Relax …

Lemon is a powerful detox agent.
It can clean your digestive system effectively.
Drinking lemon juice does not only detox your body, but also kill germs.

It is healthy to drink a cup of warm honey lemon tonic everyday after you wake up from bed as it will give a boost to your organs to do some body cleaning jobs.

Sometimes this tonic will soothe stomach ache as well.

It is not difficult to make the tonic.
You just need to cut a lemon into two and take half of the lemon and squeeze the juice nicely into a cup or mug. If possible try to remove the lemon seeds.
Pour hot water into the cup and leave it cool down to lukewarm.
Next add a tea spoon of honey and stir the mixture.
Voila! You get a cup of tonic in no time.

Drink the tonic everyday and you will notice the positive changes of your body soon.
Have fun and keep experimenting.

With healthy eyes and sharp vision,
we possess the luxury to enjoy the visual beauty of life.

Modern life is quite hectic and the straining of eyes is causing visual problems amongst us.
Many people are short sighted nowadays.
We need to do something to restore the health of our eyes.

The main and common cause of short sightedness is the loss of flexibility of the eye muscles.
There is a set of muscles pulling our cornea to change the thickness of the inner lens so that images can be properly focused onto the retina.
When we overstrain our eyes by staring at close distance for prolonged period of time,
the eye muscles will loose their flexibility due to long period of visual fixation.
Hence, their ability to focus the image to the retina will decrease, and this causes short sightedness.

Glasses refocus the images to the retina but it doesn’t cure the fatigued muscles.
In other words, it rectifies the symptom but the cause of problem is still there.
Glasses itself may become a clutch for the eyes in the long run and this is not something good to hear.

LASIK surgery removes a thin layer of cornea so that images can be focused on the retina sharply.
It is like glasses, which eliminate the symptom and not solving the cause of problem.

To reduce the straining of your eyes,
look elsewhere far away every 10 minutes while you are reading or staring at the computer, for about 10 second and blink occasionally. Do this as often as possible so that such habit will form to maintain the health of your eyes.

 
 
 
Exercise for flexibility

This exercise is best done a few times a day to make the eye muscles flexible.

Hold a book or a line of printed words near to your eyes. Face your body towards somewhere far away, for example towards a hill or tower far away.

Focus sharply at the far away object, then suddenly look at the words you are holding. Next quickly look at the far away object again. Repeat this step of looking far and near alternatively, and keep the time interval of switching objects short.

By switching the visual objects quickly, your eye muscles are trained to focus your sight at different focal distance so that the flexibility of the muscles is increased. As you do this exercise consistently, you will experience improvement in your vision.

It is a good idea to exercise one eye at a time. One set of exercise is done typically for 5 to 10 minutes.
Twice a day of doing this exercise is recommended.

I hope this exercise will help to improve your vision and prevent future eye problems.
Most importantly, have fun in doing this exercise.
Don’t expect too much, what matters is that your vision improve as days go by.

Avoid overstraining your eyes in everyday life if possible. Rest your eyes from time to time.
Take care and be well.

 
 
 
Song : First of May . lyric

The voice is very soothing.
It reminds me of the days of autumn.
I just listened to it and got inspired to share this song with you.
Sang by a wonderful singer… I will introduce her to you in the future.

beauty and the beast
 
 
 

the dance of yin and yang

 
 
 

the angelic dance of evening sylph

Sylph clouds are quite rare. They appear when the surrounding has strong, yang tone of energy (chi, life force)
I captured these pictures in summer when the weather is sunny and bright.

Please note that the weather is sensitive to the energy condition of our environment.
If the energy is good, more likely the weather will be balanced.
Bad and extreme weather comes when the energy is chaotic.

We humans are influencing the energy around us, indirectly affecting the weather.
We radiate the energy of certain qualities through our thoughts, emotions and action and the effect can be significant.
Therefore, if we really want to have nice weather, or to see sylph clouds more often
It is best by starting to change ourselves, from within.

Feel more love, give more joy, be grateful and positive.

