Dreamless Sleep

We all know why sleep is important. Sleep helps us in healing and repairing of our heart and blood vessels, and it helps our body to maintain a healthy balance of the hormones that make you feel hungry (ghrelin) or full (leptin). Sleep also aids in maintaining proper blood sugar level. Sleep is as important as the air we breathe and the water we drink. Without sleeping we cannot live. If we deprive someone from sleep, we can kill them. During the World War 2 in Germany, and even now in Russia, the most popular method of torturing prisoners was prevention of sleep. They were simply not allowed to sleep. The guards were put next to the prisoners to disturb their sleep. The Chinese would make the man stand in a cell which was so small that he could not move at all; he could neither sit nor lie down. Then they used to drip water from above which used to fall on his head, drop by drop. He could not move at all, could neither sit nor lie down, so after a maximum of twelve or sixteen or eighteen hours the man would start shouting and screaming – “I will die! Save me! Get me out of here!”

Now moving on from why sleep is necessary to importance of dreamless sleep. To comprehend the importance of dreamless sleep we will have to understand the process of sleep.

What Happens During Sleep?

In sleep natural cycles of activity take place in the brain and these natural cycles consist of two basic states: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, which consists of Stages 1 through 4. People begin the sleep cycle with a period of non-REM sleep followed by a very short period of REM sleep. Dreams generally occur in the REM stage of sleep.

What Is Non-REM Sleep?

The period of NREM sleep is made up of 4 stages. Each stage can last from 5 to 15 minutes. A completed cycle of sleep consists of a progression from stages 1-4 before REM sleep is attained, then the cycle starts over again.

·        Stage 1:  Polysomnography (sleep readings) shows a reduction in activity between wakefulness and stage 1 sleep. The eyes are closed during Stage 1 sleep. One can be awakened without difficulty; however, if aroused from this stage of sleep, a person may feel as if he or she has not slept.

·       Stage 2: This is a period of light sleep during which polysomnographic readings show intermittent peaks and valleys, or positive and negative waves. These waves indicate spontaneous periods of muscle tone mixed with periods of muscle relaxation. The heart rate slows and the body temperature decreases. At this point, the body prepares to enter deep sleep.

·      Stages 3 and 4: These are deep sleep stages, with stage 4 being more intense than Stage 3. These stages are known as slow-wave, or delta, sleep. If aroused from sleep during these stages, a person may feel disoriented for a few minutes.

During the deep stages of NREM sleep, the body repairs and regenerates tissues, builds bone and muscle, and appears to strengthen the immune system.

How to get a dream less sleep?

First, to get a dreamless sleep we should drop on our bed, close our eyes, and then remember that sleep is coming and we have to tell ourselves "I have to remain awake when the sleep comes". It is very arduous, but it helps. One day it will not happen, another day it will not happen. Persisting every day, constantly remembering that sleep is coming, and keep reminding ourselves that "I do not have to allow it without knowing. I must be aware when sleep comes. I must be able to feel how sleep takes over, I must feel how sleep takes over" One day sleep would be there, and we would still be awake. At that very moment we will become aware of our unconsciousness. Sleep will be there, but we will be awake simultaneously. A centre in us will keep knowing; although all around would have fallen asleep. When this center is knowing, dreams become impossible. Then we are asleep in a different sense, and we will be awake in the morning in a different sense.

Second, darkness is an auto-signal to your brain that it is night and time to sleep. So, we should switch off the bright artificial lights an hour or two before going to bed.

One thing needs to be understood – right sleep will be different for everybody. It will not be equal because the body has needs which are different for everyone – according to age and to many other elements. For example, when a child is in the mother’s womb, he sleeps for twenty-four hours because all his tissues are developing. He needs complete sleep; his body will develop only if he keeps on sleeping for twenty-four hours. When the child is born, he sleeps for twenty hours. His body is still growing. Then he sleeps for eighteen hours, then fourteen hours…. Slowly, slowly, as his body starts becoming mature, his sleep also gets less and less. In the end it settles at a time between six to eight hours. The sleep of an old man gets less, it becomes five hours, four hours, even three hours – because the growth of the body of an old man has stopped. He has no need of much sleep every day because now his death is coming close. If an old man sleeps as much as a child sleeps, then he cannot die, death will be difficult. For death it is necessary that sleep becomes less and less. For life it is necessary that sleep is deep. That is why an old man by and by starts sleeping less and less but a child sleeps more.

