Finding Your Inner Spiritual Balance
We as human beings often live an unbalanced life, with unbalanced priorities, expecting a balanced outcome. The question is where are we unbalanced? We are very aware of our physical body and what it takes to nourish it. We know what foods to give our body, how to exercise it and look a certain way. We nourish our mental body with education, experiences, conversation, reading, and film.
What about our emotional and spiritual body? How do we nourish this body? What do we feed it? As a society, we are trying to balance our lives on a stool with two legs. This is a dangerous way to approach life as we ignore an entire body and its nutrition.
How and why is this relevant to the start of your child’s school year?
As a parent, guardian, and teacher it is important to implement what you are teaching and sharing with your children and students into your own lives. It is important to raise and educate our kids to be physically, mentally, and also emotionally prepared for life. If we as the parent, guardian, and teacher are not feeding our emotional body, how can we impart this knowledge on to our offspring.
There has been an increase of mental health issues over the past year and half. Adults and children have been both affected in their own capacities. So, as we prepare our children for school this year by buying them new clothes, supplies, and mentally preparing them, we must also teach them mechanisms to understand their emotions, so their emotional body is prepared as well.
How do we do this?
The first step is to acknowledge our three bodies. Secondly, we must understand how well-nourished they are. We must face our reality. This can be uncomfortable as it will unveil parts of ourselves that we are ashamed or scared of. Thirdly, understand which body needs the most nourishment at first. My body might be 18 years of age, but my mental body can be 25 and my emotional body may be 5 years old. Ask yourself, where do your 3 bodies stand?
According to ancient Indian and Greek philosophy, there are 22 basic emotions that act as the alphabet to communicate our emotions into expressions of Raags (moods). This universal approach of music was utilized within Sikh music. The Sikh Guru’s composed the lives of the Sikhs into 60 Moods (Raags). Understanding one and being able to express it uncovers 1/60th of your reality and mind.
Why is this important?
Visualize getting a small cut that led to bleeding and pain. You don’t know what a cut is, you don’t know what this red liquid coming out of it is, and you are new to the sudden sensation of pain that you are feeling. How would you feel at this moment? The moment would likely be very uncomfortable. It would undoubtedly invoke a sense of hopelessness and fright. However, because you have a decent understanding of your body, you know what to do when you get a minor cut. You can get a band-aid and rubbing alcohol and are able to tend to minor physical wounds.
This is not the case when it comes to our emotional body. There are a myriad of moods and even more emotions that come along with them. It is commonplace to feel a mood and certain emotions associated with it, but it isn’t readily understood by us “why” we are feeling them or “how” to deal with them. Instead, we may feel uncomfortable feelings and emotions, and so we may suppress them since we don’t know how else to deal with them. Imagine if you knew your emotional body as well as you know your physical body? The approach to life would completely change as it is now working in a balanced manner with certainty. This allows us to achieve “sehaj.”
The Raags that could be helpful overall for this new school year are the following:
This is an overall blanket approach. The Raags are consumed uniquely by everyone as food is. Just as we all have different diets and requirements that best suit us, the same goes for the Raags.
This list is a good start in beginning your journey:
Abstract Meanings of the Raags (this information is directly taken from Yogi Prof. Surinder Singh’s Mere Mun booklet)
This website has great blogs with more information on emotions
Dhanasari offers a more detailed explanation on the Raag, and of the Shabad
Raj Academy Courses
About the Author:
Preetinder Singh has been practicing Sikh music for seventeen years. He started his journey at Guru Angad Institute of Sikh Studies. He later went under the apprenticeship of Prof. Surinder Singh to further his knowledge of Sikh music and its link to mental health. Currently, he teaches students across America. Check out his work, and follow him on Soundcloud.
