Archive for February, 2007

Meditation is concentrating our mind for inner peace. You attain relaxation with meditation.

Meditation gives balance emotionally, mentally and physically. With meditation, a person can manage stress, anxiety and tension.

Meditation technique helps in removing destructive thoughts from mind and gives happiness to your life.

There are many benefits of meditation if you follow regularly.

Benefits of meditation:

The psychological benefits of meditation are reduced depression, reduced anxiety and stress, reduced irritability and moodiness, increased self esteem and concentration, increased alertness and emotional control, increased memory and reasoning and increased intelligence.

The physiological benefits of meditation are lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels, lowering chronic pain, high skin resistance, decreased aging process and increased immune system.

Depression: You may feel hopeless, helpless and mentally upset if you are depressed. Meditation increases your self confidence and feels much better after meditation. You feel relaxed and out of depression if you practice meditation regularly.

Stress: You may be affected with stress in life that comes from family, work place and outside. The hormones and other biochemical compounds which increase the stress tend to decrease with the practice of meditation. Reduction of stress leads to reduction in tension and anxiety.

Meditation is a state of consciousness when your mind is free of thoughts.

Meditation is flow of your mind towards concentration. You have to develop concentration for meditation.

Why concentration is important for meditation?

Meditation is nothing but making your mind free from all thoughts. When your mind will be free? When you narrow your thoughts to specific object or thing and concentrate on that object.

Your mind will be concentrating on that specific object leaving behind all the thoughts. If you have thoughts in your mind, they will distract your concentration.

How to improve your concentration?

You have two techniques to improve your concentration: number meditation technique and visualization meditation technique.

Number meditation technique depends on numbers. Close your eyes and start counting from number one while exhaling. When you visualize number one in your mind breathe in and start visualize number two in your mind. When you see number two breathe in. You continue this process fifteen to twenty minutes.

Visualization technique depends on visualization of objects. Close your eyes and think about any object in your mind and try to visualize it. Suppose if you think of a clock in your mind, get the clock in front of your eyes and visualize it. You continue visualizing the object, the color of the object and the shape of the object.

When you have specific man fitness plan, you can get results quickly and can stay in great shape.

Man fitness comes from fitness program which includes resistance training, cardiovascular training, good nutrition and supplements.

Along with fitness program, man fitness includes warm up and stretching exercises, cooling down, proper lifting and safety measures.

Warm up: Before starting any fitness program, proper warm up is necessary. Warm up your body before starting the exercise program and cool down after performing the workout. If you warm up your muscles and joints properly, it will prevent injuries.

If you warm up your muscles, your muscles become flexible and improve blood circulation. Due to the flexibility of the muscles, you can exercise without any injuries.

Warm up with cardiovascular exercise. Don’t do it for thirty minutes. Warm up requires only five to ten minutes. You can warm up with walking or cycling if you are at home. If you are working out at gym, warm up on stationary bicycle for five to ten minutes.

Kundalini yoga is a dynamic yoga which is kept secret for millenniums.

It is a method of expanding consciousness and maintaining the new awareness.

It concentrates on the awakening of the energy that is found at the base of your spine. This energy is going to take the form of snake.

Therefore it is called as kundalini; the meaning is ‘coiled up’. Kundalini yoga awakens this snake and sends moving up your spine to the brain which results in uplifting state of delight and attentiveness.

Kundalini yoga deals with basic life energy, prana. Prana is the sub atomic energy, the life force. Kundalini yoga teaches how to use prana as it is the path of the discovery of the source of the prana.

It passes through different chakras or centers of consciousness which are in the human body, once the kundalini is awakened. Awakening the kundalini is not a big deal since for life to exist in us, it must already be active. We do not know what contributed to this awakening but moments of deeper awakening happen in life.

Vitamin C is water soluble and antioxidant vitamin and cannot be stored in the body.

It is excreted from the body regularly, so you have to supply it regularly to the body. It is used for proper functioning of human body.

It is also known as ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid is an antioxidant which helps in protecting the body against pollutants.

Ascorbic acid helps in promoting healthy cell development, normal tissue growth and repair such as healing injuries and burns, and helps in absorption of calcium.

The main function of vitamin C is that it helps in the synthesis of collagen. Collagen is an important component of ligaments, blood vessels, bone and tendons. It is found throughout the body, present in cartilage and connective tissues and is used to separate skeletal and smooth muscle cells.

Vitamin C is useful for healthy gums to help in protecting against infections. It also strengthens many parts of your body such as blood vessels and muscles.

You have to exercise consistently in order to have the greatest advantage and reach your goals.

