 Namaste, welcome to the 20th session of our course Yog and Positive Psychology for Managing Career and Life. Today, we are going to discuss yogic interventions for making mind a friend. Some of you might be wondering why this is topic mind as a friend because this is my mind and it is supposed to work for me and if it is supposed to work for me naturally it is bound to be my friend. But that is not the case, we will we looked at what are the causes of the emotional issues problems and challenges and if you recall these are about fearfulness, anxiety, dependence and sentimentality. You may also recall that we examine these ailments, we examine these sources of emotional distress and what we found was that fearfulness is nothing but excessive concern, anxiety is nothing but excessive alertness and excessive attachment with the outcome of my efforts. Dependence is excessive trust and aversion and attachment more sentimentality. So, all these major sources of distress are actually started with the mental or emotional faculty which are useful all these have some evolutionary significance. But when these faculties are overused they turn into the source of emotional distress. So, a friendly mind is the productive and functional mind, but the same mind can be dysfunctional and the reason for dysfunctionality is that my mind probably has started working against me, it has become an obstacle in delivering my role, it has become obstacle in me experiencing well-being, it has become an obstacle in delivering my duties and my disposition, title of the session is mind as a friend and how yogic interventions can help us making my mind as a friend. In order to understand mind we may look at the basic biological feature of our mind or our brain, we discussed in the earlier session that mind is not limited to brain. So, we are not going to repeat that, but brain is a very significant expression of mind or you can say seat of mind, brain has three major parts reptilian complex, limbic system and neocortex. Reptilian complex is mostly related to the survival and reproduction, limbic system emerged first time in the primitive mammalians and that is the center for emotions, empathy, parental care, parental role and that is the significant feature of the human brain. All three parts of the brain have different roles to play. Reptilian brain is related more to instincts, dominance, survival and this is that part of the brain which gives a sense of territory, what is my territory, what is your territory, what is my boundary, where my ownership exists, where from where your ownership starts. So, that is the reptilian brain's job. reptilian brain's job is nurturing and experiencing feelings and emotions and that is the seat of maintaining relationships. It is the mammal brain which is the basis of parental care, relationship with the kids and kids which eventually result into formation of community. reptilian brain as I told is the newest part, new mammalian brain, neocortex as it is called that is the center for language, ideas, concepts, artistic vision, etc. So, this is the newest part and that is the center where most of the exhibitive functions or most of the complex cognitive activities take place. So, if we explain function of yoga from the perspective of these three brains, these three parts of the brain channelize the power is emerging from the reptilian brain and mammal brain and help the human brain to take charge of things. Please remember the Kathopanishad, the allegory of chariot about human self. So, man is the rean, senses are the horses, charioteer, one who holds the rean is the intellect and that controls it and the direction of the chariot is given by the self, the atman which is the true owner of the chariot. So, so yoga help us to keep the human brain as in charge of our activities. How it does that in a simple terms, how it does that limbs of yoga and we can reflect on our previous conversations, how these different limbs help us in managing our emotions and managing our intellect. In that way, they govern our behavior as well, yam which are satya, ahinsa, astya, brahmacharya, parigra, these set the boundary conditions. These ahyamas are the basic rules or principles on which community or existence operates. If ah entities, living entities stop following these niyamas, ah there will not be order in community, family or in nature. That is why Patanjali Maharshi call these yamas as maha vratas, the obligations or duties which are to be followed in all stages and all conditions of life. These yamas help us to align our self with the community or with the nature and ah these set the boundary condition. In that way, they manage our emotions because once the boundary conditions are set, naturally our emotions are channelized niyamas which are ah Shaoja, Santosh, Swadhyay, Ishwar Pranidhan, they maintain and cleans our inner conditions. Shaoja is related to the external cleansing as well, otherwise Swadhyay, Santosh, Ishwar Pranidhan, these are all related to managing our mind and managing and controlling our mind and maintaining the inner interiority in such a way where our mind can be directed towards functional and harmonious objectives. Asanas, we discussed asanas in great