Benefits of yoga for stress - extract

Media Release

Benefits of yoga for stress - what's the reality?

Can yoga really help people to overcome stress?

That's the question being posed by new research at the University of Adelaide, which is hoping to better understand if, and how, yoga can be used as a therapy for stress - and who can benefit most from it.

The study is being conducted by Psychology PhD student Kaitlin Harkess who has been a yoga instructor for the past seven years.

"Anecdotally there's a lot of evidence to suggest that yoga can have benefits for people experiencing stress; I've seen that from my yoga students over the years. But it's one thing just to accept this as fact, it's quite another to put it to the test scientifically, which is what we're doing with this new study," Ms Harkess says.

"Yoga is growing in popularity in Western countries, but so are stress levels in our everyday lives.

"Severe forms of stress can be extremely debilitating for people - they can suffer physical as well as psychological and emotional impacts from stress. Anxiety, burn-out, depression, these are all of interest from a clinical psychology point of view. But stress can also result in real problems with people's immune systems and cardiovascular health, for example.

"Yoga involves controlled movement of the body, breathing and relaxation techniques, and these might be broadly applicable to helping people overcome stress in their lives," she says.

South Australian women aged 35-65 are needed for the study. They must be new to yoga. By participating, women will learn a basic form of yoga and attend a free yoga class twice a week for two months.

Ms Harkess says women who participate in the study will fill out a standard psychology questionnaire to help determine their level of stress. Those taking part in the study can give blood so that biochemical markers for stress can be tracked.

"There have been small studies in the past suggesting that yoga is beneficial in overcoming stress, but we're looking for 90 women to participate, which will be the biggest study of its kind so far.

Singapore River View Hotel = my experience

I was on a business trip to Singapore and I stayed two nights at this Hotel ie River View Hotel and there was a river running by the side of this hotel.  It was a muddy river but the setting and landscaping was excellent with a bridge running across the river.

Last night, I went for a stroll after a heavy Japanese dinner  and there was  a light breeze blowing making my walk very relaxing. There was roads running along the bank of the river and along the roads , there were a lot of eateries and pubs serving different types of food.  Italian, fusion, Japanese and the tables were lay out in the open like the cafes in Europe where people sit for drinks and food.

As I walk along, there were people bring their dogs for a stroll or some people were walking and some running for exercise. Step by steps , we could feel the peace in our steps.  People call this walking mantra as we are aware of the movements in our sores.

After finished the stroll, I just choose a seat by the river in my hotel and just enjoy the nature as well as the concrete jungles of private condominiums and apartments.,  There were several hotels like King Copthrone Hotel and the Grand Copthrone Hotel situated in the vicinity of River View Hotel.

If the water in the river is crystal clear, it would be excellent but even it is muddy, it was very well restored to its former glory. For such picturious scenary,  it is often occupied by westerners. Why?  The Asians are boring people ?  or  too busy in making money ? Hey , fellas wake up to the beauty of nature and enjoy its flow.

Namaste.

Why do we need to do it twice or more ?

Life is a routine, it is a repetition.  Running round in circles  in a zombie state. Don't know where we are going to ?  In the end, we still do not know our purpose in life. Wasted days and wasted nights and only love keep us a  live .

Do you have this feelings? If you have, just snapped out of it and make changes.  Try to  change the way of  your routirne.  Sleep, wake up, eat , work eat and sleep.  We have to go through this way every day and not realizing it . It became such a routine that we can do it with our eyes close and after that, we don't even realized that we have done the routine already.

To change the routine, we have to put abit of awareness in it. We must sleep deep , we have to brush our teeth with consciousness and feeling . Feel the tooth brush scrubbing away the tar in your teetch, eat slowly and enjoy every bite and carry out our job with awareness and with challenge.

Every action or motion tick with time and it moves by itself and stops for no one. So, we have to ask ourself , if tie to me is so precious, why do we have to do the same motions more than once ? Can we use this limited time to do a different job each time or different ways each time?

If we taka away the repetitous and routine actions like sleeping ,eating, working , traveling , watching TV, the balance of time is only so little for us to do a different thing. Do we really live to 80 ?  If we wake up and be aware , then it is only about 20 years of real living. So, we should try to stretch and do different things and reduce the time which is reserved for the routine duties.

We have to slow down and think and discuss with our love ones to wake up the state of complacency and state of non-thinking. We live like a zombie, eat like a zombie and end our life like a zombie. It is time to break through and wake up and change so that our years of real living is longer .

We take things for granted and let our life run on a auto-pilot.  It is time to exercise your choice and takes over the pilot seat before our lives runs out.

Namaste.

GE13 - a disgrace.

From the news, there are so many lies and wrongful accusation and we do not know what is right and what is wrong.  Even, militants from the Sulu state came in to add more confusion and trouble to the already messy GE13.

We suspect the truth in the news print as there are been so many proven lies while in the internet, there are more news that we do not know whether is true or not. We are bombard with lies and half truth and based on these news, we make our choice

Even , the opposition do not trust the EC or election commission and the EC is not acting on the recommendations from the NGOs or Bersih. There is a already thee demonstrations but still the EC is moving like tortise.  At this election time, they should be running like Cheetahs to ratify things.

Many times, Anwar is accused of been a homosexual or bi-sexual , isn't sickening. The news get spin around and around and it makes us feel sick with shit in our mouth. Why this shitty things have to be used over and over again. Enough is enough , stop the bloody spinning.

