June 2006 Archives

Let’s start at the beginning of all you do…what you think. Have you ever analyzed your thoughts to determine if there is a pattern they adhere to? Moreso, if it exists, is this pattern skewed towards worrisome thoughts? If again your answer is yes, you need to get a grip on your mind and realize just how much damage you are, probably unintentionally, doing to your health.

Negative, worrisome thoughts are basically thoughts that include seeing negative even when there is no established reason to be pessimistic. In simple terms, if you have a headache and without reason, attribute it to a brain tumuour, you need to have your head examined…not for the brain tumour but for the way you jumped to such a gloomy conclusion without any diagnosis proving the same.

Dr. Paul E. Adolph expresses this in clear terms in Release From Tension: “Anxiety and worry represent forms of fear which project themselves into the future and often concern themselves with imaginary situations which never come to pass.  Indeed, it often happens when the future situation arrives, it is devoid of all the contemplated elements which are anticipated”.

As an exercise, pause several times a day and ask yourself, what am I thinking of? Is it positive or negative?

Picture courtesy www.flickr.com

Dean Ornish, MD, is the founder, president, and director of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California where he holds the Safeway Chair. For the past 28 years, Dr. Ornish has directed clinical research demonstrating, for the first time, that comprehensive lifestyle changes may begin to reverse even severe coronary heart disease, without drugs or surgery.

The core components of the Dr. Dean Ornish Lifestyle Modification Program as elucidated on the PMRI website here, are as follows: (1) a very low-fat, whole foods diet, (2) moderate aerobic exercise, (3) stress management techniques, and (4) support groups.

Visit this page for a list of the PMRI’s program sites as well as to read up the details of the program.

Obviously then, alternate methods of treatment are being advocated by mainstream medical practitioners too. So it is no wonder that nowadays many physicians perceive meditation, an immensely useful stress-reducing tool as a key element of an integrated health program aimed at an individual’s overall well-being.

WebMD has this interesting article on the benefits of meditation as elucidated by Dr Dean Ornish, or more specifically in response to a query, Can Meditation Help Lower My Cholesterol?

Research indicates that meditation is immensely useful to an individual’s well-being. Apparently, meditation influences our brainwave patters.

So what exactly are brainwave patterns? Our brains’ nerve cells constantly generate electrical impulses that rhythmically cause different patterns – these are known as brainwave patterns and are said to have a definite bearing on our thoughts, emotions and general state of well-being.

Meditation helps generate an alpha brainwave pattern, which implies a consciousness that promotes healing. Alpha brainwaves are slow, indicative of relaxation.

Brainwave patterns may be of type alpha or beta or theta or delta.

Beta brainwaves are more rapid, this pattern is indicative of normal waking consciousness which as we all know, implies concentration, alertness and cognition. The other side of course of beta brainwaves is anxiety and disharmony born of a necessity for too much concentration or focus. In excess, beta waves can cause disease.

Theta brainwaves are also associated with relaxation and the release of endorphins that are known to lessen our experience of stress.

The slowest brainwave pattern is delta, associated with dreamless sleep, a stage of immense relaxation yet with the potential of extreme alertness. It is believed that at some point in a delta brainwave the brain releases the human growth hormone, a hormone linked with youthfulness.

Brainwaves are measured by electroencephalograms. Learn more about this procedure on this page of Wikipedia.

As described, meditation is all about increasing our awareness of ourselves. It’s not easy to be able to meditate deeply, yet at the same time it’s not like climbing Mount Everest!

Awareness is of various types: you can meditate to be more aware of your body, your breathing, your consciousness, God (based on your faith although this would ideally follow meditating on your consciousness).

It’s important to keep one’s eyes and ears open to wisdom coming in from all sides. This is very useful, for masters of meditation have existed in every country and culture across the world.

Meditation per se is empowering but certainly meditation that relates to spiritual awareness offers a joy that has to be experienced to be believed.

This book, Awareness by Anthony de Mello is often read by those embarking on a journey of spiritual awareness.

When we meditate, we expend energy on our faith or simply focus on ourselves or on an object or on nothingness. Irrespective of whether the object of our meditation is of a religious origin or not, this process implies an increase in our state of awareness and thus empowers us both physiologically and psychologically.

Apparently, meditation helps reduce blood pressure and stress thus promoting healing and reducing the intensity of pain.

No wonder then that healthcare practitioners are increasingly encouraging their patients to meditate to promote their well-being.

To know more, refer this interesting article on the New York Daily News by Erik Ness titled, Does prayer heal?

His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi founded the Transcendental Meditation program. This page on the TM website succinctly describes its program:

“The Transcendental Meditation technique is a simple, natural, effortless procedure practiced for 15-20 minutes in the morning and afternoon while sitting comfortably with the eyes closed. During this technique the individual's awareness settles down and experiences the simplest form of human awareness -- Transcendental Consciousness --where consciousness is open to itself.

Transcendental Consciousness has been found by physiological research to be a fourth major state of consciousness, a state of restful alertness, distinct from the commonly experienced states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.”

