Some Precious yet Random Health Tips for You!

(For any health query, please write to contact@drshreya.com)

The below given health tips are tested tips for people that are willing to follow a comparatively healthy lifestyle in today's rushed world scenario.

1. Do not walk / exercise after meals ever. It is the worst culprit that can result in disturbed stomach and gaseous distension. Brisk walks are always good on light stomach!

2. Smaller and mild to moderate stretches during work hours work more efficiently than irregular gymming. Get out of your chair frequently and have a brisk stroll around!

3. Eat a healthy breakfast, which sets you energetic for your work ahead through the day. Never ever skip your breakfast if you want your liver to perform optimally.

4. Never sit in front of computer screens for long without moving your spine. Get up, bend your back, stretch back- sideways, move your knees up and down and you are ready for your further computer work!

5. Chew your food properly. Many people fail to comprehend the reason behind improper digestion when they hastily gulp down the meal.

6. Blink you eyes frequently to avoid tiring of eyes and undue pressure in them.

7. Maintain strict body hygiene. It not only keeps you healthy but makes you feel better about yourself, which boosts your self confidence tremendously.

8. Make sure you devote at least 1/2 an hour of the day completely to yourself. You may do whatever you want during that time and enjoy being in the company of yourself!

9. Green vegetables do you loads of good. Eat them raw or mildly cooked; your intestines will thank you!

10. Remember that health drinks and other beverages can never take place of water. Keep yourself well-hydrated with optimal water intake.

11. There is nothing like 'reduced smoking now'! Quitting completely is the only option if you want to look, feel and be young and healthy!

12. Do not sleep at least for 1 and 1/2 hours after meals. Longer the better!

13. Be in the vicinity of positive-minded people. They make you feel lot healthier, as you shed the negativism about life!

14. Take minimum medicine, only when required. Never self-drug yourself unless you know ins and outs of the therapy you are treating yourself with.

15. Do not think about sleep. It will follow naturally! 

May the Prana Be With You! Energy and Yoga

by Baxter

Exploring the Arctic by Michele Macartney-Filgate

During an evening meal recently, an acquaintance of mine asked me what I thought about the word “energy” as it used today in this country when discussing practices such as yoga and martial arts. I should mention that this new friend is a medical anthropologist and a long time martial arts expert and teacher, and had a few ideas of her own. After we spoke about western and eastern concepts of energy, I had a sneaking suspicion that I had not addressed this idea to any great extent in these blog posts. So, with that in mind, I’d like to begin a conversation about energy as it pertains to the practice of yoga.

For anyone who has been in yoga classes for a while, you will be familiar with a term from Sanskrit that is sometimes translated as “energy,” but really has both a broader and more specific meaning in the original language.  Prana, the term referring to energy (not the yoga clothing line!), is conceived of as being of two types. The first is a substance called prana that pervades the entire known universe of material objects and is contained in such things as our atmospheric air and in the food we eat, so that it could be considered in part as nutrients for living beings. According to Georg Feuerstein, prana “signifies the universal life force, which is a vibrant psychophysical energy similar to the pneuma of the ancient Greeks.” In addition, there is an individual prana, which exists solely within you, that is the animating force of your life. We are born with a certain portion of pranic energy that we slowly use to fuel our life’s activities, and a partly renewable portion of prana that we can derive from food and air. This later source is not able to sustain us, however, if our original store of prana eventually runs out, which it does for all of us eventually.

Prana in the body is also said to move around. It does so via channels or small inner highways, said to number around 72,000 according to some sources, that are known as nadis. Out of the 72K, only three of them get spoken about much: the central channel that runs within or in front of the spine from the pelvic floor to the crown of the head, known as the sushumna nadi, and the right and left nadis known as ida and pingula, that start at the nostrils and end at the pelvic floor at the base of the sushumna nadi. I’ll tell you more on the sushumna nadi another time.

In addition to these three large channels and all the myriad smaller ones, the prana is said to move around the body via a series of forces called “winds” or vayu, that assist in moving prana up towards the chest and head via the prana vayu, down toward the pelvic floor via the apana vayu, out to the extremities via the vyana vayu, around the digestive center via the samana vayu, and finally around the throat area via the uddana vayu.

