 Namaste, welcome to the 18th session of this course, Yog and Positive Psychology for Managing Career and Life. This session is about Pratyahar, Pratyahar as the intervention for managing self and managing career. We are towards end of this course in this run, there will be 20 sessions and this is 18th one. So this is the right time for us to reflect on our journey and how this journey started, what was the context and how Yog and particularly Pratyahar fits into that broader context under which this course is offered. So you might recall that in the very first session, so you might talked about two levels of competencies required to be successful in any career. There is one set of competency which is about expertise and experience which is the threshold to enter any field, knowledge, declarative knowledge or procedural knowledge and functional knowledge about that field and the assortment of basic cognitive competencies like memory, deductive reasoning, these are the threshold competencies, these are not there, we cannot even enter in certain profession. However to be successful in any profession, we also require other set of competencies and these are recently identified that is why these are also called 21st century competencies to be successful and to grow in any career. And in this category, we look at cognitive, social and emotional competencies which are of different kind as we discussed and as mostly they appear even in the performance appraisal systems. These abilities are pattern recognition, systems thinking, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, self-management, relationship management, empathy, team work and our ability to connect with people and influencing without authority. So these competencies which are called 21st century competencies are must for anyone to grow in any career. The high achievers in any career are found to have these competencies along with the threshold competencies. If we look at the more recent model and one of the examples is a model given by Hoolay and colleague about career growth skills. In the career management or career growth skills, they have in fact clubbed self-management skills and career building skills. So they have recognized that we cannot actually distinguish the self-management skills and career building and self-management are related to values, abilities, aptitude and career building skills are related to our skills competencies along with openness to learn to motivate our self, keep us motivated and keeping our team motivated, career self-efficacy. These are the career building skills. Self-management and career building skills now recognize to be clearly overlapping and these result into discipline specific skills as well as generic skills. So these two great findings, this typology the threshold competencies and the 21st century competencies as you might recall is given by Boyd's and his colleagues and the framework given by Hoolay and colleague, they point out the importance of our ability to manage our emotions, our relationships and these abilities are deeply connected to our ability to manage our body and our mind and you is about that. So in this context, we are looking at various interventions so till now we have looked at AHAR at the physiological level. We can significantly alter and alter towards better experience of ourselves on a day to day basis rather in a moment to moment basis. So we looked about, so we discussed about AHAR because of the long hours of sitting and the sedentary lifestyle. We naturally have developed the tendency to attract many elements how it can be prevented and how asanas can be great intervention to prevent those elements and make us on the path of thriving that is what asanas do and that was discussed in the intervention in the previous session. We had two sessions on pranayama because pranayama is an amazing intervention which is based on the breathe work and it is clearly connected to the physiology as well as our psychology. Today in this context, we are looking at pratyahar. Before discussing pratyahar, we need to reflect on the nature of organizational life. Organizational life which is the basis of our career management is not only about good things. There is a suffering, there is anxiety in the organizational life. All these things can be clubbed in the form of organizational suffering. Associated with that but may not necessarily be arising from that but associated to that is dysfunctional behavior abusive supervision, bullying. These are some of the dysfunctional behaviors at workplace. Workplace is not only about leadership, motivation, sound decision making, excellent project work is not only about that. It is also about people suffering because of loneliness, anxiety, sometime lot of stress. Workplace is also having dysfunctional behaviors and resulting into dysfunctional relationships because of the abusive supervision, bullying, politicking, Machiavellianism, knowledge hiding. These are host of things which cause suffering and which result into dysfunctional behavior and dysfunctional relationships. To summarize all these points, we can look at these two factors arising from top management level, co-worker level and colleagues level or employee level. These factors can emerge from top management level. When we see there is a struggle between the short term, bottom line and long term health and employees well being. So, that struggle arise from that. So, suffering can arise sees result into organizational suffering. Many workers become party to or victim of unethical practices and that creates unease, dissatisfaction, mistrust, guilt. All these are different forms of organizational suffering arising from that generally from the top level management. Then suffering and dysfunctional behavior can come from co-workers in the form of poor communication, workplace in civility, political work environment and many of the other things like Machiavellism, knowledge hiding, passive aggression so on and so forth. This can come from our colleagues at the employee level at the personal level as well. So, the person at the individual level can also be the source of suffering in organizational context, organizational behavior and showing the dysfunctional behavior. Our inability to cope with change that is my inability that is person's inability and but that inevitably results in certain kind of suffering issue of prestige. If I am too touchy about my prestige or I am too touchy about my self esteem that can cause suffering. There can be reasons for a family in civility, family responsibility personal health because of which we can suffer at organizational level. So, suffering can occur from all three levels in this regard of this suffering. The process is long drawn, but the key thing is that if I am able to distance even for few moments from my experience there is a possibility that I can identify solutions or ways of dealing with suffering and dysfunctional behavior. The core issue and problem is that when we are part of the organizational life we are not able to distance our situation and ourselves. Because of this deep attachment we many time are not able to perceive things in clarity and as a result we are not able to find the solution which is otherwise not very difficult to find. Pratyahar is an intervention to address this specific issue. Pratyahar helps us in creating a distance between my situation and myself. My situation can never be in my 100 percent control. My intrinsic situation can certainly have greater control. I can certainly have greater control on my intrinsic situation, but on the environmental situation my control will always remain limited. It can never be 100 percent under my control. In the Hindi or Sanskrit these terms are called Manasthiti and Parasthiti. Parasthiti which is environmental factor and organizational suffering, dysfunctional behaviors are all come in the environmental factors can never be our control. But Manasthiti can be in much greater control of ourselves. However we should be able to distance from ourselves so that we can distinguish Manasthiti and Parasthiti. Pratyahar help us to distinguish Manasthiti and Parasthiti. That is why in the battlefield of Mahabharat, Yogastha Kuru Karmani Sangam Takta Dhanan Jaya Siddhya Siddhyao Samo Bhutva Samaptam Yoga Ucchate Perform your duty equi-poised. O Arjun, abandoning all attachment to success or failure such equanimity is called Yoga. Our ability to remain equi-poised help us to strategize better, respond to the situations better, employ our creative faculty better. When Bhagawan Krishna says that we equi-poised, he is not asking Arjun to remain neutral. He is not asking to be neutral. He is asking to have abilities so that you can draw within, reflect and can come up with the right solution. And even before right solution, you can come up with the right perception of the situation and accordingly you can find the right solution of the problem.