Archive for April, 2007

Zen meditation is the form of Buddhist meditation developed Korea, Japan, Vietnam and china.

Zen meditation allows the mind and body to relax and experience insight into nature of existence.

Zen meditation postures:

1. Full lotus posture
2. Half lotus posture
3. Burmese posture
4. Sitting on a chair
5. Seiza posture

Full lotus posture: Sit straight on the floor and place each foot on the opposite thigh. By sitting cross legged on the floor increases your stability and efficiency. This is perfectly symmetrical.

Half lotus posture: Sit straight on the floor and place left foot up on to the right thigh. Place your right thigh under the left foot. This is slightly unsymmetrical. Sometimes your body needs to compensate in order to keep it straight.

Burmese posture: Sit straight on the floor. Keep your legs crossed and feet should rest flat on the floor. Knees should also rest on the floor. Sometimes you may feel difficult to make the legs touch the floor. After sometime, the muscles will loosen and the knees begin to drop.

Sitting on a chair: Sit on the chair with feet touching the floor. Keep your spine straight with lower part of the back curved.

Your exercise and fitness program is an important part of your life and you don’t want to miss for a single day.

But if you are sick, what you have to do? If you have fever or cold or sore throat, you should exercise or not?

Exercising when sick completely depends on the situation. Some doctors suggest that exercising can benefit some of the illnesses.

If you have fever or chicken pox or any other serious illness, you stay back in bed. Otherwise you can perform little physical activity to benefit from exercising.

As exercise raises the body’s temperature, don’t workout if you have fever. If you have fever, you don’t feel like doing anything. At this time, you can perform yoga or meditation as it relaxes your body and mind.

If you have cold and stuffy nose, you can workout, as exercising breaks up the blockage and sinuses. You should not workout if you are taking medicines for cold as they may increase your heart rate.

You can workout if you have sore throat but take rest if you have fever along with sore throat. If you have stomach pain, you can exercise but don’t exercise vigorously. If you are suffering with headache, aerobics relieves from your headaches [Aerobic workouts]. Exercising also helps to relieve from premenstrual syndrome.

Transcendental meditation is a technique of deep relaxation by which our mind was taken to the source of thought.

Your power of mind increases and you can use a great potential of mind.

It is unique, simple and effective for improving all areas of life simultaneously.

With Transcendental meditation, the physiological effects of stress are minimized by a deep relaxation of the body during meditation [Benefits of meditation].

You can learn this technique within few days and can experience the result immediately.

The word transcendental means to go beyond or to go above the norm. Achieving this state takes lot of time and dedication but if have done it, then there is no feeling greater than this state of being.

In order to go beyond meditation, you have to leave all the conscious thoughts. You have to reach the deepest possible state. During this state, you lose all sensations with the body.

This may be frightening because you may not hear any sounds including your own heartbeat. It is not dangerous but it is basically like relaxing until the absolute deepest state of relaxation is achieved.

Now-a-days every one is cautious of being slim and looking good.

Therefore wherever we see a promo or an advertisement, we start dreaming to become slim with in no time.

As we see commonly in news papers and on a television “lose weight in no time “, is there some miracle going to happen without exercises or diet? We all know there is no such thing but we still believe.

If we believe such promos to lose weight without any exercise or diet, then it is must to consult a physician before using any drugs as every medicine we use for such cases will compulsorily have side effects.

Let me tell you one of my own experiences with my neighbor .she was very much fond of being slim and good looking. However, she was extremely fat that she was unable to even sit or stand easily.

She visited all obesity centers, which told her she would lose her weight with in a short time. She took all sought of drugs and treatments mentioned but there was no change and she had all side effects.

Pregnancy yoga works wonders on women’s health. Practicing yoga during pregnancy is the healthiest way to well being and for an expectant mother.

Pregnancy has lot of risks and you can overcome with pregnancy yoga. Pregnancy yoga postures stretch and explore your body.

During pregnancy, these exercises help you to keep active and flexible. Strenuous exercises are not suited for pregnant mothers.

The pregnancy yoga techniques:

Yoga exercises: Yoga exercises works on your reproductive organs and pelvis gently to have smooth pregnancy. These exercises supply blood and nutrients to the fetus.

Deep relaxation: Deep relaxation helps for physical and mental relaxation.

Meditation: Meditation helps to resolve fears and differences which are common during pregnancy.

Breathing: These techniques help in supplying plenty of oxygen to you and your child.

Pregnancy yoga exercises:

Standing Mountain: Stand with feet slightly more than hip width apart. Bend your knees slightly and keep your toes pointing straight. Keep your palms at the centre touching your heart.

Breathe deeply by closing your eyes. Inhale and sweep your arms out and overhead, bending back slightly. Exhale and stand straight returning hands to the center of the heart. Repeat it for ten times.

