Rudra - Cosmos of Healing

23/11/2025

Rudra Musings

Stepping Out

Like self-serving courtiers, thoughts and emotions don’t always speak the truth, and they come and go. That is why we need to treat emotions and thoughts in the same way we treat those corporate reports, as mere position papers, subject to our evaluation, rather than as representations of solid reality leading to action points. Thoughts and emotions contain information, not directions. Some of the information we act on, some we mark as situations to be watched and some we treat as nonsense to be pitched into the bin.

Emotional agility means having any number of troubling thoughts or emotions and still managing to act in a way that serves how you most want to live. That’s what it means to step out and off the hook.

Techniques for Stepping Out

- Think process. See yourself as being in it for the long haul and on a path of continuous growth. Absolutist statements drawn from old stories (‘I’m bad at public speaking’ or ‘I’m terrible at sports’) are just that – stories. They are not your destiny.

- Get contradictory. In Zen Buddhism it is common practice to contemplate paradoxes, such as ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ There are probably paradoxes from your own life that you could chew on in a Zen-like fashion: you may love and loathe your hometown, your family or your body. You can feel that you’re both the victim and the person responsible for a relationship breakdown. Embracing and accepting these seeming contradictions improves your tolerance for uncertainty.

- Have a laugh. Humour can be a stepping-out practice because it forces you to see new possibilities. As long as you aren’t using humour to mask genuine pain (bottling), finding something funny about yourself or your circumstance can help you accept and then create distance.

- Change your point of view. Try to consider your problem from the perspective of someone else – your dentist, your child or even your dog.

- Call it out. Any time you get hooked, identify that thought for what it is – a thought – and that emotion for what it is – an emotion. You can do this by introducing the language ‘I am having the thought that …’ or ‘I am having the emotion that …’ Remember you have no obligation to accept your thoughts’ or emotions’ opinions, much less act on their advice.

- Talk to yourself in the third person. This strategy allows you to transcend your egocentric viewpoint and regulate your reaction.

With a receptive, open, broader view we can hold our thoughts and emotions lightly, not be hooked on old stories and not prejudge new experiences as they come along. We can let go.

from the book ‘Emotional Agility’ by Susan David

Healing to Happiness

16/11/2025

Rudra Musings

Vedas - about both material and spiritual aspects of life

The misguided ones who delight in the melodious chanting of the Vedas - without understanding the real purpose of the Vedas - think as if there is nothing else in the Vedas except the rituals for the sole purpose of obtaining heavenly enjoyment. They are dominated by material desires and consider the attainment of heaven as the highest goal of life. They engage in specific rites for the sake of prosperity and enjoyment. Rebirth is the result of their action. The resolute determination of Self- realization is not formed in the minds of those who are attached to pleasure and power and whose judgment is obscured by such ritualistic activities. A portion of the Vedas deals with three modes or states (Gunas) of the material Nature. Become free from pairs of opposites; be ever balanced and unconcerned with the thoughts of acquisition and preservation. Rise above the three states, and be
Self-conscious. To a Self-realized person, the Vedas are as useful as a small reservoir of water when the water of a huge lake becomes available.

from the Bhagwad Gita

09/11/2025

Rudra Musings

Tweaking Our Habits

Habits can be powerful. Often, it is difficult to break them. It follows, then, that if we want to direct our behaviour toward our values – if we want to really master emotional agility – we should transform our intentional behaviours into habits, making them so deeply ingrained that we no longer have to be ‘intentional’ about them at all. The beauty of deliberately cultivating habits in line with our values and associated ‘want-to’ motivations is that they can persist over time with almost no further effort, on good days and on bad, when we’re really paying attention and when we’re not. No matter how frazzled we are in the morning, we always remember to brush our teeth and to fasten our seat belts as soon as we get in the car. The ability to form values-connected habits not only makes our good intentions durable, it also frees up our mental resources for other tasks as well.

Habit is defined as an externally triggered automatic response to a
frequently encountered context. We encounter dozens, if not hundreds, of these familiar contexts every day, and generally respond to them automatically and unconsciously. But when we approach these situations intentionally, seeking opportunities to act in line with our values, we can use them to trigger better habits.

Studies have shown that exposure to cues we associate with rewards – tasty food, money, s*x, ci******es for smokers, drug paraphernalia for addicts – activates the brain’s ‘reward areas’, the structures and systems that drive people to seek out the pleasure that’s readily available.

Limit the exposure, limit the temptation, and you make life easier for the ‘executive brain’, the part that integrates the cognitive and the emotional, to arrive at an appropriate course of action.

