Healthy Habits - Present Life Style
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The people around him influence man. A child’s vocation is endless imitation. So children learn the good or bad habits from their elders. Good habits lead to good heart and good health. They are like the bond between a tree and a creeper. Same way bad company leads to bad habits. Ordinary men follow the footsteps of the great. Our thoughts depend on the food we eat and in turn our actions depend on our thoughts. ‘As you sow, so you reap’. As the way of your lifestyle, so is your health.
Festival of Dawn
It is good to get up early and enjoy the pleasures of dawn. Your body will be engaged in the excretory action in your sleep and it continues even after you wake up. The energy of the nerves will be centered around the large intestines as soon as you wake up, since all the waste material in your body are stored up there. So your mind will not rest until it sends out waste material that reached there through the night. This waste material and fecal matter is sent from small intestines and stomach to rectum. The nerves holding the fecal matter will be ready to release it once you wake up. If you do not engage yourself mentally and physically with other things, your energy will help you have free motion.
Instead, if you drink bed coffee before clearing the bowels, the energy that was to be used for motion will be diverted to digest the coffee, keeping aside its duty of sending out fecal matter. The excretory action will go on till you eat some breakfast.
This action of sending out waste matter slackens as the sun’s rays become warmer and you start feeling hungry. To satisfy hunger you will start eating. If you wake up at 8 a.m. you have no time left for excretory action. You feel it’s too late and so you hurry up your activities to get ready for your work! You brush your teeth and have your breakfast immediately after that.
If you get up at 4 or 5 a.m. your stomach will be free for 2, 3 hours. With free motion immediately after getting up, you feel relaxed! After that some physical exercises, yogasanas or pranayama will help in sending out the waste material churned out in the night. The same way if you drink more than a liter of water, the waste that reached the blood, and the waste material that has been formed in the night joins the water and comes out in the form of sweat, urine and motion. Again you should drink one more liter of water to enable the body to clear itself of its waste material. This way if you just supply water and nothing else and do some exercise, then the body will fulfill its duty (excretory action) completely. Then it is a happy morning for us.
Tongue speaks of your health
The smell in the mouth is the indicator of the purity inside your body. The tongue is the mirror to the body. Your tongue speaks about your health or ill health. It shows your bloodlessness. Those who have constipation, those who have bacteria in intestines or toxins in liver, and those whose waste material is not sent out regularly such people’s mouth gives bad odor.
Do the other creatures brush their teeth? Does their mouth give a stinking smell? No. Then why does man alone get this smell? If somebody’s saliva spits on us in the course of conversation, we get irritated. We clean ourselves. Whereas a small child spits on us, we don’t mind! We brush it aside happily! But when the same small baby grows up into an adult does the same act on us, we don’t like it! We get very irritated. You know why? The baby eats pure food and is pure at heart whereas an adult eats cooked food to satisfy his tongue. The latter’s mouth has bad smell that irritates us.
Fate of man
Man, who cannot bear the droplets of saliva of a fellow human being, happily allows his pet dog lick his hands or body! He enjoys its affection! The dog eats the food he eats and lives with him. It doesn’t brush its teeth, but still its mouth doesn’t give a bad odor. On the contrary we brush our teeth once or twice a day! That too with a paste that gives good foam and a good odor! In spite of all that, our mouth smells bad. Man is able to bear a dog’s but not another man’s saliva. That is the fate of man!
The saliva in the mouth gives a bad smell because there are no movements in the mouth for 6-7 hours in the night sleep. Bacteria in the mouth and lack of air there are other reasons for such bad odor. Also the phlegm from the lungs gets stored at larynx and pharynx in the throat result in bad smell.
You don’t have to clean or gargle if you eat the natural food provided by God. You don’t need to brush teeth. The spices and the sweets that you eat cause bad odor and decay the teeth. If you are healthy, your teeth will not become weak, not even one tooth gets loosened. We assume that the decay of teeth is a symptom of old age. Because all people eat salt, spices and sweets and the decay is natural result for all! But this is not the symptom of old age for animals. Why? That means the fault lies in our food style and not in our age. People neglect their teeth because they can get dentures.
Sweat and its story
Skin is an excretory organ. It is called a third kidney. Every day the skin lets out two liters of waste material. A part of the waste in our body comes out in the form of sweat through the pores in the skin. If we don’t sweat, it will be hidden in the layers of skin. It comes out easily for the people who sweat.
For instance, when we clean the floor in our house with water, doesn’t the dirt in the house get dissolved in the water and move out along with it? The same way the dirt in our skin comes out only through the sweat.
