Taking a cue from the jungle adage
‘survival of the fittest’, man, in his rush to reach the top, is fighting with
the monster within for survival. The frightening truth is that instead of
making life easier for him, man is increasingly riddled with rage, suicides and
a plethora of psychosomatic illnesses.
“Modern day survival demands constant
action, and constant action without the feel of fulfilment leads to excessive
stress. This in turn plays havoc in one’s personal, family and social life,”
points out Manoj Asok Kumar, a qualified psychotherapist and yoga therapist,
registered with the Rehabilitation Council of India. Conducting a series of
anger management workshops across the country and internationally as director
of his company ‘Go Beyond Mind’, he makes a few observations about this
‘constant action’. “I refer to self-imposed high level and difficult-to-achieve
goals, family and social demands, strong likes and aversions, unhealthy life choices
like drinking, smoking, and sedentary life style. Furthermore, excessive
exposure to negative information creates pessimistic thought patterns, belief
systems and habits. Stress is, indeed, one of the root causes of anger and
rage.”
Impacting just about every segment of
society, children and teenagers are the most vulnerable. “Children are often
the soft targets of anger and rage without the ability to express themselves.
Similarly, youngsters are subject to constant pressure, particularly peer pressure,”
elucidates Kumar.
Anger in itself can be self-destructive,
leading to several psychosomatic illnesses that are plaguing us today. “Stress
is a modern day epidemic and the cause of innumerable psychosomatic diseases.
Hypertension, diabetes, cardio vascular diseases, cancers and various
psychological conditions like anger/rage, anxiety, fear, depression to name a
few are an outcome of this,” explains Kumar.
To combat stress and its consequences,
Kumar points out, there is a step-to-step method to process suppressed anger
and manage stress in day-to-day life. “We teach this method in our anger
management workshops ‘Tame the Monster Within’. We have a two-fold approach:
one is to bring up the past suppressed anger from childhood to a conscious
level and to process it. The second phase is to teach the participants to adopt
a positive and practical lifestyle. The workshop also includes anger workout
and anger quotient test,” states this yoga therapist who incorporates a host of
yogic anger management techniques in his workshop.
(‘Tame the Monster Within’ workshop will be
held at Bhagirathi Niwas, Borda, Margao on June 20, 2015 from 9.30am to 5.30pm)
Yoga for the Mind
Yoga is restraining the fluctuation of the
mind thought processes. The purpose of Yoga is to make thoughts voluntary,
making thoughts a choice. In this condition, the individual will be able to
think what he or she opts to think.
Yoga offers innumerable methods to calm
down the mind. One of them is ‘Mano Yoga’ which includes breathing technique
with rhythmic body movements. ‘Yoga Nidra’ or Yogic sleeping is another which
offers a thirty minutes relaxation technique that can be practised by everyone,
irrespective of physical conditions.
Taming anger
A few basic tips of Time Management and a
host of Yogic Anger Management Techniques that can be practised on a day-to-day
basis to tame anger.
An anger management workshop starts with an
‘Anger Quotient Test’ (AQT). The test gives an in depth understanding of the
nature of anger of the participant and unmasks the anger to a certain degree.
The AQT also analyses how problematic the anger is for the person. Anger Management has basically two steps to
it. One is defusing the past (accumulated) anger and managing the day-to-day
(current) anger. Defusing of the past anger is done by bringing the subdued
anger on a conscious level and expressing the anger to get it out. The methodology followed is ‘Anger – Accept,
Name, Get It Out, Energise and Resume’ to deal with day-to-day anger.
