in in? Yeah, so the nervous, the whole aspect of our mind body, all the systems are neutral. All the system can be used positive, and all the system can be used negative. So the digestive system, the limbic system, the skeletal system, the muscular system, and then of course, the nervous system. So we have the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic. So the parasympathetic nervous system is when everything is relaxed and calm. Now, in 24 hours, the human mind body organism, we are engineered for an adult. We should have about anywhere from 6 to 8 hours where the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in. We call that sleep. That should be enough to cope with the sympathetic stresses of the day. But unfortunately what we see today is people from the chronic stresses of the day, people start to suffer with insomnia. They can't sleep at night. And even when they sleep at night, the physical body goes into paralysis. But then they start to have night mirrors, beams which speeds up their heartbeat and breathing even faster than when they were awake. So then the parasympathetic nervous system doesn't kick in even in sleeping. So it's like a continuous sympathetic stress while they're awake, and then stress while they go to sleep at night. And then that's constant in someone's life. That breaks down the other systems. The digestive system breaks down. The circulatory system breaks down. All the other systems starts to fail because the nervous system doesn't get that beautiful balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic of relaxation. And if you look at our culture, we know why the sympathetic nervous system continued throughout the night and throughout the day. Yeah, absolutely because every, ideally, this nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, there's such a good system. Our ancestors, when they were living in a day and age where their stress might not be constant, they were able to use that system to respond to whatever that's happening outside. Say a caveman or a cavewoman, they were outside. They went out hunting and they see a bear. Then they are sympathetic nervous system kicks in. They're like, I need to either fight that bear or I need to run or I need to freeze to pretend that I am dead so that I'm not being eaten. And in that way, that moment, because the sympathetic nervous system kicked in, they're able to protect their lives. They were able to survive. And in those moments, that's like you are saying Yogi Churu, when the sympathetic nervous system kicked in every other system, they shut down. Because in that moment, the only priority is to deal with that life death situation. That's a real, real physical stress that the body is going through. But ideally, when that bear leaves or when that person, our ancestors, when they survive that event, their sympathetic nervous system is supposed to kick in. They can feel like, okay, I'm relaxed. I can digest. I can rest. But for most of us, these days, we are never in that state. We're able to return back. We have one stressor. Then we have another. First, I'm late running late for work. Then when I get to work, I have this deadline. I have to me. Then I have a fight with someone on a street. And then when I go home, I have more stress from my family, from my partners. And then we never get to that point where we can return back to that person sympathetic nervous system. And I feel like these days, probably more and more people are having that awareness to be able to regulate our nervous system so that we can find that balance between these two. But still, if we don't mindfully pay attention to practice those tools, those techniques, it's probably very hard when we go to sleep or caring, all those stress that we already experienced during the day and maybe from yesterday, maybe from last week. And then overall, of course, we are chronically stressed. And sometimes it even calls some longer term physical and mental distress as well. Right, yeah. And when we're in that sympathetic or blood pressure goes up, headaches, we get chest pain, we get people can't breathe properly. Because we're doing these shallow quick breaths, we don't use the full range of the lungs. We just breathe in it, the chest breathing just to cope with the stress. And so we, and that's throughout the day, throughout the night. Absolutely. Yes. We should breathe like the baby, right? When the baby, little baby, right, two, three months old, six months old, we put the baby, the baby is breathing with the abdomen. Inhale, the abdomen goes way out, exhale, it goes down because the baby has no stress. So we should sleep like that. We should sleep with abdominal breathing. But we don't know how to switch back to that. We keep the chest breathing throughout the night because we are still having the crazy dreams or the agitated dreams and the ten. Sometimes you're dreaming of your balls, you're dreaming of the day that just went all the great, you're dreaming of that. So you drag it into your night. So how do we, how do we work with those stress, how do we find the balance of releasing stress in a more mindful way so that we don't carry them into our sleep so that we can actually use those seven or eight hours of sleep every night to reset ourselves and release stress. So, fundamentally, right? This is just practical. We are today, we are overloaded with information through technology. And the yoga is understood. If you want your mind to be peaceful, and your parasympathetic nervous system to kick in and all the other relax, the system to relax as well, we have to get to a point where we can use our free will to choose what we want to listen to. I can choose to listen to relaxed music. I can choose to