Dr Chandrashekhar R. Desai is an ENT surgeon and an alumnus of the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune. He has been practising and teaching Shiatsu, a form of Acupressure, since 1980. Since 1993, Dr Desai has been regularly conducting workshops on Stress Management for corporates in India and in more than ten other countries including Germany, Switzerland, England, Holland, Nepal, Korea and so on. He has a regular agenda in some of the European countries.
Three years after the success of his Stress Management workshops, in the year 1996, Dr Desai also began teaching Self-Management, which deals with Identity, Purpose of Life, Values, Contentment, and Redefining Success.
Dr Desai has been studying Vedanta and Zen Buddhism since 1982. He applies the knowledge gleaned from these studies in his daily life and this forms the basis for the workshops that he designs. He also invests a lot of time studying the human mind as a science and from a counsellor/therapist's point of view. Besides Acupressure, Dr Desai is also experienced in practising other forms of therapies such as Reiki, Pranic Healing, Kinesiology, Crystal Healing, Acupuncture and Colour Puncture.
Dr Desai has written and published more than 20 scientific papers which were read and published at various national and international conferences. He has developed a technology in health assessment and health enhancement, which was accepted and given recognition at the National Conference on Scientific Validation and Technical Evaluation of Ancient Medical Systems (SVTEAMS), held in New Delhi in February 2006. This is the first such pioneering movement in the world and Dr Desai has three patents pending on the technology of health enhancement.
Dr Desai is a prolific writer and has authored several books in English and Marathi. Some titles that have been published include Shiatsu - The Art and Science of Acupressure (the second edition of which is already on the stands); Love is... (The first of a series of value education books, published by Macmillan India Ltd.); and Prem Mhanaje... (The Marathi version of Love is...), 'Beyond Balance' and 'Anandmarg'. He also contributes articles to leading publications in English and in Marathi on a wide range of topics that cover health to stress management and philosophy.
A man of many interests, Dr Desai's hobbies includes tennis, cycling, trekking, music and reading, on which he draws to enrich his work. In fact, it is very difficult to segregate his hobbies and serious work, for he puts 100% of himself into everything that he does. He has cycled the entire length of South Korea, while pursuing the study of Zen and Shiatsu. He has cycled through five European countries in 1998, with his daughter who was then fourteen years old.
Dr Desai is the Director of the Shiatsu Research and Training Institute (SRTI) and Sat-Ayushi (Truly Alive) Institute of Enhanced Living, a venture by SRTI. He is the Vice President of Navkshitij, an NGO committed to the cause of rehabilitation of Mentally Challenged Adults. Dr Desai is associated with Jehangir Hospital, Pune, which works in conjunction with the Apollo Group of Hospitals. He the director of 'HPS Wellness'- a company that is developing the Global Positioning System (GPS) of Health taking an individual from illness to wellness and further to excellence .
ET: Stress has taken a toll on people everywhere. What are the various causes of stress in our urban life and what is its consequence?
CD: The human race today is splitting into smaller and smaller units spreading all over the world. Communities and joint families have given way to emigrant, nuclear families where the husband and wife work in different places and 'catch up' with each other on weekends. Add to that the fast pace of life and cut throat competition, where one has to run faster and faster to even remain in the same place; and we have a perfect formula for a stressful life. The rising cost of living, medical expenses, new diseases cropping up every day, water, air, food and sound pollution add their bit to the fray. The consequence of the all this stress is seen in the form of failing health, intolerance and increasing rate of divorces, suicides, addictions, vandalism and crime; together they increase the feeling of insecurity and further stoke the fire of stress. Out of desperation, we reach out to our one trusted friend in the wilderness of life - the internet, only to be hit by the tsunami of information overload. By the time we wade through the labyrinth of information we are convinced that we are in deep trouble; there are more ways of dying than we had ever imagined!
Today there is no feeling of 'we', it is each man for himself; no one you can trust to give you covering fire or to watch your back. If ever, this is the time to re-discover our inner strength and our inherent capacity to regain and retain our mind/body balance. In this way, we can reach the calm in the eye of the whirlwind raging around us and be at peace with ourself.
ET: What is the importance for the need for the balance of the mind and body?
CD: It is true that we are living in stressful times. What is equally true is that we are also living in the most interesting era of human existence. We are constantly surrounded by opportunities begging for attention as well as by opportunists ready to take advantage of a single lapse of judgement on our part. There are well trained teams of advertisers who have identified our soft under belly in the form of greed, guilt, sex and fear. On the one hand, they are the devil incarnate, constantly whispering in our ears, tearing us apart between our fears and desires. On the other hand, well-disguised among these whispers, lie the very opportunities that we have been looking for. It is very easy to be swept off our feet, take the wrong turn and land in deep trouble and hence it is very important to be balanced and ready to strike at the right time.
