Yesterday's answer, today's question

ANSWER: Surya mudra is a heating mudra. It is used for weight loss. But if you have high BP and even if obese, u cannot practice it, because it ups your blood pressure. A `heating' mudra is one which spikes your metabolism, and is not good in certain ailments.

QUERY:  In yoga nidra/shavasana/corpse pose/and also while holding mudra why is it advised not to place your hands so the palms face down?

Your left brain, right brain

Even now I blunder about, wondering which side of the brain does what... Here is what I learnt, I recall, when reading the Bihar school of books on how this is used with awareness in your practice. The main words below,  are as the yoga school describes the special qualities of each channel. In the brackets, my take on that...

This is rather important. U find that teachers can orient a class as per their natural orientation towards ida or pingala. However, a better class is where both are mixed equally, and one is able to switch to one or the other flow, as the situation demands.

Also, the physical charge(left brain/pingala)  is necessary for health, strength, and even sustained interest in asana practice. The cooling, mental flow(ida/right brain)  is necessary for the meditative aspect and even pranayama. So, just sticking to one way or one channel way of doing your yoga, I wonder how good that would really be??


Let's not forget the absolutely beautiful symbolism of the ardhanareshwara:)


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RIGHT BRAIN -- IDA NADI

•  Intuitive (The sort of thing that makes u say, I feel this is right)
•   Subjective way of thinking (reactive? Seeing it from your own point of view)
• Coolness (Keeps u calmer?)
• Inactive (Absorbs info, instead of doing something?)
• Introverts you
• Increases awareness (meditative, as against hyper-thinking?)
• Mental energy (as against physical activity/work)
• Female energy
• RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN. LEFT NOSTRIL/LEFT SIDE OF THE BODY.

LEFT BRAIN - PINGALA NADI

• Analytical thinking (As to think 2 plus 2 is right. Newtonian thinking, as opposed to Einsteinism)
• Objective (Can take the other person's point of view)
• Heat (Stimulates and excites the mind)
• Active (Propels you into work, movement and creation)
• Extroverts
• Physical energy (needed for things like digestion, detox)
• Male energy
• LEFT BRAIN. RIGHT NOSTRIL/RIGHT SIDE OF BODY.

And remember if u are fixed or oriented towards one way of being, yoga is the ideal way to make you change patterns to experience yourself even more completely.

Twitter: on the sun salute

... by no less than Swami Satyanandaji, here. This is a very exciting insight he offers on the two ways of doing surya namaskar -- slow and fast and how it affects different energy flows in the body!!

Today's yogic tip

For eka- pada hasta bhujapidasana (one-legged shoulder pose) a good preparatory pose is the humble naukasana (boat). This is because the upper thigh, specifically the muscle strand on top of the leg, gets used in both poses. Unless that is super strong, u simply cannot lift up into the shoulder pose.. In fact the boat can also help u with the more difficult lift in brahmacharyasana.

Daily health gyan: red grapes or green

The French Paradox refers to the fact that though the French eat a lot of red meat they still have strong hearts (excessive red meat consumption interferes with the circulatory process). This French Paradox apparently is due to the habit of wine consumption amongst the French.And the red grapes -- from which the wine is made -- also contains this resveratrol which is what has this marvellous effect.  So, though both grapes are rich in nutrients, the red one makes your skin glow and heart pump better:)

Today in class, rowdies again:)

Today, the (Tue-Thurs-Sat) class seemed to be back in form, after a long while. It felt good.It also meant back to some rowdyism! That is my rowdiest class, in all my years as a teacher -- there is Jit becoming a rather good-natured/ willing brunt of most of the jokes in the class;  if Amitabh is in form, he is passing his own two-bit add-ons to that, so that there is a lot of laughter happening. A `has -- laugh -- yoga' class, more like it. . :)
I don't think a meditative temper works here, but what the heck! If it brings out the better in them, and if that means the focus can be maintained despite all the jokes and ribbing, I think I am going to go with that flow and not insist on a rigid format of grimness! Each group has a different energy, and if that energy is not dissipating but contributing towards growth on the mat, I am going to be flexible about that . In a way, for a teacher, this is a difficult choice -- because most teachers are fearful that a  group can get out of hand: and stampede the teacher!! :) Mmmm, I am not in that sad zone!! My evening Mon-Wed-Fri batch for instance is full of bachus, little babies, all girls, so that has to be a  different sort of a class and attitude  there:) 

