As part of the YSS Centenary celebrations in 2017, several public talks have been organised in collaboration with educational institutions and professional organisations by Noida Ashram. On the same lines, the prestigious IIM-Lucknow management institution invited YSS for a talk at their Noida campus on International Day of Yoga on June 21.

Swami Lalitanandaji and Brahmachari Dhairyanandaji from YSS Noida Ashram were welcomed by the Director of the institute on the day of the event. Swamiji delivered a talk on ‘Yoga: Towards Relieving Stress and Finding Balance in Life’ to the staff and faculty of the college while Brahmachariji conducted guided mediation for the audience.

In his talk, Swamiji explained the nature of what is called “stress” and how it affects the individual. He broadly divided stress into two categories: physiological and psychological. He further enumerated the various types of stress like workplace stress, occupational stress, domestic stress etc. and the characteristics of each of them. To illustrate each of these, he gave examples by narrating true stories of individuals who have actually gone through these and had taken counsel from Swamiji; and how Yoga and especially Gurudeva Sri Sri Paramahansa Yoganandaji’s teachings have helped in those cases.

Swamiji showed the relation between stress and balance. He gave illustrations on how stress makes a person unbalanced – how individuals get into undesirable habits of smoking, drinking etc. in order to get relief from stress.

Swamiji briefly went into the physiological process of how yoga asanas help in controlling stress by their action on the endocrine system and the para sympathetic nervous system.

After which he elaborated the ways in which the meditation techniques given by Guruji help in stress management – how the sacred techniques work at the deepest levels of the psyche of man and eradicate the problems of stress at the grass root level.

Then he went on to describe the dynamics of the highest and most sacred technique of Kriya Yoga. He showed how Kriya works in various ways to transform the individual into whatever he wants to become. Swamiji explained how the Kriya technique “rewires” the circuits of the brain. He also mentioned how habits of thinking and doing cut grooves in the brain, and how Kriya changes these grooves, so that habits and thought patterns “fall off” naturally thus bringing about a total transformation in the practitioner.

Finally, he highlighted the fact that the sacred technique of Kriya actually mitigates the effects of past actions. He explained the law of cause and effect and how we are responsible for ourselves. If we find that we are in a stressful situation, it is because we have done something in the past to be in this situation. This cause-and-effect relationship can be altered for the better by the practice of the sacred science of Kriya Yoga. He introduced the Autobiography of a Yogi to the audience and informed them how they could find out more information about Kriya Yoga in the book.

Then he invited Brahmachari Dhairyanandaji to take the audience through a period of guided meditation. The talk drew a good response from the audience and YSS monastics interacted with the attendees during the Open House session that followed.