Vitamins B and vitamin C are water soluble vitamins. Water soluble vitamins are not stored in our body.

They are kept in our kidneys and excreted out in the form of urine when not needed.

As these vitamins are not stored in our body, you have to maintain and supply water soluble vitamins to the body regularly.

The water soluble vitamin is absorbed into our intestine, passes directly to the blood, and is carried to the tissues in which it will be utilized.

The water soluble vitamins we eat are very sensitive, so cooking, and improper storage can easily eliminate the nutritional value.

The fruits and vegetables which contain these vitamins should be consumed in raw or boiled in less water and should not be stored for more than two days.

Water soluble B complex vitamins are vitamin B1 or thiamine, B2 or riboflavin, B3 or niacin, B5 or pantothenic acid, B6 or pyridoxine, B12 or cobalomin, folic acid, and biotin.

Water soluble vitamins:

Thiamin or vitamin B1:
Thiamin is a water soluble vitamin. Excess intake of thiamin is excreted from the body as it is not stored in the body. This is easily destroyed by cooking. It is necessary for normal functioning of nervous system, stabilizes the hunger, promotes growth, and helps in energy metabolism.

Meditation involves concentrating the mind on subject of thought without any distractions [Meditation and concentration].

The methods used in the practice of Buddhism are called Buddhist meditation.

Buddhists identify meditation with mental growth. In meditation, one uses object to concentrate and direct their attention.

The object may be breathing sensations, physical sensations of the body, visual images or sounds.

The core of Buddhist meditation is practicing eight fold noble path.

The eight fold noble path are right thought, right view, right speech, right effort, right concentration, right livelihood, right action and right mindfulness.

Three types of Buddhist meditation are mostly used in United States.

Three types of Buddhist meditation:

1. Insight meditation: This is also referred as mindfulness or vipassana. This meditation comes from Thailand and Burma. This method involves observing body sensations and thoughts which come and go. If your attention drifts, you return to the observation. Observing and watching yourself can lead to deep insights about your real identity.
2. Zen meditation: This meditation comes from Japan and Korea. You should perform meditation without thoughts. Second way of performing zen meditation is watching your sensations and thoughts as they come and disappear. Third way of performing zen meditation is teacher asks the student to solve a puzzle.

Most women complain and dislike with the size and shape of their butt. Butt consists of skin, muscles and fat [Women's fitness]

As there is no bone, the shape of the butt can be determined by skin, muscle and fat.

Men have generally more muscle and less fat and skin whereas women have more fat and skin with less muscle mass.

You can easily firm up the muscles with butt exercise and can get the result quickly within three to four weeks.

The butt muscles are used for walking, sitting, standing and other movements. By shaping your buttocks, you can get a toned and strong rear end which makes your daily tasks easier and increases you calorie burn during cardiovascular exercise.

Before starting butt exercises, you have to plan about your targets and goals. Do you want a good shape of your butt? Do you want to change the size of your buttocks? Do you want firmness in your butts? Or do you want to tone your butt? You have to work to change your butt according to your desire and for strong and healthy body.

If you want to lose weight, you can follow low calorie diets which help in losing weight.

But the weight loss takes place uniformly all over the body but your shape of the body does not change [Weight loss on a busy schedule].

You have to follow good exercise schedule along with diet to shape the specific areas of the body [Diet and exercise].

Here are some of the exercise workouts to tone your body:

Back exercise:

Lie on your abdomen on the floor with your hands beneath you, palms pressed down and finger tips pointing towards each other. By straightening your arms and arching your spine, raise your body off the ground, twist around to look at your feet over the right shoulder. Repeat five to six times for each side.

Arm exercise:

Stand with your back about one foot from the wall. Place your palms against wall and press hard against it. Hold the contraction to a count of ten and then relax. Repeat it eight to ten times. Stand in front of a wall about one foot distance and repeat the exercise for eight to ten times. This exercise shapes your arms.

Everyone says that fats are unhealthy to our body.

Even doctors and nutritionists recommend avoiding foods which contain fat.

But all the fats are not unhealthy fats. There are healthy fats which make our body to function properly.

We have to understand about saturated and unsaturated fats, their uses and health facts.

The cellular system work properly when you consume proper amount of fats. But if you eat fats which are man made, chemically altered and heavily processed, your cellular system can be damaged.

Your body will work hard to operate correctly and this type of fat causes your body tissues to deteriorate. Unhealthy fats can smooth the body’s tissues by decreasing the oxygen, which is highly needed to stay alive. These fats also increase the level of cholesterol and uric acid in your tissues and finalli affects your health and fitness.

Healthy fats increase the production of hormone production and balance which is important for burning fat and building muscles. These fats also help in vitamin and mineral utilization, energy and enzymes to the body.