detail and we also looked at asanas as psychosomatic interventions because when we perform asanas, it is not only useful, it is not only very good for our physical self, not only useful for our body to remain flexible. It also helps our mind to maintain itself better. It also generates a kind of a pleasantness in our mind and how it does that? It does that by bringing coherence ah in the brain waves, by lowering the stress hormones and releasing the happy hormones. Then comes pranayam ah rhythmic breathing and different types of pranayams we discussed in the previous session and its unique ah property breath is by definition of voluntary activity, but we cannot live without it. So breath controls and connects our sympathetic and parasympathetic system. It connects our interiority with exteriority. So by managing our breath as it is done in pranayam, we can ah experience the relaxation and we can regulate our mind ah pratyahar that is a sense withdrawal prati ahar means instead of enjoying our senses through the outside goods and things ah reflecting back our senses towards interiority and that is like stepping back purposefully and that helps us to maintain a limited stimulants that helps us to maintain a limited exposure to the stimulants and uniform exposure to the stimulants and that brings calmness and equanimity of mind. Dharana that is one pointedness that is the source of self mastery. When I am able to remain focus on my dharma, when I am able to remain focus on the thought, I am able to perform my dharma or I am able to create which is the potential of the thought. So dharana brings a kind of purposefulness to our mind to our personality and purposefulness is extremely important for our mind to get managed. The most this ah harmful thing we can do to our mind which in turn be harmful to our overall self is not remaining focused. Obviously, the most helpful thing to manage our mind is to identify the purpose and remaining focused on that. Then comes dharana quietening of mind in the quietitude of mind great things emerge. So that is the space of intelligence that is the source of intelligence and samadhi is the source of bliss ah that is about transcending emotions and individualized cognition. Happens in the state of samadhi, but that is not individualized that is not limited to my individual identity it is of different kind of cognition ah and that becomes the source of bliss and ah transcendence. So you can see that all limbs of yoga help us to manage emotional balance and manage our mind. The question is how mind actually gets entangled and and what is the ideal state of mind? These answers are given in the second chapter of a yoga sutra. It says that Swaswamy Shaktioga the union of the Purusha and Prakriti the constant integrated ah awareness that is Purusha and Prakriti which is the manifestation that that which is ah made up of guna and dosha when the combination and merging of identity happens of Purusha and Prakriti that is the ah that is the cause that causes the realization of nature that causes the self awareness. And from there itself a Vidya emerges Tastya Hetur Vidya ignorance is in the cause of this association this union. What happens in that association? We remain deeply identified with the with this association. We remain deeply identified with the Prakriti with our guna and dosha. We do not identify ourselves with the Purusha. So, ah tath abhavaat san yoga abhava hanam tath drashi kaivalam that means the seizing of that union is the ideal condition han that is the ideal condition. So, there being absence of ignorance there is absence of union and which is the thing to be avoided that is the state of the liberation of the seer. So, han which is adarsh stiti ideal state what is that ideal state that is a seizing of the connection ah unconscious ah union of Prakriti and Purusha when the han is achieved in the adarsh stiti in the ideal state vivek khyati how that han is achieved what is the way of achieving that ideal state the way of attaining ideal state is vivek khyati clear and distinct discriminative knowledge which can distinguish Prakriti and Purusha that is vivek khyati and that is called han opai opai means way han is adarsh or ideal way of achieving ideal according to yoga sutra is vivek khyati. And what happens in the vivek khyati what what are the sign of attainment of vivek khyati that sign is saptadha prantabhumi pragya the wisdom of 7 type we are going to look at what are those 7 types of wisdom vivek khyati is achieved this is reflected in ah attainment of the 7 types of wisdom his the yogi who has acquired discriminative enlightenment knowledge is of the 7 fold highest ground prantabhumi is the ground pragya meaning wisdom saptadha means 7 types tasya is his so when the han opai happens vivek khyati is achieved 7 types of wisdom arise and that can happen by following 8 limbs of yoga a yoganga nushthanaad asuddhi khyati by practice of the limbs of yoga the impurities being destroyed knowledge becomes engulfed up to discrimination that is the ah translation we have taken from the book of ah Bihar school of yoga munger most of the translation are actually taken ah from the books of the Bihar school of ah yoga as located in munger