All Time Best Medicines

The All-time medicines

Laughter

It is well known that health and cheerfulness go together and negative moods can put us onto a wheelchair. Unhappy feelings trigger off changes in our glands and upset our body’s natural balance. Whereas, the positive feelings energise our glands and facilitate production of right hormones at the right time. Therefore, coping with life’s vicissitudes with cheerfulness is something desperately needed by ailing patients.

In this context it is nice to know that a one-minute laughter gives our body 45 minutes therapeutic relaxation. The laughter is free, easy and good for our health. The laughter produces greater quantities of the healing chemical called interferongamma. You can yourself feel it. You know immediately after laughter, you feel a ‘high’. That is the effect of this healing chemical getting unleashed. It does its work till long after we had finished our laughter.

Laugher lightens our heart and stimulates appetite. Laugher also acts as a great pain killer. Laughter expands our blood vessels and sends more blood into our extreme parts. It sends more oxygen into our parts and strengthens them against infection, etc. During laughter our muscles and body cells receive positive stimulation which creates a pleasant state all over our body. This reduces our ESR, reduces stress hormone levels, enhances respiration, tones up circulation and kills our pains and removes our fears and worries. Laughter releases chemicals like neuropeptides and provides us with antioxidant properties that improve our health. These help us tackle our stress, high blood pressure, depression, etc. and help us emerge more relaxed. When you laugh, your whole body benefits; your lungs are exercised, your heart is given extra tuning up. After a good laugh, your blood pressure would be lower, your breathing would be easier and you would have a sound sleep. Thus laughter helps our body to cure itself.

Even faking laughter helps. Whatever be the nature of laughter, when we laugh, our muscles get activated and when we stop, these muscles relax. Since muscle tension means pain, muscle relaxation means relief from pain. Thus those who laugh, get good amount of relief from pains of arthritis, rheumatism, headache, etc.

So next time you fall ill, instead of taking medicines, try to laugh. If you can’t, view laughter movies, listen laughter cassettes and read jokes and laughter books. Laughter would release the needed healing power and with the release of ‘feed good’ chemicals, you would soon feel good. Thus you can laugh your way to health.

No body can wait to be happy. If he waits, he would have to wait longer and longer. Happiness is NOW. If you are happy now, you would be happy for ever. So, laugh. Make light of your personal problems and laugh. Be light hearted and have an optimistic and positive approach towards life.

Walking

Benefits of walking are multifarious. You walk into the consulting room of any doctor anywhere in the world. They would advise you to walk and benefit yourself. It is because, walking produces its positive effect in every part of our body, as under:

Your Muscles and bones
· Your shoulder and neck muscles hold your head erect
· Your foot, leg, hip, tummy, diaphragm, rib and back muscles take an active part in our walking
· They all tighten to actively support the weight of your internal organs
· They eliminate impact of injuries
· Walking preserves and increases the bone mass and bone strength
· It is a perfect work out for big bone joints and arrests osteoporosis
· This muscular activity puts pressure on the veins and helps emptying blood clots in the veins
· If you don’t walk, blood clots in your veins and get you leg pain [thrombophelebitis]

Your lungs
· While running, you gasp because you fall short of oxygen. It does not happen when you walk
· Walking helps you to inhale more air [oxygen] without much effort and use it purposefully
· It thus enhances your respiratory reserve and improves the functional capacity of lungs

Your blood flow and heart
· It increases the healthy cholesterol, i.e. the HDL and lowers the unhealthy cholesterol, i.e. the LDL
· It checks clot formation in the arteries and reduces blood clotting
· It reduces blood sugar
· It stimulates the natural growth of newer blood vessels [fuel lines]
· It improves the elasticity of blood vessels
· It encourages good blood flow throughout the circulatory system
· All the above means helping your heart to function well
· This helps to lower your blood pressure
· Thus you save yourself from heart attacks and cerebral strokes

Your general physical health
· Walking helps in containment of sugar levels in your blood and increases the body’s sensitivity to insulin
· It is a very good insurance against blood sugar
· Brisk, rhythmic, aerobic walking tones up your basal metabolic rate and burns the excess calories
· It reduces your weight and helps you sweat away your risk for heart diseases

Your mental health
· It is the best remedy for stress, anxiety and depression
· It releases a number of natural neuro-hormones in your body
· The endorphins and encephalins give you a pleasant feeling and helps you get your tranquilizer you need
· It improves relationships when you take your spouse or friend along while you go for walking
· This way you release yourself of stress; relax, energise and bring enthusiasm back in your life
· Walking provides you a ‘pondering time’ which can prove greatly beneficial to you