Finally, one of my students is managing the scorpion on his own. Amitabh repeated the scorpion and held on well. So, his first one, this Tuesday, was not a fluke. This means now the scorpion pose is his!! Yippee. He is also doing the nirlamba sirsasana (unsupported headstand) with the hands out in front, palms down  variation -- a rather wobbly, difficult pose, but he has been doing it the last few times rather well. His plough is also being maintained, thank the lord:) And Jit managed to hit the forehead to his thigh in the Janu sirsasana (one-legged, seated forward bend) so yes, it was fantastic progress.. Amrita's sun salute is also improving and she has  tightened up her practice. All impressing newcomer Vinay -- he must be youngest male I will be teaching since the last two years (the first Nalanda batch had Rajiv who has disappeared, after that particular batch got over. Then, I recall  Miss World Yukta Mookhey's brother too, my private student, who had picked the poses, including the headstand, all in first attempt:) And Vinay did the halasana on first day, so I have hopes of vaulting him into some great poses:)

Yoga class etiquette. Part I. Mat & u

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This is not about my current bunch of students:) They all are here, with me, simply because they align with the way I see a yoga class happening.

So, this is the general yoga class etiquette that simply needs to be discussed! And comes from other experiences I have had in the past, both as a student myself, as a trainee and a teacher.

MAT PLACEMENTS

• Booking place for your friend. A rather nasty habit that happens when the groups become large. Some groups can be aggressive about this. Hey, but that attitude is not so cool, def not yoga.
• How much space: Some of my students can do yoga anywhere, I believe. Sonia def. I will place in that category. Also Amitabh.  Actually the only amount of space u need is what your mat requires. Then, you have to measure how much space in front you need to sweep your hands up in sun salute (position 2/11). Then, a similar length behind u, for the plough.  Rest of the space u should not really be bothered about:)
• Where to place your mat: Deciding on the above requirement then  your mat placement must be just so that you take care that there is space behind u for the other student, for both his/her hands and legs to drop. For instance, even if the `how much space' bit is correctly deciphered by students, they may not think of the second part of it, as to where and how to place it, so u can accommodates someone else. When u place your mat, u need to have seen both these above aspects.
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• Slamming the mat rudely or loudly to open it up: This is often done unthinkingly.But if someone is already there in the room, meditating or in the corpse pose, this can be quite a jolt for that peaceful creature. So, that loud slapping manner in which u place your mat must be toned down.
• Size and texture of your mat: Most are standard mats, so the size is assumed. But sometimes people bring their `organic' mats. I had a lady with a fiber, Indian grass thingie which was two mats' size. Now think of how awkward that is for everybody else,  including the teacher, in a crammed space.  Plus, u will find that such mats are impractical for a general class practice (they make u slip). And are practically useless in advanced poses like the scorpion. The lady used to say she was feeling breathless using the `western', non-stick yoga mat... Mmm, next they will want to bring tiger or deer skin to a class?! That is what they may have used earlier on, dearies!!

• Proximity to the next student: This cannot be helped in a crammed room. But if you can ensure that when you move your hands and limbs you are not touching the other person, u are already doing great yoga.This is crucial particularly while in the corpse pose. Keeping within your mat, when the space is a constraint, is cool:) Even if in the corpse pose u have to have arms about 40 degrees off the body, if there is less space, u may display your decorum by keeping hands within the mat. Why? Not because I say so, but because Swami Sivananda says, Adapt, adjust, accommodate. That means u  don't invade somebody's personal space, esp if the other person is of the opposite gender.

