Improve Your Golf With Yoga Techniques Audiotape
Recommended by "PGA Teaching Pro", featuring 9-minute relaxation technique AUDIO: The yoga exercises described in this AUDIO help the golfer relax the body and allow the mind to focus on the game...Learn More...
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Yoga For All Americans
Featuring 9-minute relaxation technique AUDIO: The yoga exercises described in this AUDIO help all Americans relax the body and the mind...
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Yoga For Dads Audiotape
Featuring 9-minute relaxation technique AUDIO: The yoga relaxation exercises described in this AUDIO helps dad focus more clearly...
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Yoga Blocks from YogaBestseller.com
Blocks bring the ground to you. Initially if you are unable to reach the floor, a set of yoga blocks can help you achieve and maintain proper positioning.Learn More...
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Carry All Bag
Organize your yoga accessories in this convenient Carry-All bag.Learn More...
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Eye pillow
Let your eyes relax. This soft silk pillow instantly helps you close your eyes and relax during corpse pose and meditation while lying down...Learn More...
Some people have weak venous valves, in these cases gravity forces large quantities of blood back down into distal parts of the vein. This pressure overloads the vein and pushes its wall outward. After repeated overloading, the walls lose their elasticity and become stretched and slack. Such enlarged and convoluted veins, caused by incompetent valves, are called as varicose veins.
It is good to be aware about the problem of varicose veins and prevent from it. Once the devil of this disease takes hold it may be possible to arrest the pain caused but it is impossible to completely eliminate the disease.
When the veins in certain part of the body become widened the other part of the body gets lesser or improper and irregular supply of blood, the working capacity of the heart may get affected.
The great danger is the collection of blood in one spots that clotting of blood. Blood clotting can occur in any part of the vein and the clot can move with the circulation of the blood. It can clot in the leg but it can also clot in the vein pertaining to heart or lungs as well as brain.
Cause for Varicose Veins
To remain standing for the whole day or longer time (may be part of profession)
Going on walking, who have not to sit at all, the veins of such people get little dilated than necessary because of the higher pressure of blood in these veins.
In the case of ladies, irregular menses, pregnancy or repeated delivery as well as very quick deliveries, and miscarriages, including the menopause time, it is very much possible that the varicose veins may result.
Varicose veins Symptom
• Aching, heavy legs (often worse at night and after exercise)
• Ankle swelling
• A brownish-blue shiny skin discoloration around the veins
• Skin over the vein may become dry, itchy and thin, leading to eczema (venous eczema)
• The skin may darken (stasis dermatitis), because of the waste products building up in the legs
• Minor injuries to the area may bleed more than normal and/or take a long time to heal
• Rarely, there is a large amount of bleeding from a ruptured vein
• In some people the skin above the ankle may shrink (lipodermatosclerosis) because the fat underneath the skin becomes hard.
• Restless Leg Syndrome. Restless Leg Syndrome appears to be a common overlapping clinical syndrome in patients with varicose veins and other chronic venous insufficiency. Read more..
In yoga, the moment a person adopts an asana (posture) his life pattern changes. His personality and diet changes, he become a puritan. After doing asanas (postures) he will not want to smoke, he will not eat a full lobster. Yoga is a combination of psychoanalysis, psychiatry and physiotherapy. Maybe the hypothalamus (an area of the brain controlling endocrine activity) is activated and that is the reason for such dramatic reactions and changes. Once spontaneous energy starts coming out of the hypothalamus good things start happening to the person. He understands what he was doing, corrects himself. He emanates positive energy. A person’s energy depends on his personality. A quiet person has more positive energy and a restless person has more negative energy. Yoga is a way of life. Yoga treats a person as one with soul. Yoga knows how to bring down the high blood pressure and what would happen if blood pressure is not brought down. But the exact cause cannot be pinpointed. Yoga therapists see it as a symptom and not as a disease.
Step 1: The first step in the treatment of hypertension is identifying the symptom (i.e., high BP).
Step 2: Getting to know the person’s lifestyle, family background.
Step 3: Identifying the stress / pressure-causing factors.
Step 4: Techniques to bring about the sense of release are prescribed next. It can be asanas for some; for others it would be pranayama; for others it can be some kind of meditation to reduce stress.
Pranayama and savasana are important yogic methods to control the blood pressure. Pranayama (breath control), conscious respiration, savasana (here a person adopts a dead-body-like posture and starts relaxing from the toes to the upper part of the body step by step), these yogic postures can remove the stress and control blood pressure. Yoga brings about relaxation and this removes the stress, a main cause of high blood pressure.
Yoga is both a static and dynamic exercise and improves the cardiovascular efficiency in a healthy as well as a sick person. A person who never indulges in any kind of physical activity (either dynamic or static) has a very poor cardiac efficiency. On exercise his heart rate increases as if the same person has had physical training for six months. His heart rate will not jump but will steadily go up after a set of exercises. Extrapolating these findings to yoga which is both a static and dynamic exercise, muscle tone is created by static exercises; muscle and joints are made supple by dynamic exercises. People think that one has to run about 10 km in order to exercise. One can sit in a room and do yoga for the muscles to be equally sufficient. With yoga one can improve the cardiovascular efficiency in a normal person and in a diseased person. But one should be cautious regarding the underlying condition. Conditions like severe heart valve obstruction calls for care and caution.
