Guest writer Mark Du Bois practices Kriya Yoga and is a member of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship.

Norm,

I just read the article and comments regarding Danielle’s knee problems. It’s nice to hear of others successes using the techniques you provide to students.

I have been experiencing some knee problems myself recently.

I was an athlete in school and a golf professional during the late 60′s to the early 70′s, so I used to get plenty of exercise and in general, was in excellent health.

Due to some back problems, I began practicing hatha yoga under your supervision in the mid 80′s.

I attribute my somewhat irregular practice of hatha yoga for continuing good health through the 80′s and 90′s.

I began playing golf again in the early 2000′s and always walked when I played. This was excellent exercise and I supplemented it with the occasional practice of hatha yoga.

In 2005 for financial reasons, I quit playing golf again and for the last few years, I have made a good part of my income from eBay and thus,

I have been spending a lot of hours sitting at the computer… and getting very little exercise.

I am now what some call a “fidgeter”…because the only exercise I seem to get is “fidgeting” while sitting at the computer!

I know this is detrimental to my health and as I get older (I’m now 64) I am beginning to see the results of about five years of sitting all day (and often deep into the night) without much exercise except shuffling to the other side of my office to photograph an item to list on eBay! Not the healthiest lifestyle!

This brings me to the main point of this comment. I have been experiencing similar pain in my knees to what Danielle describes in her comments.

I notice this primarily in my left knee because I seem to have developed the habit of crossing my left ankle over my right ankle while sitting at the computer. This allows my left knee to “dangle” to the left thus putting sideways pressure on the left knee as it sort of twists to the left.

I don’t notice pain until I move my legs (often after a very long period of time) and realize that the movement causes intense pain on both sides of my left knee due to stiffness.

And as a side note, I had rheumatic fever as a child and was diagnosed with “fibromyalgia” in my 40′s by an orthopedic surgeon, so I am not a stranger to inflammation.

Finally, the knee pain became too much for me to ignore ( I have a high tolerance for pain) and I realized that I needed to start getting some exercise, eating healthier and doing some hatha yoga again.

After just a few sessions of hatha, my knee pain went away almost entirely.

…and lately, even when I make the mistake of allowing myself to fall back into the habit of crossing my legs while “computering” my life away, there is no pain!

Then, several weeks ago, out of nowhere, your email came with the knee stretching and strengthening exercises! Since then, I have been doing them sporadically and they have increased my flexibility.

Plus, I no longer wake up with intense pain in my knees at night.

In short, I recommend to anyone with knee problems to try some hatha yoga, especially the forward bending positions which stretch the muscles and ligaments on the sides and back of the legs.

I hope students who read this blog will take every advantage of the very simple techniques you demonstrate on the knee video.

To the novice, they may appear so simple that one might think they couldn’t possibly produce any positive results.

To the contrary, if practiced with concentration they can work wonders! They are truly priceless!

I have been to my share of orthopedic doctors and surgeons in my life and what I have found is that they generally prefer to treat the symptoms with pills and the scalpel.

Occasionally I have found one or two who suggested stretching exercises…and I have even heard them say, “just do it while you’re watching TV”!

But mindlessly stretching while watching TV is one thing, and hatha yoga is yet another, because when practicing hatha yoga one actively uses the mind to concentrate the energy on the particular body part.

With your body calm and your mind calm and concentrated, you send life giving energy to the injured or weak cells. That’s when the real healing and strengthening take place.

The human body is an amazing machine and it can do miraculous things, including healing almost any infirmity.

But it works best when we actively engage our mind and energy into the process.

My sincere hope is that many others in need of healing are directed here. And once here, I hope many open the door to the mind using the keys which you provide to all through this wonderful blogsite.

Those who take advantage of your decades of experience in healthful living through hatha yoga and holistic, natural living will be ever so grateful. I know I am!

Thank you so much, Norm, for all you have done for me and for all you continue to do to help others!

Namasté
Mark Du Bois
Bisbee, Arizona

In this free video you will learn how circulation works and how easy it is to improve your circulation.

Then you will be guided into some simple, easy-to-do exercises that will give you the experience of improved circulation.

Try it. Get a feel for it. Then experiment to create your own exercises.

Have problems with you knees or neck? Do you want to improve circulation, range of motion, and relax them?

Check out these videos, which are part of the same class:

Knee Healing Video

Heal Your Neck Now! Video

Hopefully, in watching and practicing with these free videos, you will get an idea of how circulation works. Then let yourself get creative and invent some movements on your own.

If you find it difficult to design your own exercises, you can always buy my Easy Yoga for Home, Office, & Studio DVD from which these video clips are taken. When you do this, you will be helping to keep this website going.

Thank you & Namaste’,

Norm

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

Whether you have been suffering from chronic pain for years, or whether you just want to loosen up your neck some, these simple movements can help you.