• Kicking somebody else's mat if you wish that spot for yourself!!: This is a sort of hugely ridiculous and rude behavior  that u see happening even in ashrams, even amongst advanced yoga teachers coming to train there. I have no comment on such behavior. But I would rather that I did not have students who did that sort of thing in front of me (I have a long story behind this simple gesture. Later:) In yoga, everything is animated... including, even that seemingly inanimate mat! Also, that kick  somehow is so unyogic. Plus, it seems to say something about how u feel about the owner of the mat! Somewhat like spitting or farting in public! Very bad, rude behavior.
• Sticking to your friend or feeling lost without the friend or feeling unable to do without your spouse or partner: I myself find that this is a constant in all classes.  But real involution in a mat cannot happen with a distracting or empathetic or sympathetic energy floating about beside u. How can u involute as u are required to??  Also, it  encourages childish behavior: temptation to exchange glances, crack jokes, share difficulties. With spouses, I find that sometimes the wife may fuss a lot over the husband. Or other way around. He breathes a little heavily, there will be a lot of Tch, Tch happening. The fellow is happy, hoping the teacher will take the hint. All silly behavior and entirely avoidable in a yoga class and interferes not just with that particular friends'-partners' yoga but somehow jars into the rest of the class too.
• Insisting on placing your mat near someone who is good, even if u don't know that person: Another ridiculous behavior in a yoga class,  including in  ashrams. They will want to do yoga  near you. They will watch where you place your mat and plonk themselves near you. All that is tolerable. But the point is, is that silly need necessary??!!
• The other extreme, not wanting to be near someone who they think is bad in yoga! This also happens. Sometimes I have students who don't like a particular student (weak yoga, behavioral adjustments, just the look of that person maybe:) and want to know delicately if somehow I can ease him or her out of the class!! Amazing cheek! Any case, another example of how you are ruining your chance to involute!

There is more churning inside of me:) But later.... This should be crushing enough, for now!

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Tweets: on the special tantric technique

of chidakash dharana (focusing on the space of pure consciousness). Here a few quotes, Swami Niranjananda's take on this secret, powerful practice

Yogic tip for today

The inverted V (Mountain pose, downward facing dog) is one of the most cure-all poses for all spinal problems. In fact, it is one of the rarest poses in spinal problems (in spinal problems each part has different poses due to the contraindications) where it may be used to control and cure upperback/middleback/lowerback. It has the least contraindications and can be safely practiced even by heart patients.

Daily Health Gyan: Mango season

Oh, wow. Red-tinted mangoes. To tell u the truth (and it could be just sour grapes), I am not a great Hapus fan. I like those fat, humbler mangoes more-- they have that slight khatta taste that turns me on.  Mangoes are good for:

• Releasing feel-good hormones.
• Great skin (used in facials)
• anemia
• eyesight
• health of the nervous system.
• RECOVERY FROM EXERCISE
• Detox

I prefer that fat inexpensive malgova from the south -- it is huge... U get a lot of pulp, not over-sweet, drippingly satisfying. With Happus u feel you hardly started eating before it is over!!!

Yesterday's answer, today's question

ANSWER: Safest pose there is Tadasana (Palmtree). Uttanasana (standing forward stretch) is contraindicated in lower back pain. Paschimottanasana (seated forward westward facing pose) is contraindicated again in lower back pain. And peacock in heart ailments,weak wrists, also pregnancy.

QUESTION : Surya mudra (pressing down ring finger with thumb) is a heating or cooling mudra?
This is a very important point that needs to be stressed while teaching mudras because there is no general prescription in mudra. It is one of the most individualised practice  in yoga and should not be casually prescribed. (I know these silly yoga teachers in Mumbai like M or D who have attended my workshops are dishing out mudras for some cheap fees. But for heaven's sake be careful when u chose your yoga teacher....or their prescriptions.  Such teachers are really more dangerous than they are stupid:). And also u should not be prescribing mudras freely... TV yoga is different from pure yoga  you know:)

Your brain, in a yoga class room: and being my student Sarah Windhover:)

I am reading V. S. Ramachandran's book Tell-tale brain. It is a lot similar to his first one Phantoms in the brain, which I found absolutely engrossing. He does not have the compulsion of Richard Dawkins (internationally celebrated biologist and best-selling author on several books, and more  famously known for his atheistic take against mystical `mumbo-jumbo' in science or where religion uses science to promote itself) to keep taking on mystics.