Your body has to get heated up if you have to sweat. If your body has to get heated up, you have to work, which means the body gets heated up only in those who work. It results in fast circulation of blood to all the parts and cells. Those who work, inhale more of air. When more air is inhaled, heat is produced. More life energy is required to burn all that is bad in the body and to send it out. If we sit idle we don’t get more of life energy! Everything is inter-related. The amount of life energy we get is based on the nature and the speed of the work we do. The sweat we get is in turn based on the life energy we receive. For those who work, the bad goes out in the form of sweat through the skin. You do get sweat though you sit idle when it is sultry at home. But that sweat has only water and no waste material. The fat doesn’t get dissolved with that sweat and that doesn’t give you good health. So the sweat that comes out of more life energy created through physical work is helpful for good health and for the health of the skin.
Four ways of excretion
Those who don’t sweat through work, just eat and gobble food three times a day, cannot send out the waste material excreted out of the food. The main advantage for those who work hard is the waste material in their body goes out through skin and through other excretory organs.
Secondly, one who sweats more drinks plenty of water, so automatically he urinates more, in which process waste matter goes out easily.
Thirdly, because he slogs, he feels very hungry and relishes the food he eats. If the food he eats contains more of fibrous material, more quantity of motion will be produced. So more of motion moves quickly in the intestines and so comes out easily.
Fourthly, the one who works takes a deep breath of oxygen. When more oxygen is inhaled into the lungs, automatically more carbon dioxide is exhaled out. As a result, the bad that has to go out through the lungs goes out every day for those who do physical work.
So, when the waste material goes out daily through these four sources – lungs, urine, sweat, motion, automatically the liver, the fifth one, is in good condition. As long as the employees do their work normally, the boss is happy. When everybody carries on his work smoothly, no body will suffer. The same way the boss of our body the liver will be happy.
‘Is life worth living? It depends on the liver!’
Yes it depends on how one who lives takes care of his liver. So if the man ‘liver’ works properly, the organ ‘liver’ can function properly and send out the waste material through all excretory organs.
Do all these happen to a man who sweats? You see, when the body gets warm, the waste material in the body gets ready to go out of the cells due to the heat. Heat expands, cold contracts. It applies to man too! You examine yourself! During hot summer you stretch your hands and legs and sleep flat. Whereas in winter you sleep like number three.
Any thing expands in heat. So when the body gets heated through exercise, blood vessels, muscles, limbs and cells expand and blood circulates easily. As a result there is an easy outlet for the dirt to come out of the cells. Instead if we eat and do not have any physical work, the waste material that is produced, remains in the body and produces cells with toxic substance. The bad that has to go out through sweat, remains in the layers of skin. That means a seed is sown for diseases to crop up.
Specialty of bathing
Now, let us analyze this aspect. Everybody has generally the habit of bathing in the morning, that too in a hurry. If you understand the impact of bathing, you can’t take it so easily. More number of cells in our body receives coldness and only a little receives heat. Elders referred to cold water as water with life and boiled water as dead water. So if you bathe in cold water, there will be both expansion and contraction for the skin, bones and blood vessels, whereas you bathe in hot water, they only expand.
One should have head bath in cold water in the morning. Mostly people bathe only from below the neck. Don’t you think the head is yours? Is it enough if the body is purified? Don’t you have to purify the head? Most important factor is to cool the mind! The mind that functions all the 24 hours, works to some extent even in sleep. So such a mind has to be cooled, to make you feel peaceful.
Head bath
Head bath in cold water enables a free blood circulation to the head. If you bathe in cold water only up to the neck and don’t pour cold water over the head, all the heat in these lower parts goes into the head. For example, if you pour water over the hot floor in summer doesn’t the heat in the floor come out of it? The same way, if you don’t wet the head with cold water, the heat that emerges out of coldwater bath, goes at once to the upper region.
Actually we are not supposed to make the mind heated up. But we are doing the contrary, instead of cooling it. As it is, we are heating up the mind during the whole day through heated arguments, tensions, irritation and anger! Should we heat it up even while bathing? Knowingly or unknowingly, we are committing a grave mistake!
Our elders compulsorily took head bath in the morning in cold water. In summer they safeguarded their head by using umbrella and wearing slippers. But now, our habits are different. The intensity of habit is like this. We bathe only once, that too in hot water and only for the body. To top it all, we bathe with soaps and shampoos that give foam at once without any effort on our part to rub the body. There are some ingredients in soaps that clear the dirt and create foam. They are called surface-active agents. Those agents not only drive out the dirt, but also the delicate layer over the skin. That’s why we feel the skin dry and pale after we bathe with soap. Because the skin is dry, we apply cold cream or body cream over the body. We wish to have our skin always soft and shinning.
Bad effects of soaps and creams
In fact the skin always shines for all of us, but we spoil it with soaps and creams. If we don’t use soaps, the skin won’t become white and dry or there won’t be cracks in the skin in winter. We don’t need any kind of cream or oil.
Another drawback with soap is, it gives foam easily and we wrongly assume that dirt is cleared because of the foam. The foam may clear the dirt, dust and sticky substance over the skin. But the easy foam without rubbing the skin much is as harmful as gulping the food at one shot. If we eat the food with more of salt and chili powder, saliva is produced and we gulp it quickly without chewing it properly. Since we don’t chew it properly, the food won’t be digested properly.
