Awareness

Awareness (Presence of Mind): Being present “men­tally”, wherever you are and whatever you are doing at that moment. 

Why do we always think about past or future?

When we were kids, we used to be present always. While growing up, we learn lot of things and experience lot of things. Also we develop expectation about future. Our mind is cluttered with all this information. It’s natural for the mind to wander around this information.

What’s wrong if we think about past or future?

Being present is the normal behavior of the mind. If your mind wanders past and future, it takes lot of vital energy (Prana) from our body. It makes you tired and unhealthy. Also it doesn't make sense to think about past or future, when you are doing something in present. You can test yourself that whenever you are not present mentally at that moment, your breathing will be shallow and fast that means you are not using your full capacity of lungs to draw the air in in order to get proper oxygen supply to the body.

How to achieve the presence of mind?
1. Slow down the racing mind by doing simple meditation such as abdominal breathing.

2. Once you reach the calmer mindset through meditation, keep your awareness on your breath throughout the day so you keep connected to your body and surroundings. Remember the rate of your breath indicates the state of your mind. So, when your mind is calmer, your breath is slower and deeper and vice versa.

How to begin?
Whenever you get a thought about the past or the future, you say yourself, "It may be important, but, not now. I am doing....". Then focus on what you are doing. Keep practicing this simple tip throughout the day.

What are the benefits of awareness?

Improve your health: Since you are aware of your body and breath, you listen to your body when you are hungry, thirsty or tired. You eat when you are hungry, you drink when you are thirsty and you take rest when you are tired. This will improve your health. You can handle stress effectively. When you are present mentally, your breathing will be deep and your mind will be calmer.

More productive in your work: As you are not disturbed by past and future thoughts, you will focus more on what you are doing.

Take care of your second brain

As per Taoists, We are controlled by two brains instead of one. Besides the brain in our head, there is another brain in abdomen which is called solar plexus. It’s found at the center of the torso, beneath the heart and behind the stomach. 

The cerebral brain is like a database which stores your experience, education and your knowledge, whereas Solar plexus is responsible for our emotions and feelings. Feelings such as anger, fear, hate, love, happiness, sorrow are generated from Solar Plexus. Since Solar plexus also controls the internal organs, in case of imbalance in our emotions and feelings such as anger, worry the internal organs gets affected which leads to chronic ailments.

In today’s world, we are encouraged to learn more to improve our brain. But we are not trained to manage our feelings and emotions which will improve our solar plexus. Because of that, the cerebral brain is overloaded and solar plexus is underdeveloped. It causes imbalance between brain and solar plexus. Meditation will help us to some extent by slowing down our brain. Still, it won’t bring the complete balance between the cerebral brain and solar plexus.

There is a simple exercise which will balance cerebral brain and solar plexus imbalance. This exercise can be done anywhere and anytime. Whenever you feel your brain is overloaded, the indications are headache, stiff neck, stiff shoulder, confusion, or illusions, you can do this exercise.

Steps:

1. While sitting or standing, place both hands on the stomach above navel and below rib cage. Face front, inhale and feel that the air expands in stomach.
2. Exhale. As you exhale, push in and up your stomach using your hands.While doing this, turn your upper torso and head slowly towards your left as far as possible. Meanwhile twist your pelvis to the right.
3. Inhale and back your body to face front. While doing this, let your hand release your stomach slowly.
4. Repeat step 2 and 3 on your right side.

You can repeat this exercise 5 to 36 times. If you feel stiffness and pain in your neck and shoulders, reduce the number of repetitions.

Burpee- A simplified Surya Namaskar

Burpee is popular full body workout which can be done anywhere. If you closely watch the steps you follow to do burpee, it looks like simplified form of Surya Namaskar.

To perform a basic burpee, just follow these instructions:

• Begin in a squat position with hands on the floor in front of you(Keep the back straight).
• Kick your feet back to a pushup position.
• Do a push-up (Optional)
• Immediately return your feet to the squat position.
• Jump up as high as possible from the squat position

Refer the picture.

You can do it at any time of the day. You can do it about 2 hours before or after your meal.

Animal foods and their counterparts

Animal foods such as Milk, Curd, Cheese, Egg, Chicken, Meat, Fish, and Shrimp contain plenty of calories and loads of protein and fats. But they don’t have fiber.

The protein found in animal foods is high in uric acid which stresses the kidneys. The fats in animal foods contain cholesterol which might be bad for your heart. 

There are some plant foods which provide loads of protein and fats. They are Nuts (Almond, Walnut), Seeds (Sesame seeds, Pumpkin seeds, and Sunflower seeds), Avocado, Coconut and Oils (Olive oil, Sesame oil, flaxseed oil). The good thing about these plant foods is they don’t have uric acid, cholesterol and they have fiber. Moreover, they don’t need extensive cooking so we can save some money on cooking gas. Nuts and seeds have high amount of phytic acid which causes poor assimilation of minerals in your body. To reduce the phytic acid, always soak the nuts and seeds overnight and discard the soaked water.

Does that mean we need to avoid eating animal foods? The answer is no. They have Vitamin B12, Vitamin D and some other nutrients which we won’t normally find in plant foods. So it would be a good idea to add animal foods occasionally.

Chimpanzee Diet vs. South Indian Diet

The other day I was reading a book – ‘Green for life’’, written by Victoria Boutenko. She compares the Standard American Diet with the diet of wild Chimpanzees. The reason is that Chimpanzees share an estimated 99.4% of genes with human. At the same time, these animals possess an extremely strong natural immunity to AIDS, Hepatitis C, cancer, and other fatal human illnesses. Hence, as per Victoria Boutenko, our diets are supposed to be 99.4% similar to the diet of chimpanzees in order to be healthy.

It came to my mind that what about comparing South India Diet with the diet of Chimpanzees.  Let us see how much we deviate from the Chimpanzee diet. Here is my analysis and comparison.

If you see the pie chart of the Chimpanzee diet, they predominantly eat, raw greens (green leaves) and fruits. Now let us see the pie chart of South Indian diet. To prepare the pie chart, I have considered a sample diet which we normally consume in any one day.

	Refined Grains (Cooked, White Rice)	Pulses (Cooked)	Vegetables (Cooked)	Dairy (Milk, Curd, Ghee)
Breakfast
Idli (or) Dosa	2	0.5
Tea				0.25
Lunch
Rice	3
Sambar		0.25	0.25
Kootu			0.5
Poriyal			0.5
Curd				0.25
Coffee				0.25
Dinner
Rice	3
Sambar		0.25	0.25
Kootu			0.5
Poriyal			0.5
Total	8.00	1.00	2.50	0.75
Total (%)	65%	8%	20%	6%

Measurements are in cups. 1 cup is equal to 236 ml.

If you compare the pie charts, we eat almost all the foods cooked whereas chimpanzees eat raw foods (Of course, Chimpanzees don’t know how to cook.). The other difference is that they eat lot of greens (green leaves) and fruits, whereas we eat less amount of green leaves (keerai) which is part of vegetables group in the pie chart and fruits are optional in our diet.

The comparison indicates that we need to include lot of keerai (either cooked or raw) and fruits in our diet to get the health benefits of these two important foods. If you want to add raw greens in your diet, the simplest method would be making green smoothies with keerai, fruits and nuts.