Flow is a state of letting go of all your worries and experiencing timelessness. Featuring the Prelude from Suite Venezolana composed by Antonio Lauro.
Venezualian musician Antonio Lauro (1917â1986) wrote this prelude around 1952 as a homage to popular music guitarists of his home country. Titled âRegistro,â the piece evokes the virtuosic and improvisatory style by which these guitarists would assess or âregisterâ their instruments before actually beginning a piece.
An essay in my 6th grade Hindi textbook was titled âShok Sabhaâ and narrated the scene during a Hindu bereavement ritual. In it was described the life of a âRudaaliâ (âone who criesâ) or a professional mourner from Rajasthan. She was a peasant woman who wore black and was hired to mourn at the untimely death of a young aristocratic man from a wealthy family. She cried aloud and thumped her chest while tears rolled down her cheek and her disheveled hair gave the reader the appearance of someone angst-ridden, inconsolable and overcome with sorrow.
For the first time in my life, I remember asking myself âHow is it possible that she could grieve for someone she didnât know? What is a real feeling and what is manufactured? Can you choreograph a feeling?â It also led me to forming my own personal reaction to intense pain. I started fearing public displays of emotion because of the meta-thought âWhat if they think Iâm like her? the one who fake-cries for money? â This often led to my pretending to be okay, when In fact I wasnât.
It was only after I was introduced to these lines from Lord Alfred Tennysons poem :
Home they bought her warrior dead:
She nor swoonâd nor utterâd cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
âShe must weep or she will die.â
that I started working on âallowing myselfâ to feel sad when the situation warranted it, although I still greatly struggle with displaying any negative emotions outside of my inner circle. We each have our own reasons for reacting or responding to pain in our lives. There is no right or wrong, good or bad. Luckily for me, my undergraduate degree was in psychology, which allowed me access to books and readings on the psychology of emotion. Here are some of the answers that I am happy with, alongside the questions that I constantly struggles with.
Psychologists look at an emotion as both a state of strong feelings and a physical sensation, although we canât pinpoint its exact location in the body. Modern technology allows us to see emotions as brain activity, but we only still know very little and have a long way to go. Would
What emotions do is allow us to see life in colour and sound. They play a very important role in highlighting major life events – positive and negative, and they can be very transformative. They may motivate a person to behave in certain ways and they facilitate your taking certain decisions in your life apart from allowing you to remember important life events.
Each of us experiences an emotion differently. We experience it in our body and our mind. Our age matters. Our experience matters. Our context matters. Our emotional experiences evolve with time. No one is spared from the entire gamut of emotions.
The Buddhist story of Kisa Gautami answers this question. This was a young wealthy woman who lost her only son and was struck with grief. She took her baby to the Buddha and asked him to help bring the child back to life. The buddha listened with compassion and asked her to find him four or five mustard seeds from any family that has never seen such grief. Kisa Gautami felt hopeful and went from door-to-door looking for a family that was spared from death and grief. She saw what the Buddha had wanted her to see for herself and was finally able to come to terms with her pain.
The famous psychologist William James said
âŠthe intellectual emotion, if such it can be called, pure and undefiled. And the dryness of it, the paleness, the absence of all glow, as it may exist in a thoroughly expert critics mind, not only shows us what an altogether different thing it is from the âstandardâ emotions we considered first, but makes us suspect that almost the entire difference lies in the fact that the bodily sounding board, vibrating in the one case is in the other mute.
No. It is subjective. What is more important is emotional regulation.
Overindulging an emotion is equally harmful as denying an emotion.
In individuals who are not suffering from any neurological or psychiatric condition emotions can be regulated in magnitude and emotional trajectories can be influenced in any one of the following five ways
a. by avoiding or engaging with situations that have the potential to cause unwanted emotions, whenever possible.
b. by modifying or changing the properties of the situation that may cause these emotions, if at all possible
c. by modifying your attention towards and away from the situation that is causing an unwanted emotion (distraction), at least temporarily – allowing you to buy time to adjust.
d. sitting with the thoughts, evaluations, and appraisals that lead to this emotion and actively reorganising and adjusting to them, trying to look at the bigger picture, and working on your thoughts.
e. Directly working with and influencing emotional responses – by modifying bodily responses including breathwork and modifying facial expressions of emotions.