Ramachandran often can display a similar wonder at the brain, as would a mystic:) That way Ramachandran's first book was amazing because he had used a lot of  mystical quotes that underlined the fact that the 100 billion neurons are actually constantly firing, creating a chaos that loops and settles  into something that creates the illusion of the `I'.  So, we could be just a void pretending to be something:)

 This illusion of a central `I'   is essential for the survival of the biological structure that  a human being is  -- and even this biological structure is just  a construct of several things at once... I recall that absolutely rivetting book Body (damn, cannot remember the author, can u imagine?)  which wonders at how though we appear to be one unified structure -- our body -- we are several things all at once, working at several levels, some even with  disparate interests or moving with a momentum of their own (For instance,white blood cells die much later after natural death occurs. So, would that mean they are alive when we are dead?!! And that death can happen at different levels to different parts of the body).  In a way, when you read Patanjali's Yoga Sutras u get the same sense of wonder of how, when u go really deep into yoga or meditation (raja yoga), suddenly you can reduce yourself into these disparate things and select what you want to be, largely as a matter deduction ( I am not That, I am not -- neti, neti:).  Patanjali is dissecting thoughts in a similar fashion, even more precisely and logically and clincially  than any modern day psychologist or psychotherapist would.

Even Richard Dawkins (though he likes to use the word Natural selection, as if it were a living thing and prefers it to what Indian Philosophers -- who must have the most intuitive scientists in the world --  called Brahman) points out how gene has its own code that may often be at variance with what you are as a biological entity (his book River of Eden, for instance, takes on this amazing subject, though he seems to believes his argument is against the idea of a cosmic flow of energy: Dawkinsji --   Natural selection, Nature, cosmic energy, who cares??) .

For instance, death is coded into your DNA because the gene wants u to be dead so that it can continue in its enternal flow. If you did not die, the gene must make do with an old body. So, it finishes you off, after creating in you a need to procreate. Then it passes itself into your  progeny, which is a young body that can cater to its passage. In the meanwhile, it has programmed you towards self-destruction. One,  because it has no use for you. Two, because if you continued living, you will crowd out and eat into the progenys's limited resources. So, you simply have to die. So the gene, in its flow towards infinity, creates a finite thing, you:) So that you can die and make place for the progeny, so that the gene gets the best of the world:) It is fascinating, this flow of the nature (if you call it cosmic energy, Dawkins will shoot u down with his scathing brilliance:) In Indian philosophy this would be split up as Brahman and Jiva..  But hey, Dawkins, bred largely on a monotheistic religion would rebel at those labels...

YOU, YOUR BRAIN IN A YOGA CLASSROOM!!

So, in a way, a lot of what you read in science seems to be what Vedanta was actually saying.
However to come to prosaic things like your behavior in a classroom, and the science of your brain in creating a good energy in a class:)

In neurology (Ramachandran is a world-famous neuroscientist) there has been talk of mirror neurons. The amazing thing that was revealed about this, is when u watch somebody doing something, mirror neurons in your brain start shooting off.

Here are some lines from his book that explains it better than my blundering words:

"Mirror neurons fire not only whn you perform an action, but also when you watch someone else perform the same action. ... When you watch someone else reach for a glass of water, for example, you mirror meurons automatically simulate the same action in your (usually subconscious) imagination. Your mirror neurons will often go a step further and have you perform the action they anticipate the other person is about to take -- say, to lift the water to her lips and take a drink.  .... usually your mirror neurons are reasonably accurate guesses of others' intentions. As such, they are the closest thing to telepathy that nature was able to endow us with. .. Mirror neurons may well be central to social learning.."
---
I believe this is what happens if there is a good energy in a class -- there is a collective uplift of the mirror neurons and other students are pushed into trying things that may otherwise seem difficult for them.

