fasting during fever

Starve the Cold and the Fever
by Swami Vicharananda Saraswati (of the Bihar School - link below)

Most people who follow a yogic lifestyle soon arrive at a relatively disease-free state, where they are no longer troubled by chronic physical complaints. Nevertheless, there are times in everyone's life when extra demands are made on one's physical, emotional or mental resources. Often these periods of high stress precipitate a sudden disruption of physical health. These acute episodes of sickness are often referred to as healing crises. They should not be considered as disease states; in fact they are an expression of the body's healthy response to stress and overwork. The most important thing to remember at these times is to heed the message of the body, which is frantically signalling the need for a complete rest.

Most natural healers agree that these states of physical reaction can be traced to a high level of toxicity in the body. This occurs when the tissues are overloading the body with more waste materials than can be handled by the standard processes of elimination. Toxins can build up after long periods of overeating, eating the wrong foods, living in polluted environments, or as a result of mental or physical overwork. They affect the mucus membranes of the hollow organs of the body, such as the lining of the throat, nose and sinuses, the gastrointestinal tract and the urogenital tract. These mucus membranes become inflamed and provide excellent sites for infection.

The exact location of an illness depends on many factors. Each individual has a unique pattern of illness which will determine which organs or systems will be primarily affected by systemic toxemia. Genetic predisposition, residual pranic weakness from previous illnesses, environmental factors such as pollution and climate, and psychological factors all help determine the exact form a healing crisis may take. Nevertheless, it should always be kept in mind that no disease can be isolated to just one specific part of the body. All states of physical unrest reflect a generalized imbalance in the body-mind complex as a whole, and must be treated in as holistic a manner as possible.

Symptoms of the healing crisis typically include physical tiredness, loss of appetite, and a general loss of motivation and interest in life. When the respiratory system is the focus of the reaction, the commonplace infections of the nose, throat, sinuses and lungs occur as responses to the overall physical toxemia. The organs of the gastrointestinal tract are also highly susceptible, and when they are affected cramps, gastritis, diarrhoea and other digestive problems result. When the urogenital system is at risk, non-specific infections of the bladder, urethra and vagina may develop. Boils, eruptions and skin disorders are yet another way in which the body responds to high levels of toxicity. Any of these symptoms may be accompanied by fever, which reflects that the heart and the immune system are working overtime to rid the body of its excess of poisons.

The proper functioning of the body is based on a complex system of interaction and feedback which is controlled by the central actions of the nervous system and hormones. Therefore, when one system of the body is malfunctioning, it usually has multiple, harmful repercussions on other systems as well. Any of the primary symptoms mentioned above can generate many secondary symptoms. For example, a problem with the digestive system may affect the circulation, and lead to disorders of the teeth and gums, joints and connective tissues, and the skin. Infections which initially take hold in localized areas are spread by the lymphatic fluid and blood to all areas of the body. And various forms of physical discomfort, even if they do not originate in the mind, can act as powerful triggers which bring up all kinds of negativity to the surface of the mind, thus effecting a mental, as well as physical purification.

For this reason, fasting, in conjunction with other forms of yogic therapy, is an ideal method of dealing with the acute infectious disease. It has a dual action, benefiting the mind, which must be seen as the underlying cause of all disease, as well as the body. Seen in this light, short periods of sickness can become extremely useful and even welcome opportunities for self-exploration. If, at the first sign of physical breakdown, we relieve our minds of the pressures of the external world by retreating into solitude and quiet, and we relieve our bodies of the pressures of digestion and assimilation, we can learn to really appreciate being sick. By following these recommendations, it is possible to develop an increased sensitivity and understanding of the physical and mental factors contributing to the illness, and a clear insight into the lifestyle changes which must be made in order to avoid recurrence of symptoms.