But if you are performing it on the wrong exercise equipment, you may not reach your goal.

Many people spend 4 days a week on different exercise equipment at different gyms but don’t lose weight.

This is due to the fact that that they are not using the proper equipment that is best for toning, firming muscles, weight loss and for overall health

When you go into any exercise equipment store, a sales person tells you that you need certain exercise equipment. Their aim is to sell the equipment, but they don’t know which equipment is exactly useful for you.

There are plenty of exercise equipment such as treadmill, free weights, dumbbells, home gym, stationary bike etc. you have to decide which equipment exactly do you need.

You need to decide your goals before purchasing any exercise equipment. Are you trying to improve cardiovascular strength or are you trying to lose weight? Based on your goal, you search for the right equipment.

Are you cautious about your health and want to purchase home exercise equipment to keep yourself fit and healthy? Think before you purchase home exercise equipment.

You ask yourself before going to purchase the home exercise equipment.

Do you have enough space at your home to keep the fitness equipment? Do you enjoy exercising at home alone? Do you know how to use the equipment which you have planned to purchase? Do you have any medical problems to use the home exercise equipment?

If you got the answers for the following questions, you think about your goals. Do you want to lose weight, participate in weight lifting, increase your strength, make overall fitness, or build muscle mass? Each goal has different exercise plan and home exercise equipment.

There are different types of home exercise equipment. Treadmill is one type of home exercise equipment. You can run, walk or jog on treadmill. Working on treadmill can improve your body fitness and cardiovascular fitness. You can increase or decrease the intensity of workout by adjusting the treadmill.

You can select a stationary bike. A stationary bike is coming with digital meters which indicate speed, no. of calories burned, time and the distance traveled. It strengthens the leg muscles and tones your lower part of the body.

Hatha yoga is an easy and important type of yoga popular in Western countries and United States.

Hatha is made of two words: ‘Ha’ means Sun and ‘tha’ means moon. Yoga means to join or unite. Hatha yoga means union of sun and moon.

It means harmonizing the positive and negative currents in the body.

Hatha yoga is an excellent means of stretching, exercising and freeing so that the body can be healthy, vital, and long lived instrument of the soul and mind.

Hatha yoga prepares our body for the spiritual path via breathing and physical exercises. Hatha yoga is the best to start with if you never tried yoga before.

Hatha yoga mainly concentrates on asanas, dhyana and pranayama. It aims at balancing different energy flows within the human body.

If you are practicing hatha yoga, your mind become clear and you can concentrate well. As your minds become clear, your healthy body enables to meditate easily.

Practice hatha yoga with a calm and meditative mind. Sit quietly and relax your mind for few minutes. Now you can start doing asanas slowly. Don’t overstretch yourself as it may lead to injuries.

Guided meditation is the best way if you want to start meditation.

Guided meditation is nothing but taking help of guide to meditate.

If you are going to start meditation, it will be difficult to concentrate intensely.

With the help of guided meditation, you can concentrate and the process of meditation can be easier.

The guided meditation can be live or recorded and the voice helps step by step to guide you for meditation. Guided meditations have specific purposes such as healing or self improvement. Some meditations are intended to produce peace and calmness.

By guided meditation, you can attain peace and you will be relieved from stress from everyday life. If you have experience in meditation, still you can use a guide to improve your concentration.

Taking the help of a guide means, a person will be present along with you in your room to read book which is inspirational. If the other person is reading the book, you can concentrate on the words read by the person in order to concentrate deeper. The person meditating feels inspired by hearing the words repeated if the words are inspirational.

Green tea is used in diets and can benefit you in your physical health.

It was used by the Chinese but now it is introduced to Americans.

It’s ingredients combine EGCG with certain enzymes to prevent cancer cells.

Studies have shown that combining caffeine with green tea extracts help burn calories.

According to the studies, the green tea contains antioxidants which have protective effect against cancer.

Its extracts are available in capsule form and its dosage and effects remain uncertain. In U.S. it is sold as a dietary supplement, so there is no need to prove that they are effective and safe.

There are three types of tea: green tea, black tea, and oolang tea. The difference between green tea and others is that green tea is not fermented, thus keeping powerful antioxidants not lost in the fermenting process. Therefore green tea contains more catechins and vitamins than black tea.

Benefits of green tea:

It lowers blood pressure, prevent infections and help with impaired immunity functions. It is rich in EGCG (Epigallocatechin gallate), which is a powerful antioxidant. It fights viruses, slow aging and have beneficial effect on health. It makes your skin healthier.