We relax partially while we are asleep, but it is not total. Even in our sleep we manipulate things. If we watch a man sleeping: we will see that he is very tensed. While if we watch a small child sleeping, he will look very relaxed. We are not relaxing even while we are asleep; we are tense, struggling , moving, fighting with something. On our face there are tensions. In dreams we may be fighting , protecting-doing the same things as when we are awake, repeating the inner drama.

In my opinion, if we know how to relax then nothing can disturb us. If we don’t know how to relax then everything will disturb us. It is not really something else that disturbs us, everything else is just an excuse. We have the tendency to get disturbed. For example while lying on the bed before sleeping we wait for someone to whatsapp us. Even if we eliminate all such causes then also we will find a way to get disturbed. Not that the world will change and things will be different, it is on us how we perceive things around us. All the things around us are soothing- and even the traffic noise becomes soothing to our ears if we are relaxed. It depends on us. It is an inner quality.

Meaning of OM

We hindus believe in ‘’Gods’’ – yes not one God. Some believe in Shiva , some in Vishnu, some in Maa Durga and so on. For each God there is aarti and chalisa. Have you ever noticed that majority of these prayers begin with Om. But what is OM? Have you ever thought about it? Why it is used so often? Today in this post I put some light on the significance of OM.

Om sustains entire universe; not only physical universe but also the experience of it. The experiencer, the experience and the experienced, all three of them are OM. The physical body, the physical world and the thought world is OM. Thus, the sleeper and the sleep experience, the dreamer and the dream experience and the waker and the waking experience all these constitute what we call everything that is here. All these together represent ‘Om’.

It is written as OM, but if we chant it slowly syllable by syllable we can observe there are three sounds – a, u, m. If we close our eyes and sit in meditation position and chant only ‘a’, what we observe is that there is vibration in the genitals. After this if we chant only ‘u’, then there is vibration in our chest. Finally if we chant only ‘m’, then we can feel vibration in our head. So if we chant all the three syllables in continuation i.e. we chant OM, then vibrations travel from our genitals to our head.  So what we are doing is channelizing all our energy. We are extracting the energy which is not being utilized or used in some other activity. Basically we are trying to concentrate and giving our brain all the power we have. 

bhūtaü bhavad-bhaviùyad-iti sarvam Omkāra eva

What had happened before, what is now and what will be later

– Everything is just Om. (Māõóukyopaniùad)

Credits- Vinayak Kaushik, Art of Living 

Sun Gazing

We all know about the Sun, it is the center of our solar system and all planets revolve around it. In Hindu mythology Sun is one of the three chief gods of Vedas and in Greek mythology the Sun is personified as a Titan named Helios, who wore a shining crown and rode a chariot across the sky. Not only this, the solar energy is responsible for the starting of food cycle of which we all are part of. Interestingly, with the help of the sun it is possible to solve our emotional, physical and spiritual problems.

We get energy from the sun by either eating plants or vegetables or from chicken and meat. Through both these forms we are indirectly absorbing sun’s energy. But there is also another possibility that we bypass these plants and animals and directly absorb energy from sun. This is known as HRM –phenomenon. Hira Rattan Manek hasn’t used any solid food since 1995. This fact has been examined and confirmed by an international team of doctors and scientists and the NASA. This said, purpose of this method is not to stop eating but to live a mentally, physically and spiritual healthy life.

Sungazing is simply looking at sun and deriving all the energy required for survival. This method has been practiced for centuries and it was rediscovered by HRM recently.

THE METHOD

1.        Walk barefoot on bare earth for 45 minutes, every day, for the rest of your life. This connection with nature is necessary to enjoy the full benefits of sungazing. Do it whenever you can.

