MyLifeYoga

The human brain is an extraordinary resource. It plays a leading role in manifesting consciousness. It is through consciousness we live and express ourselves. This is why brain health is important for quality of life. Since the brain acts as a command and control center for important body functions, brain health also has a significant bearing on our longevity. Rather than taking our brain health for granted we should concern ourselves with taking good care of it. Here are seven secrets for a healthy brain:

1. The brain is not static – The view that the brain does not grow or improve after adulthood has now been discarded. The brain continues to grow and develop throughout our lives. If we do not take care of it then it shrinks at the rate of 0.5% per year. Our brain can improve by adding new neurons, improving the myelination (coating) of existing neurons, and by creating new connections between neurons. There is no age limit when this can happen.

2. Sleep – Adequate sleep is the single most important thing for good brain health. It is during sleep that the brain is able to do housekeeping activity like getting rid of waste products, processing information, and carrying out necessary repairs and maintenance. We need 7 to 10 hours of sleep for good brain health.

3. Brain killers – Know things that are the brain killers. These are things that damage the brain:
Continue reading →

Lisa Beamer was on Good Morning America – If you remember, she’s the wife of Todd Beamer who said ‘Let’s Roll!’ and helped take down the plane over Pennsylvania that was heading for Washington DC back on 9/11. She said it’s the little things that she misses most about Todd, such as hearing the garage door open as he came home, and her children running to meet him.

Lisa recalled this story:

“I had a very special teacher in high school many years ago whose husband died suddenly of a heart attack. About a week after his death, she shared some of her insight with a classroom of students. As the late afternoon sunlight came streaming in through the classroom windows and the class was nearly over, she moved a few things aside on the edge of her desk and sat down there.

With a gentle look of reflection on her face, she paused and said, ‘Class is over, I would like to share with all of you, a thought that is unrelated to class, but which I feel is very important. Each of us is put here on earth to learn, share, love, appreciate and give of ourselves. None of us knows when this fantastic experience will end. It can be taken away at any moment. Perhaps this is the power’s way of telling us that we must make the most out of every single day.’
Continue reading →

In February 2014, one of Gerdi McKenna’s friends wrote an email requesting a photoshoot for all her friends as she was diagnosed with breast cancer a few months before … and this is what happened!

You may also like: Want To Be Happy? Be Grateful!

This is a continuation of Bob Weisenberg’s essay: Six Big Ideas Of Yoga. This is the first of the Big Ideas:

Each of us is already infinitely wondrous–miraculous, awe-inspiring, unfathomable. (This is well hidden beneath the distractions of everyday life and emotion.)

Ask yourself this question: “Which is more wondrous, the entire universe or an individual human being?”

Think deeply about this. Most people can’t honestly choose between the two. The question is, of course, unanswerable. The entire universe is so wondrous (miraculous, awe-inspiring, unfathomable–whatever words you choose to use.) Yet, when seen objectively, so is a thinking, breathing, feeling human being.

The fact that it’s not easy to choose is fascinating in itself. And it’s a dramatic argument for the most basic Yoga idea that just being alive can be infinitely wondrous, if we let it.

For me this is a blockbuster, mind-blowing insight, and undeniably true. I had always thought of the individual human being as small and insignificant, like a grain of sand on the beach. And we are, in a way.But each of us is also infinitely wondrous–so wondrous, in fact, that it’s hard to decisively declare even the entire universe to be more wondrous.

The universe is complex and unfathomable, indeed. But a human being, in body alone, is equally complex and unfathomable, and, in addition, we are conscious. We are able to perceive the miracle of our own being.

(Yoga often uses the word “divine” for this. The most basic finding of Yoga is that each of us is already divine. I prefer the word “wondrous” instead of “divine”, because “divine” has too many other religious meanings, some of which Yoga doesn’t necessarily intend to convey.)

According to Yoga, this wondrous, blindingly amazing self is the “true self” referred to in the title of Cope’s book, Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, and the process of self-realization, or “enlightenment”, is not the process of “becoming” something, but rather simply “discovering” the joy of who we already are, buried beneath the pressing distractions and emotions of everyday life.

For me the conclusive, objective realization that each of us is as wondrous (“divine” if you prefer) as the entire universe is like a light switch that changes everything about the way I think about myself and my life.

Next week: Second Big Idea.

Credit: This has been written by Bob Weisenberg. He is Editor of Best of Yoga Philosophy and former Yoga Editor & Assoc. Publisher of elephant journal. He is the author of Yoga Demystified and Bhagavad Gita in a Nutshell, as well as Co-editor of Yoga in America. For more details visit: http://bobweisenberg.wordpress.com/

Related:
Six Big Ideas Of Yoga
Our Wondrous Nature Is Same As The Wonder Of The Universe!