How to walk
· To start with, walk twenty minutes a day
· Increase for 10 minutes each week till you reach a 45 minutes walk a day
· Take care of your speed of walking
· Subtract your age from 220; that gives you your maximum heart rate
· Now work out sixty percent and eighty percent of your maximum heart rate. To get best results, walk at your heart beat / pulse rate between your sixty and eighty percent
· The best advantages of walking will reach you when you walk within this range
· Count your pulse rate immediately after you have come to sitting position and verify

Exercises

If we see around us, we can see many people engaging themselves in one physical exercise or the other every day. At the same time we can also see around us people who say they have no time do any exercises.

The latter are the people who at their advanced age who are afraid whether, even if they start an exercise programme now, they can continue the same and whether they would be physically able to sustain themselves.

Yet some of them force themselves to do the exercises, but they don’t really enjoy doing the same because they feel tired during the exercises and due to all the discomfort and pain arising out of the exercises feel convinced that their goal is unattainable. The net result is that they soon wind up doing nothing.

Notwithstanding the above efforts and failures, many of us agree that exercises are very important to maintenance of our health. Muscles starve through lack of exercise. If you want proof of this, look at hospital patients who get all the balanced diet and medicines but still leave the bed too weak. Why do they feel weak despite balanced food and good rest? Because, they never put their muscles to inactivity. If you spend your days in bed or in wheel chair, your muscles and bones assume that you don’t need them to become strong. The same thing applies to those, who work sitting in chairs and attend to sedentary work.

One thing that we all need to note is that the exercises are not intended to make us enter into any competition with champions. They are to simply remain personal to us and what we do, how much we do and when we do are matters that we and we alone are to decide and implement. Our goals in doing these exercises are:

We want to remain fit
Our movements must be comfortable
We should continue to feel youthful
Our joints must remain flexible, whatever be our age
We should have sufficient stamina to do our day to day jobs
We should live with no undue physical worries

To tell you frankly, the above objectives are attainable and are within our reach with no rigid and punitive exercises. Formalised, special and regular exercises are needed only for those who eat junk and negative foods or those who want to develop muscles. People who take care to add natural food with their daily meals need not resort themselves to doing any rigorous exercises. All they need to do is to ensure that their various limbs are kept in movement. They are not to aim at any muscle strength and they are to exercise only to keep fit, They therefore only need to do some minimal exercises within one’s comfortable range. For them the sufficient daily exercises are

30 minutes of brisk walking in the open in the early morning and
10 minutes of exercises within their homes

When you exercise at home, if possible, put on some light, spirited and non-aggressive but rhythmic music. This music could make you feel energetic and enthusiastic to do your exercises.

This ten minutes exercise is meant for all your joints and limbs and this could be :

1st minute [Leg/knee]
You must have stairs in or around your house leading to the first floor.
Identify one such
Measure the height of the first step. Generally it would be upto 9 inches
If that is the case, stand down on your left leg and climb on the step with your right
Then pull the left also up the stair
Then bring back the right down
Then bright your left also down
Right up, left up, right down and left down

This way, just climb up and down on the first step of the stairs only
Do it for thirty times in one minute. No more and no less
If you feel discomfort at any moment during the exercise, stop. If you feel discomfort at any moment during the exercise, stop.
Don’t continue because you have low tolerance level
If you could do only 20 times, perhaps you can increase it to 21tomorrow
You can slowly increase it to 30 over a week

2nd minute
[Leg/knee]
Do the above exercise with Left up, right up, left down and right down 30 times, no more and no less

3rd minute [Hip]
Stand with stretched legs

Stretch both your arms parallel to the ground in front of you

Standing at the same place, make your hip swing semi circular

Take your arms along to the right extreme and then to the left extreme

4th minute
[Shoulder]
Stand in attention

Rise your arms parallel to the ground at their respective sides

Then raise them up above your head

Then bring them back to the sides and then down

5th minute
[Elbow]
Rise your arms parallel to the ground at their respective sides

Fold both the arms and touch your shoulder and get back

6th minute [Wrist]
Stretch both your arms parallel to the ground in front of you

Rotate your wrists clock wise and anti-clock wise
7th minute
[Finger joints]
Stretch both your arms parallel to the ground in front of you

