What makes you tired? Are you tired? Are you tired of what? You are tired of working. You are tired of going to shop. If you do an excess of physical work, you get tired. If you talk excessively, you get tired. If you think too much, you get tired. You have been on these trips (mental, physical and vocal workshops) for lifetimes! What is the effect of your work on you? Sorrow and fatigue.
You are tired of this. You’re tired of that. The children tire you. Your spouse tires you. Your friends tire you. Everything is tiring, isn’t it? Are you tired? Just think about it.
Tiredness is Good
Tiredness is a shadow of enjoyment.
Every day you get tired, right? When you get tired, you sleep well. If you’re not tired, you can’t even sleep well, you know that?
If you are not tired, you will never reach home. Only if you’re tired, will you ever rest. Everything in the world will tire you. Only one thing does not tire you. That is love. Love does not tire you because that is the end, the home. It is not possible to be tired in love. In fact, enjoyment brings tiredness! Tiredness is a shadow of enjoyment. What puts you on the road is your desire to enjoy. What brings you home is being in love.
3 Types of Tiredness
1. Physical Tiredness
You do some workout, you get tired, you get good sleep. If you have walked, if you get onto a treadmill, you exhaust some energy and you get tired. You know when your body is so tired, you keep up late at night and so much stress accumulates.
Remedy for Physical Tiredness
Get rid of it with good rest.
The formula for stress is different. It is too much to do, too little time and no energy. Either you reduce the workload, which doesn’t happen in the days, or you increase the time. That also doesn’t happen when you are tired. You want to take more time for yourself to recuperate. So the only visible option we are left with is to increase your energy level.
2. Mental Tiredness
This comes by thinking and thinking and thinking, and overthinking and overthinking. It wears you out. It’s the worst type of tiredness that you can ever experience in life.
You are tired because of your mind.
Your mind tires you more than the physical work. If you are willing to do some work, even 15 hours at a stretch, it will not tire you but if you are not willing and you have to work even for four hours, it will tire you.
You have a party at home or you are arranging Christmas decorations. So you may work many late hours but still not feel tired. You feel good about it. But you work in some place you don’t like, you’d like to have four coffee or tea breaks and even then you feel it’s tiring!
Thinking you need rest makes you restless. Thinking you have to work hard makes you tired. Thinking you have worked hard brings self-pity. Don’t do any work at all. Just sit and go on thinking. You’ll be terribly exhausted. For many people, tiredness and exhaustion comes from thinking and worrying, not by working.
5 ways to Stop Your Racing Mind
- Something bothers you mentally? Do some physical work!
Do a lot of exercise, get on the treadmill, and work. You’ll see this gives a big relief. Then, you will see the mind will become less active because you are physically in the moment (action). Then, when the body gets tired, you will be able to rest well. - Take a cold shower or take a walk in the snow. Your mind freezes.
- Watch the sunset, sunrise just gaze at the sky. Mind stops.
- Listen to loud music.
Do you know why people like rock bands? Hard rock and all this it’s so much sound and so much noise. But it stops thinking. So people feel some relief. In temples in India, They know all types of people will come. Not everyone is evolved. They keep these huge drums at the time of Aarti they make such huge noise. Drums, trumpets barrels and all that sound brings your mind to the present moment. It stops the thinking for a few minutes. You are distracted from your thinking or your own little world that you are closed in. - Meditation and Sudarshan KriyaTM are the best of all.
A few minutes of meditation keeps your mind like a clean slate to take on a new load of work.
3. Emotional Tiredness
Your emotional tiredness is even worse. You know, heartburn, fear, anxiety. But are you tired of all these also? Are you tired of feeling anxious?
Remedy for Emotional Tiredness
Listening to chanting, or even “Bhajans” of any language of any religion, can really uplift your emotional well-being.
3 Troublemakers
1. Desire & Actions (On Subtle Level)
Desire, awareness of the self and action all are manifestations of the same energy that is you. Among these three, one of them dominates at a time.
When you have lots of desires, you are not aware of the self. When desire dominates, self-awareness will be at its lowest, and that’s why all the philosophers around the world have always advocated renunciation and the dropping of desires. When desire dominates, stress and sorrow result. When actions dominate, restlessness and disease is the result. When awareness is dominant, then happiness dawns.
However, work doesn’t make you as tired as your desires. When your actions and desires are sincerely directed to the Divine or to the welfare of society, then the consciousness is automatically elevated, and self-knowledge is sure to be attained.