2.        Find out the times of sunrise and sunset. They change every day a few minutes.

3.        Calculate the safe hours for sungazing:  from sunrise until one hour later is safe and also the last hour before sunset. Beginners should never watch outside of these times. Others can consider the fact that sungazing is safe whenever the UV-index is below 2.

4.       If possible, stand on the naked earth with bare feet. This protects the eyes. Warm earth is better than cold. If you cannot find any naked earth, then try mud, stone or concrete. The further in the list, the less protection the surface offers. Avoid standing on grass or in water. If you cannot stand, then sit. Standing straight with a straight back is the best. Sand is better than heavy earth. Dry, sandy beaches are perfect.

5.        It is important to look relaxed at the sun. Blink your eyes as you normally do. Don’t pay much attention to this. Watch the sun as you would watch TV. Don’t use any glasses. Lenses are fine because they are part of the eye.

6.        Start with 10 seconds at the most. Heighten this amount every day with maximum 10 seconds. On a partly clouded day, you can repeat the time of the last sunny day. For example: yesterday was a Sunny day and you’ve watched for 2 minutes. Today there are some clouds, so you go for 2 minutes again. Tomorrow is sunny so you add 10 seconds and watch 2 minutes and 10 seconds.

7.        If you have practiced this method for 3 months without interruption (or 90 days), then you are sungazing 15 minutes. This solves all mental problems. If you continue to 30 minutes (180 days), then your physical complaints will disappear. And if you continue to 45 minutes (270 days), you will solve all spiritual questions and then you will become completely healthy. After this, you need to stabilize the results by walking barefoot or further sungazing.

TIPS:-

û     When following the HRM-method you can have excellent results in improving your health and feeling of well-being. But whenever you try to make shortcuts by going too fast, not walking barefoot, not standing on bare earth or other tricks, then most certainly the benefits will be less. HRM says: ”The benefits are delayed, but not denied’.

û      Splitting of or catching up on the time: it is OK to, for example, look the half of the time in the morning and the other half in the evening. If you want to look that day ten seconds more than the day before, then you might add five seconds in the morning and five in the evening. It is also possible to watch two times on a day when you haven’t been able to sungaze the day before. In that case, you watch the sun in the morning for as much time as you would have done yesterday and in the evening you add maximum ten seconds. Whenever you cannot watch the sun on a particular day, nothing really bad happens, but the benefits will be delayed. It is not necessary to add 10 seconds every day, you can decide to go slower and add less seconds (5 or so). It is better not to go faster and add more than 10 seconds to give your brain and eyes the time to adapt. Pregnant women and children should not look into the sun longer than five minutes.

û     Palming you can do whenever or where you like. Rub the palms of your hands upon each other for a few seconds to make them warm and then bring the warmth to your eyes.

û     Sunglasses cannot be used for sungazing. They block away the life-necessary UV-light.

û     Drinking water before or after sungazing helps in detoxifying.

û     When it is too cold to get outside, then watch the sun from inside through the window (open or closed). You can be barefooted if you want, but keep yourself warm. Sungazing from inside is not as effective as from outside, but it gives benefits.

û     It is also possible to watch the sun in the reflection in clear water or glass. This does not damage the eye. People living between high mountains or houses might find this handy. The midday sun is the most suitable to watch the reflection in water. You can put a bucket of water outside in such way that you see the sun in it. Don’t use the reflections in snow, dirty water or seawater. These are not healthy. Most clear glass windows are fine.

û     In winter it is sometimes safe to sungaze during the whole day. There is no danger when the UV-index is below 2, but you should always check if the light is not too strong for you.

û      There are methods to make sungazing easier if the sun is too bright for you. You can use pinhole spectacles or look through a white piece of textile, the clouds, the leaves or branches of trees, and so on. You can also look with half-open eyes. But don’t do any of these things when the UV-index is more than two. Even clouds do not filter the UV-rays enough to be safe. Looking with closed eyes is always safe. All these methods slow down the benefits, but sometimes it is better to go slow than to take a risk and hurt yourself.