Without moving the arms, close your first and release

Do it again and again

7th minute [Neck]
Stand erect

See straight

slowly lower your head and see down

slowly lift it to see straight

slowly lift it to see up

Bring it back to see straight

Neck exercise sideways

8th minute
[Neck]
See straight, bright slowly your right chin to touch your shoulder

Slowly get back to normal and do it towards left and get to normal

minute
Neck exercise sideways

See straight, slowly turn to see the right side and get back to see straight

Then do the same to see the left and back to normal

10th minute
Jog at the standing position, i.e. pretend running

Well, in addition to these 10-minute exercises, you are also prescribed some other exercises which can be done while you are on some other job and they do not consume your time They are:

· While taking bath pull your bath towel from both sides and increase
· your muscle strength
· Twist the wet cloth [clockwise and anti] and enhance your wrist strength.
· Wet the cloth, keeping it between your palms, push water out
Walk up your stairs while climbing to your office premises. Mind
you, you can climb up to 6th floor. If you find it difficult, go by lift
upto 3rd floor and then climb the balance
· Make sure you walk down in the evening
· In the office, don’t sit dormant, intermittently stand and work
· Possibly you can also move around often
· If you want to talk to someone in office, Don’t call him, walk up to him. [You get the exercise and you build good relationships too.Also you casually inspect what does he do! And your subordinates could become alert and office efficiency improves]
· Be on your legs say for one to two hours in the eight hour office
· Don’t use vehicles, walk to the market
· Lift the groceries yourself and walk back home
· At home just lift some heavy item once a day and hold it for five seconds.

All these help you to have better orthostatic tolerance

Do deep relaxation when you go to bed. You can pray or you can concentrate on each part of your body and command them to relax ; or you can do both. When you get up in the morning respond to your natural urge to stretch yourself as much as you need. Enjoy your best yawn. Correct stretching dispels lethargy and ener­gises body and mind. It is a great stress reducer. It rejuve­nates the stiff spots. Hence from time to time stretch yourself by ensuring that your shoulders, hips, knees and ankles all have a ballet like movement.

If one does the exercises, he can bring in a variable of 20 years. Suppose you are sixty, you can live an active life of 40 if you do the right kind of exercises. Experts say that the variable can be increased up to 30 years. Exercises are meant to awaken our youthfulness residing in our body all the time.

In exercise make sure that every joint and every muscle had had enough activity. Have emphasis on body movements and regularity. If you can combine exercises with playing games like tennis, squash, badminton, swimming, gardening, etc. it would be both useful and interesting.

Exercises are essential also to digestion, sleep and peace of mind. They keep the muscles in good tone, bones in good strength, blood in good circulation and bowels to good movement. By bringing more oxygen to lungs and removing carbon dioxide, they also tone up the functioning of your organs and glands. It induces better sleep and brings beneficial effects on your nervous system.


Exercise makes our heart work better. It can now pump more blood into our body benefiting every organ. Exercise also reduces triglyceride, cholesterol levels, etc. it means reduced coronary risks. Exercise also reduces body fat which influences insulin action. Exercise strengthens our muscles and bones and enhances flexibility. The nervous system also gets invigorated by exercises. Exercise also helps us to sleep better. Exercises increase oxygen transport capacity within your body and accordingly every part of your body gets more oxygen and thus function more efficiently including your mental performance. Regular exercises also stimulate our brain due to increased circulation of oxygen and blood.

Health decline is generally associated with old age, whereas it is actually related to inactivity. Muscles and bones generally degenerate when they are not in effective use. Matters like what exercise you do, at what age you do are of no consequence, so long you do it regularly and less strenuously. Make it your daily habit like brushing your teeth. Poor fitness is as dangerous as smoking or high cholesterol. The good news is that even moderate exercises can substantially reduce your chances of ill health.

Breathing exercise

Breath is the foundation of all human life since it supplies oxygen to the cells. But beyond this, it also helps the flow of lymph fluid in our body, which is our sewage system. The blood in our body is moved by our heart. But our sewage has no such pumping system and it is moved by our breathing. So, the more we are able to breathe deeply, the more the movement of sewage. And if the movement of this sewage is slow, you know it can result in accumulation of dirt in our body and we could get into lot of illness. So it is in our interest, that we deep breathe more and facilitate our sewage system move well.

Deep breathing is so easy, but it requires practice. Inhale to the count of two. Hold the breathe to the count of eight. And then exhale to the count of four. 2:8:4 is the mantra. Start doing it. But this is the beginning. After you have mastered it, prolong these a little longer and take it to 4:16:8.

