Relax, Let Go And Enjoy Your Stay

- Don't Let Stress And Anxiety Mar Your Experience On Planet Earth
- The way the human body is constructed, it would appear that it was Known beforehand that this living being is always going to encounter stress and strain in some form or the other in their lifetime. And that the stress will not be related to the humdrum challenges of foraging and survival alone; it will go beyond. For a typical human life, stress begins to be experienced right from the moment the gravida's uterine muscles begin their contractions to expel her precious cargo. The subtle stress signals coming from the muscles of the surrounding walls are a hint to the neonate - ensconced in its comfortable sac - that its time to "arrive", has finally arrived. Never mind if the infant ends up being lifted from the sac after carving a slit in it. Stress has already been hardwired in its psyche, become part of its nature, part of its life; no there's no escape; and dear kid, now that you have chosen to arrive, now that you have arrived, welcome to Planet Earth!


In neurobiology labs, entire professional careers are invested in studying the hotlines set up between three very important glands in the body that work very hard to battle stress in our life - the Hypothalamus and the Pituitary - both embedded deep in the brain -, and the Adrenal - sitting atop the two kidneys like cute crowns. Together known as the HPA, this "axis" between these three commanders is always buzzing with activity, always alert to handle any stress that we might choose to take upon ourselves.

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* 'The Stress of Life' - Hans Selye, Amazon.com. Selye's seminal research led to the establishment of the role played by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in stress management in our body. A 1993 paper in the journal 'Neuropsychobiology' introduced to the world the "Trier Social Stress Test", that has now become an industry standard to induce and measure in laboratory setting, psychological stress in both healthy subjects as well as clinical populations.
When we take stress upon us, the HPA tautens every cell, tissue and muscle in our body, which is then put on deep, flashing-red alert of the anxious kind. The appropriate energy-generating chemicals - such as glucose - whoosh through the bloodstream, making sure that no cell collapses due to fatigue in the crucial life-sustaining moment. The immune system is asked to hold fire: wait, it is told, those threats from the tiny microorganisms can be handled later; let's get past this immediate danger first. It is a cost that we incur at the metabolic level, every time we indulge in stress. We pay for it, and heavily, though we do not realize it then. When the threat subsides, the HPA commanders heave a sigh of relief. That was close! Tomorrow will be another day.


* Somebody aiming before shooting, sxc.hu/straymuse. The sight of an armed gunman running amok on a college campus can lead to immediate stress in people who know what a gun in the hand of a person with that out-of-the-ordinary expression on the face, means. This very same person's actions might draw squeals of delight from a small child sitting on the ledge of a window across the road, who finds the actions comical and mirthful. It is not the sight of a threat which creates stress in our HPA. It is the perspective which does.
Whew, feels good when the threat subsides. But what if it doesn't subside? At this stage of life, we know by now that certain of life's challenges do not end so soon so fast. Some challenges have a tendency to fester and suppurate, and some others take perverse pleasure in taking tension to never-before heights. Stress steals up slowly from behind when we have to deal with an insane world with all its illogical rules and cynical regulations, with all its quirks of daily-living and all its unreliable machinery. Stress descends on the mind when we confront the ruthlessness of a universe that follows the Law of Cause-and-Effect both in letter and in spirit.

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* 'The Overachievers: The Secret Lives Of Driven Kids' - by Alexandra Robbins, Amazon.com. We all are quite painfully aware of the trials and tribulations endured by the underachievers and those who are unable to perform well due to x-y-zee reasons. But there is this other end of the pole too which demands equal empathy.

Growing up with fingers wagging at them, asking them to achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve, that the best they were producing just wasn't good enough, the plight of the overachiever is very rarely chronicled. To aspire for even higher goals is quite laudable of course. But the downside of looking at oneself from the critiquing eyes of parents and teachers is that one tends to begin leading a life that is full of stress. The stress becomes so acute for these these overachievers, that hardly any surprise it is when some dysfunction and disorder creep into their system.

And then we moan and shake our collective heads at such a terrible waste of their brilliant, genius brains.
Stress walks by our side, grinning that lopsided grin, as we huff and puff in our attempt to push our particular cart of responsibilities and commitments and promises, up a steep hill, this cart whose wheels wobble all the time and whose tires wore out long ago. After reaching the brow of the hill, this same stress claps and shouts whoopee and bends over with laughter at our plight, as the cart careens down the slide, going out of control, and we try to hold on to it with as much dignity as we can muster, hoping that the next bend in the road will prove to be less disastrous than the last. And what happens when the road is a straight, level, smooth cruise? We still get stressed nevertheless, wondering where in heaven stress went!? Where has all the drama gone? Why is there such quiet contemplation now becoming possible? Why have we been left alone? Have we fallen out of favor? What have we done? What happened? What happened? And we go searching for aggravation, even more aggravation, aggravation in different flavors and exotic colors, to embrace and invite in our lives, just so that stress can once again return. When there's nobody around to do it, then we perform the infliction of wounds on ourselves. Who needs enemies?

