Relieving Negative Feelings With Self Awareness – Case Study

By Vd.A.Rangaprasad Bhat
For the Doshas affecting the body, resulting in a disease, the medicines in the form of combinations of the appropriate herbs will address the issue. But, what might be the remedial measures for the Mano Doshas namely the rajas & tamas which create mental stress by increasing the negative emotional thoughts in a human being?

Causes, Remedial measures

Remedial measures for mano Doshas  (Negative state of mind):
The Atma VijnAnam (The knowledge of soul a.k.a self knowledge) in identifying the exact negative emotions like DveSHa – hatred
IrSHya – spite, envy, malice
MAtsarya – jealousy
krodha – anger
JugipsA – frustration etc.
These are the root causes of mental disorders and thereby adopting counter measures through counselling and educating the patient to increase his
Dhi (determination),
Dhairya (fearlessness) etc.

Such measures lead to mokSha – detachment from negative emotions. This kindles positive approach towards life and relationship, thus curing mental disorders.
Read related: Improper Use Of Sense Organs: A Neglected Cause For Diseases

It is to be understood that both positive and negative emotions are to be maintained in working combination of balance to live in happy and peace. The remedial measure for the unhappy state of mind being created by the circumstances or the social factors do not happen as such without the involvement of one’s own reactions in the society.

Atma Vivechana (analysis of one’s own soul) and addressing the basic negative emotion as the cause for unhappiness is very important. Identifying the negative aspects and weakness of mind helps us to detach mind from those negative thoughts.

This detachment from negative emotions can be achieved
1. By the person himself, if he has good awareness
2. By the Spiritual master or with counselling experts, in case of medium mental strength of the patient
3. By counselling + oral ayurvedic medicines and herbs to strengthen the mind- in case of a weak minded person.
Read related: Importance Of Soul In Perception Of Knowledge: Atma Jnana

By Vd.A.Rangaprasad Bhat
“Padmanilayam”, (Ayurveda & Non Conventional Marma Chikitsa Clinic) 49/46,
Kanagaraya Malaiyappan St,
Raja Annamalaipuram,
Mandavelipakkam, Chennai- 600028.
Email: drrangaprasadbhat@gmail.com

Atma Jnana in treatment

Incorporating Atma Jnana (Self Awareness) In Treatment – Case Study

Physical diseases, that affect our body are primarily treated with Panchakarma, oral medicines, diet etc. Similarly, Mental disorders are primarily treated with Atma Vijnana – the knowledge of one’s soul. 

Atma Vijnana – Knowledge of the self helps in identifying the negative emotions like hatred, jealous, over zealousness, displeasure, anger, hatred, laziness etc.

These emotions which may either be innate or acquired at times roughens up the determination and the fearlessness, which are the basic nature of the soul governing the peace within the soul. The dhI (intellect) and dhrti (retaining power) provides innate strength from within the soul, whenever the person lands up in circumstances of sudden & unforeseen situations of difficulties over the front of family or society.

When dhI and dhrti are balanced, through the Ajna chakra (shiras is one of the site for jIvAtma and Ajna is related to shiras.
Read related: Ten places where Soul resides – Jeevita Dhama 

They provide the solution for the problem advocating the mind for executing either the indriya-artha sannikarSHa or indriyartha  viprakrSHTa, by means of adopting the principle of bandhana (contact) or moksha (disconnect) with the distress causing objects, respectively.

A few examples will provide some insight in approaching the clinical cases over the perspective of role of Atma in evading the negative emotions of the mind causing stress in both psychic and physical plane, there by influencing a person to be with either a bahu-satva (will powered) or alpa-satva (hypochondriac) person. To find the root causes and there by adopting counter measures through counselling and educating the patient to increase his dhI (determination), dhairya (fearlessness) etc and there by ensuing mokSha (detachment) or bandhana(attachment) to the negative emotions and positive thinking respectively will be the most appropriate remedial measure.

