Taboo but true: Talking mental health the right way

CHENNAI: The most important unlearning around health is that it is not just an absence of disease. True health is about letting your mental and physical capabilities shine.

Accept it or not, but the mental health stigma is still a taboo. Concerns surrounding it have grown exponentially, not just in India, but across the globe. Countries like the UK and Japan have appointed a Ministry for Loneliness. Following Bhutan, countries like UAE and Venezuela, and states like Madhya Pradesh in India have experimented with a Ministry of Happiness even before the COVID pandemic.

Over the past decade, Kaushiek Pranoo, the founder and facilitator of Unlearning Ashram, has travelled extensively and engaged with thousands of people from various cultures and regions across India.

Kaushiek says, “One common pattern that I notice is that people often tend to think of their well-being only when they reach a moment of crisis. ”

Unlearning Ashram, an experiential space which offers courses and events for individual transformation through mindful presence, facilitation and unlearning, is an outcome of the experiences of his own unlearning journey and the many insights, tools and possibilities that have transformed his experience of life along the way.

“As someone who has experienced both the corporate as well as in the grassroot level, and engaged with people from various walks of life, I notice that people seem to be in a relentless pursuit of happiness, constantly running, keeping busy and hardly finding time for their self care or spending enough quality time with their loved ones,” he explains.

Every time the context of mental health is brought up, Kaushiek sees a pattern of instinctive denial and dismissal of the idea.

“They have the fear of what others would think, the fear of loneliness, and the fear of being labeled by society, which still has a strong grip on the choices we make,” he highlights.

Having said that, is there a solution to this?

Kaushiek opines that it’s time we recognise that we live in a country today, where some of our traditional systems are breaking down, and changing while modern systems are putting us through rapid changes, more than what our mind can handle.

“It is time we recognise the need for building the right infrastructure within and around us in India if we truly want to come out strong through this emerging mental health crisis. One important thing to unlearn around mental health and wellness is that true well being is not about crisis management,” Kaushiek explains.

Living mentally well has to become something that people see value in, something that people aspire for. We need to do for mental health what we have managed to do considerably well to a large extent with our narratives around physical wellness – our mainstream ideas of physical well being is no longer about just being disease free.

He states, “We are building value towards eating healthy, exercising regularly and staying fit. A whole lot of physical ailments today are attributed to stress and other psychosomatic disorders. Our health is one interconnected whole.”

While there has been a growing awareness about the need for therapy and other mental health care support in the urban areas, the reach in other parts of the country is still relatively low.

Kaushiek is on his journey to bridge this gap. “By becoming mindfully present to how we experience each moment, and by learning to imbibe simple tools to check into our body and mind more authentically, we can empower ourselves to transform the way we understand and approach our own mental health. This is what we focus on at Unlearning Ashram,” he says.

Join the Unlearning Movement by spending a mindful morning with Kaushiek, which will have a combination of fun and reflective activities involving movement, sounds and art to understand the nature of our mental health and what we can do to enhance it for our well being.

“We use a combination of movement, art, breathwork, psychological frameworks and other modalities to offer a wide range of possibilities for people so they can experience the rich bounty of resources at our disposal if only we can come together to choose to transform our mental health,” explains Kaushiek.

Unlearning Mental Health, the unique experiential workshop will take place on May 19, from 10 am to 12 pm, at Idam, Kodambakkam.