Navarasas of The Human Heart

Emotions, and the way you deal with them can affect your health. This guide will help you understand the impact of nine primary emotions in maintaining health. The positive emotions create a positive field which fills your blood with the chemicals of happiness and wellbeing. They are conducive to the building or rebuilding of the healthy heart. The negative emotions create a negative field which fills your blood with the chemicals of unrest and unhappiness.

Navarasas are a two-thousand-year-old Indian concept of emotions which see the mind as a space filled with positive and negative emotions. These emotions are: love, laughter, compassion, chivalry, anger, fear, abhorrence and wonder. Shantha or peace is the result of handling all these emotions correctly.

Obviously, the positive emotions or states like love, humour, compassion, chivalry and wonder put the mind in a happy and enthusiastic state, thereby fostering health. On the other hand, the negative rasas like anger, fear and abhorrence produce a state of mind which creates, as described in Daniel Goleman’s book, an ‘emotional hijack’.

The Big Five negative emotions are Lust, Anger, Arrogance, Greed and Jealousy. They are listed both in Hinduism and Buddhism as generating an atmosphere of unrest in the mind. In this state, the fog of negative emotions slows and confuses the mind. During meditative practices, the chemicals of peace and tranquillity flow into the blood. Breathing, heart rate and pulse rate stabilise. The mind is able to function calmly and freely. An alert and relaxed attitude is required for the teamwork involved in building ideas and analysing them. Self-awareness of your state of mind can help you get the most out of life and lead to a healthy heart.

Each of the major rasas has a few stable sentiments and many passing, transient emotions. The permanent sentiments are pleasure, laughter, grief, anger, zeal, awe, disgust and surprise. All the major rasas will have elements of these feelings. In love, there will be the pleasure of union and the grief of parting. Many scholars add the ninth rasa, Shantha Rasa (or the rapture of peace). The mutable sentiments are not present in all the rasas. A few are present in each of the rasas. They are like passing clouds and there are thirty-three of them

Inclusion and Exclusion

Belonging to a supportive nurturing group, is the best protection you can have against disease and unhappiness. Being loved can prevent you from the flood of negative emotions that have the capacity to destroy you.

With the breakdown of the joint family in India, the shock absorber of family ties is threatened. Nuclear families are creating explosive situations, which are lethal.

Invest in your family. Keep in touch with your extended family. Join supportive groups.

Being ‘included’ in a group is very healing. Study the group to which you belong and see whether you share:

common goals

a common language

shared jokes

your pet-name

personal successes and failures

time together

a common shorthand of thinking and speaking

compliments

comfort and support

affirmations and help

Phrases that would destroy relationships

Your words are often experienced by others like lethal weapons. When sent out with matching non-verbal signals or HSMs, they can demolish people. Watch your verbal, tonal and non-verbal arrows.

• What I can’t stand about you is…

• You’re always messing thing up.

• Trust you to come up with an impossible idea.

• Every time you come here, there is a mess.

• You have no idea about this.

• We’ve tried all that you say. It doesn’t work.

· It sounds O.K, but it is quite impractical

• Be serious. Be practical.

• Has anyone done it before?

• Let’s ask fifty people about it.

• You don’t understand our culture.

Phrases for Building Lifetime Relationships

There are simple words of reassurance that can miraculously improve the energy field. They provide support and encouragement to those around. Use them often, but use them sincerely.

• I agree.

• I really enjoy talking to you.

• That’s good!

• Good job!

• I made a mistake, I’m sorry.

• I like the way you left your room cleaned up today.

• I couldn’t do it that well even if I tried.

• That’s a great idea!

• You’re on the right track.

• That’s a winner!

• I believe you can do it!

• I know you can make it work!

• If anyone can do it, you can.

• Congratulations!

• Beautiful!

What I really like about you is…

Social Bonding

No man is an island, but a part of the Main,’ said the pensive poet John Donne. Man is a social being, and interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other people. It is to be able to see what motivates them, how they work and how to work cooperatively with them. Interpersonal intelligence is the inward sense of being able to understand oneself, to form an accurate model of oneself and to operate that model effectively to live life. Professor Howard Gardner of the Harvard School of Psychology told me that the two aspects of personal intelligence, interpersonal and intrapersonal, form the most important foundation for a happy, fulfilling life. To those who define success as happiness, these two elements can be the bedrock of a happy life.

Sensitive people can empathize with others. They can understand the feelings of others as though they were feeling it themselves. This skill involves being able to pick up subtle verbal, tonal and non–verbal signals from others. Charismatic leaders are able to reach others by breaking the barrier that exists between people. A charismatic speaker can make thousands of people react like one mind.

The Upanishads say that the divine spark or life force exists in all—the leader, the leper, the judge and the criminal.

The concept of a life force is recognised in all cultures. It is called Chi by the Chinese; Light, or Holy Ghost, by Christians; Prana by the Hindus; Mana by the Kahunas and; Bioplasmic Energy by Russians researchers.

It is conceivable and probable that the following words also describe the life force or prana:

The Solution to be Happy

- Spend time reading and improving your mind.

- Get involved in activities that will benefit others.

- Develop an absorbing hobby.

- Involve your spouse and children in your work.

- Keep in touch with close friends and extended families, use the power of the internet

- Plan to cut off from work on weekends.

- Meditate.

- Take care of yourself.

- Look at your life goals and evaluation of your job—that will help you achieve it.

- Be in touch with best practices in your field.

- Learn to say ‘No’.

- Network with the best professionals in your field.

- People are more important than getting ahead.

- You are more important than the car, house, bank balance or foreign holiday.

Innovation In Living Spaces

Peter Drucker, in his classic work on innovation, speaks of a real estate company which became a success in a depressed post-war market. It was months after the Second World War. No one was buying a house. Young people, just married, were particularly averse to investing in a home. Till a young real estate genius created a runaway success. He did not sell houses, he sold dreams. He sold a little 200 square foot studio apartment with a 2000 square foot blueprint of a dream house. ‘Build your dream home as and when you can afford it, in modules,’ was the message. He used the concept that people invest in dreams rather than immediately visible, touch and feel products.

The innovation tool, ‘Turn it upside down,’ helped me turn a major corporate hospital brand from a place of illness to a sanctuary of wellness. The same hospital taught me that the most important element of a place of healing is not the floor, not the walls, not the counters…. These things are important to care-givers who are on their feet and vertical to the floor. But hospitals are built for patients—most of whom are horizontal, on their back, lying on beds, looking at the CEILING. One of the hospitals where special care has been lavished on the ceiling is the Singhania’s hospital in Kota. The ceilings are a blaze of colour. Collages are created out of broken marble chips. What must have started as an attempt to practice economy, has resulted in a masterpiece to keep patients as happy and amused ‘watching the changing patterns on the ceiling like clouds in the sky!