Everyday Love

Our lives revolve round love. Next week our grandson Akira will be one year old. His little nostrils flare at the fragrance of a flower. He is an efficient drinker of milk and loves food. His perfect limbs stretch in strange flexible asanas and he does everything with noisy enthusiasm. He gazes up at the light and smiles to strange dreams. We are his puppets on a string.

Glued to electronic toys are we forgetting the need to communicate love face to face?  Are we forgetting daily acts of kindness and caring? While sms, email, Facebook or Twitter can enhance the instant communication of loving thoughts, nothing can replace the human touch. So make sure it plays a major role in building unbreakable bonds and bridges in your life.

Let us send out valentines to those we care for, entitled “What I really love about you is……..” everyday!

Meditation

Meditation is the broom that sweeps out the negative emotions and pours the honey of tranquillity into the mind. There are many forms of meditation. Here are some examples: Each of our senses provides us with new adventures and helps us live more fully. Often, however, our senses are scrambled or numbed by the hurry of life. Opening-up meditation gives us a heightened awareness of our senses. Explore each one of your senses and experience their immense potential for joy. The purpose of this meditation is to relax the physical body and the mind.

This exercise of sense-opening can be performed with any object, and while taking a walk in the park, in the house, or at your workplace. For the purpose of the example here we will use an apple. Practise this meditation for ten minutes. Some actions are performed simultaneously, but focus on one sense at a time.

1. See: Take an apple and closely examine its outer skin—its colour variations and texture. Peel it and inspect the edge of the peel. Look at the inside of the peel. Cut the apple into wedges and look closely at them. Break open a wedge and examine the heart of the apple—the tiny seeds and the wooden core. It is even permissible to use a magnifying glass.

2. Hear: Squeeze the apple. Is there a sound? As you peel it, listen. Bend the peel and listen to the sounds. What sound is it? Close your eyes and break a wedge in half. What sound is there? Rub your fingers along the outside of the peel. Is there a sound? Rub your fingers along the inside of the peel. What difference is there?

3. Touch: Close your eyes and rub your fingers along the outside of an unpeeled apple. Feel the texture. Rub your hands all over the apple. Spend five minutes examining the apple with your fingers before peeling it. Peel it slowly, feeling each piece. Break the apple into wedges and explore each wedge. Feel the inside of the peel. Examine the edges.

4. Taste: Close your eyes and place a wedge of the apple in your mouth. Bite slowly into the wedge. Bite a piece of the peel. Taste the pulp. How many different tastes are there in an apple?

5. Smell: Sniff an unpeeled apple. Peel it and smell the inside of the peel. Smell a wedge. Bend the peel and smell the acid as it explodes from the peel. Smell the pulp. Smell a squeezed wedge. How many different smells are there in an apple?

By extending the senses one forgets about present problems and is able to relax. By allowing in more than the ordinary amount of information from a single sense, other thoughts are blocked. That is why it is called meditation. It must be patently apparent that if one can extend the senses to examine an apple, those senses can be used in an even more extensive way during a walk in the park, or on a city road, on the way to work, or during lunch. It is a handy, quick and efficient way to meditate. It will even work with an apple!

Nurturing the Prana

Prana is the life-force that flows in all living things. Kirlian photography has captured pictures of the pranic aura. When prana leaves the body, the body dies. When prana is in full flow, the person is full of vitality, energy and enthusiasm. Prana creates a field of possibilities where the seed of any idea develops rapidly, where our activities proceed smoothly and bear rich dividends. To develop prana, meditation, pranayama and a calm attitude are key. Freshly-cooked healthy food, pure fresh air and yogic exercise nurture and enhance prana. Eating too much, consuming stale food, exercising till you are ready to drop dead, constant arguments, overworking, getting emotionally upset, breathing polluted air, all interfere with the smooth flow of prana. Moderation is the rule. 

Drala

The Tibetians of the Shambala tradition believe in a concept called drala by which any space can be made sacred. Drala is created by the reverence, purity and faith within a space. When a person treats his office space with reverence and keeps it clean and sparkling, he attracts drala into that space. Drala makes that space powerful and attractive. When he dresses carefully, speaks and acts mindfully, he attracts personal drala.  Many are able to do this in their homes. Indian homes have beautiful white flower patterns drawn at the entrance to attract Lakshmi, the Goddess of Good Fortune. The atmosphere is further enhanced by the fragrance of incense and joss sticks. Certain sounds like that of mantras or the sound of bells, or wind chimes in a Chinese home, are said to purify the field.

The Secret Power of Emotional Fields

Around every person there is a field of emotional energy. Some people always look radiant, and everything in their life flourishes and grows. They have a positive energy field around them. Some people, on the other hand, always have a morose or tense air about them, and everything in their life seems to fade and die. They have a negative energy field around them. A positive field is created by positive emotions and a negative field draws sustenance from negative emotions. Energy causes all beings to act in this world. The higher the level of energy, the greater will be the accomplishments. When we are tired, our energy level plummets and we do not feel like doing anything. When the field around is negative with hurt, anger, possessiveness, greed, jealousy, fear and abhorrence, we are less able to act with speed and efficiency. These emotions suck the energy and life-force out of us. All beings have within them the all-pervading life-force, the same one that creates and sustains life in the universe. It is the universal or cosmic energy that binds and connects all creatures in a single, networked web. That is why it is difficult to be completely happy while hurting others. It is necessary at all times to make sure that the negative field is not created. 