Here are some more tweaks you can make to alter the architecture of your choices.

1. The no-brainer: Switch up your environment so that when you’re hungry, tired, stressed or rushed, the choice most aligned with your values is also the easiest. Let’s say that you want to drop a few kilograms. Studies show that people tend to eat 90 to 97 per cent of what is on their plate, regardless of the size of the plate. So use smaller plates. Based on that maths, a plate that’s 10 per cent smaller should reduce food intake by 10 per cent.

2. The piggyback: Add a new behaviour on to an existing habit. Studies show that when participants choose a new specific action to consistently piggyback on to an existing habit – add some fruit each time you eat a granola – they have significant success transferring that new action into a habitual behaviour.

3. The pre - commitment: Anticipate obstacles and prepare for them with ‘if-then’ strategies. Let’s say you’ve had a fight with your boyfriend and want to smooth things over. You know you both have a tendency to lose your temper when things get tense, but that yelling at each other makes you both miserable and that you sometimes say things you regret. You want to resolve the situation, not continue as you have in the past. Often, when we can anticipate unpleasant situations or reactions like this, we allow ourselves to get hooked by them. And even though we may want
to change, when confronted by these emotional triggers, we can’t. But emotional agility allows you to take a step back and see these moments as opportunities to make a values-based commitment to yourself. Before you even talk to your boyfriend, you can commit to the idea that ‘if’ he raises Explosive Topic X, ‘then’ you’ll hear him out with an open mind. Similarly, you may know that, when the alarm goes off at 5 a.m., you’ll be tempted to roll over and hit snooze instead of getting up for a morning run. So the night before you tell yourself that even ‘if’ you’re tempted to sleep in, ‘then’ you’ll immediately haul yourself out of bed no matter how tired you feel because, as grumpy as you might be for a few minutes, you’ll feel a thousand times better an hour later when you’ve started your day with a bit of exercise.

*4. The obstacle course:* Offset a positive vision with thoughts of potential challenges. Fantasizing about smoothly attaining your dreams doesn’t help. In fact, it hinders you by tricking your brain into believing that you’ve already achieved the goal. In essence, these positive fantasies let the fizz out of the bottle, dissipating the energy we need to stay motivated and really follow through. Those who achieved the best results did so through a combination of optimism and realism. It’s important to believe that you can achieve your goal, but you also need to pay attention to the obstacles most likely to get in the way. This is called mental contrasting.

A mind that is open to growth and change is a hub from which values and goals can be brought to life and realized. Tweaking your mindset, motivation and habits is about turning your heart toward the fluidity of the world, rather than planting your feet on its stability. It’s bringing a playful sense of curiosity, experimentation and what-ifs to bear in the service of living.

from the book ‘Emotional Agility’ by Susan David

Healing to Happiness

26/10/2025

Rudra Musings

Meet The Who’s Who of the team running your Brain

Amygdala
Mrs. A is your internal fire alarm but is also a drama queen. Freaks out anytime you do something vulnerable. While her job is to scan for danger and alert the rest of your system. But she doesn’t fact check. She reacts. When she takes over your heart races and your stomach clenches and you get that feeling that something bad is about to happen.

- Try hand-on-chest breathing or humming to calm her down.

Prefrontal Cortex
Mr. C is your logic guy. Strategies, Decision Making, Boundaries, Creativity. But when Mrs. A starts screaming, Mr. C shuts down. He is in action only when you are well regulated. When not, you spiral, you forget everything and you can even spell simple words.

- Move your body gently (walking, swaying) and name 3 things you see/hear/feel to re-engage your executive brain.

Vegus Nerve
V is a vibe regulator. Listens to everything from your breath to your digestion and tells your body whether it’s safe to chill or needs to fight for life. V runs the parasympathetic nervous system and connects your brain, heart, lungs and gut. When V is in order, you feel calm, clear and connected.

- Long exhales, gargling, chanting or cold water on your face.

Cortisol
This one is a stress dealer and is activated any time your brain thinks you are in danger. It is helpful in the short term but if it is always high, you feel tired, foggy, and inflamed. If overactive, your sleep sucks, your patience vanishes and your digestion shuts down.

- Exhale focused breathing, sunlight, or a slow facial massage will help you calm down.

Sympathetic Nervous System
This one is a lion - fight/ flight branch of your nervous system. It is always hyped to act but if it doesn’t power down, you burn out. If over-activated you are snappy, sweaty, reactive and overstimulated.