û     The inner images that you see after sungazing are perfectly normal. It is the best to close the eyes and observe them until they are gone. Mostly, they are gone within a few minutes. Sometimes they stay longer, even for one or two days.

û      If you experience things like a glowing face, tears, prickling eyes, sneezing, the eyes closing automatically, tension round the eyes, or other things, this is not a serious problem, but you should be careful. Check the UV-index and your experiences. Ask HRM for advice whenever necessary.

û     When you have reached 44 minutes, then stop sungazing. You have reached the second phase of the technique. Now, for one year you have to walk barefoot on bare earth for 45 minutes every day. This is to stabilize the energy. You change your body into a ‘solar chip’. Your feet might hurt a little in the beginning, but they will get used to it. As HRM says:  ‘When the mind accepts, the body adapts’. And if the body adapts, then the mind accepts. An alternative technique is to start counting down: every day you watch the sun one minute less: 43,42, 41, … minutes. Proceed until 15 minutes. This method is for people who cannot walk barefoot on bare earth every day. Ask HRM’s advice.

û     When you stop sungazing, the body gets uncharged within six days. Barefoot walking stops this. The best time to walk is when the earth is warm en there is sunlight on the body.

û      After the first phase of the technique it is advisable to contact HRM and ask if there are some other things you might do. Sometimes additional methods or information is needed to preserve the results.

û      People having fear of practicing these methods, better not do it (immediately). It is possible to have an opposite effect. The first step towards sungazing is opening oneself for the sun’s radiation. If you cannot do this spontaneously, it is possible to get used to the sunlight by sungazing in the safe hours with eyes closed. Do this for ten minutes every day or as long as you like it. Once you are accustomed to the sunlight and your fear has gone away, you can start with ten seconds with open eyes.

û     It is possible to stop sungazing before you reach 44 minutes and still have benefits that last. But therefore you definitely have to stabilize the energy by watching the sun for one year longer (every day the same length of time as to where you’ve come) or walk barefooted on bare earth for 45 minutes every day. Without such grounding, the benefits will slowly go away. When the grounding is strong enough, the benefits can be kept up by coming in the sunlight for a few minutes every day, but the need for a systematic approach then is gone. The HRM-method, when practiced properly, only needs to be done once in a lifetime!

SPECIFIC PROBLEMS AND TECHNIQUES:-

Weight problems

Obesity can be cured with this technique. People who don’t have enough weight or hunger, have to carefully investigate whether their feeling of hunger disappears because the food has become unnecessary for them or because they refuse themselves the food mentally. If the body needs the food, than one needs to eat. The purpose of the HRM-method is not to stop eating, but to obtain optimum health. Everyone who practices the technique correctly till the end, will not need any food anymore, but it is not sure that everybody can attain to this. It is only realistic to think that one doesn't need any food anymore when the body is entirely nourished by the cosmic energy from the sun. This comes by itself, as a side-effect of health. In ancient times, many people didn't need any food or just a little bit of it. 

Eye Diseases

People with serious eye problems (muscular degeneration, retinopathy, cataract, or other) usually cannot directly start with the HRM method. They have to do preparative exercises. HRM advises to go sit or stand in the sun for ten minutes with closed eyes, every day within the safe hours, for two months. The sun warms the eyes and the disorder will improve. Drinking sun charged water, putting it on the eyes and palming also helps. When the problem has been cured enough, it is possible to start with the regular method. It is wise to consult a doctor regularly to measure the effect on the eyes.

Every man or woman is unique. So the HRM-method also is unique for everyone. Some people might even add more seconds every day, or some should add less. Every method, which is accepted by the body, is OK. Progress shows the way. When there is no sign of progress or there is doubt, then one should not experiment further. To be careful and very attentive are the best advices. It is possible to have a temporary fall-back. Positive thinking also has its effect and can accelerate the benefits. Generally, the standard HRM-method is the best for all and offers the time for the body to adapt to a new way of life.

