Health Tip

If you are upset, go light on your stomach. Have more fruits, salads, juices. Our attitude plays a very important role in digestion and absorption of food that we eat. Anger, jealousy, worry, stress, emotional turmoil etc hamper digestion in a big way. Try this yourself and experience.

Health Tip

For firm, glowing skin, massage the peel of papaya, cucumber or tomato on your face and neck. Keep it for 15 minutes and them rinse your face with water.

Sticky eyeballs – anyone??

Undivided audience attention garnered by any visual is termed as sticky eyeball in marketing parlance. Here I am making the meaning more literal by relating it to the eye sores and other eye problems faced by people who spend long hours at the desk starring at the computer screen. They might be programmers, stock brokers, bankers, management students – people from all fields today.

The problems generally faced are redness of the eyes, dryness, headaches, watering of eyes, stress due to constant eye strain etc. Here are a few handy tips to alleviate those symptoms.

· Palming – Rub your palms vigorously, generate warmth & then cup your eyes. Do this a few times till your eyes feel relaxed.

· Looking away from the screen – Don’t stare at the computer screen for too long. Atleast every 30 minutes look away from the screen.

· Close eyes while thinking to given them rest.

· Wash them with cold water every couple of hours

· Facial massage – Massage your forehead, around the nose, cheeks, neck & ears you’re your fingertips. Will blog on that in detail later

· Eye socket massage – Take the index fingers of both the palms and massage from the bridge of the nose on both sides to the base, up around the cheeks to the eyebrows and on the eyebrows to the middle of the eyebrows in circular motion. Do this a few times.

· Eye rotation, diagonal, sideways, up & down movements – Imagine there is a bog clock in front of you, it’s centre being at the level of your nose tip. Now do eye movements to & fro from: 3 – 9, 12 – 6, 2 – 8, 4 – 10, clockwise, anticlockwise.

· Looking near & far – Draw your palms in front of you close, look at the palms & immediately look away at the farthest point you can see outside. Do this movement very quickly for 10-20 times at one go.

· Blinking – Blink your eyes continuously and quickly for 20-30 times. Then blink hard hold for a second and let go. Do this 5-10 times.

· Ergonomics for your eyes – Sit at a distance from your computer screen (not too close). Place the screen just below the eyelevel. You can use anti glare glass on your screen. Also maintain proper lighting when you have to use your eyes.

These techniques help in strengthening the small muscles around the eyes which are never used. (eg we never look to our sides without moving the neck. Imagine how funny it would look !!! :-) ) it also provides much needed circulation to the eye & face area thereby making us feel refreshed & re-energised. The massages are stimulating for the sinuses, nerves & muscles. Yoga says that about 50% of our energy loss is from the eyes when we keep it open all the time. Also consider that we never really close our eyes except when we want to sleep. Atleast most of us. How abusive of us towards our precious faculty of sight, don’t you think?

Note: remove your glasses, preferably your lenses as well if you can see at 2 feet distance clearly without them. I.e. if the power is not too high. Do all the techniques frequently as per your requirement (once or twice a day). Donot overdo. Start with lesser number of repetitions and increase gradually. Also take your doctor’s permission if you are suffering from any eye complication like very high power, cataract, retinal detachment or anything else.

Lemon Shots

Juice of one lemon with equal amounts of water.

Have this after your meals specially heavy or greasy meals. More water dilutes the effect of lemon. It is a tonic for cleansing and detoxifying. It acts the same way inside our body as the lemon in the finger bowl does to our fingers. (removing grease & dirt).

Apart from that, it helps in better absorption of nutrients, builds immunity (storehouse of vitamin c), has cosmetic & medicinal values. Lemon is antiseptic, antibacterial, antioxidant and anti rheumatic. Contrary to the view, it doesnot lead to acidity. It is acidic outside our body but alkaline inside. Sprinkling some lemon juice on food also enhances its taste. Lemon shouldnot be heated as heat kills its nutrients.

Harry Potter or Yoga Sutras??

I was wondering as to why the Harry Potter magic has left both the children & adults spellbound. Though children are being more expressive about their emotions, an equal number of adults have been thrilled by the characters, plot and the story, including yours truly. The imagination, writing and execution is exemplary. I am talking of the whole series the books, videos, movies included. The reason i feel is that Harry Potter (and all its characters) personifies something creative, hidden and unreachable within our own personalities.

If we take a closer look at what this blog is about, even yoga philosophy talks much about supernormal powers or siddhis (some people might call it magic). The 3rd chapter (out of the 4) of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali talks elaborately about the siddhis a sadhak / yogi may acquire on his path to enlightenment. They range from getting knowledge of the past & future (Harry's Prophecy), controlling others' minds (Voldemort tried it in Order of the Phoenix), making appearance at a far away place (flying on brooms), spells (mantras), dharana & dhyana (extreme concentration required to execute a spell), making oneself invisible (we see that all the time in the movies) and so forth.

At home also we see various sadhus engaging in mystical activities like piercing of tongues or body parts, getting buried underground for a few hours, surviving only on sunlight...... the list seems to be endless.

We need to realize that what is shown might appear out of bounds to us, but all has been said in our ancient philosophies and are very much a part of our true selves. Meanwhile we can continue to enjoy the sheer happiness that comes by watching the paranormal.

Milk - Good or Bad? You decide!

There are a lot of controversies surrounding milk. First we used to have just two classifications of people depending on food habits - veg & non-veg. But now we also have vegans, eggitarians etc. Not having milk or dairy products comes under the vegan diet. Since I have never come across anyone who encourages you not to have milk & dairy, this course (Nutrition Re-education by Dr Vijaya Venkat) came as a surprise, and a pleasant one (since i never really liked milk)!!

Well, they say that:

• Milk is not a perfect food, it lacks Vitamin C, fibre and iron
• It is an animal product just like eggs, chicken & meat
• The enzyme renin which helps to digest milk is present only in children upto 3-4 yrs age. The only milk humans can digest is their own
• Milk combines poorly with all foods. On reaching the stomach, it coagulates to form curds. The curds gathers around other food particles in the stomach preventing gastric juices from digesting them. The results are gas, constipation, etc.
• Dairy products actually increase calcium loss from the body due to its acidic nature
• Environmental contaminants like pesticides are concentrated in milk. It also contains hormones and antibiotics fed to the cows for higher production
• Moreover, we are the only species that consumes milk even after we are weaned
• We are also taking away from the new born calves their mother's milk when they are allowed to suckle only for the first 3 days
• Today milk is very much a processed product (tamasic by yogic definition). It is pasteurized, homogenized, sterilized. All this impairs its value.

These and a host of other reasons for going off dairy.

We at our level can make judgement & take a call for ourselves.