Baba Ramdev's Women Problems Video

Below is embedded a video by Baba Ramdev. It is an hour long and so much full of tips that first I thought of recounting them here. But, it is just impossible to. So, I''ll just write a short summary about the video.

This video was specially made for women and their problems. So, it recants all the home remedies, physical exercises and Ayurvedic medicines for every problem a woman can face right from a simple hair loss and pimple to the infertility due to closed fallopian tubes, fibroids in the uterus or irregularities of the menstrual cycle. Baba Ramdev says that every problem in the body can be cured by just simple pranayam techniques and the most important of them are Anuloma-Viloma and Kapalabhati. These exercise if done daily for 15-20 minutes each can cure all our problems:

• wrinkles, pimples, acne, moles on our face
• split ends, damaged hair, weak hair, hair loss or promoting hair growth 
• keeping lips and eyes in the best of their conditions 
• improving the health problems caused by irregular periods like back problems or stomach problems or heavy blood flow 
• infertility due to closed fallopian tubes, smaller size of the uterus, fibroids and cysts in the uterus
• migraine and regular headaches
• improper functioning of any part of the body
• weight loss for people with excess fat and weight gain for people who are too thin 

The exercises can be done even during the periods. But, pregnant women should not do Kapalbhati. Probably, it will be bad for the baby. He also warns to stay away from the burgeoning market of the cosmetics which are useless and do nothing but rob you out of money and eating a lot of spices in the food. Eating wrong food can cause irreversible damage to your system like eating lots of spices causes both hair loss and weakening of eye sight.

Some simple Grandmother's Remedies (Dadi Maa Ke Nuskhe) for hair loss and chapped lips.

• Apply some oil in your belly button to prevent dry and chapped lips.
• Rub the nails of both your hands against each other. Exclude the thumbs if you do not want to grow a mustache and beard. This can help even bald men regain their lost hair. The simplest and most inexpensive remedy for hair loss and promoting hair growth.
• Apply Mustard Oil / Sesame Oil / Coconut Oil to your hair for keeping it healthy and black. Mustard Oil is the best for cooking purposes and body massages whereas sesame oil is used in all Ayurvedic preparations.

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Meditate while you walk

I am not very sure about how many of you like to exercise and sweat out. And, I'm not equally sure of the number of people who can sit through the meditations and yoga since you might find it very boring and slow. But, no one hates walking or, rather, cannot do without walking. So, I am sharing today with you all a great article which I came across which discusses a combination of walking and meditation as a form of exercise and I must say it looks really interesting and worth giving a try.

Walking is one form of exercise which can be indulged into without any expenses and waste of time. A short or a long walk early in the day literally helps you marathon through out the day and a short stroll in the evening or after dinner helps in a good sleep. Not only that, it helps you lose weight too. The article discusses how you can make walking a time to observe awareness of your own body instead of concentrating on the surroundings and the people. You can take this time to come in harmony with yourself and understand how your body moves and how you can make it even more better. So, go ahead and make walking an enjoyable and a different experience by reading this article. Do come back and share the experience and thoughts.

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Yoga to reduce weight

Today, I would be sharing with you a yoga asana which helps in reducing weight. It is the Alternate Nostril Breathing (Nadi Sodhana or Anuloma Viloma). It not only helps in reducing your weight, but it has lot of potential health benefits. It helps in cleaning and rejuvenating your vital channels of energy. Some other benefits are:

• The exercise produces optimum function to both sides of the brain: optimum creativity and optimum logical verbal activity. This creates a more balanced person, since both halves of the brain are functioning property.
• best technique to calm the mind and the nervous system.
• helps in combating asthma.
• balances body weight. Increases it if you are too weak or decreases it if you are overweight. 

The videodescribes the step by step procedure of anuloma-viloma breathing exercise.

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Reducing Belly Fat {Health}

Exercises are important part of our regimen. But, there are some parts of the body where if fat gets accumulated, it becomes difficult to cut down by regular exercise. I am  talking, here, about belly fat which affects many people and they find it difficult to remove. There are some yoga postures which, if practiced daily, would help in reducing belly fat and also in reducing the body weight:

• Yogamudra: Sit with legs crossed. Reach your arms backwards and hold your left wrist with your right hand behind your back. Then, bend forward, bringing your forehead and nose in contact with the floor. Breathe out during the process. Maintain this state for 8 seconds and then rise, breathing in. Practice 8 times. This is one of the essential asanas for women. It should be practiced everyday.

        Benefits: Strengthens Digestive System, relieves constipation, helps with menstrual problems, strengthens heart and removes belly fat.

• Bellows Posture: Lie on your back. While breathing out, bend your right leg and bring the thigh close to your chest. Hold your right leg firmly with your both hands. Maintain this position for 8 seconds, holding the breathe. Lower your right leg while breathing in. Repeat with your left leg and then with both legs together. This comprises one round. Practice 8 rounds. 

          Benefits: Strengthens digestive system, relieves constipation, helps remove gas and reduces belly fat.

• Hare Posture: Kneel down and hold both heels firmly with your hands. While exhaling, bring the crown of the head into contact with the floor in a posture of bowing down. The forehead should touch the knees. Maintain this posture for 8 seconds, holding the breathe. Breathe in while rising. Practice 8 times.

