Anxiety, stress and depression: by vastu

Has it become difficult to make it to dinner time without losing your temper, without fear of losing your jobs, without fearing a stock-market crash, or without worrying about an ailing family member or friend... Our days are filled with all kinds of personal reasons that get our adrenaline pumping and our minds churning. An air of uncertainty seems to always hang heavy. Anxiety disorders, which include generalised anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), phobias, panic disorder, social anxieties and post-traumatic stress disorder are becoming increasingly common in Indian households. These conditions can strike as early as one’s childhood; students applying at colleges, preparing for finals, or entering a brutally tough job market are ever more anxious as well—often much more than their parents are.

Yet, many of us are seemingly not curious enough to find the root cause of these anxieties. Rather, we have started to live with stress, anxiety and depression as if they are our natural companions – we say they are a part of life. It is only when the condition becomes alarming and results in heart attacks, strokes, immune disorders, obesity, infertility and other serious illnesses that one realises what damage the stress they have been living in has done to them.

Why not kill the real cause of this basic problem which is most likely rooted in the house that you live in? Do you know that all the stresses, pressures and anxieties are basically an outcome of the flow of the negative energy around you? And all these elements of the outside world can easily be dealt with if your house is in sync with the universal energy system. A house that is made as per the Vastu Shastra guidelines is immune to any negativity, and it ensures that the family that resides in it is always calm and at peace – the stresses that they face in their everyday life get negated by the positivity of their living space.

Vastu Shastra has categorised directions for each common activity that a person does in the house. And this categorisation is based on the kind and the level of energy that is prevalent in each direction. Anxiety is caused if the occupants of the house start sleeping in the zone that is meant for churning – that is, East-South-East. Another cause of anxiety is practising yoga or offering prayers in this zone. While a person expects some peace while doing all these activities, the results turn out to be exactly the opposite.

The person performing these activities in the wrong zone is not in the proper state of mind to be able to make right decisions, resulting in great losses at many fronts, and thereby multiplying the levels of anxiety further. The zone is so powerful that if a pregnant woman sleeps in it, the stress caused may reach the baby in her womb. Later, the baby may become hyperactive or self-destructive, with tendencies to harm himself. Hence, bedroom in East-South-East is a strict no.

However, if your bedroom is already in this zone, it does not mean that you have to deconstruct the house or shift your bedroom to a less comforting room. Vastu Shastra not only tells you about the ideal zones, it also tells you how to curb the negative energies in case there is a Vastu fault. You need not think of restructuring or rebuilding in case of any Vastu fault in your house. The Shastra is not about fault-finding – it is about finding solutions to problems. If you already have a bedroom in East-South-East, then what you need to do is counter its negative effects. This can be done by painting the walls in either light cream – towards the shade of yellow, not white – or in a very light tone of pastel green. These colours on the walls will absorb the stress and anxiety levels to a great extent.

Another zone that affects mental health and is primarily seen as the cause of acute depression is West-North-West in northern hemisphere.. Bedroom should be avoided in this area of the house as well. Depression can also be caused if you create a temple or a prayer room in South-South-West, which is marked as the zone of expenditure and wastage. Likewise, dumping things or locating a store room or a toilet in the North-East direction of the house can leave the occupants in a state of depression. Although the most impactful solution is to shift the activities to their respective zones, it may not always be possible due to paucity of space or other reasons. You can opt for the alternative solution of painting the store room. However, there is no final solution for the toilet, so it should either be demolished or it should not be used at all.

Apart from getting rid of anxiety by following the above-mentioned solutions, one can also move ahead with more agility by simply placing a sculpture of a deer in the West-North-West zone and also by placing a washing machine in the same, as it will wash away the bad experiences of the past and help you start afresh – with the promise of little or no stress and anxiety in the future.

Vikas P Deshpande

M. E. Civil, Structural Consultant

Vastu and Feng Shui Consultant

0434681647, deshpandevikas@gmail.com