Reiki spreading smiles

She came to learn Reiki because her brother- in- law told her it will make a difference to her life. She was depressed, for lack of love and attention from the husband. She was stressed, as her daughter was not studying in spite of being an intelligent child, and also due to the fact that in her joint family, nobody lent her a helping hand to manage the household chores.  

Though she was doing acupressure for many clients, nobody ever paid her and she was too meek to mention anything about the need of exchange of energy. After finishing the Reiki training, I asked her to teach me some acupressure points and I gave her a fee, ‘This is your first payment for acupressure’, and she beamed. I felt so nice to watch her smile.

After a week, she called me up. She was laughing all the way through the conversation. “You won’t believe it, Reiki is doing wonders for me. My daughter now studies herself, without me nagging her. I am full of energy to manage the house work. I don’t know how, but Reiki is working. And you know what? Clients who come for acupressure are now asking me how much to pay.”

Her words made my day, and my heart sang, ‘Thank you Reiki’ 

Acupressure can do wonders

A 36 year old lady came to learn Reiki from me. She is into acupressure therapy and has helped many people get rid of their physical problems. She heard about Reiki and thought it will complement her acupressure therapy.

It was an interesting story how she tumbled upon acupressure. At the age of 25 she was diagnosed with hyper thyroids and the doctor put her on allopathic medication. With time the dosage kept on increasing till it reached 150 mgs. She had three kids to look after, apart from all the house work. As a side effect of the medication, she started losing memory, she was tired all the time and she lost the grip of her fingers. While picking up vessels in the kitchen, the vessels used to slip from her fingers and fall down. She was going through hell.

Meanwhile she developed back pain and was advised surgery.

One day her parents came to see her and her mother was devastated. They went back and on another morning they took her forcibly to the Brahmakumari center where an acupressure therapist was visiting that day. She received a session on acupressure therapy, and to her relief and astonishment she was relieved of her problems to a great extent. She was called again in the same evening for a second session, to which she obviously went.

That kindled her interest in acupressure and she followed her heart’s calling. Now she is off the allopathic medicines, her memory is back to normal and she can perform her house hold duties well. And she didn’t have to undergo the surgery for back pain, which was also relieved through acupressure therapy.

'Oxford - 8 centuries of learning' - Alive , May 2001

Bumps and road rumblers of Karnataka

I have travelled quite a bit in India and can safely say that maximum bumps and road rumblers are found in Karnataka. They are provided at such short distances that I doubt some orthopedicians and dentists have close relations who make these. Many youngsters come with fractured teeth to the dentists for repair and old persons undergo fractures on fall due to bumps and rumblers.

Speed bumps and speed humps are among many types of “traffic calming” measures. Speed bumps are applications, usually asphalt, that are from two to six inches high and one to three feet from front to back. Speed humps are usually less than four inches high but 10 to 12 feet from front to back. They have to be marked with white paint so that it is visible from a distance and one can reduce the speed of the vehicle. I have reasons to suspect that the people of Karnataka are sadists because it is very very rare to see them demarcated or to find boards telling there is ‘Bump Ahead.’

Recently we had to drive from Belgaum to Raichur, and you can’t even imagine the number of bumps and rumblers on the State Highway. When we encountered one bump I started counting and by the time I reached ‘twenty’ there was the next bump on the road, many times. The rumblers, there were even six of them together at many places!

I was pitying the bus drivers who ply this route on everyday basis. No wonder many drivers suffer from bad back ache! When I saw the loaded trucks going over the rumblers, I was really praying to God! How much of fuel wastage and wear of the vehicles this must be causing?

Stinking ‘God’s own country’

I used to take pride in being a Keralite. We were known for our cleanliness. During our  travel from Lucknow to Kerala, when the train passed through my home state in the early morning, I used to show proudly to my husband the scene of ladies brooming the front yard of houses. It was the habit of many people to clean their houses, inside and outside, take bath and then enter the kitchen.