have conversation that raised my vibration. I can choose to, in other words, you look, no, because if we don't choose what is going into our mind, through our ears and eyes and smell and tongue, if someone else is making those choices for us, we will never be happy. So with the overload of information, right? Today, constantly, someone else is paid millions of dollars in marketing people to put information in our minds. And those information comes into our minds constantly and is coming through the digital world. Today, it's like when we came out of our mother's womb, our head came out first, then our shoulders, then our two arms came out, then our last feet. But today, it seems we've drifted so far away. Today, it looks like we came out with our mothers, out of our mothers womb, with our head, then our shoulders, then one hand, and then our other hand has a phone, or a tablet, or a computer. Like, we can't leave this down and overload of information through the technology. We drag our stress from the day into the night with us. Absolutely. And then as soon as we wake up, the first thing we reach for is those technology, we overload ourselves with information again. So yeah, one of the things that I learned from you, Yogi Shura, I think it was from one of our first trainings was to turn off the devices before sleep and put it as far away from me as possible. So that physically, I'm not distracting myself with all those overload information. But also, I feel like subconsciously, I'm also sending myself a signal, okay, this is no time for me to turn off, to return back to that state of relaxing, rather than constantly being pulled by the different senses. Yeah, I mean, that's so this is just one practical, like you mentioned. You're, where you sleep at night, your bedroom should be a healing room. Now, when you put your mind and body on your mattress and pillow, those are your healing apparatus to let you let go. If we have the digital, you know, tablet and phone right next to us in our bedroom, even when you try to switch off its energetics. So the energy that's in there starts to go into the subconscious mind. Well, dream of the stuff that's coming true. So if you can leave the tablets outside, you know, if you have a studio flap, then maybe you put the gadget in one corner, another corner. If you have a one bedroom, then yeah, your bedroom should be a place of healing where the parasine partner or system now relaxes. So if you can do that, leave the gadgets outside and then switch them off, right? Switch them off. And then when you switch them off and then you're just with your mind and body and your breath. So we do our practice, the Krishna Kriya practice, a nice practice throughout day. So reflect on our day before we go to sleep and that helps us though. When let the parasine partner or system goes, he starts to kicks in. So we'll do our little practice like that today to help people what to do when you put your head on the pillow, how to go through your day and restructure the mind and help the nervous system to relax. And the goal is to try and reach back in the day from the time we got up from sleep that morning. But it's very challenging. I've done this for many years and most nights I still get lost, fall asleep somewhere, somewhere during the day. When the first hour you put your head on the pillow 10 by 930, you're gone. Have you reached here? Where are you gone? So yeah, regardless, even if it just one hour, we're consciously unwinding our mind before you go to sleep rather than just lay on the bed and allow whatever thoughts to come up because of the information that we hold on to throughout the day. So beautiful. And whether some of other techniques that we can do, Yogi, Cheru, to consciously release stress, because Yogi's even traditionally speaking, Yogi's even creates stress intentionally and then release stress so that we can find that balance so we can return to that state of being. Yeah, so Yogi's they call it the Sanskrit word is tapasya, in words. It's voluntarily accepting some stress so that you can evolve. So in the Yogi culture, we were trained to take a cold shower. When I was in the mountains, there was no shower. You had to go in the river. The river is very cold up there. So in other words, my baths back then were less than 30 seconds. Get in there and you start to shake and you know your limitation, right? And then get out. And then as you get out and you start to sit, then the cold temperature around you is not cooling anymore. Regularly, I could start to stay for one minute, a minute and a half, two minutes, I built it up over the years, but I had to train my body and know my limitations, right? And the Yogi's they don't know the scientific benefits from it. It's just tapas. You feel it's an experience you have. That's so much so now, one of the big businesses. You're on this. It's cold plunges. I am personally obsessed. I feel like my best meditation, the moments, my mind's quiet, quiet, quietest is in those ice cold baths. And these days, there are so many researchers about the country's therapy, especially combining cold baths with ice baths with sauna so that you train your body. You are intentionally putting your body into those environments that might be otherwise stressful. But then by calming down your nervous system, by breathing through it deeply. And even scientists, those guys, sauna guys teach you to do that. We train the body, train the mind to know that okay, this is a safe space. Even when we are going through those very hostile environments, we can still return back to a stay where we're feeling centered, feeling grounded. But it's incredible. Yogi has been doing that for thousands of years. You know, you're a limitation, right? You