Interestingly, when the flow of energy is positive from a person, the students want that person to be with them, or attend class where this student is. For instance Sarah Windover in my current batch, Amitabh also, other students always react to them positively, wanting to be around them. Otto, also,  for instance, has a similar draw.  Other students  miss them if they don't come. Everybody wants to be in Sarah's class, because she is involuted, focused about her yoga practice and gets poses with a flowing ease that comes from a mind that simply won't be distracted. 

The other students believe their practice will improve being in the same class as her! Now that is wonderful.. and this business of the mirror neurons is what seems to be at work here...

As a teacher, I also use this flow of energy -- if there are groups which are very slow or lethargic in learning, I mix them up so that the general drag does not pull everybody down (including the teacher:) And that the `bad' students are with the `performing' ones.

However, look at this from another  perspective, which actually worries me quite a bit: if you want to be in Sarah's class because her practice is uplifting you, what are you contributing towards her practice??!! Or, are  you taking away from her practice??

That is why you will find really good students involuting in a class -- I have wondered at that: it may be because they don't want to be exposed to negative mirror neurons, that could drag  them down!! That must be it... They don't want to be watching people fumbling in poses or struggling, so that it does not set off their mirror neurons to do similar mistakes!!

That is the reason I also worry when someone is constantly cribbing about some little toe or an eye twitch in a class -- such casual physical complaints also have a way become suddenly infectious... in a class!! Pain, I have found, can have a similar ripple effec in a class if u gave it too much credence. It is a fine balancing act, to rein such things in, so a nocebo effect is not let loose!

So, yes, while everybody wants to be with somebody good, the idea would also work if your practice was good enough to attract that sort of attention... That your neurons are firing in a fashion that inspires the other's mirror neurons to follow u in like fashion...

Think about it...

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Daily Health Gyan: colour green

I find green tea a bit bitter. Also, I tend to overbrew it when it actually does not require brewing at all .. So, yes, if I have overcome inhibition there .. btw green tea is great for circulation (heart problems), obesity (helps with weight loss and hunger control) and just found out it is good for halitosis also!!

Today's yogic tip

For the seated forward bend, ideally you must reach not too fast into the pose. Initially, it is even better if you don't drop your head to the thigh, instead focus on reaching chest down, or even look ahead, just to stretch things that are otherwise stiffly holding u back..It is a pose of surrender, remember. That attitude will reach u faster than anything physically would ...

Yesterday's answer, today's query

ANSWER: The jatharagni is actually refers to metabolism. Possibly also catabolism, which is necessary to throw out stuff.... It is good because it removes dead cells, removes fat, flushes out toxins, facilitates lympathic drainage. When it goes into overdrive (hyperthyroidism, for instance) it can create disease -- hyperactivity, anxiety, inflammation...

QUERY:  Which is the safest poses from this list tadasana (palm tree), standing forward bend (uttanasana), paschimottanasana (seated forward bend) and mayurasana (peacok). Essentially, u need to know that they are contraindicated for which ailment and which is the only one not contraindicated in any ailment...

Daily health gyan: matter of taste

Did u know salt gets generously added to chocolates, fruits and desserts to hike their sweet quotient??!! Heavens, no wonder u feel bloated (sodium, dearies, is what causes that water retention when in excess) after u overdo these things.. Have to avoid fruit salads when eating out!! And one thot it was an healthy option!!

In my class and Yoga in a film:)

Today was Gudi Padwa, Mahashtrian new year.... and I did not expect my Maharashtrian students to land up... but they did:) Prajakta Potnis and Manasi Salvi.  They did because they wanted to start the new year with yoga... Now u know why I feel aligned with my students? They think about yoga the way I do:) Manasi's film Sadarakhshanaay (Marathi) was released last Friday... and I went to see it yesterday, at her personal screening. It was a knock-out film, amazing story (by Vikram Labhe) and amazing portrayal.

 I did not know anything about Manasi's acting abilities.. I see her usually doing her yoga meekly in her corner, hardly speaking and mostly not laughing at my jokes:)  Then I see her, in the film,  transformed, her body language morphing her from a pretty woman into a tough super-cop, handling several moral issues. She was mind-blowing!!!  Here is my review of her film, on Rediff.com. I have raved, yes!!  But not just because she is my student. But because the story was worth telling. And worth hearing. And she told it well.