Vipassana is a meditation practice propagated by the Buddha. It is useful for calming the mind and nerves and removing stress. In this era, most people are not interested in dharma and moksha. Of the four purusharthas, now only two are being fulfilled: artha and kama. When you go into artha and kama without the balancing effect of dharma and moksha, you will have mental tensions, worries, feelings of insecurity and fear. The mind will be troubled, full of passion, anger, remorse and regret. Practices like vipassana can be used to keep the mind calm and balanced.
Can meditation techniques help stabilise marital relationships?
In all relationships there are feelings of insecurity and fear. The mind becomes dissipated, filled with anger, passion and guilt. One moment you are fighting and the next you are friendly again. In the evening you quarrel, and by morning you are friends. You say, “Sorry”, and it is over, but all this creates tension. When you come to a really hot point, you have a shower, then you feel better. Similarly, at times of tension, you can do vipassana.
Yoga means to calm the restless mind, and yoga also means the techniques which calm the mind. When the restless mind is quietened, then it is said that yoga has been achieved. So, yoga is a practice and an attainment too. It is very difficult to talk about it.
I tell everyone that first it is necessary to sort out artha and kama. King Janaka was liberated though he lived amongst passions. He had immense properties and wealth, position and power. He had everything, but he was calm.
There have been many such people who have lived a disciplined life and still followed the path of purushartha, self-effort, while living in the world. They have done their duties, worked hard, but, in the midst of all, they were able to remain calm.
I saw Gandhiji during my youth. Even in old age, he had surprising purushartha. He was always calm and quiet despite political upheavals, clashes and killings. So, a person who can keep himself calm in the midst of money and passion, is worthy of praise. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: “That man who renounces all desires, gives up all ties, and becomes egoless and detached, achieves tranquillity of mind, even while performing action”.
Just as all rivers flow into the sea and lose their individual existence at that point, in the same way, let all of your desires and fantasies flow, then anchor them at the point where they cease flowing. That central point has to be located, then you move beyond vipassana or you will remain stuck there.
How can mauna or observing silence succeed in the grihastha environment?
When you play a transistor for 24 hours will the battery go flat, or not? If you switch it off, the battery will last longer. That is the importance of mauna. In speaking, listening, thinking, walking, i am using up the battery’s energy.
Our battery is pranic energy. That pranic energy is used up quickly in talking, in worrying, in passions. This pranic energy that is spent on all of our activities should be conserved. Conservation of prana is the solution to our energy crisis.
Ancient Hindu yogis and Tibetan Buddhist monks categorized seven stages of human consciousness, and refered to them as the “seven bodies.” I would like to describe these “bodies” as realms of consciousness, because I feel the evidence strongly suggests that they are all layers of awareness in the purely physical human brain. This is my opinion, and traditionalists may disagree, so be aware that you are reading one man’s views of ancient teaching that are not written in stone. I am trying to bring science and the Eastern traditions into harmony in order to express the actual facts, rather than just restating ancient myths. This marriage of science and meditative states of consciousness may be a bit awkward at first, as the combination is so very new.
All should be aware that an overly serious discussion of higher realms of consciousness can lead to a form of pseudo-spiritual fascism. Fixation with categorizing different levels of consciousness tarnished the image of the Theosophical movement in the early 20th century, as it led to a foolish competition among members. A few Theosophists claimed to be on a higher level of consciousness than the rest of the group, and felt this made them superior and of greater value as human beings.
Ultimately, human worth is subjective and rests, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder.Who is to say that even a Buddha is better than your wife, son, or daughter? Those you love most are of highest value to you, not some far away yogi or monk. No real or imagined hierarchy of beings on higher levels of consciousness are of importance unless you make them important. Full enlightenment and three dollars will buy you a cup of coffee and a jelly doughnut at almost any diner in America.
The traditional Eastern descriptions of seven bodies of consciousness are derived from subjective feeling, not objective testing. It is therefore advised that you take these descriptions as subjective states of consciousness, not as proven physical science. The human brain contains approximately 100 billions neurons, all connected by an estimated 50 trillion synapses. This ocean of electrified living cells creates the organic holographic phenomena we know as consciousness. The amount of variation in human consciousness is almost infinite because all those neurons and synapses can fire in an essentially infinite number of sequences. No two humans have exactly the same brain structure, and no two moments in any individual’s consciousness are ever exactly the same. The words of Greek philosopher Heraclitus are often parapharsed as saying that “You can never step in the same river twice.” A more exacting translation of his words would be “We both step and do not step in the same rivers.We are and are not.”
