Sadhguru on Yoga and Weight Loss

If you are doing yoga, excess weight will definitely go. Yoga not only functions as an exercise, it rejuvenates the system and brings so much sense into you that you will not overeat. Once a certain level of awareness arises in your body, your body becomes such, it will just eat what is needed for it. It will not eat anything more. This is not because you are controlling or regulating your life in anyway or because somebody is telling you to go on a diet. With yogic practices, you do not have to control yourself. You just do the practices. This takes care of the system in such a way that it will not allow you to eat more than needed. If you do some other exercises or dieting processes, you are always trying to control yourself. This is the big difference with yoga.

When you start kriyas, certain people start losing weight, certain people start gaining weight. If your digestion was bad and your ability to convert the food into flesh was not good, when you start practicing kriyas, the digestive fires get activated and because of the improvement in digestion, the conversion of food to flesh will be more efficient and you start gaining weight.

If your digestive fires were already okay and you start doing kriyas, once again the conversion rate will improve. But instead of turning the food into flesh, it will turn food into a subtler dimension of energy. Now, however much you eat, you will find you are losing weight.  If you are practicing the kriyas, you may even find that if you eat a larger quantum of food, you still do not put on weight, you even lose weight. Or, it may be the other way around: your food quantum comes down dramatically, but still you do not lose weight. This is simply because the conversion ratio is being altered.

We do not teach yoga to reduce weight. It is not something that you do to slim down or for your backache or your headache. Yes, those things will anyway happen – becoming healthy, becoming peaceful, loving, gentle – these are the side effects of yoga, not the focus of yoga. The focus of yoga is to set another dimension alive within you, which is beyond the physical. Only when that is alive, slowly the existence opens up to you in a million different ways. Things that you never thought existed become a living reality for you, simply because a dimension beyond the physical has become alive.


Source Link :  http://blog.ishafoundation.org/yoga-meditation/demystifying-yoga/yoga-and-weight-loss/

Delphi, Greece, A Temple Built by Yogis - Sadhguru

Pink October, 2012: Sadhguru Talks About Breast Cancer

October is celebrated as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the world over. All through this month, campaigns are held to spread awareness and also raise funds towards the research, diagnosis and cure of this disease.

 

As described by Wikipedia, “Breast cancer is a type of cancer originating from the breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk.”
22.9% of all cancers in women worldwide are related to the breast. In 2012 alone, the American Cancer Society reported 226,870 new cases of breast cancer in women and 39,510 deaths from the disease. Some of the most prominent risk factors for breast cancer are related to lifestyle – lack of physical activity, smoking, poor diet, obesity, high hormone levels, and lack of childbearing or breast feeding.

Today, as a part of our contribution to the ongoing breast cancer awareness initiatives, we would like to present to you Sadhguru’s own words on the subject. He tells us about the way the yogic system views cancer and what can be done to avoid the disease.

Sadhguru:

Cancerous cells are present in all our bodies. In the yogic system, we describe cancerous cells as being similar to, let’s say, criminals in a society. If there are a few individuals here and there who commit petty crimes, it doesn’t really affect the society. But when they gang up together in one place, something begins to happen. Similarly, having a few cancerous cells in your body is not going to affect your life or health in any way. Generally in yoga, we look at it this way: when certain kinds of blanks happen in the energy body, either because of a person’s attitude, food, lifestyle, or any other factor due to which the energy body gets affected, an atmosphere conducive to the growth of cancerous cells is created. So if the flow of energy is not good in a certain part of the body, cancerous cells choose that place to hide and fester.

Breast cancer is very rampant today, especially in societies where a lot of women never conceive. It is a good thing they are doing for the world, anyway. But even if they have children, generally in today’s world, for most women child-bearing happens only once or twice and is over before a certain age. So the next 15 to 20 years of their life that they still have the capability to bear children and the necessary hormones are still being produced – this is not being made use of. This is one of the main reasons for both breast and uterine cancer occurring among women.

The mechanism of the breast, which was mainly made to feed the offspring, is not made use of. Or, it is made use of at a very early age and not after that. If a woman went through the normal process of conception, from the age of 16 to 18 until about 45, she would be conceiving periodically which would have kept her whole system active and kept the energy flowing. Because it is not made use of the way it should have been physiologically, that part of the body becomes low energy. Such an atmosphere always attracts cancerous cells, and it becomes a place for them to accumulate and do the necessary work that they do.
So does it mean to say we must produce more children? Please don’t. There are ways to find solution for this.

