The 5 day Swadhyaya (which means self-study in Sanskrit) training course was INTENSE!!! People were bearing their souls and talking about their deepest, darkest problems and life challenges.
The takeaway of the Swadhyaya technique is to dive into whatever life “challenge” you are facing at the current time, or whatever is causing you disharmony. Think deeply about a subcsonscious “belief” related to the problem. Then once you have brought your subconscious belief about the issue to your conscious mind, you can start to reshape/reform the belief into something that will help you overcome it. To form this new belief, you must continuously ask yourself the question “WHY?” many times until you get to the underlying root cause of why the surface level issue is creating a problem for you. Almost every problem will be related to an EXPECTATION or CONDITION of either yourself or someone else.
For example:
Problem: I have a fear of public speaking.
Why is this a problem?: I must present at work next week.
Why are you scared?: Because I get nervous speaking in front of big groups.
Why do you get nervous?: Because I am scared people are going to think I am bad.
What happens if people think you are bad?: People will make fun of me or talk about me.
What happens if people make fun of you?: My sense of self-worth will be weakened.
What happens if your sense of self-worth is weakened?: I will feel embarrassed and down about myself.
Essentially, this person’s sense of self-worth is CONDITIONAL on what other people think about him/her. If other people think he is good, he has high self-worth. If other people think he is bad, he has low-self worth. Usually, this same deep-seeded belief manifests itself in other problems/challenges in this person’s life. In other words, there could be a different problem, but the same underlying belief is the root cause. This person needs to develop UNCONDITIONAL self-worth from within that is not dependent on whether or not he performs well or bad in his public speaking (Expectation of himself) OR whether or not the people like or dislike the speech (Conditional on others). This has to do with the SACRAL chakra – which deals with confidence.
Then, once you bring the belief to the surface, you must create a new positive belief and turn it into a mantra that is opposite of the negative one and strengthens that chakra (energy center) weakness in yourself. The new belief must be POSITIVE, PRESENT, PERSONAL, and SIMPLE.
New belief: I have unconditional self-confidence. I am worthy and deserving of my place in this world.
This new belief is POSITIVE (+), PRESENT TENSE (not “future” or “past”), it is PERSONAL (does not include anyone else, is not dependent on anyone else) and is SIMPLE. Simple is important because you must repeat this mantra AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. This is the home practice – once you have developed your mantra, you are to:
- Repeat it: As little as 2 hours a day, this must be repeated. You can read, it, write it, say it out loud, say it silently to yourself, think it, record yourself saying it. However you choose. But you must commit to repeating this to yourself as much as possible. As many years as this subconscious belief has been brewing beneath the surface, we must counteract this with our new CONSCIOUS BELIEF.
- Believe it: You must believe the mantra, or at the very least, believe that the repeating the mantra will help you believe it. You must believe in the technique. Your mind is the most powerful force for your body. What you believe becomes true for you.
- Implement it: Act as if it is already true for you. You must practice. Example: Even if you are scared, PUBLIC SPEAK. And practice having confidence in yourself, regardless of the outcome.
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