Do this exercise 10 times in the morning, 10 times in the afternoon and 10 times in the evening.

Prayer

In today’s fast moving life, there is need for high degree of achievement and the resultant tensions, worries, anxieties and stress. In this situation people need something which would not only release their stress and calm them down but would also pep up their morale, self confidence and optimism. In case people had already fallen victims to their day to day stress and have contracted illnesses and are not getting any relief from any of the medical treatments and therapies, they need to be lifted out of their defeated feelings.

Here comes the importance of prayer. Prayer is not merely worship and is not repetition of formal routine of words. To those people who think so and undervalue prayer, it cannot do anything.

Prayer is the most powerful form of creating one’s own energy. It has a high positive impact on the mind and body. It can provide us the needed antibiotics, restore our spirits, re-supply our lost power and thus re-start our glands. In nutshell, by addressing our emotional and spiritual dimensions, it can overcome all our problems and create miracles in our lives.

Sudden accidents, unexpected illness and unexpected birth of handicapped children at home can bring sea change in life all of a sudden. We should never take normalcy for granted. We should always thank God for our being able to do our work independently.

Love

The lack of love makes us sick. Love is thus very important to our mental and consequently physical health.

Patients in general face terrible onslaught of negative feelings, such as fear, anxiety and worry. At that time, there is a dire need to counter the harsh voice of negative feelings. And then if love is showered on them, it would greatly help in facilitating their physical and mental balance. So love the patients, hug them, hold them close and recharge them. Let them feel comforted, protected and relaxed. Love is at the root of what makes us enjoy life because you know you have someone to turn to. Thus love gives us better immune system through its antidotes to stress and thus provides longer life expectancy.

Oxytocin is a medicine provided by doctors to treat depression in patients. But this oxytocin is already produced within our body if the patient enjoys physical touch, affection and care from near and dear.

There are effects of everything you do and marriages are no exception. If your marriage had been good, it has positive effects on you and the reverse is also true. Hold on to your partner in good romance and you are sure to live longer happily without disease even in your old age.

If your relationship with your spouse is good, you are better looked after and your positive mental state helps your glands to secrete all the required chemicals in good amount at the required time. On the contrary, if your relationships are unsatisfactory, it weakens your immunity system and you become more susceptible to diseases are prone to cardiovascular and nervous disorders. A good marriage is good for health and a bad marriage is bad for health. You can join the group which suits you best.

And I tell you, if your marriage is good, your relationships with every other would also be good and you would have no tensions in your life.

Touch Therapy

Whenever a child gets cough or undergoes some pain, it is normal for anxious parents to reach for antibiotics. Such parents would need to know that God has given to them great healing powers, which grand mothers generally use. What do they do when the child gets some uneasiness? They invite the child to lie in their lap. Then they take some domestic oil such as eucalyptus oil and rub it on the chest, throat, back and nose assuring the child very lovingly that nothing is wrong him/her and that he/she would become alright in an hour. This Touch Therapy has a measurable impact on the child. This causes tactile sensations and makes the child more comfortable and tension free. And this really helps in early and easier recuperation.

Touch therapy, i.e. caressing by loving parents reduces the level of stress hormones and relaxes the child hastening the process of recovery.

This touch therapy can used by all parents to their children and by all wives and husbands to their spouses. This way of using hand with plenty of love and assurance, is called the ‘magic touch’.

Speaking to your body

When your child cries or when your spouse is upset, what do they essentially communicate? They only tell you, you need to attend to them and their needs. And if you calmly and lovingly speak to them, their cry and upset is gone instantly.

The same is true with your body. When you feel pain in any part of your body, it only communicates that you are not paying attention to it and you are neglecting it. And what do you do next? You speak to it!

So, when you have some pain or discomfort, take the following actions:

Sit quietly
Close your eyes
Identify the organ giving you the trouble
Speak to that organ
Ask the following questions one by one and wait for its responses before moving to the next question:

Hey, what is the problem? – Listen to the answer and then ask
How was the problem caused? – Listen to the answer and then
ask
Now what do you want me to do?

If you really listen to your organ, you would hear your body responding to your questions

It would tell you the nature of the problem
It would tell you how you are neglecting it and its welfare
It would tell where you are over doing things and how you are causing pain
It would tell how you need to modify your life style

If you really follow whatever your organ tells you to do, your cure is at hand. Please be aware that nature has given us lots of tools and keep ourselves in good order. You only need to know them to avail of the nature’s help systems.