One of the simplest solutions that we have for curtailing cancerous cells in the system is periodic fasting. One aspect of these cells is that they need a lot more food than a normal cell, up to 30 times more. Just by denying yourself food on certain days, you could put down the level of cancerous cells.

There are also certain types of sadhana one can do where one’s hormonal secretions can be controlled. The Shakthi Chalana Kriya^[1] and asanas we teach help in correcting and balancing the system. We have seen many women with uterus-related problems, such as polycystic ovaries getting completely cured by simply practicing certain asanas and kriyas. The hormonal conditions inside the body become controlled, rather than simply reacting to the kind of food you eat and atmosphere you live in.

To what extent the practices have helped patients suffering from cancer, we cannot document or confirm this. But we have definitely seen that they recovered quite well. The doctors who were treating these cancer patients were quite surprised at their response to chemotherapy. We have seen a few people who recovered from chemotherapy very quickly after doing yogic practices. Whether their cancer went away because of the practices, there is no way to say that. I would say supplementing yoga with medical treatment could definitely benefit the patient.

 

[1] Shakti Chalana Kriya is taught as a part of the yoga program Shoonya Intensive at the Isha Yoga Center. To know more, please visit: http://www.ishayoga.org/advanced-programs/shoonya-intensive

Yanni - Highland

A real Master does not speak the language of your desire and your demand. - Osho

A real Master does not speak the language of your desire and your demand. A real Master only promises one thing -- death. A real Master says, 'I am going to be your cross. I can help you to die and disappear.' A real Master can only promise you crucifixion because only through crucifixion is resurrection. Only when you disappear as man is God born in you. Only when you are not, God is.

So whenever you find a dangerous Master who is ready to throw you into flames, who is ready to destroy you utterly and who is not in any need of your being a follower, who does not care a bit whether you follow him or not -- only that Master can be of some help.

- OSHO

Book - Sufis: The People Of The Path (Volume 1)
Chapter # 12
Chapter Name - The Instant Pathology

Suryakriya - Sadhguru on the new dimension of Hatha Yoga

On Guru Pournami, we inaugurated the Hata Yoga Teacher Training School in the Adiyogi Alayam. Forty-five people, largely from the U.S., but also a few from Eastern Europe, Africa and India have come to take part in this 21-week program.

The word “ha” means sun; “ta” means moon. Without the sun and the moon, there is no Hata Yoga. With the Hata Yoga school, we will start teaching a certain form of sun-related practice which is very much like Suryanamaskar, but is called “Suryakriya” because it involves a certain level of breath and powerful activation of energy . The postures in Suryanamaskar are preparatory in nature if you do it one way, or balancing in nature between the Ida and Pingala^[1]. Largely, it is called Suryanamaskar because it is mainly to activate the solar plexus, to raise the “samat prana” or the solar heat in the system. When we say “solar” it is not just symbolic. All heat that you experience on this planet is essentially from the sun — stored and released in many ways. Or, hydrocarbons have formed the way they have formed essentially because they are sun-baked. If you take a piece of wood and burn it, it is only releasing solar energy. If the solar energy is taken away, the whole planet will freeze into solid ice.

Everything is run by solar power. You may think we are generating power by thermal or by gas, but everything is happening because of solar power. The only exception could be the breaking of the atom. That is not solar and that is why it is considered the most effective and dangerous because you are not using the normal powerhouse of this system, which is the sun. When we activate the sun in the system, the body begins to glow and shine. If you have certain types of problems which manifest, usually in the form of excess mucus in the system — not just in your nasal passages, but all over — this can become balanced.

For one who is doing Suryanamaskar, glandular secretions and mucus levels will be very easily balanced and in good shape, and this determines a lot of things about you — not just your physical health. Your physical health, psychological health and spiritual possibility are determined by this, depending upon how much solar energy is within you. Or in other words, how balanced your secretions are. If your glandular secretions are slightly imbalanced, it is very hard to even sit and listen, forget about meditating or doing something else. It will make you feel crazy because the chemistry will go wonky. Suryanamaskar is one of the simplest and most effective sadhanas to bring that balance.