This popular childrens rhyme dates back to the Black death or bubonic plague of the 1300s. It was popularised during Londonâs great plague of 1665. Usually, children hold hands and sing the song in a circle and when the last line is sung, they imitate the gesture of falling down. The symbolism of the song while macabre–“we all fall downâ indicates collective death–it was used to make meaning of tragedy through the medium of rhyme and play. The present pandemic has become so much about big people and our big problems in this big bad world that we might have neglected little people and their narratives altogether. They too, afterall, live in the same big world as us.
Much like Antoine de saint-exupĂ©ry in his book âThe little princeâ writes a dedication :
Much like Antoine de saint-exupĂ©ry in his book âThe little princeâ writes a dedication :Â
âTo Leon worth
I ask the forbearance of the children who mayÂ
read this book for dedicating it to a grown-upâŠ
I will dedicate the book to the little boyÂ
from whom this grown-up grew.
All grown-ups were children once –Â
although a few of them remember it.Â
And so I correct my dedication :Â
To Leon Worth when he was a little boyâÂ
I, likewise, dedicate this article to the child in all of us.
The longest I ever (against my will) stayed at home was in the summer of 1989. I had just contracted a particularly bad case of the chicken-pox. My little sibling and parents left me with my grandmother. I could not understand why I was not allowed to leave home or meet with other children. My absolutely devoted grandmother whose heart was full of abundance dropped everything that was a priority to her, and gave me preference before all else. She had no house-help. The âbig-meâ would call that âbraveâ and unnecessary. The little me however, was thrilled to be told this story – âRinku (as she lovingly called me), the chickenpox magically affected only you, because you are special, and I always wanted to have you all to myself, so that we could do things together without any rules. Just you and me. NO RULES. You will remember this time you have spent with Ati (my grandmother) and Ravi mama (my uncle) for the rest of your life.â Here I am, at 40, narrating the story of the âbestâ worst Summer vacation I ever had, to you. A vacation without rules.
Human existence revolves around storytelling and play. Camp elders in some indigenous tribes who are skilled storytellers can recount tales that engage and when needed uplift the human spirit. While stories are a powerful pedagogic tool, they are also a beautiful therapeutic tool. They give vent to childrens curiosity and playfulness while building hope and resilience, but most importantly can heal trauma. For hundreds of years stories, narratives and poems have helped heal the memories of previous massacres, genocide, dislocation and displacement. One such example is the book âHiroshima No Pikaâ written in 1980 by Toshi Maruki. In it, he calls the Atomic Bomb âthe flash of Hiroshimaâ and goes on to narrate the happenings of 6th August when a little girl and her parents are eating breakfast and âitâ happens – the flash. The author tells of a great tragedy, beautifully, in the hope that it will never happen again, anywhere. Then again, there was the1997 Oscar winning Italian movie La vita Ăš bella with Roberto Benigni where he plays a Jewish waiter named Guido who uses magical storytelling as a way to soften the blow of the Holocaust for his young son. The narrative dares to laugh in the face of the unthinkable. It both hurts and heals at the same time, and at this time in history, when a big thing has happened and now everything is different, it inspires.
Will they be racist? Will they be political? Will they talk about freedoms being taken away? Will they ask for them to fear the unknown? Will they complain about how birthdays and travel were missed?
Or, will they be about how the whole Big world – big and little people – have come together to solve a problem. How science is helping protect us. How medical workers are being heroâs. How little people are being brave and how the children of the world are ultimately triumphing over this not quite red, neither yellow, nor green but entirely colourless thing. And how, together, in the end as always —
We shall overcome.
