gayatri chanting: Mind Over Money: How Vedic mantras and Gayatri Chanting help this CEO manage stress?

In an interview with ETMarkets, Medury, said: “The meditation practice has many amazing Vedic mantras, with Gayatri Chanting at the core. It is based on Advaita

and is called Sandhya Vandanam. It used to be very common in ancient days.” Edited excerpts:

Thanks for being part of the show. Being a founder and CEO – stress is something that is part of life. How do you manage stress on a day-to-day basis?

Like most things in life, stress is both a good and bad thing. When used in moderation and with awareness, strenuous activities like exercise make us stronger. Fasting is stress which promotes autophagy and good health.

For me, it is important to be aware of what stress I am taking up. I make an effort to see what signals my body is giving to alert potential overload.

Examples include a heavy shoulder, shallow breathing, getting drowsy, etc. It helps that I am a nature buff and like to spend time in the woods, mountains and near the ocean. Being with nature makes one realize that in the larger scheme of the universe, we really don’t matter.

All our stresses and worries are trivial. The gushing waters in a Himalayan stream convey that everything is transient and that you can’t force things.

With that perspective, one can reflect and make good decisions that are not looking for short-term benefits. This has also helped us steer JamaWealth in the direction of long-term growth and be more client-centric.


I like what you said in your note ‘health’ over ‘fitness’. How do you define this and what changes have you introduced in your lives to follow this principle?

Health is a sense of comfort and being at ease; i.e. not having any disease. While most health parameters can be measured, fitness is a pure number-driven thing; such as being able to run a half marathon under say, two hours.

Or being able to deadlift so many kilograms. Fitness is about efficiency, whereas Health is about effectiveness.

When fitness is pursued as a goal in itself, I have seen that some health parameters may get affected. For example, many amateur long-distance runners have too much visceral or belly fat.

The changes I have made are, reducing cardio-intensive sports like marathon running and tennis, to nature-oriented activities like trekking, biking, swimming, etc which not only keep the metabolism up but also change the scenery. I also avoid gyms and instead prefer the comfort of the yoga mat.

Long-term investors are usually worried about the future returns on their investments. What can investors do to keep themselves calm and composed?

Long-term investors should not be worried about what the herd thinks. They must study an investment philosophy and then trust it by giving it 3 to 5 years to work out.

If real estate can be given decades of patience, why not high-quality equities which have been proven to generate better returns over similar timeframes?

An investor can also take the help of a Trusted advisor (SEBI Registered) to help navigate the ups and downs of investing.

What are the other techniques you follow to keep yourself mentally fit?

I pursue new learning in fields of interest to keep the brain engaged. As of now, I am doing a Master’s program in IIT related to Technology, Machine Learning, Neurology, and the Science of Yoga.

That perhaps makes me one of the few people studying at an IIT after an IIM! New insights always help, when one brings them back to the world of investing.

I have a short meditation practice that is timed with dawn and dusk and tunes into Cosmic Energy.

This has many amazing Vedic mantras, with

Chanting at the core. It is based on Advaita Vedanta and is called Sandhya Vandanam. It used to be very common in ancient days.

In fact, the Mahabharata states that during the Great War, soldiers and warriors used to take a break to perform this. Can there be a more stressful situation than the Mahabharata War?

How have mantras and meditation helped you in taking you out of a bad phase? If you correlate from an investor perspective (when they have a bad day how can they mentally prepare themselves for the next day)

Firstly, I don’t think any mantra must be attempted to be used for making better investments, or any other such material objectives. These are powerful and encoded instructions to make us better human beings, and evolve to a higher purpose.

Secondly, I don’t believe that an investor should be worried about the next day. If so, then how can he be a long-term investor? One should reflect on the purpose of investing, creating wealth, and the timeframes involved.

Thirdly, an investor must be ready to accept both a bad bear phase and a great bull phase with equanimity. No single investment strategy will outperform all the time. There will be ups and downs.

What we may see as a bad phase, may actually turn out to be good if one is able to buy quality stocks at attractive prices.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)