The powerhouse of the exercises

We move the body during our workouts, when the body is moved, the energy is expended from the body in the form of heat energy as well as mechanical energy. The energy is drawn from different sources such as the oxygen by respiration, stored fat and glycogen of the muscles depending on whether the workout is carried out aerobically/anaerobically.

Efficiency: The efficiency of the energy transfer is greater when core muscles are engaged. The core muscles consist of abdominal muscles around the centre of the body. These include muscles such as Rectus abdominus, Serratus,Transverse and Oblique.

Balance : The center of the mass for any object is the balance point for that object. If we pivot at the point of center of the mass, the object remains in place and get balanced. The center of mass for the human body is located just below the navel region. If we engage the muscles around this region, the energy transfer not only at the maximum but also helps in achieving the balance. As known to you, balance is one of the key aspects in any form of exercises.

Engage the core: Here are some simple steps to engage your core. Stand in the upright posture with neutral spine, chest opened up and shoulder dropped down. Keep the right palm on the lower abdominal muscle and left palm to support the base of the spine. Now try to level the pelvis by pressing the lower abdominal towards your spine as well as pulling upwards. Get to know the distinct feel of levelling the pelvis and isolation of the lower abdominal muscle. This engages your core and it is your powerhouse .Just perform all exercises by engaging the core for the maximum energy transfer from the core as well as to strike a balance during the workouts.

Deep Breathing: Deep breathing acts as a conduit that draws the energy from the core and supplies the energy to different part of the body. During the process of deep breathing, the diaphragm muscle acts as a piston that aids in the transference of the energy from the core. If one uses sallow breathing or chest breathing at the time of exercises then the conduit is not extended all the way to the core and hence the transference of energy from the core is not optimum.

Chakras: Out of seven chakras, four chakras namely the root, sacral, solar plexus & heart chakras are located in the core areas. By engaging the core, it indirectly activates the solar plexus and sacral chakras around the navel region. At the physical level, sacral chakra helps in balancing the sexual & reproductive system, urinary system, kidney &  lower spine. Solar plexus balances digestive system, liver and pancreas.

Leakage of energy: Without a good posture, the body leaks the energy. A slouching sitting posture without the proper engagement of the core leaks the energy to the ground.  Exercise produces movements and an act of dancing against the gravity. We tend to leak our energy when we do exercise without proper body posture alignment. The best way to maintain the posture during exercise is to consider the body as a single column joined by three points. The three points are our ankle joint, hip joint and shoulder joint. During all the standing exercises, make it as a point to keep all these three points in alignment as a single column.

Attention: Always imagine that the energy is drawn from the center of the mass and move towards the extremities as you move from one posture to another posture during your workouts. Shown below are some sketches with the direction of flow of energy for various movements during the workouts.

The 3D’s for a Healthy Life: An Effective formula

If you look for your long lasting perfect healthy life then it is important to keep some fundamental strategy clean. In general, due to the intensity of our health issue, we may tend to deal health issue with speed and vigour by using the available known solutions. If our mind is preoccupied constantly in resolving the problem then there is a possibility for us to become unknowingly part of the problem itself. This is a typical scenario where instead of solving the problem from outside, we get into the problem and eventually we become part of the problem itself. So, it is important to stay on top of the problem so that one can get a clear picture and see the problem in its totality.

To stay on top of the problem and see the problem in its completeness, we need to have some top level strategies. “3D’s for a Healthy life” is one such top level strategy .This strategy works not only in having my ideal health & fitness but also helps achieving in other areas of my life too. The 3D stands for Discrimination, Determination & Discipline.

Discrimination: The power of discrimination is also called as Viveka, the discrimination between the right and wrong or good and bad. It is your choices based on your own faith & belief. Say for example, you want to achieve your perfect fitness level. You will be given tens/hundreds of options such as Gym, Yoga, Zumba, Aerobics, running etc. Out of all these options, you tend to make certain choices and those choices usually come from your own belief structure. Things are fine when the choices yield the desired results. When you don’t get the desired result then it is high time to probe into your own belief structure. Remember that our beliefs are nothing but preconceived ideas engraved deep in our subconscious mind.  Ideally speaking, our beliefs should be in alignment with certain principles governed by the universe or specifically, the laws of nature.

Determination ( Vyragaya) : Once you made the choices then you need the right determination to stay with the choices. Remember that your determination is your commitment level and not your interest level. Are you interested in executing your choices or determined in executing your choices? Interest will not take you anywhere in life. It weakens the execution of your choices whereas determination gives you the clear direction for your result.  Interest level is always polluted with your stories and excuses which take you away from the path of success. For a determined person, there are no rooms for stories and excuses. Remember stories and excuses are our old habits which try to keep us in a comfort zone.

Discipline: Discipline is the frequency and the regularity in executing your right choices. Because of the dominance of our old habitual pattern, we tend to give some stories and excuses and shy away from our commitment level. This is a psychological internal game that happens literally to all of us. We have to come away from this operating mode deliberately. Your new choices build new habits within you. These are all winning habits embedded with the success patterns. New habits are hard to make at the earlier developmental level. Discipline plays a key role in developing the new habit. Any actions when repeated many times on regular cyclic basis become our new habits. So, discipline aids in the development of new desired habits.

