Yoga and Future Shock

RAYMOND L. JOHNSON
Yoga Institute of Washington, U. S. A.

Today’s culture is a hectic trading floor crowded with competing ideas. The balance between novel and familiar situations has been altered radically. Accelerating rates of change compel us to cope with a faster flow of information, and with more and more situations to which our previous personal experience does not apply. In his forecasts for the year 2000, for example, Herman Kahn predicts a “learning society” in which all, young and old alike, will have to get new educations every four years merely to keep up. Some will be able to maintain the tortuous pace, but many will not. Falling farther and farther behind, we will become casualties of change, aliens in our own culture, victims of Future Shock.

Trying to keep pace in a world which changes faster than we can change is damaging both to body and mind. According to Alvin Tomer, author of widely discussed book, Future Shock, this disorder will afflict more as the pace of life continues to accelerate. For example, when a Peace Corps volunteer suddenly is without the companionship of his own people in the black country of Brazil or a rural village in Thailand, he is bombarded constantly with bewildering experience. The taste of food, the songs and games or children, the greetings of passers-by are all strange or incomprehensible. His ways of performing even the simplest tasks, like getting shirts laundered or checking the weather forecasts, are no longer possible. When familiar cues which guide day-to-day behaviour are suddenly withdrawn and are replaced by puzzling new ones, his mind and bodyare thrown into a cultural shock: he experiences acute feelings of agitation, depression, confusion, and fatigue. The bodily rhythms of sleep and hunger are upset. This is often followed by illness. A very similar reaction accompanies Future Shock. According to Toffler, “Future Shock is a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in society. It arises from the super-imposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one’s own society.”

In the past, culture was a repository of tradition and long-standing habit. An innovative idea or a new way of performing a task would require years, even generations, before it was widely circulated and adopted. But not because of rapid changes, threatening danger sets off a complex alarm system to prepare one physiologically for fight or flight. This alarm mechanism is one part of a complex adaptive system which is activated, at least partially, countless times in a day. It can be triggered by worry, conflict, uncertainty, surprise, even by the anticipation of change. And under normal living conditions, the alarm mechanism efficiently protects us. But as Dr. Hans Sclye has warned, “No organism can exist continuously in a state of alarm.” When stress occurs too frequently, or is too prolonged and severe, the body loses its ability to resist and becomes vulnerable to disease and deterioration. The thesis of “Future Shock” is that one critical outcome of experiencing too much change too rapidly is the weakening and eventual loss of adaptive capacity.

The sophisticated approach to physiological and psychological self-control, developed 22 centuries ago by Patanjali and his followers (the system we know as Raja Yoga), is now attracting widespread interest among scientific researchers. The reason for their rigorous testing or the traditional claims of Yoga is that, if confirmed, the techniques or Yoga can be used to protect oneself from chronic over-stimulation, and thus avoid the danger of being thrown into Future Shock.

Research on Meditation

A provocative study was conducted by Dr. Robert Keith Wallace of the ULCA School of Medicine, who reported his research in science. The physiological responses of 15 college students were monitored before, during and after a half-hour period of meditation. All were relatively inexperienced in the techniques of meditation; most had practised for only a few months before the study.

Nevertheless, within five minutes after beginning to meditate, metabolic processes decreased significantly; the heart rate slowed and less oxygen was consumed. The electrical resistance of the skin increased markedly; indicating that the students had drifted into a relaxed non-vigilance. Brain-wave recordings revealed a predominance of alpha rhythms, the characteristic EEC activity which accompanies an alert, non-drowsy state of calm, devoid of thinking or of concrete, visual imagery.

Dr. Wallace pointed out that the meditative state resembles neither a hypnotic trance nor sleep. The physiological responses which occur during meditation are most similar to those observed during the transitional “twilight” stage between sleep and wakefulness. Meditation lasts for a longer time, of course, and does not end in a loss of consciousness. Meditation also may be more restful and restorative than sleep since it is more effective in slowing down some of the metabolic processes. Dr. Wallace concluded that meditation is a unique state of awareness, what might be described as “conscious sleep”. Related research conducted at the All-India Institute of Medical Science found evidence that Yoga breathing and postural exercises, practised over a period of time, produce enduring changes in physiological responsiveness with beneficial effects on mental and physical health.

Yoga and Meditation

The psychological value of Yoga-inducted meditation is as pronounced as are its physiological effects. There are four principal benefits: First, one learns how to monitor inner states, and to detect the early warning signs of impending overstimulation. Toffler recommends, as a preventive measure against Future Shock, that we should “introvert periodically to examine our own bodily and psychological reactions to change, briefly tuning out the external environment to evaluate our inner environment. The individual can consciously look for signs of being keyed up too much. Heart palpitations, tremors, insomnia, or un-explained fatigue may well signal overstimulation, just as confusion, unusual irritability, profound lassitude and a panicky sense that timings are slipping out of control are psychological indications. By observing ourselves, we can determine whether we are operating comfortably with our adaptive range or pressing its outer limits. We can, in short, consciously assess our own life pace.”

Meditation heightens perceptiveness of inner processes, and provides a baseline or relaxation and quietude against which to compare any other state.

Second, one can counter the immediate psychological effects of overstimulation. If meditation can be understood as conscious sleep, it is a profoundly peaceful, healing, and restoring sleep. One of the grave consequences of physiological overstimulatlon is the psychological state which accompanies the exhaustion of the body’s adaption system. Depression, fatigue, and pessimism result. The sufferer feels cornered and defeated, impotent and aimless. Meditation and the practice of Yoga dissipate feelings of depression by promoting the quick recovery of the adaptive system.

Third, with the mastery of Yoga one gains an effective means of mood control. Gradually, he learns how to turn on an inner state or tranquillity, calm alertness, youthful potency–free from fear and worry. At first only transient, the mood becomes more and more pervasive as a life-enhancing sense of well-being penetrates our reveries and day dreams, habits of thought and periods of concentration. Calm purposefulness becomes a style of life.

Finally, the Yoga student discovers enjoyment from the challenge of change, and even seeks its stimulation and excitement, because he has confidence he can cope with it–drawing upon self-renewing reserves of strength, energy and resilience both mental and physical. Confronted with sudden and severe stress, he is no longer forced to resist rigidly or to retreat into fearful seclusion. The demands of new circumstances are adapted effortlessly, and the opportunities for continuing growth and development which change creates are exploited without delay. There is freedom to seek the exhilaration of change without risking Future Shock. One can joyfully ride the crest of change while keeping an agile balance.