By Elizabeth Herman : Posted on : October 02, 2020
In 2018, suicide was the tenth leading cause of death overall in the U.S. 48,000 people took their own lives, and the number of suicides exceeded that of homicides by two and a half times. This serious problem requires serious attention to prevent further increases in suicide rates.
An article about suicide rates among men “cites studies showing that prolonged practices (3–6 months) of hatha yoga can reduce cortisol (the stress hormone) levels, and increase serotonin (the happy hormone) in the brain. When practiced along with meditation and pranayama, 60 percent of patients showed improvement in sleep patterns, digestive symptoms, their mood, and social interactions.” As Theresa Soley stated, “Teaching young people coping mechanisms can be key to preventing teen suicide. Yoga can also play a preventive role.”
Nurturing the Gift of Life - Global experts in conversation with Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Leaders in diverse fields have been putting their heads together to address suicide issues. For example, in honor of World Suicide Prevention Day, a September 10 global panel discussion “Nurturing the Gift of Life,” included 8 speakers from India, Canada, the U.S., and the U.K.
The panelists were Dr. Sangeeta Mahajan, trustee of the United Kingdom’s National Charity for the Prevention of Suicide, Professor Rakesh Chadda of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Lori Hassall, MSW, of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Akshya Vasudev of Western University in Ontario, Canada, Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan, Senior Research Scholar at Princeton University, Professor Ronnie Newman, Ed.M., C.A.S., Director of Research and Health Promotion, Art of Living Foundation, North America. Dr. Newman started the discussion by introducing each panelist in speaking order.
They discussed different aspects of suicide prevention, and techniques to help alleviate mental health challenges. The esteemed panelists had a Q-A with Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of the Art of Living Foundation, where each one asked a very genuine question and sought his guidance. Here you can watch the full video and read the Q-A below.
A few pointers from the Q-A with Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Empathy without stigma
Dr. Sudhir Khandalwal, a world renowned psychiatrist from India, introduced the panelists who spoke from within their respective disciplines and asked questions. The first speaker, Dr. Sangeeta Mahajan, trustee of the United Kingdom’s National Charity for the Prevention of Suicide, related her personal experience when her son took his life, and how it motivated her to work on suicide prevention.
Q: “How can we create a society that has empathy for and doesn’t stigmatize people with mental difficulties and their families?”
Gurudev: “We need to assure our young generation about human values and humanness. Everybody’s there for them. Second, as you said, there's stigma. People don’t talk about their mental health issues. As you said, nobody is too shy to say ‘I have diabetes.’ They should also say, ‘I have depression.’ Socially sharing helps.
For a few years, we started a happiness survey. Our volunteers went door to door and asked a few questions, such as what issue is bothering you? What things are affecting you? When someone asks these questions, people feel relief.
One lady said that someone asked her if she needed anything for the first time. She felt there was someone to care for her. This sense of social security isn’t what the government gives. Society should give us a sense of social security.”
Higher levels of life force
The second speaker was Professor Rakesh Chadda of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, who noted rising suicide rates. He stated, “Suicides happen frequently among youth going through stressful changes. Social support comes from family, the peer group, or a counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist.”
Q: “Why are youth unable to follow a regular routine? What can we do to help?”
Gurudev: “What helps is when you raise their prana level. When the prana, or life energy, is down, that’s when they get depressed and suicidal. Exercise raises it to some extent, but also brings tiredness and is laborious, or boring.
When people feel lazy, one can come out of lethargy by doing yoga. Yoga and meditation definitely make a difference and music plays a role. When life force is high, suicidal thoughts don’t occur.
What’s this sensation associated with happiness? It’s a sense of expansion. When someone gives us a compliment, we have a feeling or sense of expansion. Contrary to that, when insulted, you have a feeling of shrinking. In the yogic sciences, it’s said that this thing that expands and contracts must be known as your own consciousness, your mind.
So what you can do to make your mind expand is music and dance, or spending time with a joyful, happy group of children. When older people connect to younger children, they feel uplifted. They don’t feel low energy. Third is meditation.”
Crisis services
Lori Hassall, MSW, of the Canadian Mental Health Association, reflected on crisis support. “We developed a new group called Highway to Hope for young people struggling with suicidal ideation and it’s co-facilitated by a clinician and a trained peer support worker.”
Q: “With competing needs, how can we encourage our governments to support mental health?”
Gurudev: “In Alberta, Canada, with aboriginals, we gave a short training, which showed dramatically tremendous results. We introduced mindfulness, meditation, and yoga in schools and colleges, where we found 87% of the people felt better.
A research paper from Harvard or Yale University found our SKY Breath Meditation techniques useful for youth. I think it’s like dental hygiene, and needs to be taught to the very young. Parents have to teach them how not to get tense, or if they’re tense how to relax.”
Love and devotion
Akshya Vasudev of Western University in Ontario, Canada, spoke about how love and devotion can play a role in suicide prevention.
Q: “How can love and devotion bring more depth to yoga and meditation practices?”
Gurudev: “See, love is already there. Love is the very core of everyone’s existence. When you meditate it automatically gets kindled. What you need is a little bit of commitment to follow through for some period. This is where people falter.
When many people come and tell me, ‘Oh, I meditated and it’s good, but then I drop and I don’t feel like continuing.’ This is just like when a gardener finds plenty of fruits in the tree and forgets to water the roots. He keeps enjoying the fruit. But, suddenly, after some time, he feels things are dry. He has to water the root again.
So people come back again. Love and devotion are innate in human nature. They may get covered by busy mindsets, but somewhere they connect to life.”
Mainstreaming meditation
Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan, Senior Research Scholar at Princeton University, discussed stigma challenges and how much time it will take to overcome them.
Q: “Can we prevent deaths by mainstreaming meditation? How can we incorporate this into a program that’s seen as reducing anxiety globally?”
Gurudev: “40 years back, when we wanted to take yoga everywhere in the world, yoga was taboo. It wasn’t considered a normal thing, even in India. That was the mindset. But today, people are practicing yoga everywhere.
2 billion people, nearly one third of the world’s population, are practicing yoga. This wasn’t the case 40 years ago. Today, they’ve realized the benefit of it. Same with meditation. In both Yale University and Harvard, and in engineering colleges in India, they’ve adopted meditation for all the first year students. They get courage and strength, and are able to handle anxiety, nervousness, and all of the things that happen on a college campus.
The second thing is that meditation appeared to be religious or spiritual, so a new word was coined in America, mindfulness, which is a balcony or driveway of meditation. Meditation brings about mindfulness. All of these techniques taught in the name of mindfulness have been in meditation classes for a long time.
Recently, for two months, I conducted two meditations every day. Millions joined for enormous inner strength. You see, a strong mind can carry along a weak body. But not the other way around. The weak mind cannot carry along a strong body. So it’s important to focus on
People need to feel freshness and focus. That is what SKY Breath Meditation does. We designed 57 different courses, for different sections of society, from children to prisoners to patients, keeping in mind cultural and age sensitivities, and generational requirements.”
Professor Ronnie Newman concluded the discussion with a research presentation on the effect of SKY Breath Meditation on mental health.
Want to know more about SKY?
To help bring freshness and focus into your or your loved ones’ lives, explore more of an understanding of the SKY Breath Meditation at Beyond Breath - A FREE Breath & Meditation Online Session With a Live Instructor.
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Elizabeth Herman is a long time meditator and a PhD in English, with concentrations in Rhetoric and Composition, and Literature. She offers writing support to clients, teaches locally, and volunteers for a better world.