Self questioning

In case you have difficulty in believing in talking to your body, then you can opt for self questioning. In fact it is the same this as speaking to your body.

Fearing illness would not being us health. We would never be cured if we look at our illness the medical way. What would cure and heal us is our knowledge of what is deficient in us and taking remedial action to fill that deficiency. Therefore, when ever you fall ill ask yourself the following questions:

Why this disease?
Where did I go wrong?
What food am I taking?
What avoidable habits do I practice?
How do I prevent its recurrence?
What remedial action I need to initiate and sustain?

If you do not get the answers to the above, ask whom you consider can provide the answers to you to the above questions.

Support Group

When you fall ill, you know the symptoms and troubles arising out of it. Sometimes it so happens that the healthy people around you may not be able to understand your problems and provide you the support and guidance you need.

That is where the importance of support group comes in. In western countries support groups are most prevalent for different disease states such as cancer patient association, asthma patients association, etc. In these associations, the patients join hands to form support groups as they are convinced that they need emotional understanding and support and guidance beyond the doctor’s pills and medicines. These support groups act as a complement to medical care. In these group meetings, patients share their individual experiences and exchange helpful advice. They also come forward to help each other to make life easier for the members.

In many cases, individual patients had taken the lead to form an association with great success. You, as a patient would greatly benefit by joining such support groups if there is one within your reach or start one, if there is none around.

Nutritious living

Many people start thinking of nutrition only when they fall sick. If there had been nutrition already in their lives, they would not have fallen sick even at the first instance.

And there are lots and lots of people who think of nutrition only in their food. That is again wrong. Nutrition should not be limited to food alone. It should extend also to

Nutritious food
Nutritious air
Nutritious water

But even beyond the above, nutrition need extend to

Nutritious sunshine
Nutritious exercises

But here we are stretching it even beyond. In our opinion, nutrition extends to mind also, i.e. to our thinking, reading and relationships which are very important to our healthy living
:
Nutritious education / reading
Nutritious thinking
Nutritious relationships

If you fall sick, believe that you are mal nourished in any one or more of the above. Shift nutrition from food to your whole life and adopt nutrition as philosophy of your life for happy living.

Many think healthy people are happy people. But it is only partially true. In reality only happy people can become healthy people. And who those happy people are? They are ‘Nutritious people’ who had adopted nutrition in their ‘whole’ life.

Human beings are also forms of energy. All our actions and their results thereof emanate from our internal energy. And what gives us the energy to do anything? It is our thought. It is your thought that makes you walk into a restaurant. It is again your thought that asks you to get married or to get divorced. Thus all your actions precede your thought. You thought this is a book worth reading and so you are reading it.

Now, if a person’s thoughts are negative, he could do anything, even commit a murder. On the contrary, if his thoughts are very positive, he would even win over murderers and save one’s life. Do you remember the story of Angulimal? Angulimal was a cruel robber who way laid Mahatma Budha and wanted to kill him. But when Buddha talked to him with all his positive approach, Angulimal abandoned robbery and became Buddha’s disciple. There is nothing that cannot be changed with positive thinking in this world.

Positive people always remain cheerful and energetic and it is they who attract people around them. On the contrary depressed people lose their available energy and people leave them and go away because they make others also depressed.

Be aware that you are created by God and God does not wish you to get sick. It is you who invite your sickness. The best method to come out of sickness is to approach life with all positive thinking and see yourself as a healthy person. If you can visualise yourself as a healthy person and feel optimistic, you are already on the road to recovery.

In the field of relationships, accept people as they are and develop good relationships with them. This is better than worrying and going nowhere. Once you have good relationships, you can talk things over and bring in the needed changes. Problem people are in fact opportunities for you to create an impact in their lives. A happy relationship in family can add so much of good health to your life.

Fasting

There are many toxic material that enter our body every day through the food we take, through the air we breath and through the water we drink. These toxic material create impurities in our blood. And when these impurities increase, your immunity against diseases decrease and you start encountering illness. Therefore there is need to periodically clean our blood of toxins. And this cleansing is done by fasting. How? Let us see.

Suppose you go to office on a holiday for some work. You have completed your work and you have still two hours to get your next bus or train. Then during those two hours what do you do? Since you have no work on hand, you start cleaning your table and table drawers. Right?