âPressure? There is no pressure in Test cricket. Real pressure is when you are flying a Mosquito with a Messerschmitt up your ar*eâ said Keith Miller lover of music, cricketer and a World War II fighter pilot to boot, a man I wish I knew (from the many stories I hear about him). But being an athlete is not as easy as Miller made it out to be. In fact, it is one of the hardest life decisions a person can take. In addition to the fierce physical training and exhaustion, you have to learn to take hits below the belt and roll with the punches. This is apart from the risk that you carry of your career never taking off, or a rocking career nosediving after an injury. To add, there is  intense competition, constant media scrutiny (personal and professional) and the looming threat of retirement before the average adult retirement age.
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When I read that Ritika Phogat, all of 17 years, died by suicide and the suspicion was that she might have been upset over having lost the final of a state-level junior wrestling tournament by a single point, it broke my heart, as Iâm sure it did others. It is hard enough being an Indian sportsperson, but being an Indian female sportsperson is even harder.
I grew up with PT Usha or Payyoli express as we knew her being the only role model in school who had qualified for the 1980 Olympics. I identified with her (she looked dark skinned and like me -was Indian) and wanted to be like her and I managed to make It to the district level 100 and 200metres. This is where I met my competitors. Girls who, unlike me, came from modest backgrounds and had only one single objective – to make it to the Nationals. I wore expensive athletic spikes, some of them were barefoot (at a time when we didnât know that barefoot was actually a better option).  While sports was a hobby for me, it was their whole and soul. It owned their bodies but more importantly their minds. They thought of nothing else. Of course I lost, but I came back feeling proud of participating and being told how amazing it was that I could be an âall rounderâ who studied and played. All work and no play, made Jill a dull girl, and I was anything but. And – Of course they won. But, their win was micro-analyzed. What was their timing? Did they have a better timing last time? Does someone else in India have a better timing than them? Was there any unfairness from the referees?
Â
My respect for athletes is immense. They live a life under constant pressure. Pressure is not the same as stress. As a psychologist I therefore cannot emphasize enough how important it is to train sports minds in what is to come i.e. âPressure managementâ because pressure affects the brain. It can negatively impact split-second judgement and decision-making ability. This is also why some athletes perform worse under pressure and others train to perform the same under pressure as they would when not under pressure. The idea that athletes perform âbetterâ under pressure, popularized by movies where you see some superheroic win at some poignant last moment, are few and far between. In fact they are so rare, you could probably pin them down toâluck.â  Authors Hendrie Weisinger and Pawliw-Fri, in their book âPerformance under pressure, the science of doing your best when it matters mostâ speak of  pressure to perform as arising from various sources. For a young mind, they say the goal should be to lessen the injurious effects of this pressure on the mind, because one cannot really control sources of pressure.
According to science, if you are training to be an athelete, you also need to be trained in what is called a âpressure mind shifts.â This involves doing away with the myth of being a âsuperheroâ or of ârising to the occasionâ last minute. This trying too hard negatively affects performance. Instead, in pressure management, the idea is to employ behavioural techniques to inoculate an athlete against pressure, much like you can inoculate yourself against infections by taking vaccinations. âCognitive reframingâ of an athletes internal dialogue is meticulously done by psychologists. They are also trained to not become defensive when criticized amongst other thing.
A popular psychology book on suicide in professional and amateur athletes by David Lester and John Gunn details psychological strain in athletes. It highlights the attitude of âdeliver or sufferâ in tournaments and outlines the risk factors for suicide as being steroid or substance misuse, concussions or traumatic brain injury and psychiatric disorders. It also warns of the psychological effects of losing a game, dealing with social pressures, trolling and bad press, loneliness and strained relationships. Underlying all of this lies a stigma that can make it difficult for athletes to approach their coaches or teammates for help. Said one of my clients âWhat if the coach thinks Iâm weak and not good enough. I wonât make the national team. I have worked so hard to get here. Years of no sleep, not even a bar of chocolate. Itâs best I say nothing.â To add to the strain, he stressed on the fact that he had no friends outside of his competitive sports circle, he had lost his childhood because of constantly being on the field, he had missed school, he had missed birthdays and celebrations on account of putting sports first and he had to deal with the politics of competing. At 16, he had been seriously depressed after losing out on an opportunity and did not know whom to go to, to share his pain. He was convinced the decision taken against him was unfair. He started to lose weight, lose motivation, lose sleep and lose the will to live. His entire identity, as a sportsman, was being questioned as a result of this one loss. His parents were too busy making ends meet and driving him to and from practices, adding to his guilt of âfailing themâ as a son. What was he to do? Where was he to go? Would it further affect his ratings if he displayed any weakness?