Another issue is the bloody Senior Chua and his youngster , Yong . Both of them already lack creditability and yet they come out to voice their comments on events.  Everytime, the Senior Chua is using frightening tactics or fear to want the Chinese about huduh which he know nothing about or the stock market will collapse or the Chinese will lose out  or the sky will fall on our head  while anYong will comment or accuse this is wrong or that is wrong but he is never wrong.  Sickening twins.

Then, here comes our DPM who say that he is Malay first and Malaysian second and yet he is trying to promote Malaysia bersatu.  He has a fork tongue and he say something and do something elese. Disgraceful.

Our PM Najib . There is some much dirt being said about him  and yet he is going around pretending that he has no shit on his back.  He refused to answer all the allegations , he do not want to debate with Anwar and he is throwing so much money around to pacify the Rakyat.  I do not know whether what is say about him is lie , half truth or no truth , I think he should sue the people who say all these dirts like what Anwar is doing . He is suing all the people who is speaking false about him. This is the nonly way to keep out the half truth and no truth. 

For me, after participating and voting in so many elections, it is the dirtest and the most disgrace election where so many under hand and evil tactics are use.  It is like boxing under the belt or pullin of the underwear in the polo game or biting in a ruby game. Silly and hurtful tactics.

Lets the fair game begin .  Give a fair fight  and finally , respect the winner with an open arm because you have lost fairly.  Give the world , a chance to change.

Namaste.

What are your deepest secret?

When we talk about secrets, it should remained secret , otherwise , it is no more secret. In life, we have so many secrets which we kept in our heart or the deepest point in our heart.  There are some harmless secrets, some hurtful ones, some harmful ones , some empharasing ones and some selfish ones. Everyone of us have secrets.

Every one of us have a different sets of criteria which we classify secrets or some reason, we cannot say it out and it becomes a secret for fear of harming innocent or not so innocent people.  Some of us have very bad experience with people or an incident  that we are shameful to reveal and it becomes an involuntary secret.

I have my secrets. Some are business secrets and the rest are personal secrets.  I have done a lot of mistakes and make alot of wrong decisions which I think nobody will want to listen or it cannot be reveal because of its confidential nature. Whatever, the secrets are bondages in our life, it weight us down.

There is a saying " dreams have no boundaries", it stretches to unlimited distance. Sometime, our dreams became our secret because of the taboos by society or it is anti-establishment.  It cannot be say or expressed because it is not allowed by society and the establishment. 

Frequently, the secrets start to torment us , irritate us and haunt us in our dreams and thoughts . At times, we start to reveal a little of our secrets to the people we trust to find relief to this tortures in our thoughts. After revealing our secrets, we feel lighter as we feel something have been released from our body but sometimes, after releasing, we become fearful that these so called secrets which is no more secrets could hurt us instead. We become fearful.

Nevertheless, there are secrets which become an open secret and some secrets will follow us to our grave. For better or worst, secrets have to remain a secret if it is hurtful, harmful or caused distress to the world, to the people and our loved ones. Why need to say it , it is hurts and brings no more benefits ? Let sleeping dogs lie. .......

Namaste.

What your hand phones can do for you - extracts

5 THINGS YOU PROBABLY NEVER KNEW YOUR MOBILE PHONE COULD DO..
There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. . Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it:


??FIRST: Emergency
The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112.
If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency,
dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialled even if the keypad is locked. Try it out...


??SECOND: Have you locked your keys in the car?
Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday.
Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their mobile phone from your cell phone.
Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock.


Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you.
Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other ' remote ' for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk)...

Editor ' s Note: It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a mobile phone! '

??THIRD: Hidden Battery Power
Imagine your mobile battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370#
Your mobile will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery.
This reserve will get charged when you charge your mobile next time。

??FOURTH: How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone?
To check your Mobile phone ' s serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: * # 0 6 #
A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset..
Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. When your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless.

You probably won ' t get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can ' t use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.

??FIFTH : ATM - PIN Number Reversal - Good to Know
If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can
notify the police by entering your PIN # in reverse. For example, if your pin number is 1234,
then you would put in 4321.

The ATM system recognizes that your PIN number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to the location.

This information was recently broadcast on CTV by Crime Stoppers however it is seldom used because people just don ' t know about it...... Please pass this along to everyone.

Old and New flower - analogy

When we go out to buy flowers , we will choose the fresh, young and beautiful flowers and we will pack it well and place it in our living room or bed room ,etc.  The beautiful flower will give excellent fragrance and add freshness and beauty to the place.   The more we look at it , the more captivating they become and we are so absorbed into this strange and wonderful world i.e between you and the flower.

After a while, the flower will fade and gets old and smelly.   You will go out and buy another bunch of flower and replace it instantly before the flower really drys up and give a bad smell.  A women's beauty is like that and last only like the beauty of a bunch of flowers.

Our beauty fades very fast but the inner beauty like wine grows with age and the realization of this process is very important. In order to realize the beauty of the old flowers , we should look at the grace of its beauty and the brightness in certain spots.

However, as layman, we are blind to the inner beauty and we are fully influence by its other beauty. Some flowers are very beautiful outside but its smells terribly and some flowers are  pertruding torns  and ichy chemicals which could turn you off after getting it from the shops. When the flower is beautiful,  such bad points are always neglected until we get fed up with its beauty.  Even before it is dried or old, we would have thrown it away.

The best combination is beauty and brain ie outer and inner beauty which makes it the best flower to have but this perfection is never there.  If  it is so perfect , then things could be become more boring and a little imperfections will make beautiful parts more beautiful.

In the chinese sayings,  " a beautiful flower must have the green leaves to support it ".  However, this statement have another meaning from the above but it illustrate even external beauty needs other external dressing to make it more shinning and beautiful.

Ponder on it a little and search your dream partners and enjoy it while it last.

Namaste.