2. Body & Speech (On Superior Level)
You have been working with your body for several lifetimes;* working with speech, with words, with your mind. These are the three places for action: body and mind, and speech between the two.
If you are physically not working, the same energy is diverted into talking. People who talk a lot, work less. People who don’t do any physical work and don’t talk much either, lose their mind. You may notice, some people are very quiet. There is a volcano inside them. A dormant volcano! People who talk a lot are less dangerous than those who don’t talk at all because their minds are always cooking and cooking.
Have you noticed what happens if you talk too much and unnecessarily? You feel nauseous and very uncomfortable. It is very fortunate that we have known and experienced this. Many people go on doing it all their lives without even being aware of how awful they feel. Most of the sorrow in the world is because of speech. If people were silent, ninety per cent of the problems in the world would be over.
For years you have been doing this – reeling in these three fields, in activity. It has not led you anywhere. It wears you down, and you have become very tired.
3. Ambition or Lethargy
You cannot rest if you have either ambition or lethargy. Both are opposed to good rest. A lazy person will toss and turn at night and be ‘restless’ and an ambitious person will burn inside.
3 Energy Boosters
1. Deep Rest
Meditate – Deep rest is the essence of sadhana. You have become so tired by doing something or the other all the time. Now just sit down for some time and be with yourself. Do some meditation. When you meditate, you will start seeing a new world in front of you. You get deep rest in meditation.
Contentment – You get rest when you are content, and this rest is what gives rise to Happiness. Running behind happiness makes you tired. When you run behind happiness you get tired, but when you repose in the self, when you rest, you get energy, and that brings you strength, joy and happiness. Again and again, be content.
Just Be – You cannot rest when you have to do something which you cannot. And you cannot rest when you feel you have to be someone whom you are not. You are not required to do what you cannot. You will not be asked to give what you cannot give. Nothing is expected of you that you cannot do. And no one wants you to be someone whom you are not. This realisation brings you deep rest.
Let go – There is a place to rest. That is the divine, that is surrender and that is love. And you can’t do it unless you get really tired, unless you get sick of everything. You drop down. That is called surrender.
Even a slight feeling that the Divine is with you brings deep rest. And prayer, love and meditation are all flavours of deep rest.
2. Focus on Breath
Your breath is linked to your emotions. Every emotion has a particular rhythm in your breath. But we seldom attend to our breath. There is a link between our emotions, how we feel and our breathing patterns. We don’t even recognize that every thought, every worry in our head, has a definite pattern in our breath. So, if you change the pattern of the breath, your worries will also stop. Do you know this secret?
It’s a secret but do share it with everybody at home. Your worries are linked to your breath. You cannot directly sometimes get rid of emotions or thoughts. But you can do it through your breath. If you are part of any drama or acting group, they will tell you to breathe differently. When you have to express different emotions, if you have to show anger, you have to breathe faster. Only then can anger be expressed. So, when you are feeling serene, the in-breath is slow and soft. You don’t feel the exhalation at all. When you are frustrated, your exhalation is powerful and your inhalation, you don’t even know when you took a deep breath in. Now, by doing some “pranayamas”, you can reverse this. You can change this.
Sudarshan KriyaTM is the best way to get out of your blocks. As a precursor to this try some simple breathing exercises: Straw pranayama & Bhastrika.
3. Pump up Prana
Prana is life energy or life force. When prana is lower, you feel depressed. When prana is normal, you feel normal. When prana is higher, you feel enthusiastic. When prana is very high, you feel energetic and blissful. Everything comes up in life when the prana is flowing flawlessly in the central channel that gets activated during yoga, during meditation. Little detoxification/fresh fruit or juice diet coupled with Pranayama will work magic.
What We Learned
Train the mind to live in the present moment. Drop the stress that you are carrying for nothing. Our smile is worth the whole world & more! No work is stressful. It is your inability to manage your body, mind, and emotions that make it stressful. You don’t have to keep stress and anxiety.
When you are losing motivation that is a sign that you are tired, and you need recuperation. So every once in a while, stop the rat race, take some time out to be with yourself, and get some rest. This is what knowledge is and this is what spirituality is. True sadhana is to be calm, contented and rested. Also for one, two or three days go into retreat. Some silence, meditation, yoga, pranayama and a liquid diet will help.
Focus on breathing. Learn the most dynamic Pranayama – Sudarshan KriyaTM for more power and energy.