A normal scene in Kerala tody is uncollected garbage- pileup and stinking waste across both sides of national highways. Its rivers, tiny water canals and all other natural beauty, foundation of its growing tourism industry are getting affected as lack of waste management system in the State is causing havoc to normal public life.  

The common man brings the house hold waste and dumps it on road side. The corporation workers also dump waste on the road side and set fire to it. There are all sorts of things in the waste, including plastic, so the fumes are dangerous, affecting children more than the adults.

It is sad to see that there is a lack of proper Waste Management system in place in a state with 100% literacy. In several places locals are up in arm against prevalent practice of dumping and landfill Contractors who transport garbage to dump in the interior village dumping sites or near forests or water bodies often face severe resistance from locals and environmental activists.

Unofficial estimates indicate that Kerala generates 6000 ton of waste every day. However, local issues and sentiments have prevented even the collection of solid waste. The end result is that the stunning Kerala landscape has been converted into a stinking, garbage strewn one.

Ref:

http://www.universalecoservices.com/wastemanagement_in_kerala.cfm

Watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxvZX2JHDos

Is dishonesty our National character?

The road we go through daily was so full of potholes. After months, one day we saw a road roller, and we thought that repair was imminent. But they were just patched up with small stones and sand. It is anybody’s guess how long it is going to last, with our rainy season just starting, which will last for four more months!

All the street lamps won’t be lit, and to the complaints, the answer is ‘No money”. When there are discussions on such matters, always the final fault comes to the politicians. Yesterday I heard on the TV news that ‘Situations will improve only when honest people come into politics’.

That set my mind into a thinking groove. It was searching for honest people around, from the lower class to the upper class. It is so difficult to get workers here, because they can have an ok life with the availability of Rs.1/kg rice. The families manage to have multiple ration cards (that brings in middle class citizens taking bribe to issue multiple ration cards). So they have enough rice to eat and also, sell it back at higher rate and earn some money.

There are middle aged class IV employees in private institutions, who manage to get old age pension from the government, by giving wrong age certificates (again, who issues the certificate? What’s in it for him?)

Many people don’t think twice before stealing flowers and curry leaves from other houses. More daring ones will come with gunny bags, jump inside the house compound when nobody is there in the house and fill these bags with mangoes plucked from the tree in the back yard, leaving nothing for the house holder, and they are  proud of their achievement!

The informer (to the robbers) for the theft in a house was a worker from a mutt ( religious organization)! And today I see a news item, “The woman who has made the allegations started to work as a cook there and is originally from Hubli. After lunch the Godman asked her to keep a plate in his room and when she entered he allegedly locked the room and molested her. Malamaruthi police have registered a cased under 376IPC.The godman is originally from Bagalkot.” (http://allaboutbelgaum.com/news/godman-arrested-alleged-rape-cook/)

The cream of society, the doctors who want their kids to become doctors (irrespective of their capability) would go to any length of dishonesty (which are unthinkable) to achieve their objective. And the widely prevalent dishonesty of many doctors in the approach to treating patients is an open secret.

Majority of these people who blame the politicians for dishonestly taking personal advantages, would do exactly the same thing (or even more?) if they are in the same position. So what is our future? I can’t think of any other way than to wait till the end of Kaliyuga when a God incarnate will come to eradicate the evil!

Disappearing skill of clinical diagnosis

We had the subject of general medicine and surgery in the third year of BDS. To train us to do the clinical diagnosis for the exam, we had some good teachers. When any of us fell sick, they would diagnose by clinical examination, give appropriate medicine and that was it! The health was restored.

In that period of time, one day my aunt who stayed next door, frantically called me home. Her daughter, about 4 years old, was having deep purplish color inside her oral cavity. My cousin who was doing MBBS, was already there, checking her with his stethoscope. I looked at the girl, she seemed to be completely normal, the breathing rate, pulse and all. I called her aside and asked,’ Tell me, where is the thing that you put in your mouth?’  She took me to the place where potassium permanganate was kept!