The same way, because the foam is produced quickly with soap, we don’t massage the skin properly with the hands. Our elders did not use soaps. They rubbed their body thus to drive out the dirt over the skin. Such a rubbing, heats up the skin. By rubbing, more of blood from inside comes to the skin. So one of the benefits is, there is a free blood flow to the skin at the time of bathing.
Rubbing the skin
The second benefit is – the dirt stored in the pores of the skin comes out by a hard rubbing. Generally the blood circulation to the skin is slow since skin is the last part. ‘First come first served’. This applies not only to food but also to blood. The heart pumps blood fast to the parts closer to it and slowly to the parts far apart. That’s why skin diseases don’t get cured quickly.
So, to get more blood circulation to the skin, we should rub it to warm it up. If we use soaps, we can’t rub it much. So it’s not advisable to use soaps. If we don’t use soap, we can rub hard all the parts with our hands to clear the dirt. When we clean the legs we should clean it from the ankle down to the thighs above. The same way the hand from wrist to the shoulders, because that is the way the blood flows in our body.
We are all accustomed to clean ourselves from upward to downwards. With that, the blood that has to reach up to the heart, we are driving it down, in the reverse direction with our hands.
Right method of bathing
Let me tell you one good method of bathing. You take a soft, white napkin to the bathroom. If you so desire, you can apply oil before bathing. Keep your bathroom free of soaps. First you wet your body totally with a long shower. Then you wet the white napkin, squeeze it and rub your whole body with it. You can even rub your head with it. It may take 10-15 minutes. At the end of 15 minutes, the skin gets heated up and you start sweating. As you observe, the white napkin becomes dirty. Then again have a long shower over the head. By doing thus the blood vessels and the skin pores that have expanded because of the rubbing, again contract due to the cold water. With this the chances of getting skin diseases are less. You can save on soaps. The freshness in the face and skin after such bath remains till the evening bath time. This is called ‘complete bath’. You try and see! You yourself will agree. You will notice for yourself that how much harm you are causing to your body in the name of bath and soaps.
Breakfast
Now let’s look at our breakfast. It is called so because we are breaking the fast of the night. If we can give rest to our body in the night it is called fasting. The body tries to clear itself of the waste material in its own way during the rest period provided in the night. Fasting means what? Providing more energy for the body. Putting an end to the six to seven hours of fasting in the night with light food is breakfast. How should such a food be? Can we see at once the bright light as soon as we open our eyes after 7 hours’ sleep? No! Slowly we open the eyes get them used to the bright light. Same way, our intestines that were resting have to get ready slowly to the breakfast.
The sun’s heat is less early in the morning and it reaches to maximum in the noon. Likewise, the appetite in our intestines too slowly starts in the morning and reaches its intensity by noon. Since the acids will be less in the morning, our breakfast should be such which can increase the acids, but not kill them. So it should be that can easily be digested with less quantity of acids.
Our morning breakfast should contain vitamins, minerals and natural enzymes. It can be digested with less quantity of acids produced in the stomach and intestines. After 6-7 hours of their rest the intestines ‘relish’ it. Honey, limejuice, fruit juice, sprouts, coconut and dates are ideal as breakfast. This kind of food not only gets digested easily in the intestines, but also helps the excretory organs to send out waste material.
Food and sun
It’s good for health to have lunch by 12 noon. We will be hungry by that time. It is better to provide solid food when you are hungry. Solid food means food that provides energy for the body. Such a food consists of rice, greens, pulses, curds, tubers etc. It is advisable to take them as much as you can, in lunch. If you delay your lunch (say beyond 1 p.m.) your hunger starts subsiding and you don’t feel much hungry by evening. Not only that, towards the fag end of the day, the sun slowly loses his brightness and the gastric juices produced in our intestines slowly get reduced and in result hunger diminishes. You will notice this from the fact that we feel relatively less hungry at night than in the noon.
Eating food sitting on the floor
Let’s examine how the modern culture has changed our eating style. Our elders used to wash their feet before eating. Then they sat on the floor with their legs folded. Those two actions have two benefits. First, washing of feet with cold water enables a quick flow of blood upwards. The second, sitting with folded legs prevents the flow of blood downwards. So the extra blood gathers at the intestines. That means the blood that has to reach the feet moves to the stomach. Since more blood is supplied to the stomach, food is digested easily and quickly. There is yet another benefit. When you eat food sitting on the floor you are forced to bend forward. In the process a part of the stomach gets closed. So even if you eat your stomach full, once you finish eating and get up, one third of your stomach is still empty. To eat only up to two thirds of your stomach and leave one third is always good for your health. This is involuntarily done for those who sit down and eat.
