overcoming nervous habits

What makes you nervous?

From Restlessness to Stillness

In the beginning, there was no war outside—only a war within me.

Like Arjuna standing on the battlefield, overwhelmed, I too faced something I did not understand:

“Seeing my own kinsmen arrayed, eager for battle,my limbs fail and my mouth is parched,my body trembles and my hair stands on end.”

This was my condition—not in a battlefield of weapons, but in a battlefield of habits.

For years, my body spoke the language of restlessness.My fingers were never still.

For 45 years, they lived in my mouth, bitten down without awareness, as if something inside me needed to be consumed. I did not admire my hands—I hid them.My skin carried another story.

For 53 years, itchiness ruled me. I scratched without mercy, without pause, as if I could dig out something buried beneath the surface. I had seen my father do the same—scratch until the skin opened, until restraint had to be forced upon him. That memory stayed. Not as fear, but as a warning. One day, I chose: this cycle ends with me.

Then came the fire I kept feeding coffee.Twenty-one cups a day, for 49 years. Not a habit, but a dependency disguised as comfort. Each cup made me sharper, then shakier, then emptier.

Slowly, I saw the truth—this was feeding my nervousness, not calming it. Now, two cups remain, and even that is fading.Smoking once walked beside me too.

For 25 years, it stayed. Today, it is gone. Completely.

Tea followed—54 years, then a full stop. My body had spoken clearly. There was a point where even eating became difficult, where excess broke something inside me.

From that, I learned simplicity—smaller meals, less force, more listening.But none of this truly began with willpower.The real turning point came with the practices from the Isha Foundation.

At first, it was just something I did.Then slowly, something began to undo itself within me.The nervousness started to unwind.The compulsions weakened.Not because I fought them—but because I could finally see them.

For the first time, I was not inside the habit.I was watching it.With each practice, each moment of awareness, each breath of stillness,years of accumulated tension began to dissolve.I realized these were not truly “my” habits.

They were patterns I had picked up—from people, from surroundings, from unconscious living.And slowly, I began to return.With each moment of not reacting—not biting, not scratching, not consuming—I was not losing something.I was becoming free.

Even now, the journey continues.There are still patterns that arise, still tendencies that try to pull me back. But I no longer fight blindly. I watch. I step back. I allow them to pass.The goal is not perfection.The goal is not control.

The goal is nothingness—a stillness where nothing unnecessary moves.And in that stillness, something deeper reveals itself has no goal for me.

Like the closing wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita:

“Abandon all varieties of duties and just surrender unto Me.I shall free you from all sinful reactions; do not fear.”

From trembling and confusion…to clarity and surrender.

This is my journey:

from compulsion to awareness,

from excess to restraint,

from noise to stillness.

Not finished.

But no longer afraid.