A Healing Perspective on Mind, Energy, and Balance through understanding the Gunas

 

Ancient Indian healing traditions teach that true wellbeing is not something we “fix,” but something we remember. Beneath our shifting moods, habits, and identities, there is a natural intelligence always moving us toward balance. One of the clearest ways to understand this movement is through the wisdom of the three gunas.

The gunas are subtle qualities of nature that shape our energy, mind, emotions, and consciousness. They are always present, always changing, and always interacting within us. When we learn to recognise them, we gain a powerful lens for self-healing, emotional regulation, and spiritual growth without force or self-judgment.

These three energies shape our inner world

The understanding of the gunas can be found in many Indian traditional texts such as the Bhagavad Gita. The gunas are basically three in nature. Sattva, Rajas and Tamas and each of these have different functions. Colours, food, water, in fact everything around you, carries these gunas. If you eat junk food it makes you feel heavy and tamasic, if you use the colour red that is rajasic, if you eat onions, they are rajasic and if you sacrifice something to help another that is sattvic. So, there is a subtleness to the gunas that you will discover as you become more aware of how they work in you.

Tamas is the most dense and heavy

Tamas is the energy of heaviness, stillness and rest. At its best, it allows deep sleep, stability, and recovery when you need it but as an extreme it causes stagnation. You will notice it perhaps as fatigue or numbness, depression or apathy, confusion, doubt or avoidance or emotional heaviness and attachment. Energetically it feels like you are blocked and there is no flow.

Rajas is your fire, your passion, your movement

Rajas is the energy of activity and change. It fuels ambition, creativity, and desire but can also easily tip into excess. You may experience rajas as restlessness or anxiety, overthinking or stress, emotional intensity or irritability or being constantly driven with no rest. Rajas is nervous system activation. It can fuel your passion which is good but is not often in balance.

Sattva is when you have clarity, harmony and a lightness

Sattva is the energy of balance and awareness. It brings coherence to the body, steadiness to the mind, and openness to the heart. You may feel sattva as a calmness of presence, emotional ease, compassion and empathy, a quiet joy and trust or a sense of being “at home” within yourself. Sattva is the state in which healing integrates and insight arises naturally and for this reason this state makes for easy mindfulness and meditation.

Everything Is a Blend

No emotion, thought, or action is purely one guna or the other. So, they are not purely tamasic, rajasic, or sattvic. Each moment carries a unique blend of all three. What matters most is which energy is leading. This is why change is always possible. Even within anger, there is a clarity waiting to be uncovered. Even within darkness and heaviness (tamas), there is the seed of movement (rajas) and light (sattva). The key to dominion over the gunas is not suppression but awareness and intention.

Healing through conscious awareness

Traditional Indian healing systems recognise that we are nourished on many levels not only by food, but by also by actions and thoughts. Your whole being is constantly being fed by what you eat and drink, what you see, hear, and scroll, the conversations you engage in, the environments you spend time in and the thoughts you repeatedly return to in your head. Each of these carries a guna quality. In order to take control and self-care after any experience, gently ask yourself if you feel more open or more contracted? More clear or more scattered? More alive or more depleted? Just noticing these things is a powerful act of self-care.

Attention Is Energy

You may not control which thoughts or emotions arise but you do shape the inner landscape by where you place your attention. What you dwell on grows and what you resist often intensifies. If you stay present however and work through it your presence softens negativity. In this way from an energetic perspective, attention is a form of nourishment.

Living and Acting in Sattva

Action also has also an energetic signature. Sattvic action feels aligned rather than forced, thoughtful rather than impulsive, grounded in integrity rather than urgency. Before acting, try asking ‘What is moving me right now? Is this coming from fear, desire, or clarity?’ When intention and action are aligned, the nervous system relaxes and energy flows more freely.

Moving Gently Towards Balance

When energy feels heavy or shut down, begin with movement (rajas) such as walking, gentle exercise, breathwork, moving in a routine and being out in fresh air. This movement restores your circulation both physically and energetically.

When life feels overstimulating, begin to soften by including meditation, time out in nature, journaling, more presence and less stimulation and slow down your breathing. The stillness will nourish you.

In general, the idea is to reduce stagnation, balance your activity and move towards cultivating greater clarity. This is achieved through the above internal methods by learning to be still yet ‘still present’ in the world and it fosters a greater sense of kindness, discrimination and ease in how you live your life.