It is quite natural to drink more water while eating salted spicy food. Water along with food dilutes the acids in the stomach. Since the acids are not energetic the digestion process is affected. If you drink water after the food is mixed with acids, soaked and digested, then it will be easier for the digested juice to join water and travel into blood.
Better to have some physical activity after lunch. It enables the food move easily into intestines and lower parts. If you sleep immediately after eating food, the food remains in the stomach and intestines for a long time and that is reason for you to feel heaviness in stomach. Fifteen minutes nap will serve purpose, but not deep sleep.
Most of the people do not have mush physical work, with little scope to sweat. Businessmen and executives are under constant stress leading tension and nervousness. Neither they can eat plenty of food nor drink more water. It results in irregular bowel movement.
All about Dinner
People are used to munch something or other all through the wakeful hours from dawn to midnight. Heart, lungs and kidneys can work incessantly without rest. They are built thus! But our stomach is not created like that. After a few hours of rest it works for some time. This applies not only to human beings, but also to all creatures. Some creatures eat in the morning and move about in daylight, whereas nocturnals eat and move at night. It means the animals rest at night and day respectively.
Man is created in such a way that he should work in the day and relax at night. But does he adhere to the natural arrangement? No. He starts eating in the morning and continues till midnight. The stomach that is supposed to work for 12 hours and rest for 12 hours is deprived of it. Since he eats processed food in the place of natural food, that too till midnight, poor stomach is forced to work all the 24 hours, day and night.
How long do you think the poor stomach can slog like that? Don’t you think of its wear and tear? Is it not our prime duty to give it rest? Don’t you take care of the welfare of your young ones? Is it not your duty to take care of your own stomach that keeps you in good health? If you take care of other’s welfare, they will automatically take care of you! The same principle applies here too. You take care of your body the body will take care of your health.
The duty of the body is to digest the food eaten in the morning, to carry the digested food to rest of the parts and to provide the energy required for work. The body has to repair the affected parts during the rest period, has to create new cells, has to drive out waste material. For that necessary rest is to be provided to the body. If not all the activities will come to a stand still and body becomes disease prone.
For the people who eat oily food, non-vegetarian food late in the night it takes 8 to 10 hours to digest their food. It will be dawn by the time the digestion process is completed with no rest for the intestines. If we keep on accumulating garbage in the bin and if we have no time to clear it, it stagnates giving place to germs. The same is the case with our body. If you don’t eat anything for one day, nothing will happen. But if the waste material stagnates in the body for one day, it becomes a source for diseases. By sleeping for six hours in the night, you will have energy to work for 18 hours. Proper rest is the best source of energy for man. If you work nonstop two days and nights you become weak on the third day. The same way our intestines which work round the clock, lose their energy. Having no rest the body will not be able to clear the waste. Great diseases are born from little ailments that rise out of the stagnated waste.
We have one mouth to eat and five excretory organs to drive out the waste material from the body. These entire five have to clear the waste material created out of our digested food. We are accustomed to eat processed food and food with spices, oil and non-vegetarian that produces large quantity of waste. It cannot be cleared during the limited rest period that we allow to the body. On the contrary if we eat natural food with no oil, salt and spices, it produces less waste material and the body will be able to drive it out easily. The health of the body is totally dependent on the type of the food we eat.
Let us change ourselves
Every one of us longs for good health. We also long for happiness. So let us change our lifestyle to safeguard our health in our own humble way.
To begin with, let’s try to get up early in the morning. Let’s take up a decision that we should not eat breakfast until and unless we drink as much water as possible, urinate and do exercise till we sweat.
As far as possible let’s do pranayama exercises outside, in the open air, if possible. Let’s have head bath everyday with cold water. Let’s drink fresh fruit juice on an empty stomach. Let’s also eat sprouts and raw vegetables compulsorily as food (other items can be had after eating these). We should also eat lunch before 12 noon or 1 p.m. Our lunch could be plenty of curry, curds and unpolished rice. Let’s eat it pleasantly. Let us eat fruits and raw vegetables in the afternoon. We should again drink plenty of water in the evening to have a free motion again. Let us have dinner before sunset. Let’s eat light food in the evening that can be digested easily. Let’s spend nighttime in good discussions, reading good books, which would fill our mind with peace. We can sleep once the food gets digested. Such a routine as detailed above is good for health.
Crime is a crime
A crime is a crime whether we do it knowingly or unknowingly. The punishment is more for the crime knowingly committed. When we don’t care our own body how can an outsider, a doctor, come to our rescue? ‘Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches’. Any number of doctors, medicines, and modern equipments cannot drive out diseases totally. However much we are advanced scientifically we are not able to provide ourselves with perfect health. Why! The fault lies in us, not in technology. Every man is the architect of his own future. He is also the architect of his own health. A responsible man knows no problems or worries. In turn he is rewarded with happiness. Let us be responsible to our health. Let us live naturally for good health.