One can use this strategy not only for achieving the ideal health but equally one can apply to all other dimensions of the life such wealth , relationship , career etc.

Yoga in Solar Impulse Project - Solar Powered Aircraft

Solar Impulse has launched an aircraft called Solar Impulse2, a solar powered plane with zero conventional fuel. Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard are the two pilots who control the single seater vehicle. It is a mission to travel around the world for five months from 09^th March 2015. Yes. It is today!! You can track the progress of the course of the flight live at Solar Impulse. While it considered as an incredible technology but also it challenges the human capacity.

Challenges: The pilots are challenged to harsh physical environments as well as the psychological boundaries. The pilot said, “It's minus 20 degrees Celsius, and you are at the height of Mount Everest. In 12 hours, it will be plus 40 degrees and you will have repressurised to below 3,000 metres, only to repeat this cycle for five days! How do you survive?“

Also, the pilot is confined to a cockpit space to the size of the telephone booth. Such is the physical freedom the pilot has inside the aircraft.

Yoga: In order to cope up with the external physical harsh environment and to balance the psychological restrictions, the pilots have been trained yoga by yoga expert Sanjeev Bhanot. Yoga specially designed to balance the central nervous system including a special set of classical, static yoga postures, breathing techniques and meditation practices. Yoga helps to neutralise the challenges during the flight that come with very limited space for up to 5 days which include muscle atrophy, loss of concentration and under functioning of all the body systems.

The breathing techniques, called pranayama help pilot dealing with the respiratory challenges due to the extremes of temperature and altitude: they are designed to reduce Andre's breathing frequencies to adapt better to the lack of oxygen and keep his concentration and his emotional state stable. Postures like Shoulder Bridge, spinal twist or knees to chest increase the blood circulation in his vital organs, detox them, keep his endocrine system in shape and maintain his joint movements and general flexibility. The meditation supports the vital strength of his concentration and reduces his need for sleep. The blindfold - through the lack of light hitting the eye - creates an increase of melatonin, the main sleep hormone, which brings an immediate release of stress. By working with the principle of highest efficiency for the least effort, Antastha Yoga gives Andre the maximum therapeutical effect of yoga - even 8,000 meters above the ground! – From source Yoga Life.

Andre powerfully integrates the practice of yoga not only in his day today life but exploiting the benefits of yoga to its fullest extend while flying high and that too in a harsh physical environment. Such is the power when one makes yoga practice an integral part of his life. Please check Yoga info card the physical, psychological, emotional & spiritual challenges during the flight.

Knowing & Owning: We come across much goodness in life and we know many such good things exist everywhere around us and well within us. We can own the known only when we experience the good things which are known to us. Experiential knowledge gives an opportunity to own the known things. When the knowledge stays at a mere intellectual level, the good things are just known but not owned by us.

Yoga is one such goodness in life. If you get an opportunity to learn yoga then exceptionally work at a level to integrate yoga in your life. Unlike the case of Andre where he needs to work at harsh physical environment, we are entirely fortunate enough to work in the physical comfort of our home. For us only the harsh environment exists in the internal world at the mental & emotional levels. Let us free up a space in the mind and integrate yoga in our life from moving away from the known intellectual level to an experiential level.

Are you in control of your life (Health)?

You are at your best when you do things in life which you like the most. In reality, only few people are privileged enough to do things what they would love to do in life. Majority of us are forced to do things in life irrespective of their interests and priorities.

Disparity: You live in two different worlds when you are in a situation where there is a mismatch between the work that you do and the real interest that you have. While there is a part of the world in you that executes things so theatrically and there is yet another world where your interests are completely concealed. Our own internal emotional & mental states go haywire when such a situation prolonged for months and years. Such an unbalanced state yields an unbalanced healthy state & the body starts to show gradually disturbed symptoms.

Causes: The causes for such disparity are multidimensional. It could be due to the social conditioning, the force that comes to you externally from the society. Or it could be due to the faith and belief that you hold which were not genuinely the beliefs of yours but the forced beliefs from your childhood dogged by parents, society, culture & friends. Or it could be simply your financial needs. Or you may be operating in this mode simply just because of the future commitments and you do not have the means and the clear directions to come out such a state of disparity.

Present state: You may want to do a simple exercise to access your current state to see whether you live in such a state of disparity. Just take a look at the last one week of your activities and classify the activities in two different categories. One category of activities covered with your real interest and another category of activities with the forced interest by various external situations. If you get more number of activities in later category than in the first category then it is time now for your self-introspection.

Correlation: A decade before, I was in such a state where my second list was longer than one in the first category. Obviously, I was not at my best healthy state during that period of my life. I did notice a powerful correlation between the state of disparity and my health state. If you are now in a similar situation like how I was a decade before, there is a greater probability of you to have one or more of the lifestyle diseases right now.

I am here to highlight in this blog the significance of the despaired state and its adverse relationship to your health state. There is a practical solution to overcome this unbalanced healthy state caused due to the state of disparity. At a very abstract level, it is simply a technique of identifying our true inner callings and matching our actions in the life to these inner callings.

In my next blog, I will define the mechanism of this solution as well as the practical tool that can be used to overcome such a state of disparity to have the awesome healthy life that we deserve.