On the physical level, a fast of three or four days, accompanied by plenty of fresh water, rest, and peace and quiet, allows the body to proceed with its self-healing with maximum efficiency. The elimination of toxins can take place without the extra burden imposed by poorly digested food which ferments in the digestive system and adds even more toxic wastes into the blood. The extra energy which is freed during a fast can be redirected in catabolizing, or breaking down, old, diseased or useless tissues, so that their usable components can be recycled and the rubbish thrown out. The blood and lymphatic fluid are purified, the affected organs are restored to normal functioning, and the entire body is rested and relieved of heavy work.

We have all been conditioned to believe that it is best to eat three square meals a day, in sickness or in health. This habit has robbed us of the intuitive awareness of our own bodies. It must be broken if we want to become more receptive to our actual physical requirements. When fasting is undertaken during acute physical disease, the demands of the body become especially strong and clear, and it is possible to achieve a much greater level of awareness. It is surely worth the effort of breaking a few old patterns in order to attain this new, expanded level of integration and harmony between mind and body.

http://www.yogamag.net/archives/1981/emay81/starve.shtml

And Because Love Battles - a Poem

(please, read until the end. love, sally)

And because Love battles
by Pablo Neruda.

And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
I will finish off by taking the path away
to those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.

About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.

I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.

What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and they will then associate the danger
of my life, which you know
and which with your passion you shared.

And good, this danger
is danger of love, of complete love
for all life,
for all lives,
and if this love brings us
the death and the prisons,
I am sure that your big eyes,
as when I kiss them,
will then close with pride,
into double pride, love,
with your pride and my pride.

But to my ears they will come before
to wear down the tour
of the sweet and hard love which binds us,
and they will say: “The one
you love,
is not a woman for you,
Why do you love her? I think
you could find one more beautiful,
more serious, more deep,
more other, you understand me, look how she’s light,
and what a head she has,
and look at how she dresses,
and etcetera and etcetera”.

And I in these lines say:
Like this I want you, love,
love, Like this I love you,
as you dress
and how your hair lifts up
and how your mouth smiles,
light as the water
of the spring upon the pure stones,
Like this I love you, beloved.

To bread I do not ask to teach me
but only not to lack during every day of life.
I don’t know anything about light, from where
it comes nor where it goes,
I only want the light to light up,
I do not ask to the night
explanations,
I wait for it and it envelops me,
And so you, bread and light
And shadow are.

You came to my life
with what you were bringing,
made
of light and bread and shadow I expected you,
and Like this I need you,
Like this I love you,
and to those who want to hear tomorrow
that which I will not tell them, let them read it here,
and let them back off today because it is early
for these arguments.

Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.

Pablo Neruda

No really, this is funny & wonderful - Best Cartoon Movie Ever

Mudras for Sri Yantra/Tripurasundari

Namaste!

This is marvelous. A truly rare find on You Tube. The man in the video is my teacher's teacher, his name is Sri Amritananda Natha Saraswati of Devipuram, known affectionately as Guruji. Devipuram is a temple in India where the Goddess is worshipped in her many forms. You could learn more about it by visiting www.devipuram.com

The video shows how to do the various mudras, or hand positions, used in many different pujas (ceremonies to worship the Divine, or ceremonies to remove obstacles to Enlightenment).

If you're unfamiliar with Sri Yantra Puja - I would recommend focusing on the Yoni Mudra. This one is quiet powerful, and a good place to start.



Please enjoy. I will be practicing these mudras myself - some of them will take quite some time to learn! But good thing we have detailed instructions here and can play the video over and over again.

Om Shanti,
Sally

Good Morning

India.arie - Good Morning lyrics

Dance Party

It's a beautiful day in downtown Sydney - and there's this magestic, serene, clean park...my brother and I decide it's a perfect place for dancing! :) Check out more of our silliness below

reality show with sally & mark

My brother and I were a little bored, and decided to get creative:) hope you enjoy

I'm here!!!

And it's amazing.

Mark (my most excellent brother!) and I hiked up Mt. Keira yesterday... which is right behind his school.

