Researches said

Various researches from different countries found lots of health benefits on the following food intake. (Excuse me for not able to quote the exact researches.)

• Swedish researchers said drinking 6 (or is it 4?) cups of coffee or more will have a lot of benefits to the body, range from good for cardiovascular health, high in antioxidant, to even extend lifespan. From the book "The Girl with Dragon Tattoo," I learned that Swedish drink coffee all day long. I was amused by sentences like this throughout the book: "[It was 3 AM], Michael made himself a pot of coffee."
• Indian researches found lots of health benefit of turmeric intake, including high in antioxidant, cancer fighting, etc.
• Italian researches found lots of health benefit of drinking red wine, such as cardiovascular health.
• Chinese researchers found health benefit of eating white rice.

Love

Last year I wrote some posts on how to help relieve muscle pains, and here is an example: http://finewaves.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-human-head-is-weight-of-bowling-ball.html. Recently I was talking to a colleague who was also facing the same issue of neck and shoulder pain, and needed some advices. Just when I was going to refer her to my blog post, I realized there were some additional points which could be added to make it a little more complete.

First of all, severe muscle pains don't develop overnight, but it is likely to be built up over a long period of time with poor postures, lack of stretching and strengthening, or intense physical demands. Though intense pain could be aggregated by certain sudden events.

It is our body, so it is our job to love it, cherish it and take care of it. Therefore the first thing to do is, love your achy physical body, for it is the only one you have for this life, so pledge to take care of it from this point on, and do not neglect its well-being ever again. Just remember, no matter how bad you may feel right now, it will only get worse as you grow older, if you don't start to take care of it now.

Secondly, if the muscle pain is quite severe, it is hard to work out the tightness by stretching, so I would recommend to get a good massage. You can also try using devices such as foam roller or ma roller to do self massage, but you must know how to use them properly, and trust that they work even though it may take time.

Thirdly, apply heat therapy on achy muscles periodically will help relieve the pain. Do up to 15 minutes for twice a week. More if you want to pamper yourself.

Finally, develop a routine to stretch your muscles and stick with it. Find useful stretching postures, and use them for different kind of muscle pain. For neck and shoulder pain, you can start with stretches I showed in the link above, and you are always welcome to develop your own.

Well, I often say: nobody said life was easy. That's why I said the first thing to do is love your own body, once we established that, you will be able to start the journey of healing yourself by using the tips I provided above.

Walk and chew gum

How is the saying go? "One cannot walk and chew gum at the same time." Recently I was thinking about this saying and was slightly confused. Is it "talk and chew gum," or "walk and chew gum?"

I thought, how could it be? Everyone can walk and chew gum at the same time. What's the point of that saying? If one cannot walk and chew gum at the same time, that person must be pretty uncoordinated, wouldn't you say?

As far as I know, people nowadays not only can walk and chew gum, but also can walk and talk and chew gum while texting and gaming at the same time. In restaurants, public transportations, parks and streets, we see people, walking or sitting, immerse themselves in their devices like zombies, as if the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Electronic gadgets are ruining people and their lives as we speak. Handheld devices and gaming consoles enable and encourage people of all ages to mindlessly shut out the the world and the people around them. Deeply attached to the manmade devices, pseudo social update snippets, and virtual reality games, those people behave like dull machines.

If nobody tells you so, then let me be the first one to say that such behavior in public is offensive and rude. Just because everyone does it doesn't mean it's right. Likewise, just because you can do it doesn't mean it's a good thing to do. Parents, take up the responsibility to teach your children the right behaviors right now, otherwise they will be spanked by the society sooner and later.

The blue screen of death

One morning Jack sent me an email which I read in bed, saying: "I'm sorry but this morning I found your computer had the blue screen of death. I don't know what's wrong with it and what caused it."

I was like, great, so it begins my journey with a clunky PC. I know once you start getting it, you'll get it often, and sometimes you have to get your hard disk replaced or even replace the whole machine.

If you don't know what it is, then you are lucky. It's just when your Windows computer all of a sudden crashed, and it shows a blue screen with some text on the screen saying something like this: there is something wrong with the computer, it could be caused by newly installed hardware or software, but it didn't know the cause. You can restart the computer from safe mode, and figure out what the problem is. What is the safe mode anyway?

Since that first time, I have had the blue screen of death 2 other times within weeks. I think leaving the machine on over night with Eclipse, Lotus notes, Lotus Symphony and Microsoft Excel running is not a good idea.

Silence and reflection

Today I have a rare moment of free time after doing the dishes. I pull out my Yoga notebook and text to do some reading, while U2's Joshua Tree playing on my iPhone.  The sun is shining this morning, and we all know we are expecting rain to start again later today, so we will go out later to enjoy the nice sunny day between the storms.

I read these notes I took from my silence retreat last June, and they bring back warm memories of my second silence retreat with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar from the Art of Living Foundation. I'm inspired.

Let me first talk a little about the state of silence. Many things were said about silence, e.g. from the East: "Silence is golden." from the West: "Silence is like a cancer grows." (From a Simon and Garfunkel song?)

