Inner Mastery: Why You Must Take a Holistic Approach to Anxiety and Stress and How to Start
If I was a superhero, I would have been called “Tenseman”. I share my superhero origin story. I also talk about how to break out from the information overload around mental health and spirituality, and take create your unique model as a holistic approach — i.e. Personal Mastery
In this day and age there are so many ways to unwind and release tension. I have lived my life in a state of tension. Fight or flight mode is normal to me because I lived in a state of constant guardedness.
When I say guardedness, I don’t mean that I was worried that a tiger was going to eat me, but I will tell you straight up that I would much rather have a tiger chasing me than what I used to feel. At least I could see a tiger coming!
Inner fear is what I am talking about. Edginess, feeling like something bad was going to happen, doom, needing to be prepared! Alarm system ON, bodyguard vigilant, locked and loaded! Its this dirty feeling because it caught me off-guard and I had no control over it.
Even after it was gone it would linger around me like a bad smell, the shame of feeling powerless. Energy drained like I had literally ran from a tiger. At least escaping a tiger would feel victorious, escaping tension left me confused, questioning myself and lost.
The popular term that is used these days could be “anxiety”, as soon as I googled my symptoms (as you do!) I found this club of people I could be a part of — “Anxiety club”.
During this article I am going to go deeper than your typical doctors will, and it all started when I became aware of this suspicion that anxiety was there for a guiding reason, like an angel - dare I say! That’s why I don’t identify myself with anxiety anymore. Its a label which means its a “personality trait”. I don’t believe in those anymore, they kept me stuck for years. I was a victim of my beliefs and analytical reasoning. You’ll learn my new view of the world as you read on.
Doctors and the mental health industry will tell us to go exercise, eat better, connect with more people, find ways to unwind and relax, or sometimes take some pills to help our bodies relax
The body is in overdrive so all of this makes total sense. Even the fitness gurus out there are jumping on this these days to remind people to “Move good and eat good”. I totally agree with this and its great to have these folks on board.
But where most people are reluctant to put their opinions onto is the area of the mind. Having said that, everyone is talking about this buzzword of “Mindset”. But most people are skating on the surface and it has turned into this culture of finding the latest mindset hacks. More monkey see monkey do and less wisdom. This will keep someone at the surface level of development, like eating the cheese off a pizza and not the base. Transformation is about changing the way you see the world, digging past the layers and accessing the core.
The deeper psychological work is left to psychotherapists, trained trauma specialists and these days there are even people who call themselves “body workers”. The people who have come to understand the mind body connection.
On the other end of the scale are the extreme spiritual guides and healers, who are there to help you connect with the higher power, angels, your aura, your energy and your chakras. These folks are also awesome because they are able to put a spin on the whole anxiety thing as being something more than just the physical body and the mental body.
The problem is that it can get way too deep and people find it hard to make the shift, theory is OK but the application is missed. I sometimes find that many spiritualists themselves don’t know the depth of how to help someone holistically because they aren’t a living and breathing the transformation themselves yet. So they can take the person way too far down the rabbit hole of what I call “right wing” spiritualism, without having masterful awareness of what they are doing.
This is what I call theoretical spirituality vs the truth. The teachings make sense logically, but the unwavering, absolute knowing has not yet been embodied.
The teachings for spirituality and mental freedom can turn into a cultural identity, wearing some mala around your neck, having special incense, giving up worldly desires but despite it all — having the same old inner challenges. Perhaps these challenges manifest (a spiritual buzzword) in various way such as money fears, fear of taking action, or whatever else. Either way, the identity means nothing, the same old person is there.
By the way, I am not judging (yeah I am coming on strong I know!). I am consciously speaking in this way because these are all of the challenges that I have faced along the way and the learnings that I have come to know.
What I am trying to say is that life is about variety and union of various forms of personal growth. Think of all of these things as a part of your toolbox rather than you being the tool in the box.
I am began my personal development journey by lifting heavy ass weights! This to me (as Dwayne Johnson says) was “my iron therapy”. It allowed me to release tension and feel good about myself. I then shifted my focus towards physical performance, crossfiting, running and endurance. It rounded me into an athletic level of health mastery.
The problem was that I was still facing the same old inner challenges and I would need to “de-stress” by using my body. I was unaware of any other way to feel calm, this is often the world that I see gym junkies living in. Once you become conscious of this, you realise like I did that there's no need to exercise so extensively.
Ask yourself: “If my body wasn't so tense and it was absolutely calm and peaceful, and if my mind was the same, would I need to do any of this?”
Around 7 years ago I began a journey of yoga, breathe, meditation and stumbled upon this book called “The Power of Now”. The journey of spirituality began and it opened me up to the opposite level of mastery. I began to truly understand the relationship between mind body and spirit.
The body became my tool to access wisdom and to control my energy at will. I began master-ing (because I’m still working on it) the art of presence, energy and consciousness. It became my new personal experiment, I became a mad scientist! I treated it like the gym by disciplining like a maniac. I would learn about something and then practice it, the way I saw the world was shifting rapidly.