Same thing applies to your body. Generally your system is very busy in digesting what you eat. But on a given day when you fast, your system does not have the usual work of digesting. So it opts for cleaning. And cleaning would clear your blood and other organs of all their impurities. That is why fasting has been prescribed in most of our religions as a way of life. Our great elders know the value of fasting to our good health.

Despite the advantages of fasting, there are some people who are hesitant to go on fasting, because they don’t believe they can fast. It is because they consider fasting as starving.

Starving occurs when you desperately need food and food is not available. Whereas fasting occurs when there is plenty of food around and we consciously keep away from food because we are on a different mission of cleaning our body of accumulated waste.

In starving, our mind is focused on food. Whereas, in fasting, the mind is focused on health.

Thus the key to fasting is too know the purpose of fasting and taking a deliberate decision not to focus your mind on food. Once this decision is taken by the mind, which is our king, then the ministers and army go to execute the decision of the king.

People who have difficulty in fasting are those people whose sensory organs are in control of the mind. Their mind is yet to take control and the king is a prisoner in the hands of his army.

Well, people who are yet to master the art of fasting, there is a way to fast without fasting.

We know from the above that fasting means cleaning the body from within. If you go for cleaning your clothes, you need detergents. If you want to clean the floor of your house, you need a different kind of cleaning material. So is if you want to wash your car. Thus cleaning materials are different for different things. Now to clean your body, your cleaning materials are some amino acids found in fruits. So when such people go on fast, they can take fresh fruits during fasting or fruit juices instead. This is called juice fasting. In this way those people can overcome their hesitation to go on total fasting and at the same time also supply their system with the needed cleaning material.

So, have a nice in-house cleaning at least once a fortnight.

Music

Indian history is replete with names of great people like Narad, Haridas, Sur, Mira, Raidas, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and others who had all attained God through music. When music can take us to God, why not to health?

When man invented music, it is said that he took his first step towards civilisation. He learnt music from nature. Thus when we get into music mode, we align ourselves with nature and the nature takes care of the rest.

You are already aware that mothers ‘use’ music to make their crying babies sleep.

Well, in the field of health, music has plenty to offer. When we listen to some good music, i.e. soft music such as Gazal, Bhajan, Classical music, etc.

There is a happy change to our sensations
It creates a pleasant impact on our blood vessels and nervous system
We start enjoying the present and forget our worries and concerns

Psychologically analysed, when you are on some great music

Tensions, fears, anxieties, depression, etc in the minds are removed
Our mental balance is restored and our mood improves

Medically analysed, the music

Releases positive endorphine in our body
Reduces our blood pressure, palpitation, breathlessness etc.
Provides the patient with a pleasant environment
Makes the patient feel better
Induces sleep in the patient and provides him further rest and relief

Medical researchers know that almost 90% of our illnesses are due to mental tensions and worries. They accordingly advocate music therapy towards curing patients. The researchers say that our music is not one, but made of different ‘ragas’, i.e tunes. They say that different tunes can work to reduce different illnesses, such as:

For asthma
Kedar, Shyam Kalyan

For fever
Basanth Bahar, Hindol, Marwa, Bhairav

Constipation
Asavari

High BP
Poorvi, Thodi, Alap in Multani

All pains
Peelu, Malcose, Thodi

Heart problems
Darbari, Kaanhada

Cancer
Sindhu Bhairavi

Migraine
Darbari Kaanhada, Jay Jayvanti, Sohni

Hyper acidity
Marwa, Deepak, Kalavathi

Ulcer
Madhuvanti, Deepak

Diabetes
Jounpuri, Jay Jayvanti

Mental depression
Lalit, Kedar

So make music an essential part of your life. It is a definite anxiety reliever and mood booster. With proper doses of good and gentle music you get your body tonic.

And, by the way, can you sing? Sing if you can. If you are worried about the reaction of others to your singing, then sing or hum to yourself and get more benefits than listening to the music. He who sings frightens away his ills. .

Stress Management

There are only three rules for living long. They are,

· Self control on food intake
· exercising the body and
· leading a stress free life.

We have covered the first two rules extensively in this book. This chapter is devoted to the third rule, i.e. leading a stress free life.

Leading a stress free life is very important because stress is one of the main causes of disease. Stress activates three glands, viz. the pituitary and the two adrenals. Their hormones have a great impact on our body functions. When there is stress these glands pour out hormones that create an internal emergency within our body. Than makes all our organs tensed up.