Credits : Dhanesh Malhotra , Vinayak Kaushik

Correct way of breathing while exercising

We all know that we can live without food and water for several days but we cannot live without breathing for even 1 minute. Thus, oxygen is most important for survival. Role of breathing becomes even more important when we are exercising or doing some arduous physical work. This is not a new concept; the importance of breathing was well established by Patanjali in 400 BC by introducing yoga. In yoga, the major focus is on breathing pattern i.e. how we inhale and exhale air, how many times we have to inhale and exhale and how quickly or slowly we have to inhale and exhale.

When we exercise our muscles demand a greater than usual amount of oxygen to work efficiently. So we breathe faster than usual and this hyperventilating reduces the effectiveness of our routine by making us tired quickly and we are unable to get the desire result. In weightlifting, holding the breath is known as the Valsalva Maneuver. It limits oxygen delivery to the muscles and brain leading to fainting, dizziness, painful exercise-induced headaches, and sometimes a stroke.

So what is the correct way of breathing? Ideally we should do “belly” or diaphragmatic breathing. To do it, we should simply breathe in deeply enough so that our belly (not your chest) rises, then falls as we exhale. Belly breathing keeps your blood pressure low and allows for better oxygen delivery to your muscles. We should exhale while we are doing the movement which requires maximum effort, and inhale as we come back to the original position. For example, when we do crunches while we are crunching forward we should exhale because this will require effort and while we are going down we should inhale because going down is easy and gravity helps us in going down.  Similarly, we should exhale as we lower to the ground during a squat and inhale when we return to the starting position.                                             

While this said, it is not possible that every time we do a movement we can employ a diaphragmatic breathing. This is because, in diaphragmatic breathing we have to take deep breathes and this deep breathing takes more than usual time than normal breathing. This can be frustrating. Thus, the judgement of how deep one should breathe during a single movement should be left to individual himself but the movements should be slow and steady for proper execution and for proper breathing to achieve the progress we want. 

To understand the importance of breathing you can also watch never back down, and please don’t end up watching this movie by seeing only amber heard. Man she is hot.

A closer glance at cardiovascular exercises

Nowadays gyms are flooded with posters of Animalpak or with posters of some famous body builder. So when someone walks into the gym, he creates a mental picture that gymming is developing muscles and we have to train hard and focus on weight training to be a man like the person in the poster. In this process when the person gets so obsessed with muscular hypertrophy, that he forgets various other important aspects related to fitness, like cardiovascular conditioning. Moreover, some guys who work out in gyms also have misconception that cardio exercise will lead to decrease in muscle mass. Furthermore, when a guy who is thin, joins gym for gaining weight thinks that cardio will make him thinner and the list of myths related to cardio exercises can go on.

Cardio workout is necessary because it helps to build our lung capacity. In another words it means that we increase our breathing capacity and hence our stamina. Enhanced lung capacity helps us to work out longer and harder with weights. Besides training our lungs, cardio exercise also trains our heart. Our heart is also a muscle, so like training other body parts, we have to train our heart for giving our hundred per cent. There are various other advantages like increase in metabolism, reduction in the the risk of osteoporosis, it makes us feel good about ourselves, keeps us active and so on but with gymming perspective the two most important benefits are that cardio exercise makes our heart and lungs strong.

It is sensible to do cardio on days we are not weight training. If we try to do intense aerobics at the end of a taxing lifting session, our body gets too burned out to get results. Similarly, if we start our workout with strenuous cardio, we’ll become fatigued, and our weight lifting will suffer. However, light cardio exercise is advantageous at the start of our weightlifting sessions. A 5-10 min cardio workout will also serve as an extended warm-up session. A little cardio is good at the end of a tough workout. It helps us to limber down, and this reflects on our workout. It’s easier on our body to gradually reduce the intensity of our workout than to go full bore and then stop suddenly.