It was about a 4 hour walk (we got a little lost!) But absolutely spectacular. And it felt good to get some exercise after all the travel. We saw a wild peacock!!!, and the most incredible views from the top...

LAX

I feel fantastic.

After the 5 hour flight from Philly, I am amazed. I think this incredible feeling is due to the following welcome when I arrived in LA:

1.) The most vibrant and fun check in area I’ve ever seen. I almost cried when I walked up - they’re playing fun hip hop music, the stewardesses are all wearing long red coats and look like movie starts, and the signs for the airline are glossy and shiny and red. The trim of the counters is glistening clean stainless steel. it’s gorgeous!

2.) Stunning foreign men with great accents and great shoes

3.)Beautiful friendly women who like to dance, like me, in the aisle while waiting to check bags

4.) Red luscious tiger lilies on the counter - I mean, come on! fresh flowers in the airport - I don’t see that in Philadelphia

And the delectable soy chai from Starbucks hits the spot. You all know that if you ask for Soy Chai Tea Misto - they’ll actually add the real tea bag instead of the syrup, right? Someone taught me that a while ago and I’m eternally grateful.

My shoes!

It was a little uncomfortable the first time it happened - I walk into the airport and all these people start looking at me. My shoes! They are fascinated by my Vibrams (shoes that have toe holes - basically very very thin rubber soles that mimic what it feels like to be walking bare foot. I admit, they look very bizarre, and they are not stylish in the way I like to normally choose things. But they are SO comfortable. My toes really appreciate the separation, and I never really LIKE wearing anything with a heel anyway)

So I have a good conversation starter - or bad conversation starter, depending on your perspective. Many people have chosen to ask me about them - and for now, I’m having fun telling them.

Why not spread the word of these super comfy shoes that, according to some studies done by Harvard, are helpful for relieving many of the impact-related injuries and pains that runners who use "traditional" running shoes experience. I haven't done a tun of research yet, because I'm more of a "if they work for me, that's all the proof I need kind of person" anyway - but if you like research... here's a place to get started:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08723.html

Ayurveda in the Airport - Australia here I come!

In a couple days, I'll be in Sydney - but for now, I'm starting my journey in the Philadelphia airport and I'm starving...

So many food choices. So few of them feel like they’re going to help stoke my agni.

Agni is fire... meaning digestive fire. And when we fly, it tends to inevitably go down. Some even say we should fast while flying. But I love food too much.

My choices seem to be lots of cold stuff, lots of things that look like they’ve been in plastic wrap for a long time, and lots of sweet breads. Oh how I love sweet breads:) - and if I were feeling 100% I would definitely have some. But I feel just a tad under the weather, and want to take care. The sweet breads will come later, I tell myself.

So here’s what I found, that sparked my interest as being tasty as well as helping to stoke my digestive fire, making it easy for me to digest -

Creole soup from Au Bon Pain. I’m lucky that I’m not picky about if there’s a little chicken in soup - because otherwise, I’d be in dairy-free vegetarian trouble; meaning the other soups that don’t have meat... all have milk in them. And well, as much as I prefer not to eat meat, I find that I digest it much much better than milk or cheese.

I enjoyed every bite of this delicious, slightly spicy, warm soup. It had okra, carrots, rice, lots of whole spices, capers, and peas. It feels really nice in my belly and nourishing to my tissues. I find that the warmth of what I’m eating is essential to help ground vata, which is the dosha that goes up when we travel, and needs to be calmed in order me to not feel totally depleted by the completion of my travels.

Cold drinks, ice cream, even those sweet breads or desserts create a cooling effect in the digestive system. And on these kinds of days, when my hands and feet were already feeling cold, and I know that I’m asking a lot of my body to be flying for 5 + 14.5 hours - I don’t want to go there.

Yay! I like writing while I’m traveling... This is going to be fun!.... all you millions;) of readers out there - comment! and let me know what you’re curious about.

