Boost up your Metabolism

Some of us do religiously regular workouts, having complete control on intake of their diet; provide good rest to the body and having proper sleep. Still they struggle to maintain their body weight in spite of all the good things that they have done. Also, there is a different set of people who don’t pay attention to any of those above activities. There is no doubt that this set of people will have poor metabolic rate. But, what is wrong with those who do regular workouts, proper dieting but still can’t maintain the weight? Why the metabolic rate is not balanced?

Agni: In simple term, metabolism is a biochemical reaction that governs the energy intake and further utilisation of the energy effectively to all the cells of the body. There should be an optimal flow of energy to every cells of the body. Metabolic disorder occurs when there exists in the body certain diseases such as diabetes,  thyroidism etc. In yogic language, AGNI is defined as the fire that governs the metabolism as well as the digestion process. The strength of the Agni determines the digestive ability. Disruption in the Agni is the primary reasons for the diseases.

24 x 7 firing: An hour workouts performed in the gym helps in activating the Agni for certain period of time. But, rest of the day, if it is going to be a deskbound job then your metabolism slowly moves to a stagnant mode. This is the problem with most of us who are basically stuck to the chair in the office. We have to flip the switch in order for the Agni to light up all the time during the day. Otherwise, the workout is effective only for few hours & hence, your efficiency of the metabolism drops down during the rest period & hence , have the difficulty in maintain the weight.

Two Key elements: In order for the metabolism to stay active throughout the day, it is important to understand

 1. The seat of Agni ( manipura chakra) , the navel region. This is the centre of mass of our body. We need to activate this area.

2. The spine is the energy distribution channel and hence a consistent movement of spine is required for proper energy distribution.

Suggested Practices:  To start with, a simple abdominal breathing is sufficient to activate the centre of mass, the energy generator region. This practice should be performed frequently throughout the day to keep up the metabolism. Alternatively, certain technique such as Agnisara Kriya helps in boosting up the metabolism. In simple terms, it is a practicing of flapping the abdominal muscles by holding the breath after exhale.  Any body movement from the centre of mass such as a simple forward and backward bend helps in boosting up the metabolism too.

Also, the energy distribution channel can be optimised by giving simple movements to the spine. For example: Arching the spine backward and forward or simple twisting movement of the spine etc.

The suggested practices are simple but very effective in boosting up your metabolism and maintain your ideal weight.

“First step” a crucial factor in Change management

Life is all about changes. In fact, nothing is permanent in life except the constant changes. A positive change bounds to happen when the change works in your favour that aids in your growth. Being in the human development field, people come to me because they want to have a positive change in their life. Most of them have achieved what they really desired but not all of them. Here are few guidelines for those who really wanted to have “sure success” recipes to change their life for good.

Let the change that you deserve be in any particular dimension of your life. Say for example, better career, better health, wealth & better relationship management. What is more important is the way how you approach the change process. In particular, your “first step” for the change is a crucial element in determining the success.

Successful First Step: Your “first step” in your change process should always be successful.  “First step “is nothing but your first action in the change process. Let us assume that you wanted to have a great health. The first step is a simple movement to generate some energy in the body.  You need to pick up this movement in such a way that it is not exceeding your resource capabilities as well as not too small for you. In other words, it is a well-balanced selection of exercise appropriately selected for you.

Why we insist on the success? It is because; the experience of this exercise is stored in your memory which will have an impact when you repeat the exercise next time. The emotion attached to the exercise plays a key role in either continuing the exercise or discarding the exercise. A simple but successful pattern encourages us to perform exercise on regular basis. A wrong "first step" leads to a bad emotion that disowns the success pattern.

Pushing the Limit:  Growth can be defined as a change but is always happening in the positive direction. So, one has to step out from the comfort zone and step into the discomfort zone to experience the growth. The failure happens only when one overstep into the discomfort zone which really demands resource more than his present resource capabilities. This is one such typical pattern that leads to the failure. As a coach or trainer, it is the responsibility of the coach to take care of the clients to ensure that they travel in the path of the success pattern.

Brain circuitry: The motivational centre of the brain works based on the reward mechanism. Keep the exercises for the change neither trivial nor difficult so that the reward mechanism generates “feel good” hormones which motivate us to repeat the exercises. Repetition and regularity are the key factors to strengthen the neurological pathway. This neurological pathway eventually becomes our habits. This in fact is our success habit.