In my yoga classes over the years,  I have helped hundreds of students improve flexibility, increase range of motion, reduce pain, and heal their necks with this technique.

Note: If you have a lot of pain, move very slowly and gently in a way that increases your range of motion without aggravating the condition.

This video was shot in a my studio in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico so you may hear some church bells along with traffic noises in the background and maybe a cat or dog, all of which are very indicative of what it is like to be in downtown San Miguel.

This video clip is taken from my DVD,  Easy Yoga for Home, Office & Studio, which also includes similar movements designed to improve circulation, reduce pain, and promote healing for the eyes and all of the joints.

Feel free to comment below and please let me know what other topics you would like covered on this blog.

While this article was created in response to a question from writer Rick Skwiot about how yoga might help him heal his painful knee, many of the principles and practices will apply to the healing of other joints and conditions as well.

1 > First: STOP whatever activity is aggravating the joint and causing the pain.

One of the most difficult challenges I face when doing therapy with tennis players to heal a bad back, twisted knee, or tennis elbow is to get the person to stop playing long enough for the painful joint to heal.

If you are young and have not had a painful knee for very long, there is a good chance that you are dealing with a temporary condition, which will heal fairly rapidly, if given a rest from more aggravation along with proper Yoga Therapy.

If you are an older player with a long-term chronic condition, and your doctor has told you that your knee is damaged to the point of no return, there is no cartilage left, and the knee is in bone-on-bone condition, complete cessation of tennis may be necessary to stop an on-going destruction in order to allow the joint to return to a healthy, pain free condition.

If you find a lot of resistance in yourself to stop playing tennis, then you need to ask yourself why you want to continue an activity that is not just creating pain and preventing healing, but which may end in future crippling.

Perhaps it may help you to deal with this better if you treat this as an addiction.

You may find yourself saying, “But exercise is healthy. I need to exercise, don’t? I really enjoy playing tennis.”

How can any exercise be healthy when it is damaging your body?

THINK!

From a yoga perspective Any activity that you continue to do that is damaging to your body or mind can be considered an addiction.

Instead of wondering about other people’s addictions, Yoga Science teaches us to deal with our own.

2 > Elevate the legs up a wall to improve circulation and reduce swelling, inflammation, and pain.

This variation of the Hatha Yoga Shoulderstand Asana (posture) will reduce pain and promote healing. While the Shoulderstand offers more benefits, the ability to hold your legs up a wall much longer than you can or should in the Shoulderstand will somewhat make up for this. The longer you stay in this position and the more frequently you practice the faster the results. You will get many other benefits. Inverted poses like this improve circulation of both blood and lymph, strengthen your immune system, prevent and reverse varicose veins including hemorrhoids, help to reduce enlarged prostate, and much more.

The student I mentioned in an earlier post who ended up with a serious infection as a result of “simple knee surgery” used this practice to reduce swelling in his knee and to get off crutches.

When we started therapy, his swollen knee was huge. I had him spend time at the beginning and at the end of our first session with his legs up the wall. I suggested that he should practice this at home to speed up his healing, since this would help him reduce the swelling in his knee.

He asked, “How long or how often should I do this.”

I said, “The more the better. You can stay in this position for hours without any ill effects.”

The next day he said that his knee felt so much better. When I asked him if he spent time with his legs up a wall, he said he had spent a total of 4 hours with his legs up the wall. Swelling had reduced considerably and pain had diminished.

Surprised, I asked how was able to spend so many hours with his legs up the wall.

He said, “I found that I could put my laptop on my stomach and I got a lot of work done in that position.”

He arrived for the third session without crutches and continued to heal his knee rapidly.

Obviously, this student had a lot of commitment to self-healing. But what important activities in your life don’t require commitment? The same drive that helped this man become a successful businessman, also helped him heal his knee.

3 > Practice Deep Relaxation

Wondering where you will get the time to practice all of these techniques? You can practice Deep Relaxation while you have your legs up the wall.

To the extent that you can relax, you will not feel pain, and healing progresses.

If you have the equipment and know how, you can record a relaxation technique in your own voice to play when you want to practice relaxation. If you do not have the ability to record your own relaxation CD, you might consider getting my Deep Relaxation CD. (Soon available to order online. Currently only from me in San Miguel.)

For those of you who have no knee or leg problems but who want to practice relaxation, you will still receive extra benefit if you practice with your legs elevated up a wall.

4 > Practice visualization and affirmations.

This also can be practiced while your legs are up the wall after you have gotten deeply relaxed.

See how you are saving more time as you do these practices at the same time?

When you are more relaxed, the critical conscious mind is not as active and it is much easier to penetrate the subconscious mind. Then the subconscious mind will come back to influence the conscious mind in a very positive way.

The best times to practice Affirmations and Visualizations are

• when you have relaxed yourself,
• near the end of a meditation session,
• just as you awaken in the morning, and
• just before you drift off to sleep at night.