So that heaviness (tamas) and movement or intensity (rajas) is not something to eliminate as it is a natural rhythm of being human. It is something to notice and again and again balance. Healing comes with the awareness and that awareness can build a strength in your being to see with clarity and understanding. Try is and see how it affects you and if you need assistance we are always here with our classes in mindfulness, meditation and techniques to assist you to bring a quality of calmness and flow to your life. www.stressfreehealthmanagement.com

Pre Diabetic? – No, we can help you overcome that despite test results

Some people may find that they have higher than usual blood sugar levels. Typically, we associate this as being diabetes. However, for some people they don’t meet the threshold for a diabetes diagnosis. This is called pre-diabetes. This condition often has no symptoms but is still serious. Pre-diabetes means you are at risk for developing Type 2 diabetes, heart attacks and strokes. Many people don’t know they have pre-diabetes as there are normally no symptoms.

Risk factors for pre-diabetes

Some of the factors that put you at risk for developing pre-diabetes include:

·         If you have had gestational diabetes or gave birth to a baby weighing over 4.08 kilo

·         If you are overweight

·         If you have a parent or sibling with Type 2 diabetes

·         If you are over 45

·         If you are not very physically active

If this is you, and you think you may have pre-diabetes you should get it checked.

Ways to help manage pre-diabetes

Once you have found that you have pre-diabetes then you need to look at changing some of your lifestyle habits. If you don’t do anything then there is a high chance it will develop into Type 2 Diabetes. Then you will also possibly get other bad health problems. There is an increased risk of kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage and limb amputation.

If you want to manage your pre-diabetic state you need a healthy, active lifestyle. Curcumin is one preventative for Type 2 diabetes. So, this is a great herb to add into your diet on a daily basis.

Curcumin helps the functioning of beta cells. These are found in the pancreas. They synthesise and secrete insulin. It can also regulate and moderate molecules and improve pancreatic glucose and insulin responses.

Vitamin D also has many health benefits. It makes for strong bones, muscles and nerves. Vitamin D helps your immune system fight bacteria and viruses. Boosting vitamin D levels can help control glucose levels.

CoQ10 is an antioxidant enzyme decreases in your body as you age. It keeps your heart healthy, assists your brain to function, lowers inflammation and lowers insulin resistance. It is found in meat, fish and nuts.

Exercise is one of the healthiest ways to maintain your whole body. A half hour fast walk a few times a week will bring you great health benefits especially in lowering your risk of Type 2 diabetes. If you reduce your physical activity you increase insulin resistance. So the level of exertion in the exercise you do is important. A combination of walking and yoga is great to have a good mix of faster and slower paced exercises to manage your glucose levels.

If you are having issues with your glucose levels give us a call as we can assist with the right healthy eating program for you balanced with exercise, weight reduction, deeper sleep and less stress.

Why women need more sleep than men

Women need more sleep than men during the night due to the complexity of their brain. Studies have shown that women generally need an extra 20 minutes sleep every night so their brain can do all the extra processing that a women’s brain needs to do.

Although 20 minutes may not seem like a lot of extra sleep it impacts the brain in a very positive way. A women’s brain is structured in a way that they are able to juggle a few tasks at a time where as the male brain can struggle with this, however we are not saying that all men cannot multi task or that all women can, this is just the findings of a study on the average brain.

One of the most important reasons we all need sleep is to repair the brain and give it time to recover and sort through all the thoughts, memories and issues from the day just gone. This is why women tend to need more sleep because multi-tasking tends to use more of the brain, which in turn requires the brain longer time to repair. A man who does a lot of decision making and thinking at work through the day may also need to sleep longer than the average man.

If you happen to be a poor sleeper and a woman than you may find that you struggle with your emotions and experience greater psychological distress such as hostility, depression, and anger which can cause you restlessness but these same findings were not found in men who slept poorly.

Usually we need around 6 to 8 ours sleep a night for the brain to complete its restoration process however you, as an individual, may find you need a little more to keep you feeling fresh and relaxed. Regardless of whether you are male or female if you are having trouble sleeping you can try setting yourself a routine just as we would for a young child so that the body and mind know that it is sleep time now and start to help you wind down from the day. Also, meditation and yoga can be helpful for relaxation and helping give your body that nudge it needs to fall asleep quicker. Try some aromatherapy oils, some natural sleep supplements in the short term only or simply a cup of chamomile tea may do the trick.

So, if you are finding that you are not getting enough sleep it could be simply because your brain has not had enough time to restore itself. When you are having troubles getting to sleep try the above-mentioned relaxation strategies and see if they help or you could talk to your health care practitioner who could recommend a natural melatonin tablet to help get your sleep pattern back on track.