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* Clip from the 1993 movie - "Schindler's List", YouTube. Women folk, part of the Schindler's List of employees were to be transported to the factory at Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Moravia. During the journey in the train, the women joke amongst themselves about how tasty and fulfilling wholesome food can be. However, when they alight from the train, they find themselves in the midst of stern-looking officials of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp instead. Somebody had obviously bungled.

Standard genocide protocol at the camp requires their hair to be cut and cropped short, followed by stripping them naked, followed by shepherding them to the gas chamber disguised as a shower facility, for an apparent delousing. All through this procedure, the grim realization that they were not in for Nirvana in the form of productive labor at some factory, but that they were to face Nirvana of a totally different kind altogether, heightens the personal and collective stress. The arc lights are switched off and dim lights come on. Everybody lets out that involuntary scream of helplessness which comes when the stress becomes unbearable and neither fight nor flight appears possible. And then the showers start functioning. Oh, so this is how it will end! May be it is the new version of Zyklon B being tested on them - the liquid, not the gaseous version.

The liquid from the shower begins sprinkling over the body. Feels so heavenly, this liquid! Like the water coming from the shower at home. But of course, it is water! Pure, cold water! How could it be? Yes, it is - Schindler's magic wand of bribery has performed its miracle yet again and that too in the nick of time. A wave of relief washes over the huddled women folk. In those few moments, they understand the true meaning of stress.
When we expose ourselves repeatedly to the same kind of stress over and over again, a funny thing happens to the HPA axis. Looks like plain-vanilla HPA-stress fatigue to me; neurobiologists however have chosen to call it habituation. Meaning, the three commanders begin to take it easy, they begin to think that it is part of the natural environment we are embedded in. They then lower their guard and remove the red-alert alarm, signaling to the rest of the body to resume normal operations. Why does it happen automatically? Who gives the HPA commanders the command to "get habituated"? The Why and the Who are a mystery in the field of neurobiology. It is like the body's mechanisms saying, "We give up. We give in. We incorporate this repeated, continuous stress within us."

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* Stress at work, YouTube / xawexi. Today, after so many years, I too can enjoy the humor in the scene that the clip owner alludes to. I did not feel this way when I got the news of something similar happening in the office, and had to rush back from a client meeting. The office was a chaos. The furniture was in shambles. Computer equipment, very cheap now but very expensive in those days, lay in pieces on the floor. The perpetrator, having ultimately been overpowered by shocked colleagues, sat in a corner on a stool, head in hands.

For a recently booted-up business, working on shoestring capital and negligible reserves, entirely self-owned, very little could be worse, especially when the payback is still some distance away. Insurers, with all that experience behind them, shrewdly insert in their policies the clause of such acts not being covered. The images of the clients whose deadline loomed the next week and month - swam before the eyes. The images of the creditors and the couple of lenders who had chipped in some money to help realize the dream of owning a business - swam before the eyes.

Salvaging whatever could be salvaged, restoring the office back to normalcy and getting the operations back on track in as short a time as possible --- required a lot of energy and additional funding --- and stress! Turned out the employee had some issues at home that he was so stressed about - and the moment it had to explode took place in the office. Of all the people in his world, he chose me to transfer his stress to!

Oh yes, I too can enjoy the humor in the scene today.

The consequence of this surrender by the HPA and its subsequent habituation is that, while the tangible body with its cells and chemicals moves on with its routine tasks of living, the stress now gets a clear road to seep deep into our psyche without hinder. Because of its very nature, it becomes very easy for stress to blend into our core DNA. Before long, and almost unbeknown to us, the blending begins to change our personality. Anxiety and anxiety disorders are but manifestations of this blending with the DNA and the change in the personality.

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* A panic disorder slide from the ADAA website, www.adaa.org. Panic disorder, excessive worries, anxieties that come in diverse hues and flavors, are a manifestation of stress that has seeped into our psyche and taken control over our life, after the HPA habituation.
Sigh. And to think that we had come to Earth with so much eager anticipation. We were told that we would be having a good time. "As tourists!", we were told, "Go and enjoy your stay on planet Earth as tourists, enjoy the sunshine and the rain and the snow and the desert, the good food and the wine and the nice music; some very nice people who will be your relatives and friends; they are all there in place, for you to savor; enjoy the experiences that unfold every moment of the way." And then we were pointed to a very special suit we were going to don while on this earth. Exercise patience, we were told, this suit is in the process of being readied in a special sac lying inside a very special person who is preparing to deliver us on Earth at the appointed time. The suit that will grow as we age in the fourth dimension of time. The suit that will take us to places and that will allow us to enjoy Earth in its three dimensions. The suit that will help us negotiate our interactions with fellow suit-wearers. Such elaborate and advance preparation for our visit! Everything been thought out in such minute detail! How we were looking forward to this visit to Earth as tourists! "Come back and tell your experience." Oh, yes, yes. We will enjoy Earth; is such an enchanting place. Never mind that when, after wearing the suit in the amniotic sac and splashing around in its fluids for a while, we had cried when we finally birthed. That was just a startled reaction to the shock of the unexpected.


