Change Your Lifestyle

ARANI SERIES

Friday, September 16, 2016

Spark 25

Change Your Lifestyle

   When Indra and Virochana go to Prajāpati, seeking the highest knowledge, the Divine Teacher does not start with sermons or classes for them! He asks the two eminent students, heads of the deva and asura communities, to spend 32 years at his Āshram in Brahmacharya. They do so and Prajāpati then instructs them on the Spirit that is free from old age and death.

   In the above story from the Chāndogya Upanishad1, Virochana goes back with some half-baked knowledge. Indra explores further but is asked to stay another 32 years in Brahmacharya. Some more teaching, and then another 32 years in self-discipline. Some more spiritual education, and then another 5 years in holistic right living. Then, after all these (32 + 32 + 32 + 5) 101 years of LIVING RIGHTLY, the liberating wisdom of Self-knowledge is imparted to him.

   In our modern times, the basic principle remains the same. Unless we change our LIFESTYLE, our energies will not be properly aligned to make ‘radical transformation’ possible in us.

   Leave alone liberation (moksha), change of lifestyle is what is required for enjoying good health too. “A genuine change in habits, and not medication, surgery or any other invasive intervention, is required to change a person’s course of health,” observes Dr Sheela Nambiar, a Fitness & Lifestyle Consultant. In her beautiful, comprehensive article2 in Rotary News. To rephrase some of her excellent comments, we go about our merry way, eating and drinking as we please, or worse, eating some latest ‘fad diet’ that promises incredible weight loss in ridiculously short periods of time. We refrain from regular exercise, rarely meditate, and live on a prayer that our bodies will somehow continue to support our decadent lifestyles!

   Saying, “Today we see more and more diseases that are related directly to how we lead our day-to-day lives,” Dr Nambiar (who is also an obstetrician, gynecologist and author) goes on to give three tips on bringing about lifestyle changes.

S-S-S Three Tips for Changing Lifestyle

   Change (in lifestyle) has to be slight, significant and sustainable.

   Change has to be slight so our body does not protest violently. We may begin with, for example, a 20 to 30 minute walk every day.

   Change has to be significant enough for our human body to be forced to make the necessary internal adaptations to the change. Even a five minute walk is significant for some overweight person who has never exercised. Pushing harder is significant for a fit, younger person if her body has to register change.

   Change has to be sustainable so we do not give up after a while. Suppose we go for a diet that leaves us hungry and irritable half the time, we are likely to say goodbye to it soon.

   Lastly, we should not imagine that we practice some lifestyle changes for a few months and then get back to our old ways. We have been pampered by usual ways of medical treatment that begin somewhere and end after a while. Change in lifestyle on the other hand is for all time to come. We give up ‘for good’ all our unhealthy ways of living.

Swami Chidananda

Notes:

tau ha dvā-trimshatam varshāni brahmacharyam ushatuh Chāndogya Upanishad 8.7.3

2 Rotary News (India), September 2016, pages 70, 71.

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