Now when we continue to remain stressful, our body continues to remain tensed up. You know when there is an internal emergency, there is preparation for war and all peacetime activities get stopped. The same thing happens in our body and all peace time activities including digestion stops. This means disastrous consequences to our body. So we suffer because of stress.

The first thing therefore is to get an awareness whether you are stressed up.

How do you find whether you are stressed up? Ask yourself a simple question whether other people find it a pleasure to interact with you. If yes, you are not stressed up. If no, you are under stress, which makes you act in manners unpleasant to others.

Stress is a killer. It is a great killer. In these modern days, you can’t avoid getting stressed. But escape the stress by finding relaxing hobbies. Physical activities, gardening, playing, walking, listening to music, writing poems, painting, sleeping well or any such thing that can reduce your stress level.

You can also consider taking he following corrective actions:

ü Come out of the belief that you are a big man
ü Shun the superman image
ü Take criticisms easy
ü Make yourself available to others
ü Cooperate with people
ü Help people solving their problems
ü Live sensibly
ü Don’t waste your energy on quarrels and conflicts
ü Never opt for complaining
ü Learn not to be upset by small things
ü Cry if need be and let off stream
ü Make your attitude and thinking pleasant and cheerful
ü Don’t look upon work as something to be done with
ü What you need to do, do it with pleasure
ü Like people
ü Listen to what people say
ü Avoid spending 100 rupee energy on a 10 rupee worth problem
ü Tune in to the feelings of others
ü Pay compliments to spouse and children
ü Give yourself positive messages
ü Laugh
ü Exercise
ü Develop reading habit – read self development books
ü Keep smiling!

Hobbies

Hobbies can also work as therapy. Any hobby has a therapeutic value. It is because you are on a creative mode and creation is God’s domain. When you are in God’s domain, there is no question of your being in any kind of trouble. When you are focused, say on art, you lose yourself to it and you come of out of internal stress. This unstressing of yourself removes all internal conflicts and you get cleansed.

Meditation

Someone it appears asked a sage whether he can smoke while meditating. He was promptly admonished for asking this question. Another friend asked the sage whether he can meditate while smoking. Pat came the reply, you can meditate at any time.

Meditation can be done anywhere and at any time. It is a great medicine to relieve you of your stress. In these days of stiff competition, when we often suffer from anxiety, fear, worry, depression, etc. our immunity levels deplete. So in this disturbing scenario, we need to recoup of our lost immunity powers by reuniting our body and mind and creating the needed harmony within.

Meditation isolates you from the negative surroundings at least for some time during the day during which you can slow down, breath well, lower your anxieties and calm your mind and allow your body to loosen out and get back its balance.

For doing the meditation, look for places which are quiet. Seek out fresh air and open spaces if you can.

One of the effective methods of meditation is to concentrate on our breath, i.e. to concentrate on your nose tip while you breathe. Another method is to count your breath. You can meditate on anything, a picture, a thought, a glowing candle, etc. and watch the thoughts that come and go in and out of your mind. You can just behave an observer. This is called receptive meditation.

There is a second kind of meditation which is called ‘problem solving meditation’. In this meditation, you can think on anything with a focus and introspect. If you have problems, you can focus on it and think where things have gone wrong and what virtues and adjustments you need to acquire or make to overcome the situation. Ask yourself as to what a mature man would do in these situations. Ask yourself as to what life style changes you need to make to help your life become more healthy and enjoyable. In this way find a value based solution to all your problems.

Similarly you can check about your relationships with your near and dear and confirm to yourself they are all pleasant and healthy. Take one aspect of your life in each day’s meditation and go on introspecting. One day your family relationships and the other day your official relationships. One day your self development and another day your children’s studies. One day your health and another day someone else’s health. On another day check your attitude towards your friends, parents and even to inanimate things like materials and great books. Ask yourself are you selfish, possessive, status conscious, book loving, etc. Like this, concentrate on each day on each of your areas of concerns and interests.

When you meditate, if and when you find your thoughts have gone astray, bring it back to the object on which you are meditating without criticizing yourself. This is the way to focus your attention on your meditation.

Someone beautifully said that meditation is a dance and not a running race. In a running race, you need to go fast towards your destination. Where as in dance, the goal is not any destination, but enjoying what you do. So don’t just worry about your distracted thoughts while on meditation. What is important is sitting to do the meditation which helps you to relax your body and mind or to find solutions to your problems.