The people around him influence man. A child’s vocation is endless imitation. So children learn the good or bad habits from their elders. Good habits lead to good heart and good health. They are like the bond between a tree and a creeper. Same way bad company leads to bad habits. Ordinary men follow the footsteps of the great. Our thoughts depend on the food we eat and in turn our actions depend on our thoughts. ‘As you sow, so you reap’. As the way of your lifestyle, so is your health.
Festival of Dawn
It is good to get up early and enjoy the pleasures of dawn. Your body will be engaged in the excretory action in your sleep and it continues even after you wake up. The energy of the nerves will be centered around the large intestines as soon as you wake up, since all the waste material in your body are stored up there. So your mind will not rest until it sends out waste material that reached there through the night. This waste material and fecal matter is sent from small intestines and stomach to rectum. The nerves holding the fecal matter will be ready to release it once you wake up. If you do not engage yourself mentally and physically with other things, your energy will help you have free motion.
Instead, if you drink bed coffee before clearing the bowels, the energy that was to be used for motion will be diverted to digest the coffee, keeping aside its duty of sending out fecal matter. The excretory action will go on till you eat some breakfast.
This action of sending out waste matter slackens as the sun’s rays become warmer and you start feeling hungry. To satisfy hunger you will start eating. If you wake up at 8 a.m. you have no time left for excretory action. You feel it’s too late and so you hurry up your activities to get ready for your work! You brush your teeth and have your breakfast immediately after that.
If you get up at 4 or 5 a.m. your stomach will be free for 2, 3 hours. With free motion immediately after getting up, you feel relaxed! After that some physical exercises, yogasanas or pranayama will help in sending out the waste material churned out in the night. The same way if you drink more than a liter of water, the waste that reached the blood, and the waste material that has been formed in the night joins the water and comes out in the form of sweat, urine and motion. Again you should drink one more liter of water to enable the body to clear itself of its waste material. This way if you just supply water and nothing else and do some exercise, then the body will fulfill its duty (excretory action) completely. Then it is a happy morning for us.
Tongue speaks of your health
The smell in the mouth is the indicator of the purity inside your body. The tongue is the mirror to the body. Your tongue speaks about your health or ill health. It shows your bloodlessness. Those who have constipation, those who have bacteria in intestines or toxins in liver, and those whose waste material is not sent out regularly such people’s mouth gives bad odor.
Do the other creatures brush their teeth? Does their mouth give a stinking smell? No. Then why does man alone get this smell? If somebody’s saliva spits on us in the course of conversation, we get irritated. We clean ourselves. Whereas a small child spits on us, we don’t mind! We brush it aside happily! But when the same small baby grows up into an adult does the same act on us, we don’t like it! We get very irritated. You know why? The baby eats pure food and is pure at heart whereas an adult eats cooked food to satisfy his tongue. The latter’s mouth has bad smell that irritates us.
Fate of man
Man, who cannot bear the droplets of saliva of a fellow human being, happily allows his pet dog lick his hands or body! He enjoys its affection! The dog eats the food he eats and lives with him. It doesn’t brush its teeth, but still its mouth doesn’t give a bad odor. On the contrary we brush our teeth once or twice a day! That too with a paste that gives good foam and a good odor! In spite of all that, our mouth smells bad. Man is able to bear a dog’s but not another man’s saliva. That is the fate of man!
The saliva in the mouth gives a bad smell because there are no movements in the mouth for 6-7 hours in the night sleep. Bacteria in the mouth and lack of air there are other reasons for such bad odor. Also the phlegm from the lungs gets stored at larynx and pharynx in the throat result in bad smell.
You don’t have to clean or gargle if you eat the natural food provided by God. You don’t need to brush teeth. The spices and the sweets that you eat cause bad odor and decay the teeth. If you are healthy, your teeth will not become weak, not even one tooth gets loosened. We assume that the decay of teeth is a symptom of old age. Because all people eat salt, spices and sweets and the decay is natural result for all! But this is not the symptom of old age for animals. Why? That means the fault lies in our food style and not in our age. People neglect their teeth because they can get dentures.
Sweat and its story
Skin is an excretory organ. It is called a third kidney. Every day the skin lets out two liters of waste material. A part of the waste in our body comes out in the form of sweat through the pores in the skin. If we don’t sweat, it will be hidden in the layers of skin. It comes out easily for the people who sweat.
For instance, when we clean the floor in our house with water, doesn’t the dirt in the house get dissolved in the water and move out along with it? The same way the dirt in our skin comes out only through the sweat.