Case study

A case of Alasya, jigupsa and anutsAha and  as a cause for asmriti in a school going kid:

A 14 year old boy’s mother approached me to get some nootrophic herbal combination prescribed for her son’s forgetfulness which was compromising his mark scoring ability in mathematics, which was erstwhile good, in the previous school where he was studying the year before.

After a few questionnaires and the resultant inputs from the child it was derived that, the child was disinterested in that subject – due to the teacher’s teaching methodology.  She in haste of completing the syllabus was rushing to teach the derivatives of calculating a sum, and was not repeating the calculations for second time.  Requests from the child for repetition of the methods or even the doubt raised in trying to understand a particular step of the sequence of step, got brushed aside  by the teacher with a teasing comment, that he needs to be shrewd enough to catch up with the speed of the other classmates in grasping the subject. This was taken by the young mind as a personal insult to his egoism, which slowly grew up into hatred towards the teacher ending up with hatredness over the subject.

The event of hatred, eventually lead to a disinterested state of mind over the subject. In addition, whenever he tried to open the book of mathematics, the turmoil in mind was pushing him to procrastinate reading the subject. Even if the child tries to read the subject willfully, due to the displeasure encircles the mind repeatedly.  Vehemently, the exact event of reading and writing fails to get registered in the sequential pattern of logistics, and there by the Childs reproduction ability becomes difficult giving an appearance that he has some issue with his Hippocampal activity of retaining and recollecting the registered events.

The issue of the child is addressed with counseling, sans prescription of any nootrophics herbs to make him have a comeback in studies.

SUtra adopted to reverse engineer the faulty sequence of indriyartha viprakrshta is by creating a bandhana or attraction towards the subject by providing him an alternative source of learning through mobile apps and the interactive CD-ROMS available in the educational stores.

And to make him understand his teacher’s position, the child was mentally asked to swap him in  her place and imagine what if he as a teacher be in a position if a student amongst the fifty present in the class raise such a request, as he had requested his teacher. To my amazement, the child said, “If I would have been in her place, I would have reacted even more harsh, since I feel that the student was interrupting the pace of my work in completing the syllabus”. Having said that, he further with an open mind and soul gave a word, that “From hence forth, I will not postpone my studies and will not allow myself  get disturbed with wandering thoughts. Further, whenever I egoistically feel hurt to a given situation over a given person, before reacting to that situation through my egoistic point of view, I will adopt So-aham, and swap my place in the other person’s shoe and cultivate the habit of recognizing, analyzing and understanding the reaction that had ensued over the incident”. Needless to say, the child, adopted the reverse engineering methods counseled and started feeling happy and peaceful at his soul gaining control over the manas-indriya-artha axis over the consequent days. After 2 months, the child along with his mother came and reported over the follow up, that things have been recovered and that he is now happily observing the class, registering the teaching methodology there by able to analyse and reproduce the lessons through his logistic memory.
Read related: Relieving Negative Feelings With Self Awareness: Atma Vijnana

Modern research

Resources of modern research related to memory:-
Role of hippocampus in memory for sequence of events – Read here.
Temporal memory is shaped by encoding stability and intervening item reactivation – Read here (Excerpt from the above study – Specifically, we showed that temporal order memory retrieval was reduced when inter-item associative binding during encoding was disrupted by either a dual task or a context shift. Since it is well established that the hippocampus is critical in associative encoding ( Davachi, 2006; Eichenbaum et al., 2007 ), hippocampal processes may play an important role in establishing and retrieving temporal order across extended sequences.)

By Vd.A.Rangaprasad Bhat
“Padmanilayam”, (Ayurveda & Non Conventional Marma Chikitsa Clinic) 49/46,
Kanagaraya Malaiyappan St,
Raja Annamalaipuram,
Mandavelipakkam, Chennai- 600028.
Email: drrangaprasadbhat@gmail.com