Just like the army employs mental health specialists who are trained for the mental and emotional well-being of Army soldiers (and not just their performance) it is important to have clinical psychologists on sports teams. In both cases confidentiality is of utmost importance. Educating coaches and teams to understand that it will not ruin a career to admit the need for help, but in fact, may better chances at staying in the game longer, is not just necessary – it is indispensable. It will not only avoid unnecessary deaths, but it might help to improve the quality of life of entire sports families.Â
Let us not blind-side the mental health of young sportspersons.  Let us literally give them a “head start”
In 2009 the insurance company âMutualâ of Omaha claimed to be the âofficial sponsor of the aha momentâ and applied to trademark the phrase. Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions Inc. challenged this because they claimed that Winfrey regularly uses the phrase “an aha moment” on her television program and it was synonymous with her. The story that we are more familiar with, however, is of Archimedes, who whilst sitting in an overfull hot tub bath noticed some water spilling over the side and suddenly had a flash of insight. He deduced that the volume of the water spilt over would have to be the same as the volume of his body that was spilling it. Legend has it, this Eureka! moment caused him to ran naked down the street in jubilation.
In psychology, an insight is a new way of understanding connections between things. Insights often lead to significant emotional shifts. Psychologists strive for their clients to not only achieve intellectual sagenesses but for those revelations to actually trickle-down to observable behavioural changes. In Marathi there is a phrase âà€à€łà€€à€à€Ż à€Șà€Ł à€”à€łà€€ à€šà€Ÿà€čà„â which essentially means the same thing. An appreciation of âwhy something occursâ is of no use by itself.
We often find ourselves needing to make lifestyle changes on account of our health. Take for example cessation of certain behaviours such as smoking cigarettes. While we might know âSmoking is injurious to health, â the thought and intention need to translate into a very functional paradigm. This would happen only if there is an emotional insight, an âahaâ moment that shakes you into action. If you were to be told that you have lung cancer and if you had the desire to live long you might have to quite smoking nicotine, that sudden intellectual insight would instantly translate into an emotional one – âthis rule applies to me!â (i.e. smoking is indeed really injurious to my health). Your motivation to kick the butt would then be less difficult. In normal circumstances, you wouldâve been less motivated if you though the rule applied to other people but not to you.
Being shocked into an insight is not the only way to get there. Some insights give you a sense of wonder and enlightenment. Buddhists often meditate because they believe it helps awaken âtruthâ – and the âfull comprehension of the world.â Hindus believe that moksha (liberation) or mukti (letting go) – both deep insights- bring to an end all suffering. The more physical disciplines of Yoga are reported to facilitate gaining insights. Letting go and being able to pause and reflect is key to all forms of insights. Insights enable positive changes. Once you have an insight, you cannot go back in time to the moment you were in before. In psychotherapy insights help with gaining perspective. They help with closure and hence with healing and moving on. You cannot speed an insight up. It requires that you, in fact, slow down.Â
When a motivated and eager student approaches a spiritual guru and asks how long it would take him to achieve enlightenment, the master replies â10 years.â The student says to the guru, âI will work harder. I will work more. I wonât take breaks. How many years will it take me then?â
The master replies âIn that case, it will take you 20 years.â
To flourish is an act and not a state. This act is choice-worthy in its own right (Aristotle).
This means that flourishing is not exclusively dependent on a circumstance (rich/poor, lockdown/no lockdown, healthy/sick), but rather a state of mind, no matter the circumstance. A living example for me was my grandmother. She had a rudimentary education, an alcoholic husband, a son with a schizoaffective disorder, and limited financial resources. She eventually went blind â plenty of reasons not to be happy. Yet she flourished.