don't, or I'm going to stay here because what happens is people fall's ego. Competitive, right? I was thinking, 10 minutes, that's when you get at this, your heart, the system, it's overload, overstress. So, one more limitation, one minute, three minutes, right? No need to. Then over repetition, repetition, you can build buildings. Same thing with the sauna, right? You're going to sauna. I think if there are scientists, they recommend like 15 to 20 minutes. And you're going to the cold, right? So it was all a note that to get the circulatory system moving, the nervous system gets that. Then you have to breathe through it. Okay, one moment, let me just breathe through it. And it brings your mind in it present. A moment? I mean, people can even do that. They're going as soon as they still has the gadget with them and they can't really be in it. Now, well, like you say, the cold punch, you've got to breathe. Right away, you have to be in that moment. So the Yogi's voluntarily take on these austerities to see their limitation. And then that's why you need a teacher, a guide to help you to know, right? My teacher would give me, okay, just one minute. Then two minutes. Then as my system builds, right? And the same thing, we would do like another healing modality in the West. People are making it as fast in, right? I remember when I was learning, okay, today, we will fast for 24 hours, no food, no water. By the afternoon, the nauseous kicks and the headaches. Because the toxins are coming out. And then the next month, okay, we will start to fast for three days. We're going to drink water. So you voluntarily put in the body into the stresses. And then after like a year, I could do 10 days, 30 days, all right? It becomes, you adapt. You grow your immune system, the heals, your nervous system heals. So stresses, but you have to have a guide. So when you do that, then when you come back, you start to learn to eat in moderation. Beautiful. Yes, it's all about that moderation, that balance. And I think even with the physical exercise, we do the physical asanas in yoga, we do. Sometimes we unintentionally create stress as well. Because ideally when we practice asana, we want to, yeah, I think you each other, we mentioned that we want to get to the place where you just have a little bit of sweat, but you're not overworking yourself. But these days, sometimes when a false eagle kicks in, when we get into an environment that's too hot, we overwork ourselves. And especially if you skip that last shavasana to receive that benefits of that, then even the healthy stress we try to introduce into our life by strengthening the body can also bring us out of balance and create more of those chronicle stress as well. Yeah. So the yogis understand according to your body type, right? I'm very cuppa dominant, we say. So I have a lot of water in me. So as I do my one sun salutation, I'm starting to perspire. Friends who are like pita balance dominant, they can do 20 sun salutation, they don't even drop us with. Everyone's body is slightly different, right? Out of lane. So as you start to do your yoga, as in repetition, repetition, what happens? Your muscle starts to go under the stresses, the stress is kicking, because the environment changes about it warms up more than the normal body temperature. So then as you start to move through your poses, right? That's why in yoga class, we say don't overstretch. So the intelligence kick in. Oh, yesterday I did it. I got that deep in this pose. Today my body is telling me, no, you have to listen to the body. Out of lane. There are some poses, Susan. I got some advanced poses, I only did them once in my life. The second I try to force, I see the stresses comes in, I'm trying to overstretch. And I'm happy I did them once in my life. I don't have to do them. So we have to listen to the body. Now in the yoga culture, after you do all your awesome, like you said, we have these shabas and pose, pose, helps the parasympathetic nervous system to kick in and helps us to reap the benefits of the previous poses. So I think that's what's kind of lacking in Western movement education, right? In the Western, what I see people they go to the gym and lift weights are run. And that's very good, because it gets movement. It's endorphins, right? You're happy, but then they don't have a relaxation part. Whenever I meet my friends and family, and I see them at the gym, I was in them, do the gym for all and a half hour, whatever you do. But at the end, just learn your back, just learn your back for five to ten minutes. Just to let the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in. And that way, you reap the benefits of your exercise, and you release the tension this time away. So really, because the stress we're intentionally creating in those physical movement in the workouts, it's good. It's good to help us to make the muscles stronger, to make your bones stronger. But if we don't take that moment to find stillness to release, then we're still in that mode. Even when we come out of that workout, that physical exercise, you're still feeling stressed, even though you're not in any physical danger, because the body can really tell that. And then we overload ourselves with those cortisol, all those stress hormones that we don't necessarily need in our bodies 24/7. And then another one that the yogis do to voluntarily bring in the stresses, change the environment, is breadth whole. The yogis, they do a lot of breathing exercises. So they start to hold the breath. So as you start to learn the breathing exercises, we let people hold their breath for a certain length, ten seconds. Wow, wow, I could do that. Then you increase 30 seconds. And then as you hold your breath