Your body has to get heated up if you have to sweat. If your body has to get heated up, you have to work, which means the body gets heated up only in those who work. It results in fast circulation of blood to all the parts and cells. Those who work, inhale more of air. When more air is inhaled, heat is produced. More life energy is required to burn all that is bad in the body and to send it out. If we sit idle we don’t get more of life energy! Everything is inter-related. The amount of life energy we get is based on the nature and the speed of the work we do. The sweat we get is in turn based on the life energy we receive. For those who work, the bad goes out in the form of sweat through the skin. You do get sweat though you sit idle when it is sultry at home. But that sweat has only water and no waste material. The fat doesn’t get dissolved with that sweat and that doesn’t give you good health. So the sweat that comes out of more life energy created through physical work is helpful for good health and for the health of the skin.
Four ways of excretion
Those who don’t sweat through work, just eat and gobble food three times a day, cannot send out the waste material excreted out of the food. The main advantage for those who work hard is the waste material in their body goes out through skin and through other excretory organs.
Secondly, one who sweats more drinks plenty of water, so automatically he urinates more, in which process waste matter goes out easily.
Thirdly, because he slogs, he feels very hungry and relishes the food he eats. If the food he eats contains more of fibrous material, more quantity of motion will be produced. So more of motion moves quickly in the intestines and so comes out easily.
Fourthly, the one who works takes a deep breath of oxygen. When more oxygen is inhaled into the lungs, automatically more carbon dioxide is exhaled out. As a result, the bad that has to go out through the lungs goes out every day for those who do physical work.
So, when the waste material goes out daily through these four sources – lungs, urine, sweat, motion, automatically the liver, the fifth one, is in good condition. As long as the employees do their work normally, the boss is happy. When everybody carries on his work smoothly, no body will suffer. The same way the boss of our body the liver will be happy.
‘Is life worth living? It depends on the liver!’
Yes it depends on how one who lives takes care of his liver. So if the man ‘liver’ works properly, the organ ‘liver’ can function properly and send out the waste material through all excretory organs.
Do all these happen to a man who sweats? You see, when the body gets warm, the waste material in the body gets ready to go out of the cells due to the heat. Heat expands, cold contracts. It applies to man too! You examine yourself! During hot summer you stretch your hands and legs and sleep flat. Whereas in winter you sleep like number three.
Any thing expands in heat. So when the body gets heated through exercise, blood vessels, muscles, limbs and cells expand and blood circulates easily. As a result there is an easy outlet for the dirt to come out of the cells. Instead if we eat and do not have any physical work, the waste material that is produced, remains in the body and produces cells with toxic substance. The bad that has to go out through sweat, remains in the layers of skin. That means a seed is sown for diseases to crop up.
Specialty of bathing
Now, let us analyze this aspect. Everybody has generally the habit of bathing in the morning, that too in a hurry. If you understand the impact of bathing, you can’t take it so easily. More number of cells in our body receives coldness and only a little receives heat. Elders referred to cold water as water with life and boiled water as dead water. So if you bathe in cold water, there will be both expansion and contraction for the skin, bones and blood vessels, whereas you bathe in hot water, they only expand.
One should have head bath in cold water in the morning. Mostly people bathe only from below the neck. Don’t you think the head is yours? Is it enough if the body is purified? Don’t you have to purify the head? Most important factor is to cool the mind! The mind that functions all the 24 hours, works to some extent even in sleep. So such a mind has to be cooled, to make you feel peaceful.
Head bath
Head bath in cold water enables a free blood circulation to the head. If you bathe in cold water only up to the neck and don’t pour cold water over the head, all the heat in these lower parts goes into the head. For example, if you pour water over the hot floor in summer doesn’t the heat in the floor come out of it? The same way, if you don’t wet the head with cold water, the heat that emerges out of coldwater bath, goes at once to the upper region.
Actually we are not supposed to make the mind heated up. But we are doing the contrary, instead of cooling it. As it is, we are heating up the mind during the whole day through heated arguments, tensions, irritation and anger! Should we heat it up even while bathing? Knowingly or unknowingly, we are committing a grave mistake!
Our elders compulsorily took head bath in the morning in cold water. In summer they safeguarded their head by using umbrella and wearing slippers. But now, our habits are different. The intensity of habit is like this. We bathe only once, that too in hot water and only for the body. To top it all, we bathe with soaps and shampoos that give foam at once without any effort on our part to rub the body. There are some ingredients in soaps that clear the dirt and create foam. They are called surface-active agents. Those agents not only drive out the dirt, but also the delicate layer over the skin. That’s why we feel the skin dry and pale after we bathe with soap. Because the skin is dry, we apply cold cream or body cream over the body. We wish to have our skin always soft and shinning.
Bad effects of soaps and creams
In fact the skin always shines for all of us, but we spoil it with soaps and creams. If we don’t use soaps, the skin won’t become white and dry or there won’t be cracks in the skin in winter. We don’t need any kind of cream or oil.
Another drawback with soap is, it gives foam easily and we wrongly assume that dirt is cleared because of the foam. The foam may clear the dirt, dust and sticky substance over the skin. But the easy foam without rubbing the skin much is as harmful as gulping the food at one shot. If we eat the food with more of salt and chili powder, saliva is produced and we gulp it quickly without chewing it properly. Since we don’t chew it properly, the food won’t be digested properly.