Today's yogic tip

Summer pranayamas? Seetali, seetkari, suku -- the mouth-breathing ones! Cool u down...

Fat or thin? Devadutt Pattanaik lets me down!

I like Devadutt Pattanaik. I love his interpretations. I love his broad overview that is shorn of jingoism. Yet, today he walked himself (only a little off:)  off the pedestal I'd place under him.

He wrote this column in Mid-day about Yaksha's Potbelly and the general trend of the column was how in Hindu  mythology representations of gods were always plump and prosperous.The two names he brings up is of Ganesha and Kubera...Now everybody knows these gods denoted prosperity and their representation as plump underscored that.. Hence u could say their representation was the the exception, rather than the rule..

 So, it is disappointing for me to see this sort of writing from him. Why? Because it  now places Pattanaik amongs the league of scholars who decide on a point of focus and place `evidence' in favor of that, however scanty the link may be between what is real and what is actual. I can only presume that Pattanaik is plump and feels justified to whip up a meandering column about preserving the status quo:) He also seems to love love handles!!! (Even a skinny woman gets love handles if she tilted to one side, as some figurines are represented, to underscore their grace. Why to read into that an advertisement for love handles!!)


In most of the bronze statue of mythological figures, some  interesting and famous ones whose dates will contradict Pattanaik's observation(that their  thinness or the muscled look is an entirely western import), the general body line is thin.  The body is super-lean and decidedly not fat.

 Barring his general diatribe against the `recent' muscled look which he insists is a western import,  he does not give actual images or stronger evidence to justify his claim. Also, the reason for that column itself becomes suspect if Pattanaik is overweight or is prone to plumpness. (He does not do yoga, are we to presume?) . It is just like Wendy Doniger suddenly deciding to write about how yogasanas have no Indian root and is largely based on Christian gymnastic health sciences ... Since she is not Indian and is Christian... U wonder, don't u?  So also, when columns get written, u must wonder  (before u accept them unquestioningly) Why at all? Why now?  !!! 

In southern temples again most gods are represented as slender...The asuras or demons were the ones shown as fat or plump ...  And if you read Alain Danielou's translations of some south Indian historical classics like Shilapadikaram or Manimekkalai, you hear of women described as  having  `wasp' waists:)  (No love handles there, definitely).

Also, the lean slender supple look is not entirely a gym-toned thing, as he puts it. In yoga, there is a supple slenderness --  that is what I believe is evident in most images you can see from our past.

He does not agree with the Hatha Yoga Pradipika's saying that the first sign of a successful sadhana is a lean look: "When the nadis are purified there are external symptoms. Success is definite when the body becomes thin and glows." (Chapter  2, Verse 19).

Twitter: on meditating in a pose

Here from the book I mentioned below, about how we must engage our thoughts while doing yogasanas.  The three factors that are core to movement within a pose, by Dr David Frawley and S.S. Kozak in Yoga for your type.

Daily Health Gyan

Heavy set people (kapha) should avoid eating after sunset or too early in the morning: From the book Yoga for your Type, by Dr Frawley and S.S. Kozak.

Today's yogic tip

Wish to remove lethargy from your body? The cobra... the open chest movement removes lethargy by expanding your lungs for more air inside ... that stimulates the mind, and of course, it is a deep stretch that wakes up your sleepy muscles...

Yesterday's answer, today's question

Sigh. Today all normal activity must HALT... It is cricket time...
So won't blog I think, what say?:)
Any case, for the compulsive visitors (whom I love very much:) some snippets...

ANSWER:
1. Index finger - Air (Represents: Nervous energy -- Mind, and its movements)
2. Middle finger --Space (The meditative, more expansive sense of the Self. When it is upward, it is mystical. When downward, madness!)
3.Ring finger -- Earth (Body -- anything to do with matter inside of u, tissue health etc. On the mental level, stability)
4. Little finger -- Water (Fluids -- like periods, semen, blood, lubricating fluids at the joints, etc. On the mental level, cooling aspect)


QUESTION:
What is that `heat' (agni -- as in jatadragni/agnisara  that one keeps talking about positively in yoga... Does it literally mean body heat... or is it anything else? And why is it good sometimes and bad at other times...