longer, your mind gets more peaceful, more calm. And then with time, you can even extend it to one minute, two minutes, breath whole. I think free divers, right? The free divers, they can do like three minute, four minutes. The same thing with the yogis, but you have to build it. Now, the only difference between free divers and yogis, the yogis are going deep into that silence, into that. There's no breath, means no waiver. And calm peacefulness. So that's one of the practices we can add today for a few filter. So, oh, you can release all the stress if you can start to just connect your mind on the breath and slow it down, slow it down, slow it down, hold the breath. And as you hold the breath, you start to see your mind is no longer in the future to pass. My is in the present moment. What a beautiful place to be. Whenever the mind is in the present moment, at least in that moment, we don't feel that stress. We're not thinking about the things that's causing us anxiety, causing us depression, all those long-term build-up of stress. And so, there are many ways to help with, you know, relieving the different chronic stresses. Fundamental to relieve all our chronic stresses is the finite environment that allows you to relax. So, if you have a part nearby, provided by Mother Nature or a beach, go to it regularly where, and then just take your shoes off, put your feet on the earth. Like you came out of your mother's womb, right? Put your feet on the earth. Mother earth is given us so much energy. The fruits and vegetables. That's got a lot of energy through the roots. So, when you put your feet on the earth, on the beach, on the sand, on the grass, define healing energy comes from the earth, from other earth to heal us and calms us down. And absolutely. So, find an environment. If you can't do that, if you live far, then make your bedroom a healing place. So, you can adapt, you can change, right? And then environment is created by you. We say Sangha, Sadhu Sangha. If you associate with humans who are also relaxed most of the time, or at least they're intentionally trying to relax. Find those friends, right? If you listen to the podcast, come and spend time with us every time, and then you learn techniques, because we're trying to relax daily, regularly. Then the next how to eat, right? So, let's learn the art of eating and moderation. Over-eat, stress on the digestive system. If you under-eat, stress on the digestive system. So, let's eat in moderation, and then also eat non-violent food. If when an animal is killed, the fear and the stress from the animal goes into the flesh. When you eat that flesh, you absorb, not just the meat, but you absorb the emotions of stress and anxiety and fear, all those that go in the food, then the meat goes into ourselves. So, it will affect us. Let's eat non-violent food. Let's eat food where it is compassionate food. You take out fruit, you're not killing the tree, what you are. And you can even take the seed and replant more trees, non-violent food in moderation. Because in the yoga culture, what I see, there's a festival every week. People at every festival, there's a feast. If you feast today, like in the West, we have what Christmas, we have Thanksgiving, we have Easter, we have where a lot of feast and it's beautiful, because that's how people express their love for each other, cook for other family members and friends. So, if you have a feast today that yoga culture is tomorrow, let's go on a fast. So, you counter the stress on the digestive system. So, eat in moderation, find those people who associate, who are trying to relax themselves regularly. We discussed our sleep. So, prepare for sleep. Switch off all the gadgets, get in your bed and like, and I'll show you a technique we can do, you can do it before you go to bed today. So, chair sleep, sleep is a healing process. And then, exercise in moderation. And after your exercise, do a little. So, how does you kick your exercise in moderation after your exercise? Lawn your back for five, ten minutes to recover. Yes. Any other, do you want to share that we can? Yeah, I think that's incredible. But also, how we start a day. When we turn off the phone, when we go to sleep, when you wake up, maybe first spend some time catching your dreams, doing some meditation, offering the elements back to the universe, do a little bit journaling. However, way that makes you feel more grounded in a body, in the mind, without right away being pulled by the information from the devices. And that, that way we get to also start a day in a more stress-free sort of way. Yeah, I think that personally has been really helpful for me to be able to have those quite early morning times. When the energy is already very light and being able to slowly using to the day rather than right away, jumping to whatever, that sound the next agenda. Like I say, before you, when you get up in the morning, before you turn on your gadget, do a little daily meditation or contemplation or journaling. It will help you to break the pattern of the stress disorder that we have. We stress disorders, right? People have chronic gambling disease, gambling issues, alcoholic issues, but you can journal and spend time and then you had a deep sleep and you're right, over a period of time, you start to see, you start to gradually renounce the gambling disorder. You start to renounce the alcoholic disorder. All those stress diseases, you start to transform them. Because when people are gambling or relying on alcohol or whatever substances, in a way, they're seeking for that relief of stress. But if we don't have those tools, these things, the more we take them, the more we feed on to them, they just take us even more and more stress out, then