The same way, because the foam is produced quickly with soap, we don’t massage the skin properly with the hands. Our elders did not use soaps. They rubbed their body thus to drive out the dirt over the skin. Such a rubbing, heats up the skin. By rubbing, more of blood from inside comes to the skin. So one of the benefits is, there is a free blood flow to the skin at the time of bathing.
Rubbing the skin
The second benefit is – the dirt stored in the pores of the skin comes out by a hard rubbing. Generally the blood circulation to the skin is slow since skin is the last part. ‘First come first served’. This applies not only to food but also to blood. The heart pumps blood fast to the parts closer to it and slowly to the parts far apart. That’s why skin diseases don’t get cured quickly.
So, to get more blood circulation to the skin, we should rub it to warm it up. If we use soaps, we can’t rub it much. So it’s not advisable to use soaps. If we don’t use soap, we can rub hard all the parts with our hands to clear the dirt. When we clean the legs we should clean it from the ankle down to the thighs above. The same way the hand from wrist to the shoulders, because that is the way the blood flows in our body.
We are all accustomed to clean ourselves from upward to downwards. With that, the blood that has to reach up to the heart, we are driving it down, in the reverse direction with our hands.
Right method of bathing
Let me tell you one good method of bathing. You take a soft, white napkin to the bathroom. If you so desire, you can apply oil before bathing. Keep your bathroom free of soaps. First you wet your body totally with a long shower. Then you wet the white napkin, squeeze it and rub your whole body with it. You can even rub your head with it. It may take 10-15 minutes. At the end of 15 minutes, the skin gets heated up and you start sweating. As you observe, the white napkin becomes dirty. Then again have a long shower over the head. By doing thus the blood vessels and the skin pores that have expanded because of the rubbing, again contract due to the cold water. With this the chances of getting skin diseases are less. You can save on soaps. The freshness in the face and skin after such bath remains till the evening bath time. This is called ‘complete bath’. You try and see! You yourself will agree. You will notice for yourself that how much harm you are causing to your body in the name of bath and soaps.
Breakfast
Now let’s look at our breakfast. It is called so because we are breaking the fast of the night. If we can give rest to our body in the night it is called fasting. The body tries to clear itself of the waste material in its own way during the rest period provided in the night. Fasting means what? Providing more energy for the body. Putting an end to the six to seven hours of fasting in the night with light food is breakfast. How should such a food be? Can we see at once the bright light as soon as we open our eyes after 7 hours’ sleep? No! Slowly we open the eyes get them used to the bright light. Same way, our intestines that were resting have to get ready slowly to the breakfast.
The sun’s heat is less early in the morning and it reaches to maximum in the noon. Likewise, the appetite in our intestines too slowly starts in the morning and reaches its intensity by noon. Since the acids will be less in the morning, our breakfast should be such which can increase the acids, but not kill them. So it should be that can easily be digested with less quantity of acids.
Our morning breakfast should contain vitamins, minerals and natural enzymes. It can be digested with less quantity of acids produced in the stomach and intestines. After 6-7 hours of their rest the intestines ‘relish’ it. Honey, limejuice, fruit juice, sprouts, coconut and dates are ideal as breakfast. This kind of food not only gets digested easily in the intestines, but also helps the excretory organs to send out waste material.
Food and sun
It’s good for health to have lunch by 12 noon. We will be hungry by that time. It is better to provide solid food when you are hungry. Solid food means food that provides energy for the body. Such a food consists of rice, greens, pulses, curds, tubers etc. It is advisable to take them as much as you can, in lunch. If you delay your lunch (say beyond 1 p.m.) your hunger starts subsiding and you don’t feel much hungry by evening. Not only that, towards the fag end of the day, the sun slowly loses his brightness and the gastric juices produced in our intestines slowly get reduced and in result hunger diminishes. You will notice this from the fact that we feel relatively less hungry at night than in the noon.
Eating food sitting on the floor
Let’s examine how the modern culture has changed our eating style. Our elders used to wash their feet before eating. Then they sat on the floor with their legs folded. Those two actions have two benefits. First, washing of feet with cold water enables a quick flow of blood upwards. The second, sitting with folded legs prevents the flow of blood downwards. So the extra blood gathers at the intestines. That means the blood that has to reach the feet moves to the stomach. Since more blood is supplied to the stomach, food is digested easily and quickly. There is yet another benefit. When you eat food sitting on the floor you are forced to bend forward. In the process a part of the stomach gets closed. So even if you eat your stomach full, once you finish eating and get up, one third of your stomach is still empty. To eat only up to two thirds of your stomach and leave one third is always good for your health. This is involuntarily done for those who sit down and eat.
