Stress or relaxation: What results in best performance?

Every parent wants his child to be extraordinary. Academic excellence is something all parents and teachers want out of their ward. But, parents & schools use stress, tension & fear to get the best out of their child. This not only leads to lowering their natural capabilities & potential, but also makes for fertile ground for a life riddled with diseases, like BP, Diabetes, Heart, cancer etc.
 The origin of Yoga Nidra is a reminder to all parents, schools, tutors that a relaxed state is more conducive to learning and retention than tension. Yoga Nidra establishes the truth that relaxation leads to perfection in action. Included here is the scientific explanation by Dr.Esther Sternberg, MD, on how sustained stress can lead to diseases.

The fascinating story of how Swami Satyananda Saraswati stumbled upon the secret of Yoga Nidra. is also illustrative of relaxation being the bedrock of performance.

Here is the story in Paramahamsa Swami Satyananda Saraswati's own word as reproduced in the Introduction chapter in his book, “Yoga Nidra” published by Yoga Publication Trust, Munger.

“When I was staying with my Guru, Swami Shivananda in Rishikesh, I had a very important experience which triggered my interest in developing the science of Yoga Nidra. I had been appointed to watch over a Sanskrit school where small boys were learning to chant the Vedas. It was my duty to remain awake all night to guard the school while the Acharya was away. At 3 am I used to fall into a deep sleep, and at six I would get up and return to the ashram. Meanwhile, the boys got up at four, bathed and chanted Sanskrit prayers, but I never heard them as I was fast asleep.”
“Some time later, my ashram was holding a large function, and the boys of the Sanskrit school were brought to chant the Vedic mantras. During the function they recited certain shlokas which I did not know, yet somehow I felt I had heard them before. As I listened, the feeling grew stronger and I tried in vain to remember where and when I had heard them. I was absolutely certain that I had never read or written them, yet they sounded so familiar
Finally, I decided to ask the boys’ Acharya, who was seated nearby, if he could explain the meaning of this. What he told me changed my entire outlook on life. He said this feeling of familiarity was not at all surprising, because my subtle body had heard the boys chanting the same mantras many times while I was sleeping in their school( in the wee hours).
“This was a great revelation to me. I knew that knowledge is transmitted directly through the senses, but from this experience I realised that you can also gain direct knowledge without any sensory medium as well. That was the birth of yoga nidra.”
“From that experience further ideas and insights came to my mind. I realised that sleep was not a state of total unconsciousness. When one is asleep there remains a state of potentiality, a form of awareness that is awake and fully alert to the outer situations . I found by training the mind it is possible to utilise this state.”
Swami Satyananda carried many experiments to validate his idea. He writes that he tried it on children as well as an Alsatian dog!! It is said, that Swami Satyanada used Yoga Nidra techniques to teach scriptures to Swami Niranajn, who was a handful as a child. He writes, “I began by chanting the 15th chapter of the Gita to him about three minutes after he had fallen asleep. Then when he got up in the morning I would have him read through the chapter, which he would do, of course, mindlessly. After one week he was able to recite the whole chapter by heart. This way he managed to teach him Shrimad Bhagawatam, Upanishads, Bible, Koran, English, Hindi, Sanskrit.” Swami Niranjan today speaks 14 foreign languages fluently.
Some stress is good, but too much becomes bad: As the nervous system secretes more and more stress hormones, performance increases, but up to a point; after that tipping point, performance begins to suffer as the hormones continue to flow. What makes stress "bad" – that is, what makes it render us more pervious to disease – is the disparity between the nervous system and immune system's respective pace. Esther Sternberg explains in her book, “ The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health & Emotion”
“The nervous system and the hormonal stress response react to a stimulus in milliseconds, seconds, or minutes. The immune system takes parts of hours or days. It takes much longer than two minutes for immune cells to mobilize and respond to an invader, so it is unlikely that a single, even powerful, short-lived stress on the order of moments could have much of an effect on immune responses. However, when the stress turns chronic, immune defenses begin to be impaired. As the stressful stimulus hammers on, stress hormones and chemicals continue to pump out. Immune cells floating in this milieu in blood, or passing through the spleen, or growing up in thymic nurseries never have a chance to recover from the unabated rush of cortisol. Since cortisol shuts down immune cells’ responses, shifting them to a muted form, less able to react to foreign triggers, in the context of continued stress we are less able to defend and fight when faced with new invaders. And so, if you are exposed to, say, a flu or common cold virus when you are chronically stressed out, your immune system is less able to react and you become more susceptible to that infection."
One can imagine progressive damage to our body's eco-system with the constant unabated bombardment of stress. Therefore, Yoga lays great stress on relaxation. Relaxation is part and parcel of  practice of yoga. Shav asana, Yoga Nidra and conscious relaxation of the body throughout the yoga practice throw out accumulated stress in the body and instills in the practitioner the ability and habit to relax.
Relaxation is the door to health, happiness and higher consciousness, says Swani Satyananda in his book on "Yoga and Kriya".
So parents and schools should bother about ways to teach children without stress and in relaxed state of body and mind.