The most fascinating truth I learned while at yoga school in India was that we westerners had it all wrong. More than postures, breath and mantra, beyond meditation and devotion, the epiphany hit me one sweltering afternoon walking back to the dorms from seva. So many of us had come from countries where our yoga classes centered around holding postures and breathing deeply or powering through the heat and sweat as we sat deep into chair pose and drank in the ujjai. But yoga was not these things at all, or not mainly these things.

Canola oil is a manmade product created in Canada. According to the U.S. Canola Association,

“Canadian scientists used traditional plant breeding in the 1960s to eliminate the undesirable components of rapeseed and created ‘canola,’ a contraction of ‘Canadian’ and ‘ola’. Canola oil is prized for its heart-healthy properties with the least saturated fat of all culinary oils.” The small seeds, about the size of poppy seeds, yield about forty-four percent oil.

Learning a second language isn’t always easy, but it is fun, and the mental benefits are numerous. Here are five ways becoming bilingual can help your brain.

I pulled up beside a man in a brown coat. He was holding a sign that said, “Even a smile helps.” I looked him in the eye and smiled a big smile, pulled over and asked him how he was doing. He looked at me and said,  “It could be better and it could be worse.” I reached into my pocket and grabbed the money I had and handed it to him. As I did, another man drove by and in disgust told me I was wrong for helping the man in the brown coat, that he would likely buy drugs or alcohol.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is characterized by high levels of glucose in the blood stream. Untreated, this can lead to nerve damage, kidney failure, and blindness.

Undaunted by the devastating effects of diabetes, researchers arranged a boxing match between yoga and diabetes. The fight was going to last six rounds, each one month long.

A rose by any other name is … a raspberry. The raspberry is a member of the same family as the rose and the blackberry.

Sound has the profound ability to affect and alter our disposition, our perspective and how we carry ourselves. We have all experienced that mood-altering moment when our favorite song comes on and we cannot help but bop our head and sing along. It lifts us up and we feel the positive, oftentimes euphoric, effect of the music. “It’s a beautiful day”, or “I have so much to look forward to” are thoughts that may rise in our consciousness. In contrast, perhaps another song comes on next; a song that brings up heavy feelings of sadness and we feel the immediate shift move through our bodies.

As we age, our brains naturally lose their function. Elderly people experience memory loss in the form of what they hear in conversations and the things that they remember seeing. Researchers wanted to test whether yoga could improve an elderly person’s memory as well as the standard memory enhancement training (MET). What they found was astounding.

Purvottanasana / Intense East Stretch

Benefits:

• Stretches whole front of body.
• Helps strengthen back of body: arms legs, and torso.

Foundation & General Alignment:

“...in a friendship you get to know the spirit of another person; and your values coincide. Friends may disagree, but not about serious matters. A friend will stand for you when you are no longer able. A woman can say to herself, If I die, I know that my friend, my sister friend will be here to hold up the banner. Now that's very profound.”