How many times during a day or a week do you think negative thoughts? For many people, negative thinking has become so commonplace they don’t even know they’re doing it. It’s become their default setting, and they don’t realise that their negative thinking is holding them back from all the amazing things life has to offer.
In its way, negative thinking is understandable. We’re all under a tremendous amount of stress and uncertainty, and there’s always a tremendous pressure to succeed and compare ourselves to people who are seemingly happy and prosperous and enjoying a perfect existence. It’s far too easy to think that the reason you don’t have the same happiness and success is because there’s something intrinsically wrong with you. You don’t deserve it.You’re too weak. You’re a failure. Everything around you is out of your control, and you can’t do anything to change it.
Please know that none of that is true.
You can have all the health, happiness and prosperity you want.
All you have to do is change your mindset.
In Ayurveda, the most effective way to change your mindset is by practising Pratipaksha Bhavana.
What is Pratipaksha Bhavana?
Pratipaksha Bhavana is a powerful Ayurvedic technique that helps us eliminate our negative thoughts and replace them with healthier, positive ones. With regular practice, you’ll discover that all your negative thoughts can be overcome. Even better, when you stop thinking negatively and train yourself to have a positive mindset, you’ll start to align yourself with all the goodness and positivity surrounding you. You’ll realise that the overwhelming obstacles that always seemed to be in your way were only illusions, and they will quickly disappear.
How Pratipaksha Bhavana works
In Sanskrit, Pratipaksha means ‘opposite’ and Bhavana means ‘thought’ or ‘emotion’. So, one of the most common translations of Pratipaksha Bhavana is ‘cultivating the opposite thought.’ However, it can also be translated as ‘moving to the other side of the mansion’, which is a much more visual way to try and understand it.
Think of your mind like a vast house. The house is full of rooms that hold incredible treasures if you were able to explore them, but your negative emotions are keeping you trapped in a single room where the curtains are closed, and you’re always totally in darkness. Imagine how good it would feel if you threw open those curtains, left the room, and discovered the rest of the house is filled with positivity, opportunity, and sunlight. Who knows what incredible doors you could open when the darkness and negativity is behind you? You’ll finally be free to release your true potential.
Pratipaksha Bhavana has three stages:
· Dilution – when a negative thought arises, you ignore it
· Substitution – while ignoring the negative thought, you replace it with a positive thought
· Sublimation – as you become used to changing the direction of your thoughts by replacing negative thoughts with positive ones, negative thinking gradually loses its control over you and fades away.
As you can see, this is a process that only happens overtime. Like everything else in Ayurveda, Pratipaksha Bhavana isn’t a quick fix, and you have to apply it every time a negative thought enters your mind until it becomes a habit. But you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll begin to feel the benefits – not just in yourself, but in the world around you – when you start to practice it.
Let’s look at those three stages a little more closely.
Stage 1: Dilution
Pratipaksha Bhavana will only work when you’re mindful of what’s happening in the present moment. Don’t dwell on the past, because none of that can be changed. Don’t project into the future, because what’s ahead of you is unknown. Don’t blame your negative thoughts on bad karma or something terrible you might have done in a past life because that’s an entirely useless exercise.
Focus on what is happening to you right now.
Negative thinking takes many forms and, if we don’t recognise them as soon as they appear and dilute them to take away their power, they can be responsible for a wide range of harmful emotions: jealousy, anger, self-doubt, self-criticism, greed, pride, procrastination, violence… the list goes on. And, in turn, any of those negative emotions can throw your doshas out of balance and cause dis-ease inside your body.
So, as soon as you notice the negative thought appearing, don’t give it your attention. Ignore it before it gets the chance to take root in your mind.
Stage 2: Substitution
Ignoring the negative thought doesn’t mean parking it and trying to forget it’s there. That won’t work either.
What you have to do next is substitute the negative thought with a positive one. Think precisely the opposite of what is going on inside your mind. You could replace it with a visualisation to make you feel calmer, or a memory of when you faced a similar situation and overcame it. Relax your face, eyes and mouth. Focus on the positive and know, deep inside you, that the negative thought is just an untruth that’s yapping away in the corner of your mind like an attention-seeking puppy. As the positive thought takes control, the negative yapping will eventually stop.
Stage 3: Sublimation
No matter how successful you are at substituting a negative thought for a positive one, the negative thoughts will keep coming back. In fact, now that you’re living in the present moment and you’re more mindful of what you’re thinking, you might feel as if the negative thoughts are coming back far more regularly.
That’s exactly what happens whenever anything negative or destructive realises it’s losing its power. It tries everything it can to overwhelm its opponent and assert its power again.
Be patient. Keep substituting every negative thought for a positive thought. No matter how many negative thoughts keep appearing, keep replacing them with thoughts that are positive and constructive.
As you continue to develop the positive inside yourself, the negative thoughts will eventually be sublimated and vanish. Positive thinking will have become a habit that completely transforms who you are, inside and out.
Pratipaksha Bhavana: Three rules to success Live in the present moment
Recognise when the negative thoughts appear and then substitute them. That’s all you have to do.
Don’t fall into the trap of trying to analyse the negative thoughts or work out where they came from. That’s what psychiatrists are for, and even patients who have spent years (and a fortune in money) talking about their problems on a psychiatrists couch often never get to the root of their issues, they just find tools to manage them. Which isn’t to say that psychiatry doesn’t work, it’s just that you’re potentially only creating more significant problems if you try to analyse yourself.
You’ll only be giving the negative thought more power.Please don’t.
Don’t forget the connection between mind and body
The mind and body are inseparable. By the time sickness and dis-ease become noticeable in the body, they’ve already been growing inside the body for a long time. That’s why living an Ayurvedic lifestyle is vitally important so that the immune system remains strong and imbalances within the body can be corrected before the illness takes hold.
Negative thoughts don’t only harm our mental state. When they’re allowed to take hold, they can affect our energetic nature and create imbalance and illness inside the body. When we make Pratipaksha Bhavana a habit, we realign our energetic nature so that our mind and body become healthy again.
If you have a day when you’re practising Pratipaksha Bhavana and feel yourself faltering, try to remind yourself that you’re not just replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts, you’re also breaking your body’s unhealthy bad habits and replacing them with healthier ones. There will be days when your body tries to resist it, but the fact it’s resisting is a sign that you’re on the right path and your energies are realigning. Keep going.
Be consistent
The ultimate goal of Pratipaksha Bhavana is to eliminate negative thinking and positively transform your personality. It’s a constant journey and, along the way, you’ll discover some incredible things about yourself. You’ll find out that negativity is an illusion, and that everything negative can be overcome. When you apply that positive mindset to your activities in the outside world, you’ll continuously be astonished at the things you’re capable of.
But, like any journey, the transformation takes time. It’s gradual, and some days will be more difficult than others. Don’t be disheartened. Practice Pratipaksha Bhavana consistently, and you will eventually reach your destination. In the meantime, every day you practice Pratipaksha Bhavana is a day when you’re eliminating negative thinking and bringing more positive energy into your life.
If negative thinking is something you, or somebody you know, is struggling with, I hope this brief introduction to Pratipaksha Bhavana has helped.
Until next time, to your enduring health and happiness in Ayurveda,