The yoga of shitting on time! Early morning, go for it:)

Everybody thinks I am fanatic who preaches impossible habits,that are difficult to sustain. Mmm, I don't think so... For instance, when u were a kid, and had to study late, u did that, right? Discipline is just prioritising...

So, in adulthood u realise that continuing to do things the way we did as youth won't work. Your body does not have that capacity for cleaning up itself as it did in youth, when abuse of your insides was ok. Now, if u continued living your life  in your thirties(or above -- have u noticed how people either become disciplined or slowly wither away in their forties:) as if you were an irreposnible collegian on a juvenile high,  it just means you are super-dirty. I mean that literally.

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You are just a sewer-tub, which is covering up its malador with designer clothes, smart talk and expensive perfumes!! If a sewer-tub did all that and managed to pretend it was pristine clean toilet seat, then, who is going to believe it? So, a sewer-tub is a sewer tub is a  sewer-tub, all its efforts notwithstanding. I hope that I have emphasised that point enough:)!?

That is why yogic habits are easy for me... I want to be a  flushed-clean toilet, not an overflowing sewer tub whose contents are backing up on itself.

Yuck!:(

Here is science to show why if u did not manage your life enought to be able to wake up in the morning you are indeed that tub u don't want to be...

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Excretion News!

• The reason yoga advises early rising is also due to the body clock: from 4 to 6 am is colon time. During this time elimination and excretion is advised since the body is prepared to throw out its wastes then. Sleeping through this time means the water from the accumulated toxic waste is reabsorbed by the body during its forced rest. 
• Dr Robert E. Svoboda in his book Prakriti,  “Awaking before sunrise permits the body to begin to synchronise itself to the rhythm of the sun. Also, vata (wind element) whose qualities of lightness and irregularity do not encourage good sound sleep, rules the last portion of the night. Since vata is also involved in elimination, the pre-dawn period is the best time to try to eliminate the body’s physical and mental wastes. Proper elimination also helps remove the kapha that naturally accumulates overnight.”  Here the wisdom of ayurved and yoga combine to reason out why early rising, early yoga practice and meditation are good for the health of the body and mind. 

 Cogitate on this:

• Diverticular disease (that is that yucky thing where bad things flow back into the body, through cuts where they should not be), diabetes, arthritis, circulatory problems are some not so nice things associated with bad bowel habits...
• Toxins that should be released get reabsorbed. (Colon takes water back from the crap moving alongs its length).
• Your crap has now become more hard, more cemented, and its passage out, more difficult... Yowww!

--
Point taken???

Yesterday's answer, today's question

ANSWER: Index finger represents Vayu element..Air -- restless creative. Overflow can cause hyperactivity, high anxiety. Below par, can cause lethargy, depression

QUESTION: Mmmm, I do this reluctantly... If u guys did not know what the index finger (most commonly used in yoga) represented, it is highly unlikely that u have any clue what the others indicate...Any ways, since this is more a tutorial then a quizz ..let's get this out.. What do the other fingers represent...

Daily Health Gyan: pistachios

Yes, I love pistachios. But why do these Johnnies add salt to it... must be to prevent it from getting rancid too fast. Most high-nutrient stuff turn bad fast because they attract other life forms to live off them (that is why refined is a dirty prefix in nutrition. Refined is dumb eating....)Any case, pistachios -- (sigh, give salt less) are stacked with nutrients and amongst all the nuts are the highest in fiber and lowest in fat...A small handful should be good enough...

Today's yogic tip

For anxiety attacks, cooling pranayamas like seetali, balancing ones like nadi shodhana. Also forward bends are very soothing and encourage belly breathing, send blood to head (which gets less blood under fear or anger), and relieves it. Ideally yoga nidra, but since it is difficult to do it to yourself, just ordinary shavasana/corpse would do the trick, with breath awareness. This calms the mind immediately...