When I joined my job and started working, I developed a pain in the neck and shoulder region. The pain was a bit more and we went for consultation. He diagnosed some problem in the neck area and told to go to the physiotherapy department to get traction done daily for a number of days, apart from taking some tablets. Well, I am not a lover of tablets, but went for traction for a few days. Then I got the intuition that something was not right. I didn’t want to continue with the traction. I started thinking deeply what must have gone wrong.

While doing post graduation, my friends had talked me into buying a very high heeled chappal, and I was continuing to use it.  I thought of discontinuing its use and see the result. Well, that was it! Within a week, I was totally free from the pain.

I had a maid whose mother used to fall sick often. She would be admitted to the hospital for saline infusion, for at least two days. Now I have another maid, who absented one day and told that her mother was having abdominal pain. She took some pain killers herself, the pain got worsened. So they took her to the doctor.

I was experienced now, so asked her, ’They admitted her for saline infusion?’

‘Yes,’ she answered with a look of admiration.

I was surprised that her mother took pain killers. I asked her, ’Don’t you people have any home remedies (gharelu davai)?’

‘No’, she told with an expression, ’What are you talking about?’

‘The bill came to Rs. 7000. The doctor told that there may be problem with the heart also, it is very necessary to get a check up done (of course another fat bill).All of us are worried and are thinking about it.’

On further questioning her I came to know that her mother had a hernia operation last year. The day prior to getting pain she had carried big vessels of water to store in the house. Mostly the pain must have started due to the strain and then her self medication must have created acidity or something like that.

From our friend circle and others, we come to know that doctors who can make a correct clinical diagnosis are very rare now. They will write for investigations and even repeat investigations again and again! Doctors are proving to be ‘karmic police of the kaliyuga’ (my daughter’s words). The sins are increasing and doctors are here to mete out punishment by misdiagnosis, draining people of their money by repeated investigations, unnecessary hospitalization and surgeries.

To one of my colleagues’ mother, immediate heart surgery was advised, with a warning that she might not last even for 3 months without the surgery. The lady was very courageous and decided, ‘ I have spent a life time and had a good life. I am ready to die any time now.’ She didn't get the surgery done and was alive even three years afterwards. I lost contact with her after that.

I have reliable information from a hospital that there is standing instruction to the ICU unit that any patients that came with chest or abdominal pain have to be kept in the ICU for at least one week. The cost of doing an MBBS course is almost one crore now. If they do post graduation also, spending a fortune, they are in a hurry to make money after starting the practice. Then cuts from the drug companies and pathology labs are very lucrative. Even some dentists are routinely writing tonics for every patient for their cuts from the drug company. Is there any comparison to the earning if one does correct clinical diagnosis and cure the patients with minimum medicines? 

The changing lives of medical students

When I joined the dentistry course, there were so many things expected of a medical/dental student. Ladies had to wear saris, had to cut short their nails (this is the reason that my daughters decided in their childhood not to go into the medical field, because they liked to keep long nails), and make the hair neatly into a bun at the back. We had cupboards in the college where we were supposed to keep the doctor’s apron when leaving the college every day.

Look at the changed scenario now. Lady dentists may be thinking that they look older if they put up their hair. This is an age when ‘youth’ is the most coveted quality. Some are ‘gracious’ enough to put a clip at the back, but others believe in open hair policy. Sometimes the hair style is such that they come in front of their eyes (see the photo I got from the net).

 I am at a loss to understand how they get a clear vision of the area being operated on. Yes, many dental treatments are considered surgical procedures. Our counterparts, general surgeons keep the protocol of covering their hair in the surgery. Don’t dentists consider their work serious enough?

Many lady dentists also love to have long painted nails. Fashion statements are very important in today’s world. Earlier it was for the actors and ramp walkers that designer clothes were made. Now even for the healing profession members, designer clothes are necessary. Western influence has changed the general mind set, there are no qualms about exposing the body as much as one likes.

I see medical people with aprons (hopefully, only students, but I haven’t verified) in the hotels (not very close to the college or hospital they work), dust filled roads, and busy market places. Yes, they do shopping with doctor’s aprons!