Suryakriya was reduced to Suryanamaskar when people decided to teach it to a larger public. When you decide to teach it to a larger public, where it is very difficult to follow up and correct, you take away some powerful elements from it because powerful elements also come with the possibility that if people do it improperly, it could cause harm. So you make it a little watered down, but the application is wide. You can apply it to larger societies with no follow up which makes it more practical. But wherever people are doing it in close circles, where we can easily follow up, we will do it in a completely different way.

Hata Yoga is a way of aligning your system to the cosmic geometry, getting your own geometry right so that you are just a replica of the cosmic geometry. It needs to be done with enormous care. If you are far away from this geometry, no problem. But as you get closer, you have to be more careful about how you do it. If your practice becomes very powerful, then we have to exercise extreme care to ensure that it is spot-on, otherwise other things will happen. And Suryakriya is a tremendous possibility if you know how to use it.
Different dimensions of kriyas and asanas to activate the solar power within have always been done from the time of Adiyogi. Adiyogi himself taught methods, different postures to activate the sun. Somewhere in Mahabharat, there is a mention of Krishna paying his salutations to the sun. Somebody described it as a strange practice, something physical he would do every day in the morning — paying gratitude to the sun and seeking his guidance on a daily basis when the sun comes up. He himself was doing some kind of Suryakriya. What form he did we do not know. But I can easily put forth at least 20 different forms, and he must have been doing one of them, or slight modifications of them. There is no other way you could do it.

Until now, we have never really taught serious Hata Yoga at the Isha Yoga Center, though I grew up in the stables of Hata Yoga. We only used it as a preparatory step for Samyama meditations; we just put together 18 asanas as a preparatory step for Samyama. I thought I would avoid it, but about three years ago, after one of my visits to California, I decided we must teach Hata Yoga because it is taking on such absolutely weird forms. It is important that we bring back classical yoga as it was. So that is one more thing to do for us, and in the next few years, it will become a major activity, an important element of the Isha Yoga Center. In fact, we will be teaching it as Suryakriya.

I am thinking we will run 21-day Hata Yoga programs in the ashram, maybe once in two or three months, and we will start somewhere in March 2013, maybe after Mahashivaratri. This is just for learning to practice, not to teach. We have been teaching it in two-and-a-half days right now, but we want to teach Hata Yoga over a period of 21 days.

For those of you, whether you speak English or Tamil, who wish to be in a 21-day Hata Yoga program, you must plan 2013 so that you have 21 days of sadhana and preparation to perfect your Hata Yoga in a certain way, a powerful system to practice. But only those who are going to continue to practice should come; otherwise don’t come and take our lives because it takes enormous effort to teach somebody. Hata Yoga can be a complete spiritual process by itself. If you do one thing properly, it is enough.

Source Link :-  http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru/spot/bringing-back-suryakriya/

Millions of people have to strive full-time to make this happen - Sadhguru

"The world has reached a point where consciousness can no more be something that you entertain yourself with part-time. Millions of people have to strive full-time to make this happen as raising human consciousness is the missing link that has made us – that is, this generation of people – the most privileged in terms of comfort and convenience. At the same time, humanity seems to be at a crossroads like never before. Unconsciously, we as a generation have bitten into the planet like no other generation ever, to a point where future generations may have only leftovers of the planetary pie. We refer to her as Mother Earth but we have treated her as a commodity or a goody shop.

Here I am upon a perch looking down at Central Park in New York City, a rectangular patch of life surrounded by our fascination for concrete. Our ability to create comfort has not translated into wellbeing. This level of comfort has not worked to enable humanity to new possibilities but has crippled us to a generation with the weakest bodies ever. Body is not just flesh and bone but brain too, and an abode to a larger possibility. This body will not regain its natural strength on a treadmill or in the air conditioned gym. This body is an elemental soup, a piece of this planet, and only when in contact and communion with the elements and the earth will it know the full glory and the ecstasy of life.

We have everything in place for the first time. There is resource, there is technology and there is capability to address all issues upon the planet, only missing ingredient is an enhanced consciousness. One must know that boundaries are meaningful for physical entities or bodies. Unfortunately it has extended into human mindspace and crippled that miracle. It is only when touched by consciousness that humans will break boundaries and become truly inclusive. In this inclusiveness lies solution for all problems that torment the human creature. If you want to see a blissful humanity we need to invest.
Let’s make it happen."

