Headstand

See the world from a totally new perspective. It broadens your vision!!! Sirshasana makes me feel calm & alert at the same time. It has huge benefits which are elaborated below.

This asana leaves so many positive effects on the body and mind that it is called King of the Asana. It enhances blood supply to the brain and calms it. It helps relieve stress and mild depression. The regular practice of this asana increases intellectual clarity, improves will power and respiration. It stimulates the pituitary and pineal glands. It strengthens the arms, legs, spine and lungs as well. It tones the abdominal organs and Improves digestion. It helps relieve the symptoms of menopause. It helps to cure minor (common cold, cough and sore throat) to major ailments like asthma, infertility, insomnia, and sinusitis.

Sugar Blues

In my regular classes, we tend to include one activity for the whole week which we practice for our own personal growth. (At physical, emotional, mental, intellectual or spiritual levels). The reason is I just don’t want all of us to do the workout and leave. I want each one of us to grow and go towards an ideal lifestyle. Moreover, when we practice as a group it is motivating and yields better results.

This week, let’s cut down our sugar intake……. How?
First recognize that you have white refined sugar in various foods and identify the sources. All processed food has that – which includes sauces, instant foods etc. you also have that in all beverages – aerated drinks, energy drinks, lemonades and tea, coffee. We also tend to add to sugar to various home made preparations. Other than these we have sugar regularly in desserts, ice creams, shakes etc. come to think of it, hardly a day goes by when we don’t have sugar multiple times.

So this week let us resolve to have sugar just once during the day, means in any one kind of food for just once. The reason for not cutting sugar off completely is not to induce a feeling of deprivation which may result in binging later on. Also sugar is addictive and its total stoppage might result in withdrawal symptoms which we might not identify.

Now the reasons why we should restrict our sugar consumption are as follows:
It has zero nutritional value as refining destroys all its vitamins and minerals.

Can cause nerve damage, chronic infections, dental decay, diabetes, obesity, tissue degeneration etc.

It is acidic – resulting in ulcers, psychological disorders and hyperactivity.

Apart from being cheap and heavy, it masks the flavour. Thus when sufficient quantities are added, inferior foods can be made to taste good.

It is bleached with phosphate of lime to give it sparkling white colour.

I have read a lot about sugar and taken this little piece of info from various sources – books and internet. You too can refer to various sources for more.

Craving for something sweet – use dried fruits (dates, figs, grapes, bananas, apricots, raisins, prunes, peaches etc.), unrefined jaggery. You can use these in various food & dessert preparations also.

Challenges of Pincha Mayurasana

Many :-

Firstly, it just feels awkward to start off with this kind of an inversion. Viparitkarni, sarvangasana, halasana, sirshasana are all still fine, but this is weird to start with.

Secondly, it's easy to get it on the wall. But the transition from the wall to slightly away to the centre of the room is really difficult and needs a lot of mental preparation (more than the physical)


Thirdly, you have to learn to fall on the otherside with grace. Because if you are going to make the transition from the wall to the centre of the room, you better practice that well, as you are going to fall many times over and unless you learn the grace of falling you will go into a shell & refuse to grow after that initial fall.


But as Shri Pattabhi Jois puts it "Yoga is 99% practice, 1% theory".


Last but not the least, getting these kind of postures give you a different high which only a true yoga enthusiast can understand :-)

The Ancient Accurate Wonderous Science of Yoga

This information is not mine. I received this amazing forward and i am reproducing it here exactly as i feel this should be shared.

It is amazing how much Western science has taught us. Today, for example, kids in grammar school learn that the sun is 93 million miles from the earth and that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. Yoga may teach us about our Higher Self, but it can't supply this kind of information about physics or astronomy.

Or can it? Professor Subhash Kak of Louisiana State University recently called my attention to a remarkable statement by Sayana, a fourteenth century Indian scholar. In his commentary on a hymn in the Rig Veda, the oldest and perhaps most mystical text ever composed in India, Sayana has this to say: "With deep respect, I bow to the sun, who travels 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha."

A yojana is about nine American miles; a nimesha is 16/75 of a second. Mathematically challenged readers, get out your calculators!2,202 yojanas x 9 miles x 75/8 nimeshas = 185,794 m. p. s.Basically, Sayana is saying that sunlight travels at 186,000 miles per second!