The world weather is now going chaotic.
We should help not just by lessening pollution and energy consumption,
but also by hating less, avoiding destructive feelings and forgiving others.

Let’s do our part for the world.
At least by helping, we will have the hope to see the beautiful dance of sylph again.

The first rite.
 
 
 


The second rite.
 
 
 


The third rite.
 
 
 


The fourth rite.
 
 
 


The fifth rite.

The 5 Tibetan Rites is a set of exercises that I recommend you to do consistently.

Some of my friends who have tried it agree that the exercises bring vitality and make them feel younger.
I have been doing it for months and I find that the 5 rites improve not just the energy (chi) body
but also the flexibility and muscle strength as well.

It is said to be the simplified version of Indian yoga.
There are only 5 movements so it is easy to do the whole set in a relatively short period of time.

One of the mistake people make is trying to do them in 21 repetitions (max. number of repetition you can do) in the first few days.
They gave up due to exhaustion.
I recommend doing the rites step by step starting from just 3 repetitions and increase the number of repetition as fitness improves.

Overall it is something fun to do when you get used to it. I hope you enjoy the exercises.

Thanks to Life Events for creating the animated pictures and the website. You can find the complete instruction for the exercises there.

Here’s another good website with the instruction for the five rites.

The Five Tibetan Rites: Exercises for Healing, Rejuvenation, and Longevity

small talk :

Life Events is a spiritual development related organization based in Thailand.
They offer training in stuffs like Tibetan breathing, Yoga and other spiritually related exercises.
I have contacted them to ask permission to blog with their pictures and the webmaster agreed.
She also appreciate my blog and that makes me flattered
I really want to thank them for making a simple yet effective webpage on the 5 rites
otherwise the world might be learning it from some boring black and white still images hehe

 
 
As I have blogged about Norway, I would love to introduce a Norwegian singer in this post.

She has a beautiful voice…
Best described as a combination of Enya and Sarah Brightman,
Sissel Kyrkjebø, a singer from Bergen, Norway entertains the world with her charming, yet mysterious songs.
She is versatile, being able to sing in various genres from classical soprano to New Age.

One of her famous works in Asia is Summer Snow, a theme song of a Japanese drama with the same title.
She is also known for singing in the movie “Titanic”.

Sissel’s musical style runs the gamut from pop recordings and folk songs to classical vocals. Her work on the soundtrack to Titanic has led to comparisons with Irish singer Enya.

Sissel’s combined solo record sales (not including soundtracks and other albums to which she contributed) amount to over 9 million albums sold, most of them in Norway—a country with only 4.5 million people.

Fall 1988, Sissel moved to Oslo for a short period to play the role of Maria von Trapp in the Norwegian version of The Sound of Music. This production set box office records and was seen by over 110,000 people.

Sissel recorded the audio dub of the character Ariel for the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish versions of the 1989 Disney movie The Little Mermaid.

In 1989, she released her third album, Soria Moria, and met the man whose wife she would become, the Danish comedian and singer Eddie Skoller, to whom she became engaged to in Christmas 1991 and married on 21 August 1993. Sissel has two young daughters Ingrid and Sarah with Skoller, whom she divorced in 2004.

February 1994 Sissel performed during the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer.

In 1997 Sissel toured the USA with the Irish group The Chieftains. They appeared, among other places, on The Late Show with David Letterman and in Carnegie Hall. Later that summer Sissel was involved in recording the soundtrack to the film Titanic, which reached #1 on the Billboard charts and sold more than 24 million copies worldwide.

Sissel had a #1 hit across Europe in 1998 with Prince Igor, a duet with American rapper Warren G on the concept album The Rapsody Overture, which combined American rappers with European opera singers. Sissel sang an aria from Borodin’s opera Prince Igor during the chorus, while Warren G rapped.

In 1999, she sang the Gaelic song Siuil A Run on The Chieftains’ 1999 album Tears of Stone.

November 2000 Sissel released (in Norway only) her solo album, All Good Things, which was her first solo album in nearly seven years. In 2001, Sissel released All Good Things throughout Europe and Asia.