One colleague was joking, ‘They have paid so much money as donation to get into the medical/dental college that they want to show the world what course they are doing.’

 It so happened that after I wrote this, I had to go for a communal lunch. Four medical students in aprons were standing close by and having lunch. Slowly I went near them and asked, ‘Are you medical or dental students?’  They were medical students. I asked, ‘Why do you wear the doctor’s aprons?’ They had the expression of ‘what a stupid question that is!’ I persisted, ‘What is purpose of wearing the apron?’ One girl thought for some time and told, ‘To see patients.’ Aha! So she has some idea. I told them that the apron is to be worn during working hours. ‘You should find out the reasons for wearing the apron, you are going to be doctors. It is a disgrace to our profession to roam around in doctor’s aprons in the market places and the like.’

Belgaum being a place with many dental/medical colleges, some of the local house owners keep students as tenants. Some parents also don’t like their kids to stay in the hostel. So they stay in houses, have bikes or cars. They throw the garbage in front of neighbors’ houses; have late night parties where both genders have a gala time. Since money is not a problem for these kids of rich parents, plenty of alcohol consumption goes on. One land lord of such medical students had a serious doubt once, which he disclosed to us, ‘I don’t see these people studying at all, but they keep passing exams. What kind of doctors will they make?’

Now coming to the examinations, once during a viva, the college chairman was also sitting nearby. The examiner kept asking the student questions after questions, but no answer was forthcoming. Getting frustrated, the examiner told,’ you must be knowing the answer, unless you speak out, how can I give marks?’

The student looked at the chairman and told,’ He had told me that even if I didn't answer any question, I would pass the exams’!!! Well, this may not be the case in all colleges, but even if it is happening in some places, isn't it serious?

Death around the smokey corner

The significance of human body

Will we use a huge knife to cut a cloth? Or a scissors to cut wood? Around us there are myriads of things for our daily use. We know exactly what should be used for what purpose so that our work is optimized.

When we know that ‘we’ are not the bodies and the bodies are just clothing the souls, it is necessary to think whether we are putting the body to proper use. How exactly are we supposed to be treating the bodies?

We may have so many aspirations and dreams. The body is the only machine with which we can accomplish anything in life. That means we have to take care of this machine, just like one who loves driving a lot, takes great care of his car.

Unlike the car, the human body is a self healing machine. It can take a lot of abuse. So when somebody falls really sick, he/she has taken matters to the extreme that the healing capacity of the body is not able to cope with.

When poisonous foods (fried, tinned, too much cooked etc) are routinely consumed, the body’s defense mechanism kicks in and to protect the blood vessels from this poison, it puts up a layer of fat (cholesterol) on their walls. Instead of correcting the basic cause (changing the food habit), people get angioplasties done. I know people who get it done multiple times. And humans are supposed to be ‘intelligent’ beings!

One of very basic things we can do to keep the body healthy is to get up before sunrise (or at least when the sun rises) because our body rhythm is related to the circadian rhythm. Are we doing that?

Ref: http://www.tunedbody.com/heart-surgeon-declares-really-causes-heart-illness/

- Core idea courtesy Dr. S Goel

Why do mosquitoes bite humans?

Mosquitoes are out there to drink blood to fill their stomachs. Then why don’t they bite all humans equally? We all know that in a room with many people, some of them will be troubled so much by a mosquito while some others are left alone.

We used to have yoga sessions in a hall with many others and mosquitoes used to frequent the hall. From the yoga postures, hands had to be freed to kill the mosquitoes. Then it so happened that only my husband and I were doing yoga in the same hall. After some days, we suddenly noticed that mosquitoes were not present in the hall. We came to the conclusion that if you are calm inside, mosquitoes leave you alone.

Then there is another view that mosquitoes come to remove the excess blood that some persons may have. They are thus bringing balance in nature.

There is also a view that mosquitoes bite on acupressure/acupuncture points to relieve problems of the person being bitten. So if you don’t have any problems that need to be treated, chances are that mosquitoes will leave you alone!