It is quite natural to drink more water while eating salted spicy food. Water along with food dilutes the acids in the stomach. Since the acids are not energetic the digestion process is affected. If you drink water after the food is mixed with acids, soaked and digested, then it will be easier for the digested juice to join water and travel into blood.
Better to have some physical activity after lunch. It enables the food move easily into intestines and lower parts. If you sleep immediately after eating food, the food remains in the stomach and intestines for a long time and that is reason for you to feel heaviness in stomach. Fifteen minutes nap will serve purpose, but not deep sleep.
Most of the people do not have mush physical work, with little scope to sweat. Businessmen and executives are under constant stress leading tension and nervousness. Neither they can eat plenty of food nor drink more water. It results in irregular bowel movement.
All about Dinner
People are used to munch something or other all through the wakeful hours from dawn to midnight. Heart, lungs and kidneys can work incessantly without rest. They are built thus! But our stomach is not created like that. After a few hours of rest it works for some time. This applies not only to human beings, but also to all creatures. Some creatures eat in the morning and move about in daylight, whereas nocturnals eat and move at night. It means the animals rest at night and day respectively.
Man is created in such a way that he should work in the day and relax at night. But does he adhere to the natural arrangement? No. He starts eating in the morning and continues till midnight. The stomach that is supposed to work for 12 hours and rest for 12 hours is deprived of it. Since he eats processed food in the place of natural food, that too till midnight, poor stomach is forced to work all the 24 hours, day and night.
How long do you think the poor stomach can slog like that? Don’t you think of its wear and tear? Is it not our prime duty to give it rest? Don’t you take care of the welfare of your young ones? Is it not your duty to take care of your own stomach that keeps you in good health? If you take care of other’s welfare, they will automatically take care of you! The same principle applies here too. You take care of your body the body will take care of your health.
The duty of the body is to digest the food eaten in the morning, to carry the digested food to rest of the parts and to provide the energy required for work. The body has to repair the affected parts during the rest period, has to create new cells, has to drive out waste material. For that necessary rest is to be provided to the body. If not all the activities will come to a stand still and body becomes disease prone.
For the people who eat oily food, non-vegetarian food late in the night it takes 8 to 10 hours to digest their food. It will be dawn by the time the digestion process is completed with no rest for the intestines. If we keep on accumulating garbage in the bin and if we have no time to clear it, it stagnates giving place to germs. The same is the case with our body. If you don’t eat anything for one day, nothing will happen. But if the waste material stagnates in the body for one day, it becomes a source for diseases. By sleeping for six hours in the night, you will have energy to work for 18 hours. Proper rest is the best source of energy for man. If you work nonstop two days and nights you become weak on the third day. The same way our intestines which work round the clock, lose their energy. Having no rest the body will not be able to clear the waste. Great diseases are born from little ailments that rise out of the stagnated waste.
We have one mouth to eat and five excretory organs to drive out the waste material from the body. These entire five have to clear the waste material created out of our digested food. We are accustomed to eat processed food and food with spices, oil and non-vegetarian that produces large quantity of waste. It cannot be cleared during the limited rest period that we allow to the body. On the contrary if we eat natural food with no oil, salt and spices, it produces less waste material and the body will be able to drive it out easily. The health of the body is totally dependent on the type of the food we eat.
Let us change ourselves
Every one of us longs for good health. We also long for happiness. So let us change our lifestyle to safeguard our health in our own humble way.
To begin with, let’s try to get up early in the morning. Let’s take up a decision that we should not eat breakfast until and unless we drink as much water as possible, urinate and do exercise till we sweat.
As far as possible let’s do pranayama exercises outside, in the open air, if possible. Let’s have head bath everyday with cold water. Let’s drink fresh fruit juice on an empty stomach. Let’s also eat sprouts and raw vegetables compulsorily as food (other items can be had after eating these). We should also eat lunch before 12 noon or 1 p.m. Our lunch could be plenty of curry, curds and unpolished rice. Let’s eat it pleasantly. Let us eat fruits and raw vegetables in the afternoon. We should again drink plenty of water in the evening to have a free motion again. Let us have dinner before sunset. Let’s eat light food in the evening that can be digested easily. Let’s spend nighttime in good discussions, reading good books, which would fill our mind with peace. We can sleep once the food gets digested. Such a routine as detailed above is good for health.
Crime is a crime
A crime is a crime whether we do it knowingly or unknowingly. The punishment is more for the crime knowingly committed. When we don’t care our own body how can an outsider, a doctor, come to our rescue? ‘Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches’. Any number of doctors, medicines, and modern equipments cannot drive out diseases totally. However much we are advanced scientifically we are not able to provide ourselves with perfect health. Why! The fault lies in us, not in technology. Every man is the architect of his own future. He is also the architect of his own health. A responsible man knows no problems or worries. In turn he is rewarded with happiness. Let us be responsible to our health. Let us live naturally for good health.