we need it more and more and more. And the mind, of course, it's not going to be calm. But when we're able to try a different method, you always say that to replace a habit, you want to have something that's of a higher taste, then this way slowly we start to understand, okay, I don't need to rely on anything external to be able to release my stress just by proper breathing, just by creating that space where I can sleep better and slowly, mindfully waking up, starting my day, I can prepare myself for life that's relatively more stress-free. Of course, we soon need a stress, but yeah. Yeah, and then what happens when you start to make these little adjustments every day, do a little adjustment every day, we start to love our sleep, love our our breath, we start to love our environment if we get in, we start to love other people on a pure loving platform, and then our relationships get stronger on friendship or everything are wrong. And when we get pulled away from the environment of calmness, then we know, okay, I'll just deal with this and then I can come back to my centered place. Of course, so the mental hygiene techniques I'm going to share today is going to help you to come back to the space of calm and peace. Yes, and the more we can come out of those places we can come from, these places of feeling calm and peaceful, then it's less likely we're going to invite more stress into our lives. Then we are able to work with other people in a more compassionate way, so we don't create those emotional stress that we all deal with, or at least we minimize them. And we're able to feel more grounded in ourselves, so when the environments start to change physically, environmentally, or even politically, when they change, they're affecting us less, we're taking on less of those stress, then rather than accumulating more and more and more and more stress without releasing them, we're creating a life where we take on less stress. And if we do, we always counter it, but then we also have the tools to let go of them regularly. And remember, like you said, there's political stress right now. There's so many wars, so a lot of people are tensed. There's a lot of tension. And so we have to, you know, if we are not in a position to affect that war or to affect the politics, why am I going to watch that information in me daily when I can't do anything about it? So if I'm not a lawyer or a politician, okay, I should know, I should know of what's taking place, but I shouldn't let it occupy my psyche. Right? And that's what the news does. If someone is thinking for people and just put it in people's mind and people get trapped, and he creates a tension on, oh, I hate this person, oh, and that's the tension we don't need. If you're not a politician, if you're not a lawyer, if you're not a, you know, military person, okay, no, the tension is there, but wait, I can't affect, what I can do is change this environment, let this environment relax. And as I relax this environment on a regular basis, then when I get information that pulls me out of my environment of peace, okay, I don't know how to change that, but I can change this and then come back to my place of relaxation more and more and more. And the more we do that, the more we get to also inspire people around us, our community of people around us to also come to that place of feeling calm, feeling at peace, feeling out of our compassion rather than constantly acting out of reaction of anger, of whatever that's causing that stress in the first place. I mean, if you have a family member who's in the military, yes, that's their duty to be speaking about that. If you have a family member who is a politician, yes, that's their duty. But if you don't have to be part of then why I'm miserable, right? So just your own occupation creates little stress for you. Why take it out more stress? We have to learn to say no to these additional stresses so that, oh, I don't need this as additional, so I can remain more and more peaceful. Absolutely. And I love that you're saying, learning to say no, because that's another big part of living a life that's less stressful. It's also know what's our boundary, whether it's in our professional life or if it's in our personal relationships, knowing what's a place that makes me feel uncomfortable or makes me feel unsafe, saying no, sometimes protects us from that unnecessary stress that otherwise will just take home just because we accept everything. Yeah, right? Even like I said, yeah, it worked, right? You take on overload, overload of work. No, no, no, this is my limit. This is where my nervous system says, stop. Yeah, we have to learn the art of saying no to things like that so we can keep this inner environment palman peaceful. Mm-hmm. Amazing. Yogi Churu, can we finish our talk today with a short meditation? Perhaps you can share with us some of the techniques that we can do every day to intentionally release stress. Well, so we'll do like a three minute seated today and then we'll do a five minute line down that you can do with your lights off when you're closing your eyes at night time. So we'll do, I give you two techniques, you can do the seated one anywhere, work and then we can do a line the one that you do at night time. Yeah, mental hygiene technique for seated coming to a nice comfortable seated posture. You can sit in a chair or cross leg whatever is comfortable, but bring the spine tall, palms on the knees, touch the tip of the thumbs tip of the next fingers, close the eyes softly. And as you close the eyes, bring the mind to the present moment to your breath at the entrance of the nostrils. And don't control it, just witness it moving in and out. And identify the slight temperature change of the breath. The incoming breath is naturally slightly cooler. The outgoing breath with the body's heat is naturally slightly warmer. And every human in average, every human adult in average health, we take roughly 15 to 20 breaths per minute. I want you to mentally, mentally count how many natural breaths you take in one minute. You're not controlling the breath, just let it go naturally as you inhale and exhale, mentally one. Inhale, exhale, mentally two. So you're going to count like this for the next minute, starting now. