As rightly said by Rainer Maria Rilke, “THE ONLY JOURNEY IS THE JOURNEY WITHIN”. What Mental Health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more unashamed conversation.
Switch India through it’s Medical Education Cell had arranged a workshop in association with Swasth Foundation on “Wholistic Approach to Wellbeing” dated on 20th of October’19. The workshop was facilitated by Garima Gupta Kapila and Geeta B. Bhansali.
Total 10 of the Switch members volunteered for the workshop on the beautiful Sunday morning wholeheartedly and with enthusiasm.
The workshop started at around 10:30 am. As and when we were entering, the first task given to us was to write Our intention of being there on a chit block provided to us and we had to stick it on the wall. Also they made us available with various books on yoga, Nutrition, etc. to go through.
Then the session started with the introduction of Garima maám and Geeta maám. They told us a lot of things about their life, their achievements, failures and what led them to this path of Mindfulness.
We were taught how to observe our thoughts and how our thoughts can lead to our behavioral pattern rather our entire personality. We were made aware about the power of thoughts and how a single thought has an energy to be transferred in our entire body, and how our mind, body and soul is connected to each other by our thoughts.
Next we were told regarding the power of our Emotions. We were made to understand the range of our emotions and how to channelize each and every emotion of ours’ so as to live each emotion that we feel.
To make it more easy for us to understand they made us do a task where we were divided in a group of three and then each group was given an emotion which they had to enact and also feel and the other groups had to guess what they are feeling or what emotion they are carrying.
The lesson which we got from this task was that every emotion of ours creates a vibe around us, which ultimately affects us as well as the people surrounding us.
After this we were given various food item’s packets which has all the ingredients, calorie counts, etc over them. We were made to go through it thoroughly so that we understand and know the facts about all the marketing strategies of the food items such as oats biscuits, low fat and high fiber food items (as given on the packets).
They showed us all this just so that we know that how unhealthy and less nutritious food we consume in the name of healthy eating. We were showed a power point presentation where Garima maám explained us about diet and nutrition and how to avoid junk rather how to choose healthy food over junk and how to maintain a good health by eating right.
After these two hours session we all were served with hot and really very delicious Herbal tea. We were told about it’s health benefits and how we can substitute it for tea or coffee and maintain a good health.
Later Geeta maam took our session where she told us how to live each emotion of ours ; how our thoughts and our emotions have an impact on our body, mind and soul. She told us, “to experience all our emotions, and do not pile them up by not expressing or keeping them to ourselves just so that to avoid an outburst of those emotions which eventually is going to harm us”.
She told us what thought can lead to a certain pain or a certain feeling in our body and what counter thought can heal the very same pain or feeling. She taught us about Self-healing.
She gave us a task where we all were made to express our feelings, thoughts, desires, dreams, our likes, dislikes, fears, our favourite things, things we love, we hate, we are bothered of, things which makes us angry, anxious, sad, afraid, happy, relaxed, etc.
to each other. After this she made us to pass our emotions to each other in words, sounds and actions. It was really fun to do it. At the end of this task everybody had an ear to ear smile on their faces which indicated expressing ourselves will lead us to happiness; and that’s what everyone of us ultimately want at the end of the day.
Lastly we were taught the importance of Yoga. How is it to be done. How should we not just focus on the yoga pose but also we should concentrate on our breath, we should keep our mind focused so as to maintain Harmony between our body, mind, and our soul.
The entire session lasted for about 4 hours where we were literally taught how to be at Peace rather how we can achieve that peace of mind just by controlling rather channelizing our thoughts and emotions.
The takeaway message from this workshop was that “Wholistic approach to wellbeing is not an Alternative, but it is Complimentary to Medicine”. How we should take care of ourselves first, how we ourselves need to be at peace and be happy. How we have to create a good vibe for us first so that later we are capable enough to give the same things to others.
The session concluded with collecting feedbacks from all the Switch members and by asking for any improvements and what were the positive and negative points of the session. After this we all were given to choose a photographed painting from their wall which was made by their volunteers and students, as gift to us.
We all were overwhelmed by their sweet gesture for us. We all really enjoyed the entire interactive session with both the Maams.
And finally everyone left with a contended smile on their faces as their intention of being there was fulfilled. It was indeed worth and really satisfying and ecstatic.