Further, the site indicates that, over 500 studies have been completed on the physiological, psychological, and sociological effects of the Maharishi Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs, making it perhaps the most intensively studied technology in the field of human development. These studies have been conducted at 210 different universities and research institutions in 27 countries, and articles have now appeared in more than 100 scientific journals.

For a summary of research on the Transcendental Meditation Program, refer this page.

If you’d like to learn TM, use this link to find a nearby teacher.

Yoga postures or asanas help your muscles and joints to stay strong and flexible. Asanas are also known to help reduce blood pressure and stimulate the immune system.

Their dual effect on the human nervous system is interesting. The sympathetic nervous system also called the “fight or flight” system causes typical human reactions to challenging situations: a rise of blood pressure, quickening of breath rate and the release of stress hormones throughout the body.

Given that we face so much stress in our daily lives, we experience these symptoms everyday, perhaps even several times a day.

The result: health disorders such as poor digestion, ulcers, heart disease, migraines, sexual disorders etc.

On the contrary, the parasympathetic nervous system lowers blood pressure and slows breathing. More importantly, it leaves our blood circulation free to feed our digestive, reproductive and immune systems.

Pranayama is said to encourage the parasympathetic nervous system and thus promote healing and a general state of well-being.

One of best known yogacharyas of our times is B.K.S. Iyengar, a man who has pioneered Iyengar Yoga across the world. He has a huge setup at Pune (India) called the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute. To add to this, there are thought to be over 300 certified Iyengar Yoga teachers in the USA alone.

If you are keen to learn yoga, whether the fundamentals of asanas (postures) or pranayama (breath control) it is highly recommended to contact a teacher who is well-versed in the many yoga practices and who would be able to recommend what postures or breath control technique would work for you.

Southern California is home to the B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga Institute of Los Angeles and the B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga Center of La Mesa both of which offer well-structured advanced yoga courses.

If you are not aware of a reputed yoga teacher living in your vicinity, use this link to find a certified Iyengar practitioner/teacher in your state.

Australian psychiatrist Dr Janis Carter has studied the effect of pranayama on patients suffering from depression, insomnia and anger. Read more about her work on her website.

Being more conscious of our breath facilitates our being more aware and thus living in the present moment. That means, living in the NOW, instead of the then (past or future).

In turn, we are freed from disappointments stemming from hurtful events in our past. We more easily accept ourselves and our lives are they stand now.

To live completely in the now means to have a large fount of energy at your disposal to make the best use of the current moment.

Practicing The Power Of Now, by Eckhart Toelle will help you better understood the benefits of living in the NOW, besides arm yourself with excellent meditation techniques. Check out this book on Amazon.com at this link.

It goes without saying that breath control is of immense use to improve the capacity of your lungs. Quite asides this, if you think about the subtle link between the way you breath and your state of mind, you will realize there is more to breath control than what is evident at the surface.

Try and picture yourself when you last emerged from a tiff with a friend or colleague. Your breaths would have been quick to come. Then picture yourself deeply relaxed, just lying around enjoying a well-earned rest. Your breaths would have been deep.

Apparently, your state of mind has a bearing on the way you breath. Is the reverse true? That is, could the way you breath influence your state of mind?

Evidently the answer is yes.

If you control your breathing, say make a conscious effort to breath deep, your mind is likely to reach a state of calm. So practicing pranayama is a great way to keep your cool in a highly stressed world.

Expert believe that pranayama helps awaken our dormant life force throughout our body – to know more about the effects of pranayama on the brain, as explained by Sannyasi Sivagyana (Richard Budden) of Australia in the Yoga Magazine visit this website.

In order to achieve the best results, there must be a conscious effort to control prana while performing yogic asanas.

So what is prana?

Prana is breath in Sanskrit. Interestingly, prana also refers to the spirit of life. However, in pranayama, prana refers to breath and the latter part of the word ayama refers to extending breath by its control. However, the fact that breath and life are closely inter-related is noteworthy. A person breathes only until he/she is alive.

In Indian literature, Pranayama is the fourth part of Patanjali’s eight-fold Yoga, well-described in his work Yogasutra considered to have been written in the second century BC. Asanas or postures are described in the third part of the Yogasutra.

Pranayama involves conscious inhalation, retention of breath and exhalation. As a breath control technique, pranayama could imply inhaling and exhaling rapidly by taking shallow breaths or inhaling and exhaling slowly by taking deep breaths or refraining from breathing altogether.

Pranayama as a single exercise must be performed in a sitting posture. There are several postures from which to choose.

Diet accounts for only one side of the path to holistic health. Exercise takes its place right opposite. A long day at work often causes some of our muscles to get stressed, while others lie unused, causing a major imbalance. Aches and pains are a typical consequence of this state of affairs.

For instance, people who site and work at a computer often use their fingers and wrists very vigorously but as the upper arms remain fixed in a typing position, these muscles are hardly used.

A round of exercise would imply taking time out to a) de-stress muscles that are stressed and b) use muscles that are not used.

You have a range of exercise options to choose from but it’s important to choose something that you can sustain over a long period and that takes into account your daily lifestyle. As an example if you were to visit a yoga instructor, he/she should ideally ask what your profession involves and then prescribe a set of yoga asanas (positions) from the thousands of possibilities that would serve both purposes.