Despite their poor circumstances, Why do some people display such high self-esteem, vitality, determination, optimism, an interest in life and politics, and a constant active engagement with people? These are the questions that motivated my PhD research in the Netherlands. I spent several thousand hours interviewing young and poor Indian children trying to understand how they develop physically and psychologically when the odds were stacked against them. The lockdown gave me an opportunity to revisit some of the interviews I had marked as âuniqueâ because I was amazed at the durability and buoyancy I heard from these young voices.
One of those interviews was with a teenage girl who had woken up at 5 am that morning to cook and feed her younger siblings, and then carry the dayâs water supply from a distant pipeline. This was after spending a restless night in her familyâs make-shift hut, which had been inundated with water after a heavy rain. When I met her at noon, she had just trotted into school and was in visibly good spirits. Her interview suggested she was very well aware of her predicament, but had chosen âself-sufficiency for its own sake.â She felt happy about the fact that she dealt efficiently with whatever were her circumstances and had made the best of what she had. She was unable to do some chores, and this, too, did not bother her. In her words, âIt is what it is. I did what I could, and then I stopped.â
Aaji and me (2019)When Artistotle wrote of self-sufficiency, he did not refer to it as an economic notion i.e. It was not economic independence but rather a âfeeling of fulfilmentâ that he spoke of. Today, a majority of the world is in economic despair and we are giving up our fixation on âthe good lifestyleâ in exchange for the more basic requirements. We are bombarded with news of constant death and debt. Doom, doom, and more doom. But we have a psychological choice we can make even in these shitty circumstances: Should we languish or flourish? Psychologist BJ Fowers states that when we find meaning and purpose in whatever activity we undertake, we already make the choice to flourish. Finding purpose in the mundane is not a one-time choice, but a moment-to-moment choice pattern. The âgrowthâ that you see when you make this investment cannot be physically measured. Like the girl in my interview, emotional and spiritual outcomes contribute to your resilience, well-being, happiness, your âquality of life,â the thing that all of us are pursuing.
Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and holocaust survivor witnessed the death of his unborn child, wife, mother, father and brother in concentration camps, and went on to live a fulfilling life. In his book Manâs Search for Meaning (1946) he wrote âA human being is a deciding being,â and so âŠ
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedomsâto choose oneâs attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose oneâs own way.
Domestic violence is seldom a one-off incident. Rather, It is a pattern that repeats itself. If you or someone you know suffers from intimate terrorism prepare a âsafety planâ much in advance.
The most frequent types of physical abuse include getting slapped, grabbed, pushed, shoved, kicked, choked, bit, struck with an object or whipped. Over 90% of those physically abused are women. If your female friend is being abused, It is not uncommon to see that she makes excuses for frequent wounds or bruises that are visible on her face/ body. It is possible that she covers up for her partner due to these feelings of fear and insecurity. Such a friend might also start socially withdrawing or avoiding meeting you as a result. Inconsistency at work without reason is also possible as a result. If you have a friend who is being abused, it is not uncommon to see that they are numb, detached, and their emotional responsiveness is muted. They could also suffer from low self-esteem, depression or anxiety. One way to help such a person is to be there for them and to let them know that you are concerned about them. It is also important to ask them what they would like to happen in the future and that you are there to help. Very slowly and gently give them information to let them know their rights and guide them to intelligence on the skills necessary to maintain physical and emotional safety. Refer them to a doctor who can further assist them.
A] Inform a confidante
B] Keep emergency numbers at hand or on speed dial with you and your confidante
[Doctors / Family / Friends / Helplines]
C] Where can you seek safe shelter ? Keep your options ever-ready
D] Prepare a bag of essentials
(1) Cash
(2) Masks
(3) Sanitizers
(4) Other medications
(5) Phone & charger
(6) Identification (passport/license/aadhar card/ PAN card)
(7) A change of clothing for self (and child)
(8) important records such as birth certificates, financial documents, school records, etc and
(9) water-bottle, dates or other dried-fruits to-go
E] Document any evidence that might be of legal help in the future
Whom should I contact if I am at risk (India)
National Commission for Women : http://ncw.nic.in/
SNEHA is a Mumbai based non-profit organisation
Snehalaya is a Pune based short and long stay safe house that provides legal aid, refuge and alternatives to those experiencing harassment, discrimination and domestic violence.