We are navigating our way minus a compass, through unchartered waters, full of submerged reefs, treacherous currents and lurking predators - towards the Promised Land. According to Kahlil Gibran, reason is the keel of our ship and passion the strength of our sails. Passion without reason will end us shattered on a reef; reason without passion will leave us aimlessly drifting around. This is the time we need a well-balanced mind and body; a balance between reason and passion. We have to be calm and balanced in order to recognise the proper opportunity, take a firm grip on it and muster the courage and strength to bring it to fruition. At the same time, we need to keep ourselves out of harm's way. That makes it mandatory for us to learn to keep our mind and body balanced.
ET: You have been studying and practising various forms of stress management techniques and have conducted workshops on Self-Management. What are the benefits of these forms of stress relieving techniques?
CD: A well-balanced human being is like a finely tuned string instrument. A slack string is out of tune and too tight a string becomes strident. For more than two decades, we experimented with a horde of stress management techniques that would help a person to achieve the right amount of tension; we called it eustress. We were quite disappointed to find out that most stress management techniques had a very short shelf life. We knew that we were missing something vital. Then one day it struck us that what we are trying to attain is not static but dynamic equilibrium. It is the very dynamism that is responsible for the equilibrium. To our dismay we saw that all of us were chaotically racing around but without any direction or purpose. But what is the purpose of life? Could there be a common purpose or is it different for each one? Can we identify the purpose of life?
We went back to the drawing board and structured our first ever, workshop on 'Purpose of Life'. It worked like a miracle. We empowered participants to identify their purpose of life; they discovered their pole star and a compass to steer themselves with. Our 'Self-Management' and 'Mind/Body Balance' workshops helped people to stay on course and even on keel. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that steering by the pole star and managing to stay on course is all we have to do; stress manages itself, we do not have to manage it. The effect of this strategy lasts for as long as you allow it to.
ET: Can you please suggest some best practices that our readers can inculcate at home and workplace to ensure that we do not lose out on our mind-body balance?
CD: The technique for stress management that I use for myself and quite successfully too, is Anapan meditation as taught in Vipassana. Whenever I feel I am stressed I bring my attention to my breath and focus on that small area on the upper lip where I can feel the breath coming in and the breath going out; bringing myself back to the present. This technique is based on the simple truth that, unless you are sitting in a room which suddenly catches fire, there is no stress in the present. Stress always lies in wait for you either in the future in the form of - 'what if', or in the past in the form of - 'should've, could've, would've.' If one does not stray and dwell in the past or the future one would not be so stressed. Bringing yourself back to the present is the best stress buster.
Having said this, I would like to share with my friends a sentence that inspired and motivated me. This is what it said -
'Till we have identified something that we are ready to die for, we have nothing to live for'.
There is a simple exercise that we give our participants at the beginning of our workshop. This is the first step towards identifying the purpose of life. Each participant is made to write his/her own epitaph or obituary. I would like to request each one of you to do this exercise. Write your obituary, see how far you are from it today and thank the Lord for giving you the time to catch up with your epitaph; start working towards it. Whenever you hit a fork or a dilemma, steer by your pole star - your epitaph. It will help you clear your doubts and confusion and give you the moral courage and conviction to make a decision and see it to fruition. Your on-line guide will help you make the choice that steers you towards your purpose of life and away from the stress of decision making. The best way to manage stress is to avoid it. Remember, as you go along, if you find something more worthy of your life effort, you always have the luxury and liberty to change the obituary, as long as you live.
P S: Please don't show your obituary to anyone; it is about you, by you and, for you. It is your personal, on-line guide.
ET: How do you define wellness and how does one quantify the average health status of an individual?
CD: Recently we have started a company. We have named it - HPS Wellness. HPS Wellness (Patent Pending) like the GPS - Global Positioning System, is the Human or Health Positioning System. We have created the roadmap of the life and health of human beings and a tool to establish your co-ordinates on this map. Our aim is to navigate an individual from illness to wellness and further towards excellence in his/her social, economic and health status. The concept is based on over two decades of research. We first establish where you are on the map of human destiny as compared to the average and the best. We then show you the most probable prognosis of your condition, the options available and the changes that need to be made in order to avail of the chosen option. We also provide you with a means of serial reassessment.
We believe that imbalance is disease; balance is health or wellness and beyond balance is excellence. Going beyond balance is the right and responsibility of each human being; striving to excel in your chosen field creates the dynamism necessary to ensure the dynamic equilibrium for wellness.
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