Sissel sang a duet with the Danish goth rockers Sort Sol on the track Elias Rising. This song appears on the Sort Sol album, Snakecharmer, released in May, 2001.

October 1st, 2002 Sissel released her first album in the USA, which sold over 100,000 copies in its first 3 months of release with almost no advertisement or marketing. The album sold better than Decca record execs expected.

In late 2002, one of Sissel’s concerts was filmed at the Oslo Spectrum and later broadcast in March 2003 on PBS in the United States; it was subsequently released as the DVD Sissel in Concert.

In December of 2002, Sissel was invited to represent Norway at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert. Here she sang Somewhere over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz, and a duet with Josh Groban. They sang The Prayer.[1]

Sissel released her second USA album My Heart, in March 2004, a classical crossover album, which also included two pop songs written by Richard Marx and one ballad Wait A While written by Jon Lord of Deep Purple.

Summer and Fall 2004, Sissel went on tour with The Lord of the Rings Symphony Tour. Sissel was a featured soloist on an orchestral performance dedicated to the music from the The Lord of the Rings films.

May 2005, Sissel performed with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake City, Utah on their radio and TV broadcast Music and the Spoken Word, which is featured on nearly 2,000 stations across the USA and around the world.

In October 2005, it was announced that Sissel would be knighted by the King of Norway to the position of Knight of the 1st Class in the Order of St. Olav for her contributions to music and as an ambassador for Norway. February 2006, Sissel officially received her knighthood and the medal that goes with it.

In December 2006, Sissel joined the Mormon Tabernacle Choir again for their annual Christmas concerts as the featured soloist. In four performances, she sang for more than 80,000 people in the 21,000-seat Conference Center in Salt Lake City. The concerts were videotaped for PBS television, and will be aired in December 2007.

source : Wikipedia

 
 
I have been to Norway and the scenery is totally breathtaking. Although Norway is a wealthy country, the people are nice and the cities are humble. Oslo and Bergen are beautiful cities that I find pleasant to stay.

One of the greatest things to do in Norway is to explore the Fjords. The most famous fjord is Sognefjord. The 8-hour journey will leave you speechless, where you will cruise through the water valley and admire the true beauty of nature.

here’s another very good video featuring the great fjord. Fjord - Norway

The Sognefjord (Sognefjorden) is the second largest fjord in the world after Scoresby Sund on Greenland, and the largest in Norway. Situated in Sogn og Fjordane in Western Norway, its mouth is about 72km (45mi) north of Bergen, and it stretches 203km (126mi) inland to the town of Skjolden.

The fjord reaches a maximum depth of 1,308 m below sea level. The greatest depths are found some way inland: near its mouth, the bottom rises abruptly to a sill about 100m below sea level. The average width of the main branch of the Sognefjord is about three miles. Cliffs surrounding the fjord rise almost sheer from the water to heights of 1000m and more.

Boats connect settlements along the fjord and its sidearms. Towns on the fjord and its branches include Balestrand, Gudvangen and Flåm. Gudvangen is situated on Nærøyfjord, a branch of the Sognefjord particularly noted for its unspoilt nature and dramatic scenery ([1]), and only 300 m across at its narrowest point. From Flåm, the famous Flåmsbana railway climbs 864m up to Myrdal in only 20km - the steepest unassisted railway climb in the world.

The fjord’s beauty and the surpassing magnitude of its landscape has made it very popular among tourists, who power much of the local economy.

source : Wikipedia

 
 
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a tool that intends to relieve many psychological conditions, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, stress, addictions and phobias. The basic EFT technique involves holding a disturbing memory or emotion in mental focus and simultaneously using the fingers to tap on a series of 12 specific points on the body that correspond to meridians used in Chinese medicine. The theory behind EFT is that negative emotions are caused by disturbances in the body’s “energy field,” and that tapping on the meridians while thinking of a negative emotion alters the body’s energy field, restoring it to “balance.”