According to the texts on Hatha Yoga from the Twelfth century and forward, the yoga practice itself is designed to have several effects on prana. By correct practice, which is quite detailed and contains enough material to fill up many blog posts, one can conserve one’s individual quantity of prana so as to achieve your goals in yoga or in everyday life. Through visualizations, yoga postures and pranayama breath techniques to name a few, you can also encourage the usual movements of the winds of the body or you can reverse them. For example, apana vayu is associated with all bodily functions where things need to move down and out of the body, such as for urination. Obviously, we want that to happen at certain times of the day in order for our physical body to empty waste and remain healthy, so apana vayu needs to move in its usual fashion. The yogis also suggest changing the normal movement of apana vayu at times, sending it upwards, as a way of holding onto more of your total energy. They figured if you could live longer and remain relatively free of illness, you would have more time to achieve the highest goals of yoga, such as another future topic, samadhi.  

If we try to find a modern interpretation of prana, we might think it has something to do with blood in the circulatory system or nerve conduction in the nervous system, and it is conceivable that it has just such correlates, although not exactly described in the same way as our modern physiology is described. In my personal yoga practice, I find that working with the concept of prana is yet another way for me to bring more concentration and focus on the tasks at hand, be they yoga poses, breathing techniques or even a more mindful way of standing in line at the bank. I’ll leave the idea of prana here for now, but I am certain this essential concept in yoga philosophy and alternative yoga anatomy will pop again before to long. Until then, may the force be with you!

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We Didn’t Mean to Scare You Part 2 We Really Want to Inspire You!

by Baxter

Another View from 1/2 Mile Marker by Brad Gibson

Nina asked me to share my own thoughts on her post from last week, We Didn't Mean to Scare You, and I wanted to begin by saying how much I appreciated her common sense response to this writer’s dilemma. As many of you know by now, our purpose here at YFHA is to provide you with information and tools to assist you in practicing and teaching yoga as you age in healthy and beneficial ways.

Now I'd like to address one particular issue that our questioner raised:

"My own thought about practice is, if I'm not feeling something, why bother? I know most of my students feel the same way."

Indeed, much of what we experience internally as we practice yoga is some sort of increase in sensation, whether it is a feeling of stretch or compression in muscles or near joints, or strong muscle contraction when we are using a muscle group to keep us in our pose. On the level of physical-mental connection, we get this feedback from the body and we know that something is happening. The vast majority of the time, if taught or practiced skillfully, this is probably a beneficial thing that leads to some very positive, “delicious” changes, as our writer points out.

One of the skills that we develop as we practice more consistently is the discrimination to know when the level of feeling is better or worse for us. It is true in yoga and in everyday life. We learn at a young age how hot is too hot, and such.  If we acknowledge this experimental way that we all learn, then even when we go a bit too far in practice and have a brief “injury” or setback, it really shouldn’t be discouraging, because in some way this happens for us to find our limits and edges and provides us with wisdom for our future practice. We actually have learned something valuable about the yoga practice and ourselves. And, just to play devil’s advocate, don’t forget styles of yoga asana and meditation where there is not much going on, very little feedback or “feeling” happening, yet much benefit for the your entire being. This could be the case for restorative yoga or Yoga Nidra. These practices are equally an experience of yoga and the ultimate aim of yoga as a physically demanding style of practice.  

And as a teacher of yoga concerned about the general safety of the classes you teach, periodically re-assess the population you are teaching to, their average age and the fitness level of your students.  As your community ages, you may decide to learn new styles of practice and teaching that will better serve the needs of your student base that might be considered “gentle,” “restorative” or even “therapeutic.”  Nothing wrong with that, and you will become a more skilled teacher, able to work with many different kinds of students.  Our education as teachers should really never stop. And instead of letting the expanding knowledge about yoga scare us, let’s get inspired to learn and integrate this new information into our work in such a way to build our confidence, both as practitioners of the art and teachers of the path.

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