And, true to what we had been promised as tourists, we got a charming place to visit and enjoy for ourselves. The sunshine and the rain and the snow and the desert that we saw in the travel brochures in the departure lounge before embarking on the flight to earth, were not some artist's wild imagination, nor were they Anybody's marketing gimmick. These goodies are all right here in reality, for us to savor. The experiences unfolding every moment of the way that we were told would be delightful surprises on our life-path, were not a perverse attempt to delude and torture. They are all unfolding right here in reality, for us to enjoy. At least, that was the theory. In practice however, why is it that, instead of enjoying our time as tourists, you and I, why are we feeling so stressed and anxious and dysfunctional? Why aren't we enjoying our stay? What is the matter? What went wrong?


I think the reason we are feeling so stressed and anxious and dysfunctional in practice is that we forgot that we are but tourists here, on this planet earth. We forgot that this 4D world is not our permanent abode. Just as, at the appointed time, we docked onto Earth after donning a suit, in the same way at the appointed time we shall depart, leaving the suit behind for white ants to eat or the wooden logs to burn - who's bothered, who cares? We celebrate the day we arrived as our "birthday", do we not? Tacit in this celebration is the acknowledgment that "arrival" also implies "departure", though we choose not to dwell on this aspect while celebrating, which is where the whole problem lies. At the appointed time we will bid adieu to Earth and return to where we came from. Return along with beautiful experiences captured on the Kodak roll of our memories.


In practice, what happens is that in the process of growing with the passage of Time, we become so used to this place and the people around us that we somehow forget our identity of tourists. So seduced we are by these experiences, that we go deeper and deeper in the desire for more. Unfortunately, as mystics point out, at a certain depth in our engagement with the physical world, some very specific "reactions" begin taking place between its ingredients and the ingredients of the spiritual world that we are made of. A bonding, an attachment begins to occur between the two. The attachment creates some very powerful emotions that overwhelm and neutralize the basic emotion of enjoyment that we were meant to focus on. Like strong smells dousing a faint fragrance. Blinded in the desire for even better experiences, we pour these emotions unwisely into every situation we encounter. The cathexis of emotions proves to be our undoing.


Emotions --- such as fear that a given situation might pan out into something that will harm or hurt us in some way, apprehension that an outcome might not be the one that will give us happiness, disappointment and sadness about an outcome that went in another direction, anger and resentment at being shortchanged or let down somehow --- all these emotions distract the mind from the basic purpose for which we had come here - that of being at peace with the world as an individual, and enjoying the bonhomie of fellow souls as a collective. Reflect objectively upon any situation in your life that has been causing you stress, and you will see how behind the camouflage of stress is hidden some emotion that you have invested so much. We had no business over-investing our emotions into the physical world. This investment is without return, it has no meaning. We had nothing to do with the physical world; we had just come here to enjoy, have fun, and then go back. Then why did we choose to attach in the first place? Attachment created all these messy emotions. The stress and the anxiety and the dysfunction are a consequence of our attachments.


This is the key: We had no business over-investing our emotions into the physical world. We could continue to enjoy the good things available on this grand tourist spot we call earth, without over-indulging in any cathexis. As good tourists, of course we are expected to do everything possible to advance our self-interests, to enhance the quality of our stay, and to explore every possible avenue for self-actualization -- without causing inconvenience or harm to self or to fellow tourists. Where do stress and anxiety come in the picture? They don't need to. The secret is to detach. Disengage. At the same time, be rooted in the basic purpose of our existence: to remain happy during our stay here on earth, to be grateful to have received such gracious and congenial hospitality, and to return back with beautiful images imprinted on the Kodak roll of our memories.



At best, any given experience is nothing but a source of enjoyment. At worst, it is nothing but a nuisance, to be handled in the most constructive way we possibly can, and to move on. Seen in this light, every single experience becomes yet another event unfolding on the onward path of life, and it doesn't matter whether we are facing an exam or we are facing a pink-slip, whether we are getting ready for the first date or we are preparing ourselves for the spouse's walkout. Every single interaction with some fellow suit-wearer gives us nothing but peace, and it doesn't matter whether the suit-wearer has put on the garb of misguided terrorist or that of doting lover, whether the suit-wearer has cloaked themselves as diabolical sadist or as adoring parent.


Detach, disengage, from the ingredients of the physical world. Who said that detachment is only for the monks and hermits who live on the mountain plateau in that small hut by the brook? You can practice detachment right here, right now. And while doing so, enjoy everything that this earth has to offer. When you begin practicing detachment, you will automatically feel the stress begin to un-blend from the core DNA.


Relax. Let go. And enjoy your stay here on earth.