Click on these numbers available from The Hindu
Click on Saahas to access a directory of support across 196 countries. They are a feminist and peace-oriented tech and AI that supports survivors of gender-based violence and fosters active bystander intervention.
We grieve for those whom you were attached to. Where there was deep love, you will feel deep sorrow. There will be a profound awareness of something gone. Some of us will react to this separation by crying, others by silent contemplation. Old memories will rush back and you will want to re-experience your loved one, the smell of their clothes, the feel of their touch, the last conversations, the first recollections. It will hurt –Â it does hurt a lot and like any kind of pain, It is hard to share with anyone else âexactlyâ how it feels, even if they are hurting as well.Â
For as long as there has been life there has also been death â Death was here before you were born and will be here long after you die. Everyone around you has, is, or will experience losing someone they love. You will never be alone in this experience.
As a psychologist who has studied it and more importantly experienced losing loved ones almost every year since 2015, the hardest one being January 14th 2020, which is recent â I try to compile and combine my experience with the theories âout there.â Elizabeth KublĂ«r Ross is the most quoted scientist on the study of death and dying, followed by David Kessler. My views differ slightly from theirs. I do not believe in life before and after death, and for someone like me, death is final. This makes it very, very painful as well.
Lesson 1 : I acknowledged that it hurts. And I said ouch, ouch, ouch.
Lesson 2 : I cried a âhappy cryâ because It was mixed with love and sadness in the same trickle
Lesson 3 : I felt no thirst but I drank water
Lesson 4 : I felt no hunger but I ate morsels
Lesson 5 : I felt alone yet I greeted people and hugged those I loved
Lesson 6 : I felt no sleep, but I lied down
Lesson 7 : I felt pain â there was a void in the pit of my tummy or heart that was spasmodic
Lesson 8 : I felt weak, but I had a bath
Lesson 9 : I felt sad, but I went to work
Lesson 10: Days became months and you learn to make space for pain, rather than resist it.
Time and saying âYES to life in spite of everythingâ have been the 2 medicaments that have healed me slowly. I am doing exactly as âsheâ for whom I grieve had asked me to do. I do not reject the pain, but neither do I indulge it.
I also try follow the manual she game me to âlive life Queen-sizeâ
âDonât look back, only forward and onwardâ
âGet up tomorrow, go to work, despite yourselfâ
âDonât ask how life is treating you. How are YOU treating life?â
âHeartbreak, Divorces and death, mean new beginnings, tell your clients that.â
âAlways carry a handkerchief. You never know whom youâre going to make cryâ
The moment I lie down, it is as if the chamber of secrets in my brain gets an invitation to open up â darkness, doom, death, destruction, decay âworries and what ifâs weigh me down. I walk down the staircase of negative possibilities unable to stop myself.
If you donât remember the last time you felt rested, first and foremost meet with a doctor and rule out any underlying medical/age-related sleep problems including but not limited to menopausal symptoms in women and prostate problems in men. Next follow the plan below.
Step 1 is environmental, popularly called as âSleep hygieneâ and written about extensively. In order to quiet the noisy mind, doctors recommend limiting caffeine and alcohol close to bedtime. They propose avoiding exercise right before bed. This apart they suggest blocking out unwanted light by wearing eye shades and unwanted noise by using ear plugs or by listening to white noise. Screens are a definite NO before bedtime. It is highly advisable to mute your phones or better still, keep them out of your bedroom altogether. Some people prefer to sleep and wake up early and others prefer to sleep and wake up late â researchers focus more on the duration and quality of sleep than on sleep and wake up âtimeâ per sĂ©.