Law of accumulation: Big success can be easily achieved by adding up all the small steps of the successes. The exponential growth of success in fact is due to the effect of many different small actions but all are leading to their own minimal successes.

So, when you look for a change, it is important to understand your present resource capabilities and play the game where you step into your discomfort zone mindfully. Neither really overstepping nor underperforming but just setting the right balance. Do this continuously on a repeated basis to realise the big change.

Attention & productivity

There is a direct correlation to your productivity and your ability to pay attention to a specific task. Attention is one of the cognitive skills that can be developed by some simple practices. No doubt, pronounced productivity keeps us on the top in the field of our work. In other words, attention plays a crucial role to stay productive and to excel in the field of your work.

Current scenario: Recent researches show that the ability to pay attention to a specific task has dramatically have gone down in the recent two decades. We live in the information age and obviously, the information is abundant. We are bombarded with enormous amount of information each day in the light of technical advancement such as email, mobile, whatsapp, social media such as Facebook, twitter etc. Our present living condition is completely different than what we had experience few decades before. Distraction in the form of information overload is the main reason for the decline in our ability to pay attention.

There is also another research which says that we are attentive only 51% of the time and the remaining 49% of the time, our mind wanders on unnecessary random thoughts. Unknowingly, we have this pattern that happens on day today basis. Because of this, we literally waste almost half of our life time unproductively.

Tests: Here are few simple tests that can be performed right away to verify the above research facts.

1.       You would have taken probably a minute or two reading the content of this blog from the start to this point. Have you 100% completely engaged in this blog for the past one minute? Or were your mind engaged with some other thoughts irrelevant to the current task? 

2.       Here is another test .The test is to stay attentive but this time you are KOWINGLY testing yourself. The task is to stay focussed on one single thought for a minute. This thought could be anything related to something which happened at the start of today or even something that you will be doing tonight. But, JUST stay on one single thought for a minute. You would have noticed that the mind starts wandering after few seconds even though you wanted to stay focussed on that single chosen thought.

Default Network: Wandering mind is the default network of the brain. Attention is the activity from the prefrontal cortex of the brain. If you have failed in one or both of the above tests, do not get discouraged. This is quite NORMAL and in fact, majority of us fall in this category. The good news is that attention faculty of the brain can be developed by practice. Like any other skills, this skill is learnable & one can develop this skill.

Practice: Here is a simple practice to strengthen the attention muscles of the brain. Begin the practice to sit in upright posture & stay relaxed. Pay attention to your breathing preferably at your abdomen. Initially, try to have few rounds of deep breathing and switch back to normal automatic, spontaneous breathing. You might witness the rise & fall of your breath. As you inhale, your abdomen bulges out and as you exhale, abdomen sinks in. Just follow the natural rhythm of your breathing for five minutes. You would definitely witness the mind slowly starts wandering after few seconds or minutes after the start of the exercise. Once you become aware of wandering mind, gently bring your attention back to your breathing and continue to observe nonjudgmentally the natural rhythm. This five minutes practice every day strengthens your attention faculty & you will see a good change within a month in the way you pay attention to a specific task.

So, simply enhance your attention faculty by such a simple  practice, increase your productivity & excel in the field of your work .

Balancing the mind by contralateral movement

Few years before, I did a course on Neuroscience from the Duke University. Through this course, I really got an opportunity to get an insight into the structural & functional aspects of the brain and the associated nervous systems. The key aspects that I learned were the sensory and motor pathways. Sensory pathways are nothing but the sensations such as pain & pleasure and how those signals travel from the affected body parts all the way to the brain. Motor pathways are nothing but the signals that fire from the brain and how those signals travel all the way from the brain to the different body parts that are responsible in the motor actions or movements of the body parts.

Crossover point: For every pathway irrespective of whether sensory or motor pathway, there is a specific cross over point in the midline of the spine for each of the pathway. The signals that fire from the left hemisphere of the brain cross to the right side of the body parts and the right hemisphere of the brain cross the left side of the body and the cross overs occur in the midline of the spine.