As my eyes opened, my desire to learn began to grow into different areas. I became more connected to the psychological realm and the impact it had on me. I discovered tons of areas of pain and suffering which I was unaware of. I was unconsciously holding onto resentment and feelings of being worthless and unlovable.
As I uncovered the makeup of my behaviours I began freaking out at the fact that I had lived my life unaware. It was like learning that Santa wasn’t real as an adult! Or for a higher impact example… Imagine finding out that you were adopted, or finding out that you have a long lost identical twin?
I cried over and over like I was mourning a deceased child. Resentment riddled me and it drove me towards going through a process of not only making every single unconscious millimetre of myself conscious, but also sending loving energy towards acceptance and (eventually) realisation of wholeness. This wholeness was not like coming to ground level, it was like breaking the limits of gravity, feeling higher than I'd ever felt possible.
This is where everything began to overlap. The physical and energetic body were being used to channel my awareness towards the pain that the emotional and mental parts of me created. The spiritual awareness became like a container of safety which allowed me to create an even vaster expanse of awareness and massive revelations. The life force energy began surging through me like light, illuminating all of the corners which felt dark.
As I progressed, my relationship to food began to change. I fuelled this journey like I was going to the Olympics. The habits I created were all geared towards knowing and realising more about myself. The mad scientist in me began experimenting even more, I dropped the addiction to “protein amount” in foods, and I just ate things that fuelled aliveness.
Things that digest well and are “REAL FOODS” are the things we must eat. If food disturbs your stomach, it will disturb your entire energy system. The Power Source loses its battery.
The underlying realisation was that anxiety is not a surface level tension that is occurring and needs to be stamped out like a fire. Rather its a fire which keeps getting lit until you find the source of it. And not only find the source but also create the realisation that the fire is actually the part of yourself which is bursting with abundance, it isn't an enemy.
These days there is a focus on destroying the ego. People will go so far away from the truth of who they are because they are desperate to get away from this thing called ego. I realised that the truth is that the ego is the shell of the golden orb of purest potential that we have lost in our lives. Therefore you have to go close to the ego to get to the gold.
The Gold is your absolute unfiltered and unlimited you. Its creation itself, its the universe itself, its god, its everything that the stars are made of, its life, its the life in you!
The source of your suffering is thoughts, based off an automatic algorithm. Like how amazon will email you to suggest some socks for you to buy. You don’t need to listen and buy the socks, but you do, you buy the socks every time you believe your thoughts!
To End
This is how spirit, mind and body combine to allow you to become truly boundless. There is no one way of doing things, you do not need to fool yourself into thinking that you are far away from those spiritual teachers and yogis. You are closer than you think, you only have to lean in rather than running away. You only have to discipline yourself into finding the truth rather than allowing your analytical mind misguide you.
The tension you are noticing is something which must be attended to with nurture rather than fear. Fear runs away, love comes closer. Listen, don't react. If you react you will not be able to hear what its saying.
Respond with a slowed down and attentive mind, you will realise what you really want.
The soul is who's calling, the mind is just the cover on top which adds layers and distorts the message. Like those old school voice changing devices!
Who's calling?? “Its me mind, I just called you to tell you that you are a worthless piece of crap, GRARRRR”
In truth, its the soul behind that who is saying “its me soul, I just called you to tell you that you got so much more life in you, go and live!! I love you and believe in you”
This article has a to be continued in it... Because a new topic all together is being able to listen to the soul through the distortions of the mind. The tension you are feeling is sometimes a signal from the soul to do something, even when it feels like self-punishment.
But what I want you to focus and end on today is to remind you to find your formula, find what works best for you to become the best version of you. Dig into these voices rather than hiding from them.
You must bring forth every member of your team to bring their best work to the table. Your mind, body and soul must work in harmony for you to navigate this life.
The inner world and outer world must be combined. The stillness and the action must be combined. The masculine energy and feminine energy must be combined. Combine them all until you come to a place where separation doesn’t exist. THIS IS MASTERY! This is what Yo-ga really means, the union of all things.
Its why the science of yoga has changed my life, because its way more than the physical act, its a way of mastering oneself. I am often unsure whether to use the word yoga because its been muddied in this day and age into being associated with exercise. So I will use the more fancy and popular words “holistic life mastery”. This is what I represent, and what I hope you have learnt about during this article.
Before we finish.
Ask yourself these questions
- What is your silent wisdom saying?
- What does it want?
- How can you help yourself by using your mind, body and soul in union rather than separate?
- What does holistic mastery look like for you?
I would love to hear what you came up with, as well as knowing what you got from reading this article. Write to me and tell me what was 1 take away that you had. It also helps me to learn the impact that my writing is having.
If you are unsure how to start your holistic development, then lets talk.
Its a web of mastery, connecting the dots together like a piece of art, mixing the paints to create the colours. This is what I am great at, so I would happily send you a video resource that will help you as well as having a conversation and helping you directly. Write to me.
Remember, you are the driver in the car. Yes there’s some higher power, but you are being moved by it. Never forget the power that you have to take ownership of your life.
Lovingly, Raj
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