Very often, we consume meat by habit, without having thought of the fact that it involves the taking of life, often in a very brutal manner. When we eat a plant, there are two things to consider.

The first is that we often do not uproot the plant in its entirety, we pick only a part of it – say its leaves (think of spinach). What happens next? It grows again. It doesn’t die. Likewise, when we pick fruit, we do not destroy the tree.

The second factor is that plants are understood to have a lower level of consciousness than animals, humans being at the tip of the pyramid of life forms.

We do have to eat to survive, but choosing food that causes as little harm or pain as possible does not burden our soul thus enabling it to easily connect with the one consciousness (read meditate and feel harmony within and without).

Some wise persons explain that fruit is meant to be eaten by man. The fragrance and visual appeal of ripe fruit attracts our attention. Our picking fruit and eating it and simultaneously throwing away its seed serves to disperse it over a wider area.

If we were not to pluck the fruit, it would fall and rot. Its seed, lying in the shade of its own creator (tree), would die.

Leo Tolstoy, another vegetarian’s words are apt for inclusion at this point, “As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields. A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism.”

What can you do to energize your soul? As it happens plenty actually. For instance, you can start off by reviewing the food you eat. You eat to energize your body, right? But in the process, your spirit or soul also receives or gets depleted of energy. Yes, this happens irrespective of the calorie content of the food you eat.

As far as diet goes the path to spirituality starts out by understanding and implementing the old adage, eat to live, don’t live to eat.

There is a subtle link between diet and spirituality. Perhaps since spirituality is all about evolving to a higher level of consciousness, it is generally experienced that persons who include more fresh fruit and vegetables in their diet, as opposed to greater portions of meat, find it easier to appreciate consciousness in the world around them and are more respectful of all life forms. The reverse is also true. People who are more conscious of and respect all forms of life are generally vegetarian.

Albert Einstein, a vegetarian said, “It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”

Not really. It all depends on how clearly we have understood our need for spirituality and whether we have experienced the benefits of an enhanced level of spiritual energy at any point in our life. Spirituality means to be easily aware of (such as without needing to close your eyes or chanting a mantra) your spirit. Until such time as we are able to naturally feel spiritual, that is be in touch with and comfortable with our spiritual self we are required to invest more time and energy in our spiritual being. Since our spiritual self is the root of our tree of life, its well-being is the key to lasting health and happiness.

By giving our spiritual self more energy, in turn, we feel more energetic. You could well ask, “If I am feeling depleted of energy, how do I give my spiritual self energy?” and say the statement is contradictory. Actually, it is not a contradiction.

Acquiring spiritual energy is a constant process. Just as we start a car by slightly pressing down its accelerator, our spiritual journey too, needs a greater impetus when we start out and until we experience its benefits. Being spiritual then becomes a valuable habit.

Knowing about holistic health and of the natural state of harmony between our mind-body-spirit is in a sense, akin to a process of increasing our awareness of ourselves. As we expand our knowledge to know about the harmony that is intrinsic to our natural, healthy self, our horizon holds more promise and leaves us more conscious of what our being alive and healthy should really mean.

Holistic health is not unattainable. It only calls for a heightened state of awareness of our mind, body and spirit. Since the most neglected of these, in most cases is our spirit, it means we need to focus on rejuvenating and energizing our spirit.

In the last line of my previous post, I mentioned that when we are stressed out, or feel we cannot cope, we often switch off our minds and dose our bodies. But what about our spirit? Well, we are frequently so tuned out that many of us do not even consider the well-being of our spirit. Or perhaps it would be more apt to say that we are not aware of or practically conscious of our spiritual being.

Why should we be conscious of our spirit? In our daily lives, we see and use our body. Our mind commands our body to perform. Where then does our spirit fit in?

This ignorance spells a major part of our problem.

We believe our bodies must cope so instead of getting to the root of the problem, we switch off our minds and pop a pill to spell our headache away.

Going by the above, the term ‘holistic health’ is actually a repetition, albeit in different forms, of a single word, whole, whole!

Apparently then, if we were all aware of the true meaning of the word health, there would be no need to speak of holistic health. In truth, however, we assume health to stand for our current state of wellness, whether good or not so good. Hence the need arises for a phrase that encourages us to turn our attention to wholeness or harmony.

It seems apt for a blog dealing with holistic living to start out with a word on the most frequently heard connotation including the word holistic - holistic health. We must know what holistic health means to be able to seek and achieve it.

Holistic is believed to be derived from the word 'whole' - implying the complete thing or organism or human-being. When coupled with health, holistic health implies perceiving ourselves not merely as a body, but as a composite mind, body and spirit.

Holistic health is thus a health system that works in consonance with these three facets of every human-being. It is based on the understanding that when mind-body-spirit are in harmony, we are in a perfect state of health or well-being. Practically speaking, as a remedial measure it involves dwelling on the causes for the absence of a balance of energy between mind-body-spirit whenever dis-ease or a state of ill health arises.

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