Everyone, no matter how thin, needs to do some aerobics in order to strengthen the cardiovascular system and build endurance. Those people who join gym for fun and just want big muscles in short period of time say 5 to 6 months, for them it is fine to not to follow a workout regime for overall development but for those who want do gymming for longer period, they should not be so short sighted. Everyone is different; success in bodybuilding depends on customizing both your weight training and your aerobics program for your physique. This right blend of cardio vascular exercises and weight training can be achieved by training under the supervision of good trainer. Surprisingly many people think that they are not pro body builders and they do not require well trained trainers but in my opinion good trainer is always required even if you are not participating in some body building competition or modelling competition. Without a guided approach we unnecessarily waste our time in the hope of getting results. 


Credits- Vinayak Kaushik , Yashvir singh and Kavinder Saini

Importance of wearing gym supporters during the workouts

Gym supporter or athletic supporter or jockstrap consists of an elastic waistband with a support pouch for the male genitals and two elastic straps attached to the base of the pouch and to the left and right sides of the waistband at the hip. The biggest benefit of jockstrap is the ability to add a protective cup in the pouch.

The purpose of jockstrap is to hold the male genitals in place and suppress excessive motion. A supportive pair of briefs can also serve the same amount of anti-bouncing purpose. A hard blow without a resistive cup can end up in building of excess fluid in scrotum.

In gym when we do exercises like overhead triceps extension , one hand triceps extensions , dumbbell press for shoulders , squats for thighs etc , excessive weight around the mid-section can put undue pressure and downward pull on muscles and organs, resulting in congenitally weak spots bearing a tremendous burden, and ultimately leads to hernia.

A hernia occurs when an organ or fatty tissue squeezes through a weak spot in a surrounding muscle or connective tissue called fascia. In other words hernias result from a weakness in the abdominal wall that develops over time from excessive pressure placed on the particular region. The most common types of hernia are inguinal (inner groin), incisional (resulting from an incision), femoral (outer groin), umbilical (belly button), and hiatal (upper stomach).

In an inguinal hernia, the intestine or the bladder protrudes through the abdominal wall or into the inguinal canal in the groin. About 80% of all hernias are inguinal, and most occur in men because of a natural weakness in this area.

Personally I recommend that everyone should wear supporters while training, if you don't wear it, it can cause some serious injuries .In my view if you get injured you can bear the pain of injury but when you have to take off your pants in front of doctor that is more embarrassing.

Credits- Vinayak Kaushik , Yashvir singh and Kavinder Saini

What is wellness and how it is different from physical fitness?

Many times we say that we are not well and we also hear people repeating the same. Sometimes people say this because they are ill but actually what is this wellness, is this only limited to having fever or suffering from some disease? Does being short tempered is also a sign of not being well or getting injured or having some flu is the only criteria of being unwell? How is wellness different from physical fitness?

Wellness is the integration of all the components of health ; physical fitness , mental fitness , social fitness, emotional fitness , spiritual fitness and aesthetical fitness and ability to change behavior so as to improve the quality of life by changing habits to have proper nutrition , exercise , spirituality , smoking cessation , stress management , drug abuse control and disease prevention.

In other words wellness is the capability of an individual by which he leads a balanced life.

Now moving on to what is physical fitness? Physical fitness is ability to carry out daily task with vigor and alertness without undue fatigue and with ample energy to join leisure time pursuits and to meet unforeseen emergencies. If you come from office and are to stressed and take out your stress on your family by yelling and shouting you are not well, if you come home from college and mother says to you get something done and you do that without freaking out you are fit. So, physical fitness implies task to be performed and the individual’s capacity to perform it even when the work is unexpected.

Different people can have different points of view regarding physical fitness. For a sprinter running fast is fitness for him, but for marathon runner endurance is physical fitness, 100 kg may be too much weight for a human being but for a power lifter weighing 100 kg may be fitness for him and for a doctor, and the proper functioning of physiological systems is physical fitness. Even for the same sport parameters of physical fitness like weight and height for male and females can be different. For senior citizen walking without pains in joint is fitness for him but for a college student having energy to play multiple sports is fitness for him.  So, physical fitness varies according to the nature of work, individual’s size, shape of the body, age and sex.

So wellness is a broad term and physical fitness is an aspect of wellness.

Credits- Vinayak Kaushik , Yashvir singh and Kavinder Saini