How could a Vedic scholar who died in 1387 A. D. have known the correct figure for the speed of light? If this was just a wild guess it's the most amazing coincidence in the history of science!The yoga tradition is full of such coincidences. Take for instance the mala many yoga students wear around their neck. Since these rosaries are used to keep track of the number of mantras a person is repeating, students often ask why they have 108 beads instead of 100. Part of the reason is that the mala represent the ecliptic, the path of the sun and moon across the sky. Yogis divide the ecliptic into 27 equal sections called nakshatras, and each of these into four equal sectors called paadas, or "steps," marking the 108 steps that the sun and moon take through heaven.Each is associated with a particular blessing force, with which you align yourself as you turn the beads.Traditionally, yoga students stop at the 109th "guru bead," flip the mala around in their hand, and continue reciting their mantra as they move backward through the beads. The guru bead represents the summer and winter solstices, when the sun appears to stop in its course and reverse directions.

In the yoga tradition we learn that we're deeply interconnected with all of nature. Using a mala is a symbolic way of connecting ourselves with the cosmic cycles governing our universe.But Professor Kak points out yet another coincidence: The distance between the earth and the sun is approximately 108 times the sun's diameter. The diameter of the sun is about 108 times the earth's diameter. And the distance between the earth and the moon is 108 times the moon's diameter.Could this be the reason the ancient sages considered 108 such a sacred number? If the microcosm (us) mirrors the macrocosm (the solar system), then maybe you could say there are 108 steps between our ordinary human awareness and the divine light at the center of our being. Each time we chant another mantra as our mala beads slip through our fingers, we are taking another step toward our own inner sun.

As we read through ancient Indian texts, we find so much the sages of antiquity could not possibly have known-but did. While our European and Middle Eastern ancestors claimed that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago, the yogis have always maintained that our present cosmos is billions of years old, and that it's just one of many such universes which have arisen and dissolved in the vastness of eternity.

In fact the Puranas, encyclopedias of yogic lore thousands of years old, describe the birth of our solar system out of a "milk ocean," the Milky Way. Through the will of the Creator, they tell us, a vortex shaped like a lotus arose from the navel of eternity. It was called Hiranya Garbha, the shining womb. It gradually coalesced into our world, but will perish some day billions of years hence when the sun expands to many times it present size, swallowing all life on earth. In the end, the Puranas say, the ashes of the earth will be blown into space by the cosmic wind. Today we known this is a scientifically accurate, if poetic, description of the fate of our planet.

The Surya Siddhanta is the oldest surviving astronomical text in the Indian tradition. Some Western scholars date it to perhaps the fifth or sixth centuries A. D., though the next itself claims to represent a tradition much, much older. It explains that the earth is shaped like a ball, and states that at the very opposite side of the planet from India is a great city where the sun is rising at the same time it sets in India. In this city, the Surya Siddhanta claims, lives a race of siddhas, or advanced spiritual adepts. If you trace the globe of the earth around to the exact opposite side of India, you'll find Mexico. Is it possible that the ancient Indians were well aware of the great sages/astronomers of Central America many centuries before Columbus discovered America?- the M! ayans or Inca-s!!!

Knowing the unknowable: To us today it seems impossible that the speed of light or the fate of our solar system could be determined without advanced astronomical instruments. -as Sanjee argues!!How could the writers of old Sanskrit texts have known the unknowable? In searching for an explanation we first need to understand that these ancient scientists were not just intellectuals, they were practicing yogis. The very first lines of the Surya Siddhanta, for of the Golden Age a great astronomer named Maya desired to learn the secrets of the heavens, so he first performed rigorous yogic practices. Then the answers to his questions appeared in his mind in an intuitive flash.Does this sound unlikely?

Yoga Sutra 3:26-28 states that through, samyama(concentration, meditation, and unbroken mental absorption) on the sun, moon, and pole star, we can gain knowledge of the planets and stars. Sutra 3:33 clarifies, saying: "Through keenly developed intuition, everything can be known." Highly developed intuition is called pratibha in yoga. It is accessible only to those who have completely stilled their mind, focusing their attention on one object with laser-like intensity. Those who have limited their mind are no longer limited to the fragments of knowledge supplied by the five senses. All knowledge becomes accessible to them.

"There are [those] who would say that consciousness, acting on itself, can find universal knowledge," Professor Kak admits. "In fact this is the traditional Indian view."Perhaps the ancient sages didn't need advanced astronomical instruments. After all, they had yoga.