How is it possible to know oneself objectively and thus accurately? For example, subjectively your dog may know your automobile very well. He may have ridden in your car, smelled it, felt it, and seen it as clearly as you, but does that mean that your dog really understands what an automobile is? Likewise, just because you may be able to feel different layers of consciousness does not mean that you understand the true nature of consciousness in an objective, factual way.
Can we trust ancient scriptures from the prescientific era to tell us the truth? Do the famous and often infamous “enlightened ones” have all the answers about man’s inner nature? I do not believe even the words of the great “Masters” can be trusted on these issues, because history has proven that the enlightened elite can make major mistakes, just like you and me. Even the enlightened are subject to cultural conditioning which can distort their vision and judgment. For example, the famous Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese sages mainly ate meat, as was the custom in their countries. The Indian mystics, however, are all adamantly vegetarian, as is their strict Hindu and Jain culture. Societal programming does effect the enlightened and thus they may attach false beliefs to their teachings which they pass on to you as fact. If their culture believes in souls and reincarnation, they may believe the same out of lifelong conditioning. Unfortunately, the very real phenomena of enlightenment does not endow infallible wisdom. It is with these warnings that we enter the intriguing world of the realms of consciousness.
1) THE PHYSICAL REALM - The first realm is simple awareness of the physical body, the grossly material physical body which medical science continues to map and explore. Those who reside primarily in the first realm of consciousness are concerned with the simple basics of life: food, shelter, and family. They may believe in organized religions, but they lack deep involvement in anything beyond the fundamentals of physical existence.
2) THE ENERGY REALM - In addition to the solid physical body that has weight and form, human beings have a second body of energy created by the active energy content of the total human nervous system. This second realm has been called the etheric, energetic, or emotional body, which is powered by our own animal metabolism. More subtle layers of the human nervous system may exist that are not yet understood by Western science. For example, Western doctors have no explanation for what creates the sensation of the mysterious “meridians” (channels of energy) which are activated by acupuncture, even though those meridians can be clearly felt by many patients. The second realm can be energized by deep breathing, yoga postures, jogging, and good health in general. Those who live in the second realm have enough cognitive power to feel the inner workings of the human nervous system.
Most human beings primarily reside in the second realm of consciousness, and they create the majority of our culture, art, politics, and organized religion. The second realm is not meditative, but is richly and complexly emotional. No actor could develop great “emotional range” unless he was at least a conscious resident of the second realm.
This ranking of realms implies no overall superiority of human worth. A person who lives in the first realm may be good hearted and hard working, while a second realm individual may be a thief, drug addict, and murderer. Imagine the earth viewed from the perspective of deep space, the thin layer of our “humanity” barely visible as a dulling of the earth’s atmosphere due to the pollution we create. Who can judge any human worth from the eternal cosmic perspective?
3) THE ENHANCED MENTAL REALM - The third realm, sometimes called the “astral body,” is the first realm of meditation. I reject the “astral” label as both dishonest and inaccurate. I would prefer to call the third realm the enhanced mental realm. When you sit in meditation and start to feel bigger than the purely physical, that is the third realm revealing itself. It is colorful and pleasant, but fairly low in energy. Entering the third realm means that you have gained some progress in meditation, either through formal practice in meditation techniques, or through the genetic gift of a naturally meditative mind-brain from birth. Those who reside in the third realm have good skills of observation and a knack for letting go of the thought process. The third and fourth realms of consciousness are closely associated with the functions of the brain itself, just as the second realm is closely associated with the function of the total physical body and its peripheral nervous system.
When one says that a person is in the third realm of consciousness, it means that is where he or she resides most of the time. Consciousness fluctuates up and down, burning brighter or becoming dimmer when one is tired or less attentive. Those who primarily reside in the third realm have frequent jaunts into the fourth, but may also fall back into the second realm when their awareness is less activate. Those students who primarily reside in the fourth have frequent excursions into the fifth realm of consciousness, which is called a ’satori.’ Even those in the third realm may sometimes jump up temporarily to the fifth for a glimpse of freedom. These glimpses may be initiated by intense practice of meditation techniques, or triggered by close proximity to a teacher who resides in the higher realms. You can call this transference direct transmission, shaktipat, or simply a “contact high.” Read More…
Today Sinus is the most common disorder all over the world. In medical system of treatment, sinus is regarded as a resultant state of allergy. The Secretions formed by the mucous membranes of the paranasal sinuses drain into the nasal cavity. The state in which the mucous membranes of the paranasal sinuses get inflamed due to an allergic reaction or infection is called sinusitis. Swelling membranes may block the drainage into the nasal cavity increasing the fluid pressure in the paranasal sinuses, it leads to sinus headache. Sometimes the pain becomes very severe and is accompanied by irritation in the eyes. There is excessive sneezing, watering of the nose and blockage of one or both the nostrils heaviness of the head.
Many a times breathing becomes difficult and one has to struggle for every breath.
Voice is also affected. Constant sneezing and congestion makes the life miserable.
Chronic state of sinusitis may also cause initiation of several other respiratory diseases and becomes uncontrollable through conventional medical devices.