- Balance on one foot, soften your jaw, or do slow head circles.

This is not about controlling your brain. It is about understanding it.

taken from social media posts.

Healing to Happiness

20/10/2025

19/10/2025

Rudra Musings

*Prana - The Primal Energy*

“The Supreme Self is the hub of the wheel of life, the elements and senses are its sixteen spokes that created the material universe. Reach out for unity with that reality to transcend death, fear and rebirth.” - Prashna Upanishad

The powers that create the body are space, fire, earth, air and water. Sense organs like speech, mind, eyes, ears, and others, support the body. But Prana, the vital energy holds the body together. Prana is supreme. Everything exists in Prana and depends on it for sustenance. Prana also prevails in the mind.

Prana is born of the Supreme Self and it enters the body at the time of birth. The consciousness that leaves us at the time of death is what unites us to Prana.

The mind is the master of all senses. When we sleep the senses rest and all activities stop. Only Prana is awake keeping the body alive, and the mind is united to the Supreme Self. We sleep in the caring hands of Brahman.

The elements and faculties also take rest in the Supreme intelligence, which receives sensory inputs and creates knowledge for our survival. One who understands that it is in the eternal Supreme Self that the mind, the senses, Prana and the elements exist requires no further enlightenment.

from the book - ‘Upanishads for the Modern World’ by Dr. G. K. Pillai

31/08/2025

Rudra Musings

Developing Empathy

The greatest gift you can give someone is your time because that is a portion of your life that you will never get back - ‘Unknown’

It is important to understand that everyone is going through some challenge or the other; in that light, we need to learn how to be empathetic.

The different types of suffering are split into three categories: suffering as a result of our own actions, suffering as a result of another’s actions and suffering imposed by nature.

As a collective, we are called humankind. Therefore, the core, the essence, of being human, is being kind. Empathy is learning how to be kind without judgement.

The first principle of empathy is to understand the issue. To do this, we need to learn how to listen to understand and not to reply.

The second principle of empathy is to try and intentionally feel the emotions of another. It is one thing to understand an issue, but we need to develop an emotional connection to display empathy.

The third principle of empathy is acting. Although being there for someone in their time of difficulty is acting, we must understand that love is a verb. Is there anything in our capability we can do to eliminate or minimize their pain?

Understand, feel and act.

from the book ‘Energize Your Mind’ by Gaur Gopal Das

24/08/2025

Rudra Musings

Relationships

Relationships are necessary for you to exist in this world. Whether you keep them beautiful or ugly is all the choice that you have. There is no choice. Maybe you do not get married or maybe you do not build a family. But you still have relationships with anything and everything around you. So the choice is just this: either you make the relationship beautiful or ugly; that is all the choice you have.

If you had a choice between pleasantness and unpleasantness, between joy and misery, between beauty and ugliness, what would you choose? Definitely joy, definitely pleasantness. But why does unpleasantness happen? Why is misery happening? Simply because nothing about you is in control; everything is happening accidentally.

Your body, your mind, your emotions and the energy that makes all these three happen is you. These are what you call ‘myself’.

If you closely examine and see; how much of your body, how much of your mind, how much of your emotions and how much of your energy is happening the way you want it? Very little. Most of it is happening the way external situations demand, not the way you want it. You are deeply enslaved to the situations in which you exist.

A relationship is possible only when there is some sense of freedom within you as to who you are. Otherwise it is just slavery, compulsiveness. When you exist as a compulsive being, you cannot operate as a conscious being, and what you want will not happen. Whichever way situations ensues, that is the way your life will happen; you become accidental. Once you exist as an accident, you are a potential calamity.

For most people, initially relationships bring joy, after that they bring only anxiety. Your enemies do not come and kill you. It is your loved ones, with whom you created relationships with lots of care and which you always wanted - they are taking your life away. This is not okay. Somewhere we have not gotten the fundamentals right. This is because relationships have come out of compulsiveness and not out of choice or out of consciousness.

If one wants to have absolutely fantastic relationships, first you need to establish yourself as a joyful human being, somebody whose joy is on ‘self start’ and not on ‘push start’. If you are fine by yourself, wherever you go you will have wonderful relationships with people.

from the book “Don’t Polish Your Ignorance.. It May Shine” by Sadhguru

10/08/2025

Rudra Musings

Who Am I?

”When I discover who I am, I will be free.”