-Sadhguru

Source Link :- 
 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=471116122933755&set=a.451801028198598.107494.190456870999683&type=1&ref=nf

Navaratri - Symbolism of 3 Dimensions of Feminine

Navaratri Celebrations at Linga Bhairavi Temple

Yanni - To The One Who Knows

So Long My Friend - Yanni

On earth we are but travelers—guests on a brief visit. - Paramhansa Yogananda

"“Those who are immersed in body-consciousness are like strangers in a foreign land. Our native country is Omnipresence. On earth we are but travelers—guests on
a brief visit.

“Unfortunately, most people make undesirable guests of themselves! They insist on monopolizing a small portion of this earth as their very own. Their constant thought is, ‘my home, my wife, my husband, my children.’ Material entanglements, sweet and mysterious, keep them dreaming through the sleep of delusion. They forget who and what they really are.

“Wake up! before your dream of life vanishes into the infinite. When this body drops in death, where will your family be? your home? your money? You are not this body. The body is only a plate, given to you that you might eat from it the feast of Spirit.

“Why not learn this essential lesson before death? Why wait? Don’t tie yourself to the limitations of human consciousness, but remember the vastness of the Spirit within.”

--Paramhansa Yogananda

Coping with Nasal Allergies – The Yogic Way

Sadhguru:

 I know people who have just messed up their whole system trying to do all kinds of things to their sinuses. All you need to do is kapalabathi^[1] for a month or two, and your sinusitis should completely disappear. If you do the kapalabathi properly, it will provide relief to any type of cold-related disease.
Especially those of you who have allergic conditions must do sufficient amount of kapalabathi, increasing it to whatever extent possible. Three to four months of practice should generally free you from allergies. There are a few exceptions, but it has worked for a majority of people. For those who have not had any relief, they probably need to take a break from whatever they are allergic to for a while, and do the kriya for some time to establish it well. Their kriya may not be very effective because of their allergic conditions. If the nasal passages are not fully opened and there is excessive mucus, the kriya may not be completely effective. If it is practiced correctly, you can definitely work yourself out of allergic situations. Cold weather just won’t bother you anymore. Not just the cold, even heat will not disturb you. When you have an internal air-conditioning, both the heat and cold do not disturb you too much.

Keeping the nasal passages clear and breathing properly is an extremely important process. Modern societies have forgotten about this. They think that somehow if the air goes inside, it is okay. This is not so. Clear nostrils and a healthy breathing process are extremely important. If kapalabathi is sufficiently practiced all the extra mucus will be burned up. Initially, we ask you to do around 50 counts. You could gradually try to increase this by 10 or 15 counts every day. You could even go up to 1000 if you like. There are people who do 500, 1000 and 1500 kapalabathis. With time, there will be no extra mucus and your nasal passages will always be clear. 

Sadhguru also gives us a few tips for home remedies that could help ease the condition:

Sadhguru:

 Those who suffer from cold related diseases and find their nostrils blocked every morning, will benefit a lot from the consumption of neem, pepper, honey and turmeric.
Grind neem leaves to a paste, make a small-sized ball, dip it in honey and swallow it every morning on an empty stomach. Avoid eating anything for the next hour or so to let the neem pass through the system. This actually works on any kind of allergy – skin, food, anything. This practice can be continued for life, there is no harm in this. Neem has an extremely high medicinal value. Using tender neem leaves could reduce the bitterness, but otherwise any fresh and green leaf will do.
Crush about 10 to 12 pepper corns roughly and soak them in a couple of spoons of honey overnight (about 8 to 12 hours). In the morning you consume this and just chew upon the pepper. Mixing some turmeric with the honey should also work. If you avoid all dairy products, your phlegm will go down naturally. 

 

[1] Kapalabathi is taught as a part of the yoga program Shoonya Intensive at the Isha Yoga center. To know more about the program, please visit: http://www.ishayoga.org/advanced-programs/shoonya-intensive

 

Source Link :  http://blog.ishafoundation.org/lifestyle/health/coping-with-nasal-allergies-the-yoga-way/

Jal Pari, Atif Aslam, Coke Studio Pakistan, Season 2 (Music I Love)

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