Two different Worlds: The left & right hemispheres of the brain work in different ways. The left hemisphere is dominant in logical, analytical reasoning, decision making etc whereas the right hemisphere is dominant in creativity, holistic, intuition etc. Some of us are right hemisphere oriented and some are left hemisphere dominant. To get a balanced state, it is good to use both the hemispheres of the brain in equal proportion.  This can be done by taking advantage of the cross over point. In other words , a balanced state can be achieved by doing certain physical activities that produce contralateral movement.

Contralateral exercises: Contralateral exercise works in the following way. An action in the right hand is fired by the left hemisphere and when the right hand is taken to the left feet, the practitioner is crossing the crossover point and the right hemisphere is activated as the right hand reaches the left side of the feet. This is the precise pattern of movement when the practitioner does  Parivartha Trikonasana , the twisted triangular posture.

So to get a balanced state, activate both the brain hemispheres simultaneously in equal proportion. Here is the list of few exercises that comes to my mind now.

Parivartha Trikonasana

Vakarasana

Artha Matsyenderasana

Garudasana

Matsyasana and many more such postures.

Anulom vilom , alternate nostril breathing also helps in balancing the mind.

Balancing the mind is a learnable skill and exercise involving contralateral movement is one such technique. 

Personal Transformation initial confrontation

Personal transformation is a conscious process of changing ourselves to our higher self. There is a healthier meaning and purpose to our life when we upgrade ourselves to the greater good. Transformation is a change process. By default, with the time .we undergo change physically, mentally & emotionally. My present physical, mental & emotional states are different than what they were few years before.

Two opposite forces: Firstly, change is an automatic process and it acts as a force upon us. This force can have the positive or negative influences. Personal transformation is also a change but produced by our wilful conscious action. This is a different type of force which is wilfully generated to upgrade to our higher identity.

The initial resistance is minimal when both the forces work in association with each other. The early struggle becomes greater when the forces are not in alignment. Unfortunately, most of us fall in the latter category & we have a struggle for the personal transformation to realize in our reality.

Automatic Force: This force is nothing but your old habits & present behavioural pattern. This is the sum average of our past experiences. This force is really strong as this has been originated, developed and established for many years.  The stories & excuses that come in our mind (which do not allow the personal transformation procedures) are the acts of this automatic force. The strength of our personal transformation force is not as strong as this automatic force. Hence, we have the initial setback.

Overcoming the initial glitches:  In order to overcome the initial glitches, I would like to highlight three important points based on my own personal transformation experience.

1.       See the micro results while moving towards the goals

2.       Value the procedures and practices

3.       Owning & Knowing: The experiential knowledge.

1.       Micro Results: During the initial period, we have the usual tendency to look for the big results. Say for example that you do daily an hour of workouts to lose weight then obviously you develop an expectation to lose, one kg of weight after a week practice. Instead, it is better to look for the small micro developments such as feel towards your body, your energy level during/after workouts etc. and register all those developments in a note book. When you look back the records after a month, you’ll definitely see monumental changes.

2.       Values: It is better to value the procedures and practices wholeheartedly. Do not doubt the procedures and practices. A negative wavelength is created when one doubts the procedures. Remember the saying, “The value has value when its value is valued”.  

3.       Experiential knowledge:  Most of us know the procedures and practices to become good. But, this is just an intellectual knowledge. It becomes our experiential knowledge when we experience the procedures and practices. We now OWN the skill that we KNOW. So the difference between Owning and Knowing is similar to the difference of the experiential and intellectual knowledge. So, pay attention to your experiences/feelings.

Mental Disposition & the state of Health

Our mental disposition plays a vital role in determining the state of our health. I am writing this particular subject based on my own personal experience. But, there are some scientific studies that support this idea too.

My faith and belief structures took a leap jump from where I was a decade before to where I am now. Obviously, the life experiences during this ten years period were instrumental in changing my belief system and hence my mental outlook. One of the major changes is the way how I associate myself with the diseases that are hereditary in nature.

In family, we may run family inherited diseases such obesity, diabetes, cancer etc. This may be passed on from one generation to next generation in the family by transmission of the defective genes. I am sure that every one of us would have seen this family inherited disease happening within our family or families of our friends, neighbours, colleagues etc.

