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Does appearance matter?
Our ideas about how we appear to others has given rise to moral ideology and fashion. While morality and fashion are abstracts, they became excepted long ago and incorporated into our social consciousness. Yet making an effort about how we look or appear to others is fun for some and a nightmare for others.
We are born naked and yet we have become ashamed of our nakedness. In discarding our true human inheritance we so often become victims of transient ideologies which demean our lives. When will we ever learn?
Sometimes, we lose ourselves by focusing on where we could be, instead of appreciating how far we’ve come. We all have different attributes and physical features that
Continue reading The Way We Look
Yoga Asana Series
A tool to improve your life
Yoga as we know has been around for many thousands of years but it’s only in the past couple of years that this exercise has come to wider public notice. In fact this idea of super brain yoga is finding its place in classrooms, medical and rehabilitation centres all over the world. It is a practical application to help people with learning difficulties and for those who want to succeed in life.
We often think of our brain as being two hemispheres and that we either use more the left left or the right. What super brain yoga does is harmonise both sides of the brain so that they
Continue reading Super Brain Yoga
A dimension in self awareness and care
Just like our mind can affect our body, our body can affect our mind. Often times, anxiety and tension will build up in our bodies, making it even harder to get rid of.
What massage does, among other things, is to bring attention to your muscles so you can relax them most effectively. Ideally it’s great to be massaged by someone else, but its also something you can do regularly to help relax and feel better about yourself.
Tips
You don’t need to be an expert, just do what you like in the way of stroking and rubbing over your skin. You can do your head, neck and face without oil, but some
Continue reading Self Massage
How to have a proud and firm bust
Breasts for many are a social issue, yet every woman wants to have nicely shaped breasts throughout her life. Sadly, this is not possible in most cases due to lifestyle adaptations and the fact that breast sagging is a natural process that happens with age whereby the tissues supporting the breasts lose their suppleness and elasticity.
Breasts usually begin to sag after a woman reaches 40 though it can occur earlier. Apart from age, other factors that cause sagging breasts include overall health, fitness, posture, pregnancy and breastfeeding, menopause, rapid weight loss or gain, strenuous exercise, nutritional deficiencies and the brassier.
Some diseases like breast cancer or respiratory conditions like
Continue reading Preventing Breast Sagging
With a little rubbing, the ouch soon goes away
1883 Portrait courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Massage is an instinctive human response that when we bump ourselves, we rub the sore spot and the ‘ouch’ soon goes away. This basic instinct has been slowly developed over the countless generations into a sophisticated healing art and science in some form in over most of the World.
Egypt had a well developed social structure 5,500 years ago and people may have used massage then. Imhotep, the physician and architect recorded his knowledge of aromatic oils or unguents made by mixing aromatic plants, resins and gums with oils or fats.
The use of massage in India goes back a
Continue reading The History of Massage
What doctors don’t tell you
When you are diagnosed with a Chronic Illness, doctors should tell you the symptoms, the side effects, how it can progressively get worse, what treatment is available and maybe they’ll even suggest what to eat, but what they don’t tell you while you’re sitting across from them is how hard the rest of your life suddenly becomes.
They don’t tell you all your favourite hobbies that required a lot of energy might as well be tossed to the side. They don’t tell you all your life goals and dreams get jumbled up and switched around and some even need to be put on the back burners until you’ve found a way to manage your symptoms.
Continue reading Living with Chronic Disease
Is your posture killing you?
One is sometimes compelled to ask, what do we really know about ourselves, and in particular our bodies? Science has made a great many studies and come to a number of conclusions but are these conclusions correct?
Science and medicine in many ways constitutes an educated guess-work and when what some treatment works for a majority without actually causing apparent harm to most users or trailists, it becomes medicine. In many ways our ancestors had a better understanding of what was to be human in regard to our physical posture.
One of the recent contradictions in modern science has come from the x-rayed spines of so-called primitive or tribal people who live without the
Continue reading Posture and Health
Menstruation from Cultural Perspectives
The menstrual cycle is a bane in many women’s lives and those few days of bleeding are understood and managed in varied and interesting ways by cultures around the world.
But for those less educated or impoverished, it’s their most dreaded time of the month. Without access to sanitary products, many girls are hidden in shame, forced to miss school and some become susceptible to infections. In places where women’s bodies are viewed with suspicion, damaging social stigmas and myths cast them away from the community, limiting their job options and social interactions, which inevitably takes an incalculable socioeconomic, physical and mental toll on their lives.
Examples of attitudes and practices:
Nepal A recent news story
Continue reading Menstruation and culture
Towards an Ethical Way of Life
Spash Art via Tumblr
Most of us have heard the term karma, a Sanskrit word (कर्म) implying the interlinking of cause and effect. Karma signifies a moral caution and a stimulus to become responsible in life because when we cause harm to others by accident or even design, consequences will come back to us at some point.
The Dhammapada is one of the most sacred and best-loved of Buddhist texts. It points out the method of self-realization, by the way of moral conduct:
Like garlands woven from a heap of flowers, Fashion from your life as many good deeds.
The text further enlightens on the nature of the karmic fruit:
For while the
Continue reading Understanding Karma
Loss of health, delusion and addiction
Spare your body – sweet pleasure undermines health and the ability to enjoy life
Our love affair with sweets began when our parents used them as panaceas and bribes. When combined with untruths the result is often behavioural deviance.
One cannot categorically state that sugar is the root cause of all deviant behaviour, however it is a significant factor. The consumption of sugar as sweets gives a boost of sensory delight and energy that is addictive.
Food manufacturers know this and add sugar to most processed foods to keep people consuming their products.
Many of us as children were introduced to sweets and many of us continually pushed the margins for sweet rewards.
Continue reading Our Sweet Downfall
Yoga Asana Series
Opening the spine in yoga
Some yoga asana practitioners consider back bends to be as challenging or even more challenging than inversions, especially as they highlight any structural weakness or existing trauma within the spine and cause pain.
The term ‘back bend’ is erroneous and highly misleading. What we are talking about is an extension and flexion because if you think about the shape of the spine, when it bends there is a compression on one side and an expansion on the other.
Within yoga asana, especially when doing back bends, the idea is to lengthen the spine is much as possible creating space between the vertebrae and expanding the inter-vertebral discs. Then throughout the
Continue reading Bending Backwards
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