A research on this topic showed that one of the key ways mosquitoes locate their targets is by smelling the carbon dioxide emitted in their breath.—they use an organ called maxillary palp  to do this, and can detect carbon dioxide from as far as 164 feet away. As a result, people who simply exhale more of the gas over time—generally, larger people—have been shown to attract more mosquitoes than others. This is one of the reasons why children get bitten less often than adults, on the whole.

According to one study, people who drink just one bottle of beer, increase their detect-ability levels to the mosquito world. As per the opinion of an entomologist, mosquitoes attract people dressed in striking colors such as black, navy and red.

Life’s lesson from Life plant

I cut out a leaf from the Life plant (Miracle leaf, or ‘Ilamulachi’ in Malayalam) and hung it in the air. Within a week, roots started sprouting out of its serrations, and in a few days, cute, tiny leaves also appeared. The mother leaf hanging in the air with so many tiny little babies! No water was available to the leaf for this period.

I went out and looked at the plant from which I had plucked and brought the leaf. None of the other leaves had sprouted baby plants. 

The separated leaf was facing adverse situation, which led it to propagate itself.

Then the great lesson of life struck me. The Universe puts us through tough situations to bring out the best in us. Without realizing the significance of having to face difficulties, many parents approach me for counseling when their children have to take some tough decisions in life. They fail to understand that those experiences are necessary to make them balanced, mature individuals!

There are no short cuts in life

Observing the lives of self and others at close quarters for more than five decades, I am fortunate to grasp the basic truth of life; that there are no short cuts. I definitely got the divine grace to understand this, because every day I watch septuagenarians and octogenarians who are looking for short cuts, forget about the youngsters!

It is prevalent in every walk of life. As a dentist, I know that majority of dentists do short cut in doing root canal treatment. In infected cases, short cut approach will not remove the infection, so they give systemic antibiotics to compensate for the work that they have not done. Who is bothered about the grave problems that irrational antibiotic prescription will cause for the future generations?

As a Reiki master I encounter again and again Reiki channels asking whether they can do the self healing by short cut. I have seen many of them who do short cut healing not receiving the full benefit of Reiki, which can be beyond imagination when one does proper self healing every day.

The interesting aspect is that the short cut is solicited only in the efforts one has to put in. What about happiness, enjoyment, material aspects one wants in life? They have to be available in full measure, no short cuts here, please!

When you want a mango tree in your garden, it takes years after you plant the sapling, for getting a fruiting tree. To enjoy the full taste of mangoes, it has to ripen naturally. But we get tasteless mangoes in the market because they have been plucked prematurely and ripened by artificial means.

One becomes obese after years of over eating, but weight reduction is sought overnight. This gives opportunity for many to come up with ingenious ideas to earn so much money from these culpable individuals. I know some of them getting irreversible problems from usage of such weight reduction products.

We will stop looking for short cuts when we start liking what we are doing. And how can we start liking what we are doing? And that is another complicated question!

To start living in the present

How can we start living in the present? By totally accepting the present moment and also being grateful for all the blessings in life. This in no way means that one should become complacent and stop doing one’s duty in life. But to aspire something too badly and going madly after it, neglecting other aspects of life, will only bring misery to life.

When I was around 16 years of age, my parents took me to a Malayalam drama, which had a great impact on my life. It was named ‘Raktarakshas’, which means an entity that drinks blood. The story was of an ugly daughter of a great Ayurveda physician. He was a well acclaimed man, to whom people came from far and wide and got relief from their problems. The daughter used to pester him to make some potion for her to become beautiful. He just used to pacify her saying that the inner beauty was more important than the physical beauty and she was beautiful according to him.

When the father dies, she searches through his medical literature and to her surprise she saw that there was really a technique, though a difficult one, to turn ugliness into beauty. She religiously followed the technique for twelve full moon sessions and became a very beautiful lady. Some time later, while cutting vegetable, her finger got cut and some blood fell on the floor. Soon her body started transforming into a grotesque figure and she ran out of the house and killed the first man she encountered on the street to drink his blood. Then it was shown that in the medical book, the last line written was “If some body becomes beautiful by this technique, she has to take care that her blood never falls in the earth, or she will turn into a ‘Raktarakshas’.