Cleanliness

Keep your house clean. Your house would consist of many areas such as kitchen, hall, rooms, toilet, etc. and each of these areas need to be kept clean.

Let us take the kitchen first. It is in the kitchen you tame lot of micro organisms which affect your health. Clean the kitchen platform and the tiles regularly and if possible with a little shampoo. Clean the exhaust fans periodically, if necessary with kerosene. If the kitchen has no outlet for smells and smoke to go out, keep one lighted candle on the kitchen platform.

Now let us move on to kitchen appliances and utensils. Take your vegetable cutter for example. After repeated use, you could see lots of scratches in that. It is there micro organisms live and grow. Don’t think it would become clean by simply washing it with water. Use washing liquids to clean it off. Same thing applies when you wash your utensils or the kitchen platforms. Sodium hypochlorite is the chemical that can kill the micro organisms. Clear up the kitchen of old preparations. Clean the cloth pieces used in the kitchen regularly. Soak them in water with little shampoo added and rinse them after half an hour.

Let us now move on to your Refrigerator. Food kept in refrigerator does not remain free from micro organisms. Cold temperatures do not kill the bacteria. Please avoid keeping cooked items in the fridge. Use the fridge only for storing uncut vegetables and fruits. And in case you keep any cooked food or items like milk, keep them closed. Clean the inside and outside of your fridge regularly.

Avoid bringing meat or poultry products. If you bring them, you also bring with them the bacteria living on them.

Wash your hands before you go for eating.

Keep the house clean at all times. Avoid keeping pets at home.

Make sure you take all steps to avoid accidents at home. Let the floors be free of clothes, shoes, toys, books, magazines, disorderly furniture etc. Discard wobbling chairs and tables. Make sure wires, extension chords do not obstruct path ways. Let there be light switch just beside your bed. If not keep a torch beside your bed. And when phone or door bell rings, don’t get up in a hurry.

Take care of stairs. When you walk down be extra careful. Don’t walk with socks on. Don’t bring loads of materials on hand which obstructs your vision. Be careful about single steps and elevations.

You need to ensure that your house is free of flies. When you find too much of house flies around, take ‘kadipatta’ or pudina leaves, squeeze it and keep it around that place to avoid flies coming in. Otherwise, you can mix some salt in water and sprinkle around. In the alternative, you can put camphor in hot water and keep the vessel in the room where flies exist. That would also drive them away. While washing the house, you can mix some salt in the water and wash. That would also give relief from flies.

To avoid mosquitoes, use black jeera or mango flowers or neem flowers or dried organge peels and burn. You can also take bleaching powder, mix it with water and sprinkle along the four sides of your house. More simpler method would be to have a traditional neem oil hand lamp with thick threads burning overnight. If interested, you can prepare mosquito coils with Tulsi, thumbai, pudina, camphor leaves and maida of equal quantity and grind them without water. Then boil them in water and cool. Cut cakes and use for burning.

If the ants have made their house, drop asafetida powder or alam powder on it. If ants problem in containers and bottles of provisions, etc., take poondu, hand crush and draw line around the bottle or container openings. Similarly, wipe cup boards with neem oil to avoid entry of ants. In case of white ants, spread vibhooti powder around.

Change bed sheets and pillow covers as often as possible, maximum once a week. To avoid insects and bugs in the beddings, always keep a piece of camphor in them. Protect woolens with neem leaves while storing them in summer.

If there is movement of lizards, keep at places either empty egg shells, or peacock feathers or onion shoots / flowers. In old boxes, to avoid cockroaches, keep some pudina leaves in a cloth tie. Pudina leaf is a great pest control device. Cockroaches also keep off phenyle. Keeping garlic in almirahs and shelves would also keep away all kinds of insects.

Ensure your bathroom and toilet are not slippery. Have skid proof floors. Remove spills of soap, lotions, shampoos, etc. To get rid of the mosquitoes, cockroaches, etc. at toilets, sprinkle kerosene or phenyle.. In the bath rooms, you can keep some camphor which would keep away the insects and would give good smell also. Wash your hands with soap after you come out of toilet.

Daily clean your house frontage with water mixed with phenyle, dettol or clean cow dung. This is especially necessary for those living in flats as so many people walk through your frontage and many people may bring in so many germs through their foot wear. And wash your own foot wear once a week and keep them clean.

To avoid insects entering the house, spread salt at the door entrances. If by any chance snake has entered your house, first put salt at entrances where you don’t want it to go and thus cordon it off leaving only one way to exit and then drive it out.