Love,
Sally

Sweetness... Madhura

So I had the unbelievable grace and privilege to meet Sri Dharma Mittra a few weeks ago, and after the sweet asana class was a kirtan with Shyam Das. Shyam Das, as you might know is an amazing storyteller who has this voice... that well, blows me away.

My favorite mantra from the whole night was

Madhura Dhipate Rakhilam Madhuram

I sang it in Yin class the next day, and someone asked me where it came from... So I did a little research:

It looks like it comes from the Madhurashtakam, and that this line (Madhura Dhipate Rakhilam Madhuram) is repeated at the end of many paragraphs...

The version of the Gita that I have doesn't have the full sanskrit translation, so I am still looking for what surrounds it otherwise...

In the meantime, here's something to listen to. Shyam Das sounded completely different... and maybe we can find one of his recordings somewhere soon.


enjoy

Love. Self. Love

Lately I've been deeply deeply considering what love is, and how to do it well.

Funny, even just looking at my choice of words is curious to me. Perhaps trying to "do it well" is impossible... because to love we don't have to do much... is it inherent in our beingness?

Either way, I feel like I have a lot to learn about love... so I'll take that desire and run with it. It can't hurt to learn how to love better, can it?

Sometimes I feel like I don't know how to love - like I'm bad at it... that I like to receive it in certain ways... I like to be on the "taking" end of love... but giving it!!! Ahh! That's scary and hard.

And what's the deal with looking for it all the time, falling for it all the time, orienting so much energy towards it all the time.

I think these questions are really relevant to Ayurveda... in fact I might start translating "Ayurveda" as "the Science of Self Love." I do tend to come up with many translations for the word... since it's in Sanksrit and I think it's important for Practitioners and Teachers to give a meaning of Sanksrit words in our own Native Languages... letting those translations come from our lived experiences in the cultures in which we inhabit.

Ayur means life
Veda means wisdom

Life is this amalgamation of events and movements that can only happen within some grace and vastness and mystery that I will choose to call Love. When we are "in love" we often have the strongest sense of being alive.

Ayurveda is therefore love wisdom.

And that's cool to me, because I always think about Ayurveda as learning to love our selves for our own uniqueness... or constitutional make-up, Learning to love and accept ourselves as we are

And then there is this strong emotional resonance that I have between the word love and a sense of "being taken care of." So that Ayurveda might be wisdom of learning to be taken care of/take care of ourselves... feels right.

Luscious Asian Pears

It's not rare for me to fall in love with fruits. Something about their freshness, their prana, their sweetness, juiciness - they're just so irresistible. And then the feeling of being energized while eating them, as well as after eating them - without the sluggishness of, well.. let's just say other sweets that like to wear hats of frosting and go naked in the middle. For those of you who don't know me - I have a bit of a weakness for donuts.

So what is it about these Asian Pears that is inspiring me to write today? Well, I just want to make sure all of you try them! And at least where I live, they are abundantly stocked in the grocery stores - at a much more reasonable prices than I normally see them - and they have been at such peak ripeness!

Please go out and try these most magical fruits. A word of advice - they, like most fruits, are best enjoyed on their own (meaning away from meals). I happen to like having them either for breakfast if I wake up not so hungry... or around 4 o'clock as a nice mid-afternoon snack.

And let me know what you think! ? Am I crazy? Or are they simply amazing? :)

Kuan Yin, my new friend

This is her vow, like all Bodhisattvas

All beings, without number,I vow to liberate
Endless blind passions, I vow to uproot
Dharma gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate
The way of the Buddha I vow to attain

Making Medicine

Enough is enough. Let's get down to business. It's a full moon, and I'm feeling the call to action. So instead of the usual "I'll bake homemade english muffins tonight to entertain myself", I opted for the "I'll make medicine to entertain myself, and maybe be of service to other people" choice.

And oh how happy I am.