Read more about Emotional Freedom Technique

You can get a free eBook on EFT here. Enjoy

 
 
 
Jacobson’s Progressive Muscle Relaxation

 
Progressive relaxation is a technique of stress management developed by the American physician Edmund Jacobson in the early 1920s. Jacobson argued that since muscular tension accompanies anxiety, one can reduce anxiety by learning how to relax the muscular tension.

Jacobson trained his patients to voluntarily relax certain muscles in their body in order to reduce anxiety symptoms. He also found that relaxation procedure effective with ulcers, insomnia, and hypertension. There are many parallels with Autogenic training, which was developed independently.

Jacobson’s Progressive Relaxation is still popular with modern therapists.
 

Progressive Muscle Relaxation steps
 

Sit in a comfortable chair–reclining arm chairs are ideal. Bed is okay too. Get as comfortable as possible–no tight clothes, no shoes, don’t cross your legs. Take a deep breath; let it out slowly. Again. What you’ll be doing is alternately tensing and relaxing specific groups of muscles. After tension, a muscle will be more relaxed than prior to the tensing. Concentrate on the feel of the muscles, specifically the contrast between tension and relaxation. In time, you will recognize tension in any specific muscle and be able to reduce that tension.

Don’t tense muscles other than the specific group at each step. Don’t hold your breath, grit your teeth, or squint! Breath slowly and evenly and think only about the tension-relaxation contrast. Each tensing is for 10 seconds; each relaxing is for 10 or 15 seconds. Count “1,000 2,000…” until you have a feel for the time span. Note that each step is really two steps–one cycle of tension-relaxation for each set of opposing muscles.

Do the entire sequence once a day if you can, until you feel you are able to control your muscle tensions. Be careful: If you have problems with pulled muscles, broken bones, or any medical contraindication for physical activities, consult your doctor first.

Now just relax for a while. As your days of practice progress, you may wish to skip the steps that do not appear to be a problem for you. After you’ve become an expert on your tension areas (after a few weeks), you can concern yourself only with those. These exercises will not eliminate tension, but when it arises, you will know it immediately, and you will be able to “tense-relax” it away or even simply wish it away.
 
 
source :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_relaxation
 
 
 

 
 
 
Abdominal Breathing

 
Abdominal (BELLY) breathing is one of the simplest, yet most powerful stress management techniques you can perform. Basically, belly breathing can change your life for the better!

Your breathing directly reflects the level of tension you carry in your body. Under stress, your breathing usually becomes shallow and rapid, occurring high in the chest. When relaxed, you breathe more fully, more deeply, and from your abdomen (belly). It’s difficult to be tense and to breathe from your abdomen at the same time.

A newborn child breathes with the abdomen. As the child gets older, breathing becomes partially intercostal ( i.e. chest breathing). During adult life most of us breathe only through the chest. Abdominal breathing is almost forgotten.

RAISE AWARENESS

The key to natural, diaphragmatic and abdominal (belly) breathing is to begin to learn to sense unnecessary tension in our bodies and to learn how to release this tension. This requires great inner attention and awareness. It requires learning the art of self-sensing and self-observation…that is developing of a mind-body awareness.

PRACTICE

To practice abdominal breathing, sit comfortably with your back straight. Always breathe through the nose, which filters warm air. Place your right hand on the chest and your left hand on your belly. This will help you to be aware of your abdominal muscles as you breathe. As you begin to inhale, your left hand on the belly should begin to rise, while your right hand should move very little. Now exhale as much air as you can while contracting your abdominal muscles. Once again your left hand should move in as you exhale, while your right hand should move very little. This is abdominal breathing. Breathing through your abdomen will gradually become automatic if you practice it on a regular basis.

BENEFITS

Deep, abdominal breathing helps…
* Detoxify inner organs, promote blood flow and peristalsis, and bolster our immunity.
* Increase oxygen supply to the brain and musculature.
* Stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system: Promotes a state of calmness.
* More efficient excretion of bodily toxins.
* Improved concentration.
* Greater feelings of connectedness between mind and body. Anxiety and worry tend to keep you “up in your head.” A few minutes of deep abdominal breathing will help bring you down into your whole body.
 
 
source :
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~rccc/Breathing.htm