I now understand that those kinds of sayings are by no means the real representation of silence. In Yoga, one of the 8 practices are the state of withdraw or you may know it as fasting. Fasting can mean going for a period of time without food, but it can also be the practice of the absence of speech.

Our silence retreat went for 4 days. We lodge in hotels in Santa Clara walking distance from the convention center where the venue was run. We got up early in the morning to do Yoga asana and Kriya practice, then had breakfast, and then we sat for a few guided meditations a day, while having lunch and dinner together in between. At night after dinner, we had Satsang and Q&A with Sri Sri. We were also separated in groups to do service (seva), such as serving food at various meals. The event had 1000 participants, but everything was so well organized we hardly had any issues with the crowd.

All I have to say is, being in silence is really a treat. The flowers were more vibrant, the air was clearer and things around me were more positive. The mind was calmer and more opened to kindness. The simple vegetarian food was more tasty and flavorful.

So we didn't talk to nor acknowledge one another, and to my curiosity, people looked so serious. I found it humorous, since I didn't think silence means serious at all.

Based on Sri Sri, there were three types of silence:
1. Keep the mouth shut.
2. Withdraw senses, not interested in seeing, tasting, smell, etc.
3. Blissful, total satisfaction. Absolute inner contentment.

I enjoyed the Q&A with Sri Sri toward the end of the day after Satsang. Sri Sri answered questions written in pieces of indexed cards that were dropped in the basket throughout the day.

Here are some examples of the wisdoms shared:
Q: What to do when people criticize me?
A: When someone criticize you, let it bounce back, shake hands tomorrow, and you are a bigger person. Behave as if it doesn't matter to you at all.
There are two possibilities when someone criticize you:
1. Because they are attached to you. They point out your mistakes, risk friendship. They want you to be better. True friends show your flaws.
2. They are tense, ignorant, jealous. In this case, be compassionate to them. They are suffering, why be upset with them?

Q: How do I find my soul mate?
A: No soul mate because you are a bundle of thoughts, no moment of clarity and spontaneity in action.
Once you meet your soul, then you can meet anyone as your soul mate.

Every day in the evening, the basket was full of questions, and every evening he would answer a few questions from that day. In the last evening, when the basket was brought to him, Sri Sri looked at the pile of questions and said: "Again?" We laughed. He sat there holding the full basket in his lap, and asked: "Does it really matter?" He sat in silence with his head rested in his palm, and just looked around from right to left, from the front to the back of the auditorium, with his usual smile on his face and a hint of a tease.

I wondered what he was thinking. Was he upset? The the guru can't be angry. Was he searching for some jokes or wisdom to talk about? His talk yesterday was so excellent, how could he top that?

Finally after 20 minutes or so, he spoke: "This is the latest technology, all answered in silence. Come and download your answers." I laughed!

He smiled and spoke softly: "Each of you are so complete. Like the bud of the flower, just need to blossom, need silence, dispassion, contentment, clarity, spontaneity."

Year-end specials on TV

Last weekend Jack and I went to his colleague's house warming party for a couple who just moved to the states from Europe. I was talking to the nice hostess about everything from household items to her career. She told me they were in the market to buy a new car, so I told her I saw a lot of car advertisements on TV showing many manufacturers have the biggest sales of the year now.

"Toyota, Volkswagen." I enumerated, feeling slightly self conscious about speaking for those companies.

Let me add a little context, it was our tradition to watch Christmas movies starting the beginning of December. We happily watched the first two "Santa Clause" movies that week.

The week after the party, we continued to watch the recorded "Santa Clause III," when I had a discovery in the middle of the movie, and I started laughing.

"You know, I told Ms. A that so many TV advertisements were showing car sales for the end of the year. But I got the idea from watching movies with advertisements recorded LAST YEAR! Oops, it seems like I gave my new friend last year's information."

So for the whole week, I paid special attention to the real time Colbert Reports just to confirm that indeed car companies are still having year-end specials, and I updated Ms. A the whole story yesterday when I met her in a holiday party.

I wonder if I'm the only one who has so many goofy stories to tell, but this one is pretty funny and very "Ying."

Publish yourself

Since the dawn of social media, lots of experts surfaced to share their advices online. Facebook, LinkedIn, pinterest and youtube (just to name a few) were flooded with constant updates.

In the good old days, you read news from newspapers, but nowadays you find news from Facebook or you read news from blogs of reputable publication agencies. I personally don't equate blogs as news. Blogs are opinions or simply personal experiences, but news are facts without bias.

It is becoming essential for one to read everything online with a grain of salt.

Information is power, or is it? We are being forced to look at every aspect of our lives with a microscope. Do this, but don't do that. Is information helping us to be smarter, or are we being forced into a corner with less and less choices and more fears?

Worse yet, some people's ego-feast can consume your precious time and energy, which can be better spent elsewhere.

If you ask me, the internet brings more harm than good, but the chaos is unstoppable. It depends on the person to manage and control the mess of information that is coming through.