Too busy to do yoga? During this conversation at MIT, Sadhguru answers a question about those who are struggling with the stress of earning a living. He explains that if you think your work and your family are important, the first thing you must do is work on enhancing yourself.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Health, Integrative Medicine, Yoga & Ayurveda", May 2017
#Sadhguru Yogi, mystic and visionary, Sadhguru is a spiritual master with a difference. An arresting blend of profundity and pragmatism, his life and work serves as a reminder that yoga is a contemporary science, vitally relevant to our times.
So my question, it's a little personal based on where I live. So I live in Montana.
Much of Montana is very rural. There are only about 900,000 people in the whole state.
There are more cows than people in Montana. But there's a lot of poverty in Montana.
People really struggle to earn a living there. So people often are working two, three jobs,
very busy, not such great access to fresh food or good food unless it's grown there.
And one of the things that you said today really resonated with me tonight was,
when you wake up in the morning, how do you feel? And so people don't think it's okay to
think about themselves and think about how they're feeling and what they need to do each day.
So how do you begin to tell somebody that has to work 12 hours a day, working two jobs,
comes home to a family, to start engaging in some of these more spiritual and more self-realization
types of practices? Because my experience has been, well, I'm too busy. This would be great.
I can get up in the morning and maybe drink some warm water or do something. But
to actually take the time to think about themselves is very hard.
Sadhguru So if you think that
the work that you're doing is very important, then the first thing that you need to do is
work upon yourself. How do you enhance your work without enhancing yourself?
You are not going to do anything more than yourself, isn't it? Everything that you do
is just an expression of who you are. Without enhancing this, the nature and the quality of
your work will never enhance. Strive as much as you can. Right now, this is the problem with the
world. Most people are suffering so many things, enormous amount of stress in their day-to-day
activity just to earn a living, which every worm, insect, bird is doing. But human beings
with such a huge brain are going through such a struggle just to earn a living,
simply because they're trying to enhance their activity rather than enhancing the
person, the me. If you do not enhance this one and you try to enhance activity, it is like
you took your old beat-up Ford in Montana on a F1 racetrack. Well, it's going to fly in different
directions. You need to have an appropriate machine to get onto the track. So if the work,
if you think your work and family deserve a better deal, you must work upon yourself.
If you don't invest on this one, there will be really no result, only, you know, just wasteful
striving. It is very important that this must be enhanced. If you want to enhance the work,
there is no other way to do it.
