MyLifeYoga

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In this thrilling talk Susan Cain, a self-declared introvert, describes her journey into accepting her introversion in the face of societies bias to look more favorably at extroverts. She talks about her love for books and her love for her grandfather who surrounded himself with books. She remembers him as a quiet and graceful presence surrounded by people who loved him and respected him though he was an introvert.

Susan has done many years of research on the phenomenon of introversion and has even written a book on the subject. She differentiates introversion from shyness. She considers shyness as the fear of social judgment, while introversion is merely being more comfortable with less stimulation. She does not think that there is a pure introvert or a pure extrovert. We all fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. The extroverts love to be in an over stimulated environment most of the time while the introverts like to tone down the stimulation and be within themselves. Most of us fall somewhere in-between so that there are times where we prefer stimulation and times where we prefer solitude.

What alarms Susan is our societies bias for extroverts and she thinks that this can be dangerous for us as it has the potential to stifle the creative process. While she does not deny the need for collaboration and social skills she feels that all of us must take the time to get away from groupthink by unplugging and spending time in solitude.

From the point of view of those who aspire to be on an yogic journey we must realize the importance of solitude. The price of deeper Self-discovery is solitude. We must learn to live with less and less stimulation as we progress on our yogic journey. The yogic journey is a journey into quietness, solitude, and introversion. Its time we recognized the power of introversion and introverts, and have the courage to speak softly.

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Health is not something that just pours out of our mind-body system over which we have no control. There is an element of choice involved in how our mind-body expresses health. Here are few things that you can do to invite health into your life:

1. Food

The food we eat has an enormous impact on our health. Careless eating habits can even bring a robustly healthy mind-body system to its knees. Eating over-processed food that is loaded with chemicals, hormones, and sugar will overwhelm your system and force it to express its troubles to you as an illness. Do not mind being labeled as a “health nut” and put only healthy stuff in your mouth.

2. Sleep

Sleep is essential for a healthy mind-body system. Cutting short on sleep can build up imbalance in our body that can grow into physical and mental ailments. Be sure to get 8 to 10 hours of good quality sleep every night, and give yourself the chance to catch up on deficiencies in sleep at least once a week.

3. Chronic Stress

Our mind-body is perfectly capable of handling stress. But when stress becomes unrelenting our mind-body has no time to recover. Illness is the result. Sleep and Yoga can help you get out of stress. You can also try meditation and breathing exercise to help reduce chronic stress in your life.

4. Relationships

Having strong loving relationships is essential to our health and well being. It is possible to have thousands of Facebook Friends but at the same time have very few quality relationships. It’s not the number of relationships that matters but its quality.
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