Let’s understand by considering how we improve our physical health: broadly by providing our body good nutrition and exercise, and protecting it from harmful substances or injuries.

To understand how these guidelines can be applied to the body, let’s first highlight three significant differences between the working of the body and the mind.

Penetrability: Whereas food usually goes into our body only through the mouth, stimuli go into our mind from all the senses. 

Frequency: Whereas our body takes in food only intermittently, the mind takes in stimuli constantly. 

Invisibility: Whereas we are usually conscious when substances go into our body, we are often not conscious when stimuli go into our mind. 

Given the greater vulnerability of our mind, we need to be more vigilant about what goes into our mind. We can maintain such vigilance by adopting the Bhagavad-gita’s two guidelines (06.35) for mental health

Persistence: The mind is like a child who often doesn’t want to eat healthy or exercise regularly. Knowing the mind’s nature, we need practice and persistence for focusing the mind on nourishing stimuli: stimuli such as Gita wisdom which aligns its perceptions with reality. And we need to exercise our mind when its conceptions are challenged by the Gita — only then can we become more robust and resilient. 

Abstinence: Being like a restless, thoughtless child, the mind often rushes toward stimuli that seem enjoyable, even if they eventually turn out to be unproductive or counterproductive. Such stimuli may range from distracting social media notifications to agitating sensory perceptions, be they physical or digital. By self-observation, we can learn which stimuli affect our mind negatively and which situations expose us to those stimuli. Then we can plan to minimize our exposure to those stimuli and whenever exposure is unavoidable, to avoid dwelling on them. 

One-sentence summary:

To improve our mental health, we need to monitor our mental input through persistence and abstinence. 

Think it over:

  • How is the mind’s working different from the body’s working?
  • How can persistence improve our mental health? 
  • How can abstinence improve our mental health? 

***

06.35: It is undoubtedly very difficult to curb the restless mind, but it is possible by suitable practice and by detachment.

 

To know more about this verse, please click on the image