World Mental Health Day

World Mental health day is celebrated on 10th of October every year. The event is hosted by World federation for mental health with a view to advocate the importance of preserving the mental health of every individual. The theme of World Mental Health Day for 2017 is “Mental Health in the workplace”. 1 in 5 in the work place experience a mental condition. World federation for mental health states that nobody is immune from mental health illness and people find it difficult to disclose that they have mental health difficulties.

Mental health is recognizing their abilities, being productive to individual life and society by coping up with the day-day stresses. Ayurveda takes a holistic approach to individual health. It explores the definition of health with the concept of relating body, mind and soul. A human as a whole is a combination of Manas, Sarira, Atma and Indriya which means Mind, physical body, soul and senses.

 

Ayurvedic concept of mind :

Manas has three constituent qualities – Satva, Rajas and Tamas called Guna. The physical body has three psycho-biological elements, each governing different functions of the human body. As for the mental health is considered, ‘clouding of perception’ and loss of understanding is caused by gunic imbalance. Most of the pitfalls of brain is attributed to the chemical imbalance in the brain. But Ayurved a says the loss of understanding is not the cause but the consequence of the mental disease. The actual cause is ignorance – avidya. According to the Ayurvedic concept,

• Manas – the outer mind is the collector of the sensory impressions received from the sense organs. It organizes them into categories.
• Buddhi – It is the organ of intellect. Judges and defines them and brings to an understanding. It differentiates and determines the nature and makes them a concept.
• Ego (Ahamkara) – perceived impressions is appropriated to the self and brings them to its own agenda.

 

Buddhi and Ego :

So generally it is the buddhi that creates a distinctiveness in knowledge and spurs action. But when buddhi is veiled the ego would direct the actions and things in its own biased wishes. Our perception of things and actions are distorted when buddhi has the remains of past experiences, trauma, judgement etc.

 

Identity of self :

So, how do you identify your’self’?! A mother? A diplomat? A terrible drinker?

This is exactly the mistake of intellect that is the root cause of all mental disturbances. The mistake that intellect do is integrating mere banal thoughts and emotions with the magnificent ‘self’. This is the reason for our ignorance, bondage and suffering. Our true universal SELF is ineffable, but we define our self with the identity of small traits of our personality. We thereby mistake impermanent to permanence, truth to false, giving importance to actually trivial things. This fundamental ignorance is the one which causes the serious mental illness.

Although it might sound a bit of spiritual reasoning, it helps us to detach our self from the past impressions, traumas and insults thereby enabling us to connect with the higher planes of consciousness.

An ayurvedic expert can help you identify true and false, temporary and permanent, real with the fake. With meditation and yogic techniques identify your true self and live with a liberated soul. Contact us today for more information!