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Excellent. That's one minute. Just recognize the number of breaths you took in that minute. And now I'm going to ask you to slow the breath down. Breathe. You're not going to hold the breath in, you're not going to hold the breath out, but you'll breathe in slowly as possible. And you'll breathe out as slowly as possible. We don't have any strain. See how many slow breaths you can take in one minute, starting now. Inhale slowly. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Excellent. That's one minute. Recognize how many slow breaths you took. Now bring your breath back to normal breathing and bring your gaze to the center of your eyebrows and witness your mind. You should recognize your mind is much more peaceful. As the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in, the muscular system relaxes, the mind relaxes. Excellent. Open the eyelids and feel fresh. So we can do this any time of the day. Slow in the breath down. The parasympathetic nervous system kicks in. I know I'm going to show you a technique that you can do in your healing space at nighttime. If you lie on the floor and you're on your pillow, this is what you do. You're going to separate your feet about a foot, foot and a half from each other away. And then your arms are about seven inches. Maybe I'll foot away from your body, palms facing up. And as you close your eyelids, you're going to lift your right leg, two inches off the floor, point the toes, flop the leg. Take your awareness to the left leg. Lift the left leg, two inches off the floor, point, flop. Squeeze the buttocks together, simultaneously push your navel down. Relax the hips, relax the abs, ribcage inhale, deeply move the ribcage up, up, up, open them up. Bring the breath back to normal, breathing, right hand into our fist lift the right arm, two inches off the floor, squeeze, flop, palm face in the ceiling. Left hand into our fist, lift the left arm, two inches, squeeze, flop. Keep the back of the head on the pillow, simultaneously move the chin into the chest, chin into the chest. Relax the muscles and the neck and shoulders. Open the mouth wide wide wide, relax the jaw bones together. Place your tongue at the bottom of the mouth. Squeeze the eyebrows together, eyelids together, ripples on the forehead, squeeze, relax the muscles and the face. As the physical body starts to relax, now relax the mind, bring your mind to the breath in the abdomen. And we're going to mentally count the backwards from nine to one. Mental energy, nine navel up, nine navel down, eight navel up, eight navel down. Continue at your pace to one. Excellent. Now bring your gaze with the eyelids close into the center of your eyebrows. And as you gaze there, I want you to go back through your day. And as you go back through your day on the hour, try and go back on the hours. See everything you did, every conversation you ever fooled you at, everything you saw. And if you go back, come to our hour where you did something amazing, a happy time pause at that happy moment, relive it for about 10, 15 seconds and then continue backwards. And if you come to our hour in your day where you made a mistake, pause there and with your mind restructure it. See you did a good experience, you did something good and it was a positive experience. When you turn it into a positive experience, then continue backwards and see if you can reach the time you got up from bed this morning. Take your time nor rush. you you this recording comes to an end. Please feel free to just keep going backwards for the rest of your day. This is a technique we can do at night time, leave the phones outside, leave the gadgets outside and really go and cherish your sleep, cherish your day and see the patterns in your life where you did something positive, where you did something negative and then we structure the negative into positive. When you're able to do that, just as the sun rise, sunset, sun rise, sunset cycles, tomorrow a similar scenario where you made a mistake will come up tomorrow or next week or next month, but because you took the time to restructure it, when that similar moment shows up tomorrow or next week, you don't make the same mistake again. You can go into it positively and turn it into a positive experience. So you're using your night practice to help make your day time even more peaceful, more stressless. Thank you so much Yogi Charu. Thank you so much everyone for joining us and we wish you a stress-free day and we look forward to being with you again speaking of mental hygiene. Yes, thank you all so much and again please share the recording with your family friends and help them become stress-free, living, loving beings. Thank you, Susan, Riyong. Thank you for joining us with mental hygiene where ancient wisdom meets modern life one breath in a time. If this episode brought you peace, insight or inspiration, we invite you to subscribe, leave a review and share with someone you love. To go deeper connect with Yogi Charu and Susan Hood. Follow the journey on Instagram at mental hygiene podcast. Until next time, keep your mind clear, your heart open, and your spirit grounded. Be well, be still. [BLANK_AUDIO]