The immunity factor

Your immunity plays a major role in successfully warding off or thwarting the dreaded coronavirus infection. Let us face it: The virus is deadly because regardless of your physical fitness, it invades your internal organs.  It could be virus-induced pneumonia or other respiratory tract infection to start with.  Its spread is certain when your defense mechanism is impaired. Fortunately, there are specific methods available to bolster your immunity mechanism. Let us see the steps involved in strengthening immunity.

Breathing exercises or Pranayama

Breathing is the bridge between the body and the mind. Have you noticed the change in your breathing when you are angry? It will come in short, sporadic breaths. Same way when you are scared or fearful due to panic attacks or stressful situations, your breathing becomes short and labored. On the other hand, when you relax and cool, your breathing is calm and smooth.

Deep Breathing is the Key

So instead of yielding to panic and fear, start breathing deeply during these stressful times to be on top of the situation especially when infected with the dreaded virus. Furthermore, becoming fearful of the infection makes you breathe shallow thereby reducing your oxygen intake and saturation.

Building up the immunity

The success of warding off the dreaded virus infection corona is your immunity against the invading virus. Regardless of your physical fitness, the virus attacks your organs. Furthermore, the spread of the virus is certain with your impaired defense mechanism. Fortunately, there are specific methods available to bolster your immunity mechanism. Let us see the steps involved in strengthening immunity.

 

 

A Vicious Circle?

Enter corona, you end up with impaired breathing, due to its deadly effect on the respiratory tract, mainly the lungs. Coupled with your fear, the breathing becomes further shallow. Other compounding factors like the fear of the disease itself, the present condition of hospitalization, expenses, and the lurking fear of death. Because of this fear, your oxygen intake becomes less, the might of Corona slowly strengthens its stranglehold of the alveoli in the lungs.  It is a vicious cycle as you can see.  Surely if your oxygen saturation falls below 92%, in the oximetry readings, you will have to go for oxygen supplementation. Therefore, break free from this vicious cycle by adopting these yoga techniques on deep breathing.

Three breathing exercises

Bhujangasan or Cobra Pose

Lie down on your yoga mat with your forehead touching the ground. Hands just below your shoulders and your pelvic girdle slightly elevated forming a V-shape with your buttocks raised. Your toes touching the ground outstretched. Three spots your body is touching the ground, namely your forehead, arms under the shoulders, and your feet outstretched. Take a deep breath and release…

Simha Kriya

Simha Kriya is a simple process of breathing out through your mouth in two ways. The first one with your tongue sticking out and the second with your tongue rolled over to your upper palate. Forcefully breath out through the mouth 21 times first with your tongue out and secondly with your tongue touching your upper palate. This is similar to Kapaalabaathy or the skull shining breath.

Deergha Swasam

Take a deep breath and hold as long as you are comfortable and release. Start with a small count of say 5 seconds and hold for as long as you are comfortable and breathe out slowly. Remember to do it at 70% of your capacity always. This means that if you can breathe in for 10 sec, do it only for 7 seconds initially and slowly over time build it up to 10 secs. Always start with a lesser count than your capacity so that you are always comfortable.

Online yoga class during the pandemic?

Immunity what is thy price?

You are as healthy as your immunity permits you to be. Immunity is your ability to fight invading organisms be it virus or bacteria. Therefore, here we are going to see how to build up a strong and healthy immunity mechanism in our bodies.  By building a healthy reservoir of strength against invading organisms, one can be sure of not getting any disease.

Immunity vs disease

You will be surprised to know that immunity and disease are inversely connected. How?  The more immunity you have, the less likely it is for you to fall ill. Conversely, if you are afflicted with a disease, your immunity is, likely to have shrunk. Furthermore, if you examine the word disease; it consists of two words dis-ease which means the opposite of being at ease. Being at ease is a sign of health, right?

Eat healthily and build immunity

You are what you eat. It may sound too simplistic, but it is a fact. Eating affects your very being. Therefore, always make a wise and knowledgeable choice when it comes to eating. Fruits, veggies, and lean meat are preferable to other heavy food. Remember, immunity builds resistance to infection and influenza. Moreover, remember to consume as much water as possible for improved digestion and circulation.

Negative factors affecting immunity

You guessed it correct! Smoking!

The single big contributor of weakness and impairment to your lungs is smoking. Give up if not already done. It is no longer fashionable to smoke! If you remember the eighties, everyone smoked.! The actors, celebrities, you name it, they did. Remember, ” Come to Marlboro Country”? The handsome macho looking man with a Stetson western hat holding a horse. His left hand holding the horse and a glowing cigarette in his right!  So effective was the ad, the theme of the ad continued for a long time!

Positive factors building up immunity

Let us come to the positive aspect of building and harnessing the immunity factor. In fact, any type of physical exercise is welcome. To begin with, the list of physical exercises is long and varied. It includes walking, jogging, long-distance running like a marathon. Not to speak of the gym, aerobics, swimming, cycling apart from Yoga and Meditation is unthinkable! Therefore, join a weekend online yoga class. Better still any class that teaches you a deep breathing technique. In fact, there are so many different practices of deep breathing techniques that are effective in building up immunity.

Psychological factors affecting immunity

Studies have shown that one’s self-esteem and self-worth are intricately connected to personality. Therefore, anything that elevates your mood like music, dance, and meditation is worth its weight in gold!  Go for it without postponing it to tomorrow! Also, conversely, if you feel low, you may not want to do any practices! In this context, ten minutes of doing something every day is more important than reading about it!