       Benefits: Improves memory and concentration, good for meditation, helps in throat and thyroid problems and reduces belly fat.

• Bird Posture: Stand up straight. Keeping your left leg standing straight and firm in the floor, stretch your right leg as far back as possible. Extend your left arm forward and right arm backward, keeping both arms parallel to the ground. Reach out your right hand hand towards your right toes as if to touch your toes. Keep your back straight. The right leg may be bent slightly upwards. Hold for 30 seconds. Repeat this posture with your left leg stretched backwards. This completes one round. Practice 4 rounds.

         Benefits: Develops perfect balance, strengthens nerves in arms and legs and helps reduce body weight.

        

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The Mad Weeder Strikes Again

I was indifferent to gardens in my 20s and 30s. I started appreciating them in my 40s. L loves wildflowers and wildflower walks and he has a front yard with columbine (including a hybrid created by his aunt), hens and chicks from his mother's Downstate yard, irises, poppies from his mother, hibiscus, ajuga groundcover, lilies of the valley (see photo at right), vinca and other plants I'm forgetting. In back he has cacti, false Solomon's seal, asparagus, chives, green onions, yucca, day lilies and gingham girls. He has lilac, honeysuckle and forsythia bushes. All this he will leave when he sells his house this or next year, though he will dig up some of the plants for our new place. We started taking rocks from his front yard to put in our yard. We put them in the trunk of his car and then when we got here we weren't sure what to do with them. I would've just let them sit in the trunk for the next week (We close on the house--see photo--June 30). But he didn't want to drive around with rocks in his trunk. So we put them in my storage area.

This morning I went to Michael McColly's yoga class. I recommend it. What's good is the he talks about breathing and clearing your mind and paying attention to your body. It was odd, though, to be taking a class from someone I know, and to have his familiar voice telling us what to do with our bodies and breathing. My mind buzzed around, as always. The only time I've ever been about to truly concentrate and focus is when I took yoga at the Alliance Francaise. When the teaching was in French, I had to really listen. Alas, the class wasn't always in French. The teacher would let in people who barely knew how to say Bonjour, and then she'd repeat everything in English. That's why I no longer take yoga at the Alliance. When it was an all-French experience, it was like being in a trance, wrapped in a haze of foreign language, and the haze made it feel like you were in a different place.

The yoga room was warm, because for some inexplicable reason, the heat had gone on earlier. I was hot and slightly dizzy. Perhaps the dizziness is caused by gabapentin, which I'm taking to help with the hot flashes. So what should I take for the dizziness?

Yesterday L and I bought flowers in Indiana and today I planted them in two big pots out front. We decided to put them in pots so people wouldn't trample them. Someone walked on some columbine (brought from his yard to mine) and killed it recently. Now I'm afraid that people will pick the flowers because they don't have to bend down to touch them. We shall see. We have cosmos in the middle, and around them I put snapdragons, begonias, and something that looks like impatiens but isn't. At the checkout counter yesterday I noticed special pink garden gloves for sale. With each sale, money goes to Susan G. Komen [foundation] for the Cure--at least $100,000. Both L and I looked at the gloves disparagingly, though I have to admit that $100,000 going to the Komen foundation is better than zero dollars going to the Komen foundation. But I'd rather have $100K going for research on the causes of cancer.

After yoga I walked along Broadway, where there were huge round planters holding flowers in various stages of health. Some pansies were dried up. There were weeds in all the planters and as I walked along on my way to Metropolis Coffee Company and back, I pulled weeds. I love to pull weeds. I love when all their roots (see dandelion taproot on left) come up, clean, like a thorn pulled out of a paw. It is so satisfying. Once last year I had a computer mishap and I was so upset I went in the front yard and pulled weeds. It helped. I used to squeeze the blackheads on my father's back and carefully put them on Kleenex so he could see them, dark on one end and light on the other. That was satisfying, too. You'd think I'd love to clean and would be obsessive about it, but I'm not.

As soon as we close on the house, we're going to hurry to it and start yanking out weeds and pulling off the ivy from the sides. We've already surreptitiously pulled a few lamb's quarters from around the tree in front.

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Yoga

Last Friday at yoga I was depressed and somewhat weepy. We often do partner work and that day we paired up to help one another do dancer's pose. It's what it sounds like: you do an arabesque arching your back and holding the foot that's behind you as you keep pushing it back. Here's what I mean. The help was to critique your partner's form. My partner was one of The Twins in the Back. The Twins are girls who look about 20 and have dark, wavy hair. Usually they partner with one another. You can't blame them; they're perfectly matched by height and weight. Lately they've come with a third girl who's shorter. I'd said hello to them but never talked to them before. They always stay on the back row, in a corner. This time only one of them was in class. She asked me about my head tattoo and I told her I was going through chemo. She said that she went through chemo "in my country." She's from Peru, it turns out, and she was diagnosed with lymphoma at 14. She was in the hospital once for two months. Overall, she had chemo and radiation for two years. It was in Lima, and she lived about a mile from the hospital. She said her family was really close, that there are four girls. She also said it was very hard to lose her hair at 14. It makes you stronger, she said. She was reassuring because I think she could tell I wasn't having a good day, to say the least.

Today in class all three were there, and all in the back. I did partner work with my friend G. I wanted to at least catch the eye of the twin I talked to last week. But I couldn't tell which twin she was.

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