Thursday, April 30, 2009

just ordinary tea

Another little gem from The Orange Book - which I found lying on the table at a most unexpected place. Yes … when the student is ready the teacher will come.

Just ordinary tea – enjoy it!

Live moment to moment.

For three weeks, try: whatsoever you are doing, do it as totally as possible; love it enjoy it. Maybe it looks silly. If you are drinking tea it is silly to enjoy it too much – it is just ordinary tea.

But ordinary tea can become extraordinarily beautiful – a tremendous experience. Make it a ceremony: making tea … listening to the kettle and the sound, then pouring the tea … smelling the fragrance of it; than tasting the tea and feeling happy.

Dead people cannot drink tea; only very alive people. This moment you are alive! And don’t think of the future; the next moment will take care of itself. Think not of the morrow: for three weeks live in the moment.

Source: The Orange Book, The Meditation Techniques of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Sunday, April 5, 2009

regular exercise

regular exercise
one of the major hurdles in exercising regularly is time and money. time to go to the gym: to get our gear together, pack it in to the car, drive there and back … it takes so much time and money. how many of us has decided that - this year, we will exercise? how many of us have exercise bikes, or weights that are gathering cobwebs in some remote corner of the house. that’s the problem with gadgets. they seem great when we are full of enthusiasm. the gym sales people love us in january, but often don’t see us from february or march onwards because we get bogged down with other things.
so the best way of overcoming this difficulty is to not go to the gym – which means exercising at home. i find this the best way because there are no excuses – there are no gadgets, no travel time. ask yourself if you are worth 11 minutes a day to keep healthy? the answer has gotta be YES!
so here’s the deal:
there’s an exercise program that was developed in the 60’s by the canadian air force. no gadgets, no travel time, it can be done in your home, in the bedroom or any spare room. i’ve been doing it for many years and it works. 5 basic exercises for men and 10 basic exercises for women (don’t ask me why it is 10 for women … i too am puzzled). these exercises hit all the major body parts, the upper body, the big muscles of the leg, the stomach. they can be done by anybody whether you are totally unfit or whether you are close to being an olympic athlete. no, i am not kidding, these 5 basic exercises are even good for the superfit person – check out the star-jumps in exercise 5, page 29 of the Chart.
the thing to do is to start doing them and develop the habit of exercising. i find the mornings are the best for me, my stomach is empty and i do them as i roll out of bed (unless someone is sharing my bed in which case i don’t feel like just rolling out :-) check out the original booklet which gives you charts for different fitness levels.
start with the level that is recommended for you – check with your doctor if you feel you need to.
start now. read my blog ‘until one is committed’ if you’re hesitating.
ps. these exercises were developed in the 60s, and show straight back sit-ups and not crunches. i don’t know much about these things but i believe, it is crunches we should be doing to exercise our stomach muscles and we should also be doing them obliquely (cross over – left elbow to right knee) and not with straight backs: raise heads first, shoulders and then upper body in a smooth rolling motion.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

our correct weight

we are organisms - many celled, largish, intelligent, but for all that, still simply organisms. as such, we have a certain build, a certain weight that is the correct weight for our organism.
i feel much better if i have to climb a few flights of stairs and my weight is correct – if my muscle to weight ratio is correct. when i go hiking and have a hefty backpack to carry: the tent, the spare clothing, and the food - the going becomes much more difficult, i’m out of breath easier and i get tired quicker and need to rest more often. the weight i have to carry (the backpack plus my body weight) is not in balance with the heart. the heart has not only to be fit (and i’ll talk about fitness in another blog) but also has to be the correct size for the organism – and that’s me.
regular size heart working hard all the time to pump blood to a large body = trouble.
Sportspeople - long distance runners, climbers, talk of their muscle to weight ratio as being crucial for participating in their particular sport. Every pound of weight we put on is 5 miles of blood vessels. If your heart beats 100,000 times a day, that's 500,000 miles a day for one pound of fat,– see discussion here
body mass index (bmi) is a is a tool used to assess our weight which in turn helps us to learn about our health risks. are you at your healthy weight? you can either look up your bmi on the chart below or find out fast here