How does bad karma affect A.D.D. or A.D.H.D.? Watch this and find out.
TRANSCRIPT
How does bad karma affect ADHD or ADD?
That’s a question I got this week from one of our Members inside the BrightLife Yoga Collective, and it’s an important one, because the answer is not what most people think.
Hi it’s Eric Walrabenstein, and in this series of videos, we’ve been talking all about karma…and more specifically, how you can change your karma to completely change your life.
Now, to get to the root of how karma affects ADHD, It will be no surprise to hear me say that we need to start with understanding of two things:
Karma and ADHD.
Let’s start with Karma: Without going into a full explanation of karma, for that see my video “Can you change your karma” (I’ll link to it in the description), for our purposes here, I’ll just remind us that we want to forget the popular, but misguided, notion that karma is “what comes around goes around” or worse, some vindictive divine accountant punishing you for bad deeds. It’s actually much simpler than that. It’s merely the Law of Cause & Effect.
And when we talk about our own personal karma, we’re really speaking about the collection of learned or inherited programming, or samskaras in yoga, that live in our brains—and run our lives.
Things like your likes and dislikes, your beliefs and opinions, your habits and tendencies, all of which affect everything from what you think, to how you feel, and what you do. That mental programming is your personal karma. With that in mind, let’s turn to ADHD.
Now, ADHD, also known as ADD or Attention Deficit Disorder, is a neurodevelopment disorder that affects one’s ability to focus and can cause impulsivity and restlessness and anxiety and host of other nasty symptoms. While ADD is a legitimate condition, what we need to realize is that upward of 90% of the people who *believe* they have ADD, actually have something else. They have what I call, AMD, or attention MANAGEMENT disorder.
Let me explain.
You’ll remember back in the “Can You Change Your Karma?” video, it was there that we talked about how our brains are programmed and programmable mechanisms.
And, what’s important here is how they are always in the programming mode. That is to say, day in and day out, our brains are always being affected, being programmed, by everything we see, everything we hear, and everything we do.
In fact, your brain is a lot like a sponge that soaks up every experience. And as it does, that changes the mental programming that drives your opinions, your beliefs, your habits, your thoughts, your tendencies… Including, and hear this, including your tendency to be distracted and unable to focus. That’s right, you can train your brain INTO Attention Deficit Disorder, and I’ll say that again because it’s so important: You can train your brain INTO Attention Deficit Disorder. BUT AGAIN, while it looks and feels and smells like Attention Deficit Disorder, it’s *really* Attention Management Disorder.
Because it’s not a neurodevelopment disorder you’re dealing with, you’ve just unwittingly *trained* your brain to be an unruly and distracted mess. But it’s NOT YOUR FAULT. At least, not entirely. You see, in today’s world it’s become easier than ever for our brains to be trained in just this sort of unhealthy way. Thanks, in a large part, to these devices [PHONE] and the games and apps and social media garbage they feed us.
And let’s not forget, it’s a well-known fact that the app designers and the social media companies have battalions of neuroscientists whose only job is to design their platforms to be as addictive to the brain as possible.
So, no, it’s not your fault. But even more important, there’s something you can do about it. You can change your karma. Or more specifically, you can change your mental programming, the samskaras, that are driving your tendency toward distraction, and be done with the anxiety and restlessness and general sense of dis-ease that comes right along with that. So how do you do that? Well, the same way you trained the brain to be distracted. Through consistent repetition.
But here, instead of consistent repetition of distractedness, we insist on consistent repetition of focus and presence. Which is where your yoga and meditation comes in. As luck would have it, these ancient practices are proven to help train the brain, or program the brain, into a new way of being. A way of being that is effortlessly calm and settled and present to this moment. For sure, in the beginning it can be challenging work—which is why so many people give up and choose to live with the anxiety and frustration of their ADD, or AMD—but with consistent practice, you’ll be surprised what can be possible. I know, because I’m living proof.
So, I invite you to bring a little more intentional focus into your yoga practice—and whatever you do, don’t let your mind get away with any distracted shenanigans. And, of course, let me know how it goes in the comments.
As always, if you’ve found this video helpful, please do me a favor and hit the like button. It will help more people interested in living happier, more empowered lives to find it.
And if you’d like to support my work, and get some of my best yoga and meditation practices in the bargain, head on over to my Patreon page to learn how you can help. It would mean the world to me.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next one. Until then, breathe deep, smile often, and remember, you’re amazing!
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