This tincture that I just made is an infusion of Reishi in Vodka (yes, I walked to the liquor store at 9:30 at night to go buy the necessary vodka - and felt quite thrilled to walk home under the moonlight to make this magical concoction.

Here's a little info on Reishi from Mountain Rose Herbs. More detailed information on benefits will come after I've consistently taken this preparation myself, and have first-hand experience to validate its effectiveness. I wholeheartedly believe that as an herbalist I cannot rely on other people's accounts of herbs... that I need to experience them in my body first, and over a long period of time, to develop the necessary relationship to the plant, it's medium (here: vodka), and its pathways of communication once it has entered the body.

So yes, I will sleep with the tincture near my bed, I will shake it like crazy to keep it well mixed, every day for about 14 days. And then

All for the sake of really getting to know this magical and highly regarded medicinal mushroom.

"Reishi is that age old medicine cited thousands of years ago in several texts and scripts as being a tonic for emperors. At one time this mushroom was specifically used under the prestigious vestiges of the ruling class, but it has since made its way into the pantries of us common folk. Traditional and contemporary Chinese medicine admire it as a tonic benefiting vital energy or "Qi", and it is popularly prescribed for a multitude of maladies. Reishi is a polypore mushroom, growing in damp, dark forests and the occasional rotting log. Modern day demand has forced its cultivation in Japan, China and the United States which is promising for the wild stands of Reishi.
Constituents

A hearty and abundant medicine with much promise. Constituents include an array of alkaloids, triterpine acids, ergosterols, fumaric acid, coumarins, lactone, mannitol, and many polysaccharides.
Parts Used

The whole mushroom top, with as little shaft as possible. The larger the mushroom the better.
Typical Preparations

Tea decoction from the dried mushroom, which Chinese medicine usually call for 1-8 grams of dried mushroom per cup of tea (6-8 ounces)
Powdered mushroom sprinkled on food or in beverages, as a liquid herbal extract (non-standardized), and as an encapsulated (non-standardized) product from whole mushroom tops.
Summary

As mentioned above, Reishi was used historically to treat a multitude of ailments (Far too many to list here) and was dubbed as the "panacea tonic" or "cure all". Modern medicine recommends its use as a daily dietary supplement and currently all of the research on this mushroom has indicated that regular consumption of Reishi is safe and effective.

Precautions
None recorded"
-from www.mountainroseherbs.com

Thank you for reading. In good health, Sally

Yogini Roots

click here to read an amazing article by Vicki Noble

Elizabeth Gilbert talks on creativity

speechless. this performance is so beautiful

Kim Eng

Ayurveda & Yoga Video

This is a wonderful, sweet video about Yoga and Ayurveda. Courtesy of Banyan Botanicals and my dear friend Michele Schulz

Food Prayer

This is the Annapurna Stotram, or Song in Praise of the Goddess Annapurna. "Annapurna" literally means full of food. She is worshiped as the giver of abundance. I like to listen to this while cooking, and often sit down and sing one round as a blessing over the food, before I eat.

Elemental Motion of Emotion

This is priceless wisdom about what to do when difficult emotions arise. It is from an ancient Tantric Yoga text, called the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. This is a text that my teacher, Parvathi Nath, teaches from quite often. It is also used by Shiva Rae and Dave Stringer... which I think is great because it allows even more people to access to these teachings!

#78

kama krodha lobha
moha mada matsarya
gochare buddhim nistimitam
kritva tat tattvem avashiyate


"When possessed by lust,
Or anger,
Greed,
Arrogance,
Jealousy -

Stop!

Dive Deeper
Throw yourself with wild abandon into
The elemental motion of emotion.
Witness
Fire burning, illuminating,
Water gushing, moistening,
Air inspiring, soothing,
Earth supporting, holding,
Space expanding, embracing
Go deeper still and rest in essence,
Awake to infinite spiritual energy
Surging into form."

-translation by Lorin Roche, The Radiance Sutras