Am I the senses?
The physical body has senses—sight, touch, smell, taste, sound—which interact with sense objects. We see through our eyes, we smell through our nose, we taste using our tongue. As matter cannot experience other matter, this implies that we are something beyond the senses. We are simply utilizing the body and the senses as a tool to interact with things and people in this world. We may interact with sense objects using our senses, but we are not our senses.

Am I the Mind?
When the mind gets disconnected from the particular sense, even though the sense is in contact with the sense object, we don’t perceive that sense object. That is why there
is the concept of being absent-minded, that is, the mind is elsewhere. The mind interacts with the senses and is responsible for thinking, feeling and willing, but we are not the mind either.

Am I the Intelligence?
Even the intelligence is an instrument that is used and can get shut off. Whether we are watching a film or are madly in love, the intelligence can also stop working and is therefore not the essence of our identity. The intelligence is another subtle part of our being which is used to discriminate how to act; it analyses a situation. Nevertheless, the essence of our being is not the intelligence.

Am I the Ego?
The words ‘I am’ represent the ego. ‘I am a human, I am a man or woman, I am Indian, Russian or American, I am Hindu, Christian or Muslim.’ ‘I am’ encompasses a whole range of identities, but one has to question if ‘I am’ is the ego, who is that ‘I’? The ego represents the multiple roles and identity labels that we have. It is even more subtle than the mind and intelligence, and something that we deeply identify with. However, we’re not the ego either.

I am the Self!
The real self is called the atma or spiritual consciousness. It is the final layer within the Russian doll, which is the essence of our being.

from the book “Energize Your Mind” by Gaur Gopal Das

13/07/2025

Rudra Musings

Personalities of Man

The core of our personality is the Self - the real you, expressed through our personality layers also known as Vasanas (वासना).

Vasanas are our individual tendencies or personality layers we have adopted over our lifetime and through many lifetimes before. Vasanas are the impressions left in our minds by our actions and experiences. This in turn mould our thought processes and actions.

The three aspects to our physical and psychological makeup are Body, Mind and Intellect.

Body
In the realm of the physical personality, the body and the senses are paramount. The senses always seek pleasure. The body seeks comfort and fulfillment of its needs. The body may feel content but the senses are never satisfied.

Mind
This reflects your emotional self. You are identified by your emotions, feelings and sentiments.

Intellect
Identification with the intellect is the thinking self. The intellect is the rational thinker and is full of ideals and principles.

Self
At the core of these is your spiritual Self, your real Self. The spiritual personality demands truth and perfection and holds the highest values of life.

So in every field of life we actually have four personalities acting together.

from “Storm To Perform” by Swami Swaroopananda

Healing to Happiness

06/07/2025

Rudra Musings

Inner Strength

Life constantly presents us with all kinds of challenges. Our capacity to meet them depends largely on the strength or weakness of our inner state.

There is this beautiful prayer that says: “God grant me the serenity to accept things that I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Often, the difficulties we face are a reflection of an inner weakness. External problems mirror inner disturbances, which in turn are due to our internal limitations. That is why we need to gather strength inwardly; so we can fulfill our potential and attain success regardless of circumstances.

Our inner strength consists of (i) memory patterns (ii) the mind and (iii) the intellect. Of these three mind is the most complex and difficult one. Although it is difficult to restrain the mind, it is not impossible. And do it we must both to seek peace and contentment within and success and accomplishment in the world without.

from “Storm To Perform” by Swami Swaroopananda

Healing to Happiness

08/06/2025

Rudra Musings

Anger and Karma

What is the difference between actually hurting someone and wanting to hurt someone. Is being angry a very bad karma?

The question of being angry with somebody does not arise. You are not angry with anybody, you are just angry. Your anger has nothing to do with somebody else. It’s about you. Anger is simply anger. Your anger has nothing to do with anybody except yourself, only yourself. If you realize this your anger will not last long.

Anger comes from strong sense of like and dislike. This in turn comes from a very deep identification with a certain way of thinking, a certain way of feeling, a certain way of life - which you think is the best way to live, which you think is the best way to think and feel. If somebody is not in line with that, you get angry at those things.

If your likes, dislikes, your identifications become stronger, all you are doing is excluding existence. If you say “I like this very much”, in a way you are excluding the rest of existence. The very process of liberation is to include, not to exclude. In exclusion, you become trapped. In inclusion, you become liberated.

Keep saying “I am not this, I am not this, I am not this”. Once you have dis-identified with everything that is not you, you become all inclusive. Anger itself is not karma, exclusion is the big karma.

Essential Wisdom from a Spiritual Master - Sadhguru

Healing to Happiness