Yoga: Mind, Body and Spirit

Yoga rejuvenates the physical system and restores mental equilibrium. The word ‘yoga’ is derived from the Sanskrit word yuj which means to ‘yoke’, ‘unite’ or ‘join’. It implies the joining or uniting of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness. This chapter deals with the most popular element of yoga—asanas or body exercises. Yogasana is the science of the beauty of form. It

combines effortless postures and definite stances in the projection of a healthy and striking personality. Asanas mould every part of the body to its ideal contours. Yogasanas, in conjunction with pranayama, bring harmony and balance to every part of the body, and are highly therapeutic for the body, mind and soul. Yogasanas are best practiced with good teachers, and there are various well-known schools of yoga to choose from, namely, the Bihar School of Yoga, the Krishnamacharya Yoga Foundation, the

BKS Iyengar School of Yoga, and the Sivananda Centre for Yoga. Every Indian city has yoga teachers.

Building Your Social Capital

We all try to amass wealth, by putting money in fixed deposits, dabbling in shares, buying gold or land or a house. Cold cash in a favourite option. But  the latest research shows that social capital could be your greatest asset.

An oven (physical capital) or an MBA (cultural or human capital) can increase productivity. In the same way, social contacts certainly enhance the productivity of individuals, teams, families and communities. Anything you own will not really help you, especially during a crisi,s unless you have goodwill, fellowship, mutual sympathy and affectionate interactions with your family, neighbours, friends and work associates. The man who has no social capital, will find no support when faced by financial loss medical emergencies or any catastrophe where he needs a helping hand. Everyday life would be lonely and boring. Those without social capital are more prone to illness. Dean Ornish the heart specialist says that those who have five or more close friends are far less likely to get heart attacks than those who don’t.

Though no man is an island, there are four negative consequences of social capital: exclusion of outsiders; excess claims on group members and restrictions on individual freedom.

So gather your social network close around you like a warm multi-coloured blanket. Keep in touch on telephone, sms, internet. All of these channels can enhance the most important way of communicating-in-person and face to face.

Dedicated to Health

It is not surprising that Ananda Shankar Ray’s Laboratory did the initial research to escape mosquitoes. In India, with the emergence of highly resistant mosquito species that are unaffected by the most toxic bug killers, it has a kind of poetic justice that an Indian associate professor of entomology has found a way to make a human invisible to mosquitos’ most powerful hunting sense – smell. Featured in Nature, the scientist however lives in California!

1.      This discovery was quickly turned into an innovative skin patch called the Kite mosquito patch an inexpensive sticker, which is non-toxic patch which is now produced by olfactor labs. It disrupts the mosquitoes carbon di-oxide detection mechanism and protects against malaria, denque, filaria, West-Nile Virus and other deadly diseases.

2.      The human body is a magical creation, whose continuing health, in spite of the dangers that assail, it is really a miracle. So keep this invaluable asset each of us in gifted with, at birth, protected against easily avoidance but deadly diseases.

Stress the Killer: Beware

The twenty-first century will be the century of the Mind. The Mind is man's last unconquered frontier. The Upanishads describe it as fast, fickle and uncontrollable, like a dozen swift horses travelling at breakneck speed. Mankind is paying a steep price for failing to learn more about the Mind before embarking on the race for success in the new millennium. Stress is the price we pay for success. Stress stalks the precarious climb up the corporate ladder.

Any of the big five emotions—Kama, Kroda, Madha, Lobha, Matsarya (lust, anger, arrogance, greed, jealousy) respectively can flood the body with the chemicals of stress. Stress is destructive. Stress is ageing. Stress is a killer.

The Healthy, Nurturing, Home

A healthy home should be a healing space, a nurturing positive mind field. It can be a place where all wounds are healed. Alvin Toffler wrote ‘The family is the giant shock absorber of the family to which the bruised and battered individual returns after doing battle with the world!’ If your home is not a sanctuary but a battle-field do something about it. Get help, maybe professional help. Reserve time for laughter and happiness—schedule time for it, like you do for your work.

Have a rule to avoid difficult topics during meal times or bed time. Music, if is soothing, can be a powerful force for peace. The very walls absorb the vibrations of the music. Mantras can do the same for your home. I sometimes feel that if music can be infused into the mindspace so that it plays quietly in your mind, as the background to your day, it can have a really soothing affect. Avoid violent, depressing programmes. Just as you would not allow a terrorist into your home, do not allow such movies into the sacred space of your home. You surely are the protector of the field that exists in your home. Make your home fragrant with incense. Clean and sparkling and beautiful. Respectful of the sacred forces that can animate your home.