Summing up, an ounce of practice is worth a pound of knowledge! So go for it now and enjoy every bit of the present moment! Never accept other’s definition of life. Because it is your life, so define it yourself and build your health practice. Good luck and safe living!

The times they are a changing

The times they are a changing, is a classic song composed and sung by the great Bob Dylan, the American Singer & song writer. The lyrics in the song includes the line, “Don’t criticize what you don’t understand…”  The unprecedented events happening around the world is very sad and unreal. In addition to this confusion, people dying in huge numbers from each country everyday adds to the woes.

Moreover, looking at what is happening now around the world, it is unbelievable. Because, the.numbers from Europe and the US alone is alarming, not to mention the numbers have crossed one hundred thousand! Is it by far the worst case scenario ever?

The Pandemic

Did anyone ever imagine even in their wildest of dreams that such a thing would happen? No one expected COVID19 to cause such havoc in the world, in the shortest time.  Actually, it is difficult to believe. So much so, the virus has the entire medical fraternity up and running in emergencies. They provide noble service even at the cost of their own safety. We salute them and pledge to support them in whatever way we can.

The new equation

Surprisingly, India with a population of more than 135 crores, has reported the least number of victims due to Covid-19 fatalities. India has demonstrated her resilience and efficiency in combating this deadly virus effectively. Kudos to the doctors and nurses of India! We salute you with respect and love mixed with our gratitude.

Social Distancing

WHO has recommended that we keep a safe distance between one another when interacting in unavoidable situations like buying from shops or having to interact with someone in some way. Stay at home is the simple mantra to follow to defeat the corona. We have demonstrated that in spite of being poor and underdeveloped, we can adopt the strategy outline by the Government, even if it means being deprived of livelihood!

Solidarity with our European and US brothers and sisters

we Indians have a humble request to you all. Please stay at home and help the medical authorities to wage a ceaseless and successful battle with  this deadly virus.  We respect the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) which are like the bible for us Indians.

Summary

We Indians request you humbly to stay at home and help curb the spread of the virus. Stay at home, stay safe and defeat the spread of this invisible enemy of humanity.

If you like this post, please comment.

Thank you, stay safe.

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The new WP Plugin Word Pigeon

I was wondering if I could find a way to add images from my Google Drive to the media library. The reason is obvious, right? There are so many images and documents in my own drive which I know very well. At the back of my mind, there was a nagging worry, after all, have I exceeded the storage limit of the site if I keep on adding images and other files to the media library?

Enter Word Pigeon

The formatting and images that I have done in google documents must be intact when I copy and paste from there to the WordPress post. But often it does not happen and I have to rework the post to my satisfaction. That is the reason this plugin comes to your rescue.

Using this plugin, now you can have the files and documents from Google Drive to display in your blog posts easily.

How to do that?

The Word Pigeon way:

There are many images, files, and documents in my Google Drive that I have formatted according to my needs. Using the word pigeon plugin, I can import them into the media library easily!

HOW TO EXPORT

STEP I:  Go to your site and copy the URL.

STEP-II: Go to https://web.wordpigeon.com

STEP-III: A google drive folder would be created in your google drive.

STEP-IV: Go ahead and add some documents in this folder  Alternatively you can link another google folder to the site. The net result is, any document put in these folders would be visible from Word Pigeon

STEP- V:  Export the Google document from the web application. Actually, you may export it into a post or page either as a draft or as a published post.

That is it.!

Look what I exported from my DRIVE!

Myself!

 

If you liked this post, please comment and give your views.

Thanks a lot for spending your time reading this post.

What is yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidra is a great stress reduction technique. Regular practice of Yoga Nidra brings tremendous calmness to the mind. In addition, it is a conscious letting go technique. Letting go is an attitude that helps you relax your always on guard defenses.  A conscious awareness practice that relaxes the spine. The student is an a supine position throughout the process.

Why do people come to yoga class?

People reach out for yoga classes for many types of health issues, both real and psychosomatic. Issues such as insomnia, overweight, stress reduction, improving concentration among other things. They imagine that joining a yoga class will solve their problems totally. Also, they will acquire a new body, mind, and soul-in short, a new self!

It is true to an extent. But wrong to a greater extent!

Believing that a new personality is possible as soon as you complete the class, is a pipe dream! To be sure, yoga is 99% practice and only 1% theory!  Actually, it is a hands-on method to take stock of yourself in your hands!

So let us dive right into it, okay?

Yoga Nidra Requirements

It is a guided meditative practice and there is no problem when you are in a yoga class physically as there will be a yoga instructor to guide you. You could also do it as an online practice as there are many Yoga Nidra guided meditation videos or voice files using which, you can be in the process.

Yoga Nidra is a powerful relaxation technique quite unlike any other such as meditation or breathing technique. It is a process of letting go that calms the mind, body, and soul. In addition, it gives an amazing feeling when you complete it. You would feel energized throughout the day.

There are 3 elements to the practice, namely physical relaxation, mental relaxation, and spiritual communion with your inner self. Feel it, actualize it rather than read about it!  Moreover,   it is a rare inexplicable experience!

If the reader wants to experience it, there are many options. Yoga International is an amazing site where there are so many variations of the Yoga Nidra Series available both free and premium only for the members. Try and learn to do it easily.

Good luck and enjoy.

Please remember to comment if you have any observations.