The blue neck (Neelkanth) of Lord Shiva represents that one should neither take the vices out nor suppress them but alter or modify them.
The blue colour symbolizes slow poison or the negative thoughts. The same in the neck indicates that the poison is neither to be drunk nor to be spitted out but to be kept in the throat temporarily so that it can be neutralized at appropriate time.
The well described slow poisons are attachments, anger, greed, desires ,jealousy and ego ( Kama, Krodha, Lobha, moha,dwesha and Ahankar).
Lets us take anger as an example. The root cause of any anger is non fulfillment of desires. Anger in turn can be expressive or suppressive. Expressed anger will lead to aggressive behavior and resultant social unhealthiness. It can also rupture a heart blockage and precipitating a heart attack or rupture of a blood vessel in the brain leading the brain hemorrhage.
Suppressed anger on the other hand will release chemicals in the body leading to illnesses like acidity, asthma, diarrhea and cholesterol deposition in the blood vessels leading to future blockages.
One can manage anger with taking the right and not the convenient action, neutralizing anger by willful cultivation of opposite positive thoughts etc. For example the process of silently passing on love to any individual can take away the angry thoughts from the mind (love is opposite of anger).
Anger evokes physiological responses that are potentially life threatening in the setting of heart blockages.
The message by Shiva was given in our Vedic knowledge and in different Upanishads. The scientists today are only validating those concepts by way of studied all over the world. And unless the messages come to us from the west we do not believe them.
In the modern contest angina or heart pain is characterized by episodic variations in the frequency and severity of symptoms coincident with periods of emotional stress.
Stress related angina is not as a result of progressive coronary blockages but due to an increase in oxygen demand due to stress. Appreciation of this concept will help to rule out "true" unstable angina due to progressive coronary disease from recurrent angina that results from an increase in oxygen demand related to emotional stress. The former requires aggressive medical or surgical therapy; the latter, a demand-induced angina, responds to tranquilizers and stress reducing methodologies.
.Anger has many phases. Anger Expression Inventory, assesses anger frequency (trait anger), anger intensity, anger expression (anger-out), anger suppression (anger-in) and anger recall.
Dr. C. Noel Bairey Merz, from Women's Health at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has shown that anger and hostility alone are not predictive for coronary artery disease in women, but women who outwardly express anger (anger-out) are at increased risk especially if they also have other risk factors: age, diabetes and high cholesterol levels. The overt expression of anger toward other persons or objects is the most "toxic" aspect of hostility in women. The findings are a part of Women's Ischemia Syndrome Evaluation (WISE) Study, a multi-center, long-term investigation sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
Anger-in is also related to severity of blockages. Dr. T M Dembroski and group have shown that potential for Hostility and Anger-In are significantly and positively associated with the heart blockages disease severity, including angina symptoms and number of heart attacks. Suppressed anger is also associated with increased carotid arterial stiffness in older adults, a condition making them prone to future heart attacks and paralysis. They published their data in 1985 in Psychosom Med.
Suppressed anger has also been shown to increase blood pressure by S P Thomas and group from University of Tennessee.
Suppressed anger is further dangerous as the recall of anger now has been shown by Dr D Jain and group from Yale University in 2001 to be associated with angina, heart LV dysfunction and rise in upper blood pressure.
G Ironson and group from Department of Psychology, University of Miami has shown that anger recall produces more stress than the actual stress in a treadmill. In most studies psychological stressors used are mental arithmetic, recall of an incident that elicited anger, giving a short speech defending oneself against a charge of shoplifting.
They also showed that intensity of anger is associated with severity of angina. In their study vasoconstriction only occurred with high levels of anger. There also showed that there was no narrowing of non-narrowed arteries indicating that anger recall produce coronary vasoconstriction in previously narrowed coronary arteries.
It is clear from the western studies that anger ( or any vices) neither should be aggressively expressed nor suppressed but should be continuously positively altered.
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