Yoga for the stressed

The only real solution for the stressed is to sincerely enquire into why one is stressed and to go to its roots. All other techniques that the countless contemporary yoga schools prescribe, while temporarily useful, are ultimately futile by themselves. Further one needs to enquire who is stressed? Why is it needed to pursue a career, instead of doing that thing which is useful to society and one that brings one alive? Why is it needed to live a lifestyle that is not minimally simple? Why is it needed to put your kids into the biggest schools, instead of giving education that brings them alive and make them sensitive and compassionate human beings? Because the individuals have never seriously enquired into these, they have signed into a form of life that needs a lot of money and are forced to work their asses off. Even if office work environment is conducive, why do it if you are not interested in doing it? Baboons in a forest don't spend more than 3 hours a day getting their calories!

Simply speaking, all of these life style choices (career, big apartments, vacations abroad, shopping, loud marriages, being a success in society etc) are simply satisfying the mental construct called ego, which is simply an illusion and not the real you. Naturally, if one spends ones life working for mental constructs and not the real me, there will always be boredom, emptiness and suffering of various form leading to stress and depression. Will feeding a photo of us rid us of hunger? Why not understand this and undertake the real solution? It needs a little courage and sincere effort initially but very soon it becomes effortless. If not, one is continuously pushed towards more and more separation from the rest of creation - leading to more and more stress and loss of sensitiveness to the situations of others. This loss of sensitivity is probably the greatest of all suffering and it furthers the vicious cycle!

Lot of schools of yoga conduct special camps for the stressed corporate executives and their ilk. There are many websites that offer countless solutions. But, all of them only want to treat the stressed corporate executive but not question why is he/she stressed. Either they don't understand the real problem or don't want to disturb their source of income seriously.

While practicing long exhalation and asanas are useful temporary solutions, refusing to go deeper than that is simply refusing to treat the root cause! How long are we going to not acknowledge to ourselves the white elephant in us - the ego and its demands on our lives endlessly causing us to be stressed and causing others to be too!