Step 2 is behavioural. Simply put, you learn to do things a certain way, and get used to this way over time. Sometimes you pick up ways that you find difficult to get rid of â letâs call these âhabits.â After years of brushing your teeth in a specific ritualistic manner, if I ask you to change the direction from where you begin to brush, you will need to unlearn and relearn a whole new technique â DRAT !! This takes reluctance, time and practice.  For starters, try to limit sleep to only the night. Get your body to physically relax â some people use yoga, progressive muscle relaxation, guided meditation, guided imagery, massages, repetitive chanting (âone black sheep, two black sheepâŠ) tai chi and/or qigong. Calming music helps. Your bed and your bedroom should be decluttered. You are schooling your mind to understand that beds are for sleeping and tuning out not in, and this symbolism helps.
Step 3 is cognitive. As soon as you step into bed the band baaja baraat begins. Enter â horrible, terrible, worrisome thought number 1.  Either you welcome this unwelcome guest or you donât. When you bargain with yourself regarding the âimportanceâ of this guest, remind yourself that good sleep, in the long run, increases your longevity and reduces your morbidity. You get more done when you are sick less, and live longer. Worry number 1 has no good immediate solution and brings with it uninvited worry number 2, 3 and 4. âIf onlyâ all problems could be solved simply by worrying about them â at least then, worrying would be a constructive exercise. A simple solution to this problem of unwanted worries is to schedule them into your day.
When at night my mind starts worrying, I ask to carry it forward to the following day at my scheduled worry-time. If you are familiar with the Japanese 5S methodology for organising spaces in order to work efficiently, effectively, and safely â I apply the same with my mind. There is a time for everything and everything has its time â therefore, there is a time to worry and worrying has its time â that time is not at bedtime.
Female clients in psychotherapy have shared with me these insecurities related to sex:
âIâve never had an orgasm. Am I normal?â
âI seldom have orgasms during sex. Maybe itâs because I donât love him?â
âSex is painful, but itâs my duty to my husband. I just close my eyes and wait until itâs overâ
âI donât know how to masturbate. Besides, Isnât it wrong?â
âI feel guilty masturbating when I have a partner. Shouldnât I be satisfied with him?
âIâm not good in bed. Is it because Iâm not pretty?â
These personal insecurities reflect broader, societal views about sexual intimacy, and this is found in a wide variety of literatures, academic and popular (i.e., bolly/holly/other-woods, books, newspapers, stories, and pornography).
For example (click on the links to read more):
âOrgasms during intercourse are easyâ
âI canât orgasm with someone Iâm not in love withâ
âIn childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independentâ
âClitoral orgasms (versus vaginal ones) are due to immature psychological defence mechanismsâ (Sigmund Freud)
âFemale orgasm during sex increases chances of pregnancyâ (The upsuck theory)
With a population of 1.3 crore Indians and counting, it is ironic that the government has denied sex education in schools claiming that it âis a western concept. It will corrupt our youth and be anathema to traditional Indian values. It will lead to promiscuity and irresponsible behaviour.â Not only do we need to encourage scientifically correct and aesthetically superior sex education to Indians but also point to good sources for guided experimentation. The gap between our idiosyncratic beliefs and good science depends on the right information going out, not a denial of information altogether.
1. Its important to know and understand your Vulvovaginal anatomy. Here is some help : https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/vulvovaginal/ along-with an aesthetic representation of the vulva : https://www.thevulvagallery.com/
2. The Kinsey institute and Indiana University (US) undertook the first-ever, large-scale research, and published it in peer-reviewed journals. Then this group of researchers, filmmakers, engineers, designers, educators and sexologists published this website to teach more about sex : https://www.omgyes.com/en/
3. Another (less academic) website that promotes a positive body image and sex education : https://dodsonandross.com/
4. The âorgasm for better reproductive successâ is a myth as demonstrated in this Ted Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02qKAcxrnpQ
5. Here is a four-part series that dives into the sexuality of modern India by Rytasha Rathore, called âA VICE Guide To Sex In Indiaâ where she meets people at the centre of Indiaâs sex positive revolution through its most intimate obsessions and explicit moments. https://video.vice.com/en_in/video/asking-for-a-friend-sex-education-in-india/5b55ee8cbe407720983ec241