If we aspire for something and work for it for a reasonable amount of time and do not succeed, we should understand that our path must be different and take a detour. We can adamantly keep following the same path and we may achieve it, but by them we will be so exhausted that we don’t derive as much enjoyment as we had expected.

This aspect became absolutely clear to me when I became a past life regression therapist. Now I know from experience that at the soul level we decide our path for this life time. On taking birth we forget our life path and start aspiring for different things. If we really look into this, we understand that this originates from comparison. ‘If he/she can have it, why can’t I?’ And comparison is sure way to invite frustration and depression.

We are all different, beautiful beings, here on this plane to accomplish different things. Live on a day to day basis, be happy at the end of each day for what you have done to the best of your ability, and be thankful for the higher guidance. Then the life starts blooming!

‘Kitanu’ (Bacteria) phobia

Majority of the advertisements one sees on television give vivid graphics of the dangers of living with bacteria. One has to remove all the bacteria from the mouth, from the plates used for eating food, even from the floor.

If you take a look at the Wikipedia, you see that “Populations of microbes (such as bacteria and yeasts) inhabit the skin and mucosa. Their role forms part of normal, healthy human physiology, however if microbe numbers grow beyond their typical ranges (often due to a compromised immune system) or if microbes populate atypical areas of the body (such as through poor hygiene or injury), disease can result.”

Many people consider  that human beings are separate from the other beings on the earth. It is not so. We are just a part of the whole Universe, and are supposed to have a commensal existence. Of course, some basic hygiene is necessary in life, but there is no point in taking things to the extreme.

Bacterial cells are much smaller than human cells, and there are at least ten times as many bacteria as human cells in the body.  The mass of microorganisms are estimated to account for 1-3% total body mass. Though members of the flora are found on all surfaces exposed to the environment (on the skin and eyes, in the mouth, nose, small intestine), the vast majority of bacteria live in the large intestine. So how are we going to sterilize our intestine?

The solution is not to make ourselves bacteria free, but to strengthen our immunity. But this approach will not help to rake in money for the advertising companies.

Trying to guard one away from bacteria has led to the situation that when he/she falls sick, it is difficult to recover. Because the lack of exposure to bacteria diminished the formation of antibodies in the body and it cannot cope up with the infection. In such situations, fecal matter from a healthy human was introduced into the gut of the diseased person, which led to the cure! “Fecal implant’ now looks to be a promising cure.. ha ha…

And, what’s more, fecal implant is now available in pill form (http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/IDWeek/42044).

The choice is yours. Learn to live with the microbes, develop your immunity OR be ready to eat sh-t.

Of bullet trains and tears

Let us run the family together

Our teeth- An important asset

Sweden sweeps me off my feet

A Coorgi wedding

I was fortunate to get an opportunity to attend a Coorgi wedding. The first surprise that welcomed me on reaching the venue was the sight of natural pleasant faced ladies. These days it has become the norm for ladies, in whatever age group they are, to make a trip to the beauty parlor before any function. It is just sympathy that fills my heart when I see even septugenarians with painted faces that look so out of place. Somewhere along the line the fairer sex has forgotten the concept of graceful aging. Here I was lucky to feast my eyes on faces that reflected wisdom and compassion, without the overlying thick layers of foundation, compact powder and rouge.

It was heartening to see that the youngsters were giving due respect to the elders by greeting them and touching their feet. The older generation was really taken care of, and attended on.

Even though the families were very well off, there was no ugly display of wealth by providing two hundred items for the feast. This is another sad trend that is catching up. There will be a menu of innumerable items, but I have experienced on many occasions that the quality would be compromised. Here there were a few select items, but each one was a gastronomic delight!

I have to admit that the ladies had good esthetic sense in the selection of jewellery. They were very different from the ones I usually see in other parts of India.

And finally it was a great experience to participate in the traditional dance programme that followed the dinner.