Epigenetic: Obviously, we carry the blood that runs with the defective genes and without doubt that the defective genes play a major role in the transmission of the particular disease. In the recent times, a new field has evolved in the medical field which is called “Epigenetic”. To put it simply, the expression of the genes depends on the environment in which the genes thrives. Let us take an example of the family that runs with the defective diabetic genes. There is a probability that majority of the family members have diabetes manifested in their body while few of the family members do not have any sort of symptoms of diabetes. For the lucky few, the environment in which the defective genes survived is different than that of the ones with the diabetes manifested in the body. This is what exactly happened in my personal life and I am one of that lucky few.

Environment: Having understood that the environment plays a vital role in the expression of the defective genes, now the immediate question is to know how to handle the environment to work in our favour? The science says that the associated protein shape & structure play role in the expression of the genes. I do not comment on this because of my limited knowledge in this particular subject but from my personal experience, I can firmly say our mental disposition and the associated faith and belief structure play the major roles for the family inherited diseases to manifest.

Seed for the Expression: If one thinks that he may get arthritis because his mom had it at his age then this simple thought process when repeated multiple times become his newly formed belief structure. In day today life even when he has a simple knee problem, the newly formed faith has established so well that he automatically in all likelihood get a thought with the doubt that this pain could be an initial sign of the arthritis. Unknowingly, in no time, he is creating a breeding ground, a favourable environment for the genes to express & here, we have now a person with a new tag of the arthritis in his reality. Our belief and our thought process alone are good enough to create and get into the new diseased state. Such is the effect of our mental thought process in manifestation of the diseases.

So, believe in confidence that it is not necessary that you need to undergo the family inherited diseases even though you possess the defective genes running your blood. All, you need to do is to have a hygienic mental disposition and how you associate with the family inherited defies. I found out my path through yoga to gain such a fresh mental state. It is not only that I do not manifest any of my family run genes even though I carry those but also; it is a fact that I have never visited a doctor in that last eight years. Such, is the power of our mental disposition. May I know your path to get this hygienic mental state?

Ambience Design: Social Conditioning

We influence the external environment and we are also influenced by the external environment as well. If we live in a society where majority of us have the habit of going to the temples then there is a good likelihood that we develop a habit of going to the temple. Similarly, if we live in a society where majority are smokers then there is a high probability for us to become the smokers. Such is the influence of the society on the individuals irrespective of the merit/demerit of the influence.

By default, an ordinary person mimics and follows the pattern of the society. But, the ordinary person will become extraordinary the moment he becomes aware of the underneath force that operates in the patterns of the social conditioning. It is good to follow the ones that have positive influence on you and discard those which do not serve you. This is a conscious decision on our part where we filter and selectively pick up the patterns which aid in our growth.

Let us take for examples few of the commonly followed patterns.

Going for the regular medical check-ups to stay healthy

Taking eight glasses of water per day

Oats for the healthy morning breakfast

Yoga helps you to reduce the stress level

The above are the commonly followed patterns in the society. Since, the patterns are widely accepted; it is natural for an individual to mimic the patterns. But, we have a choice to work on each of the above patterns based on its own merits/demerits.

For example, going for a regular medical check-up was not a pattern followed in the society few hundred years before. This has evolved over a period of time and becomes a pattern now. People were healthy hundred years before without going for the medical check-ups. Even in the present times, there are group of people who have not visited the doctor once in their lifetime. Definitely, they operate on a different belief system which is stronger than the one imposed by the social conditioning. In fact, in my personal experience, I followed the pattern of visiting the doctor, a decade before. But, I dropped the pattern when I made a conscious decision based on the merits/demerits. Obviously, the deviation from the mainstream path is due to the change in my belief structure. I started to see the improvement in my health condition just by following certain yoga practices. Over a period of time, I developed a belief structure where prevention is better than the cure by means of health care management.

Again taking eight glasses of water per day is good or bad but nobody knows. It is just a concept imposed on to us. We need to test ourselves to work on the merits/demerits and make a conscious decision. There is no need to blindly follow because the books say it is good to follow it as a habit. For my body condition, this may work but may not be the case for someone else.

So, it is good to become of aware of all those patterns and make a conscious decision to filter out and adopt those which work in our favour. Simply discard the rest even though they are widely accepted and practiced widely by the society. By doing so, you are becoming responsible for your own health and obviously you are not only spawning a healthy lifestyle but you are consciously designing your own Health. You are the DESINGER of your OWN HEALTH.