There is an old metaphysical saying,

Quit seeing what you don’t want and start seeing what you do want.

Visualize your knee healthy and perfect.

See the knee joint opening up, the space between the bones increasing.

Visualize yourself pain free and happily walking, dancing, playing.

Recognize a great healing energy within you.

Visualize yourself removing any blocks to that healing energy.

See yourself getting in tune with that energy, cooperating with it, and enjoying the healing.

Practice affirmations like

Day by day, in every way, I getting better and better

I am happy, I am healthy, I am strong

To really understand the Techniques and Power of Affirmations get this  Great Healing Book by Paramahansa Yogananda called Scientific Healing Affirmations: Theory and Practice of Concentration. This little booklet is the most complete comment on healing that I know of.

5 > Use your knee joint in ways that increase activity and movement without aggravating the condition.

If walking causes you pain, greatly limit. Be careful not to move suddenly or with a jerk, which will aggravate the knee joint. This is why healing often does not come when indulging in sports or activities which require sudden, twisting, or forceful movements.

Substitute activities which are not weight bearing, and which do not aggravate the joint, like swimming and the Non-Standing Yoga Asanas. There are so many Hatha Yoga Asanas that you could do enough non-weight-bearing-on-the-knee poses to fill several hours of practice.

At the beginning of my EASY YOGA for Home, Office, & Studio DVD, I take you through some very simple, easy-on-the-knees, passive techniques while you are sitting in a chair. These simple exercises  are designed to improve range of motion and circulation without stressing your joint or aggravating the condition.

See the free Knee Healing Video post.

Be Creative

Discover movements that will give motion to your knee without causing pain. The more you move your knee joint without pain, the faster the healing.

If you find that putting weight on your knee is not painful, then you may find that you can easily do the Triangle and other Standing Yoga Asanas (postures).

6 > Practice This Technique to Open the Knee Joint

1. Get down on the floor on hands and knees. If your knee is sensitive to weight in this position, put extra padding under the knee.
2. Take your hands and body forward so that the back of your knee opens up. Point your toes back.
3. Place a pillow or rolled towel behind your knee joint. The tighter or more painful your knee feels, the larger the pillow needed.
4. Sit back on the cushion, which now works as a wedge to open up the knee joint. If your ankles are very tight and uncomfortable, place a pillow under the ankles.
5. As always, move slowly into position and stop before you feel pain.
6. Stay in this position as long as it feels good to you.

My HEAL YOUR BACK NOW! DVD will take you to another deeper level of relaxation and teach you how to move to lessen pain and accelerate healing, and how to develop the proper attitude for doing the regular Hatha Yoga Asanas.

7 > Adopt an Anti-inflammatory Diet

I have recommended a healthy, low fat, vegetarian diet in a previous post. This is not a vegan diet because it includes milk, cheese,  and eggs as recommended by Paramahansa Yogananda, and other highly advanced yogis. Yogananda also recommends up to one tablespoonful of Olive Oil a day to keep the joints well lubricated.

Since dairy and eggs are contrary to the advice of many popular doctors who say that no animal foods should be consumed, you might want to study this some and then make up your own mind. (See the post, Peter Berquist on Raw, Low-Fat Vegan Diet, on this site.)

In any case the Yoga Diet, like the Anti-inflammatory Diet, is a plant-based diet consisting of mostly fresh, whole, raw fruits and vegetables with the addition of small amounts of nuts, seeds and whole grains.

This means NO refined, processed, packaged, canned, old, chemically preserved, colored, or altered foods.

No alcohol, meat, caffeine, cola/carbonated/soft drinks, drugs, or strongly salted or spiced foods. And

NO OVEREATiNG.

Understand we are not talking about whether or not you are a good or bad person based upon your eating habits. These are just guidelines to help you reduce inflammation and improve your health.

Now there is evidence from research at Ohio State University in an article published in Science Daily, “Yoga Reduces Cytokine Levels Known to Promote Inflammation, Study Shows”, that Yoga reduces inflammation.

8 > Use Fasting and Detox to Reduce Pain and Increase Flexibility

I have explained the value of Fasting and Detox in my article Improving Your Eliminations Will Improve Your Nutrition.

If this interests you, you might also like to try a yogic cleansing technique given in my article How Lemons and Limes Keep Your Healthy

You can fast on water or fruit juice. You can also take one fruit, such as watermelon, and just eat that for one day. Watermelon will flush the kidneys and remove toxins.

I have always enjoyed how much more flexibility I had and how much easier the Hatha Yoga Asanas were for me when I have been on a fast.

Remember, the Yoga Asanas work scientifically to remove toxins by compression, extension, and inversion.

9 > Reduce Excess Weight

Obviously, if you put excess weight on a sore joint, it will feel worse, and if you reduce the weight on a painful joint, it should feel better. In fact, this is so obvious that you might wonder why it was not listed first.

Or you might be saying to me right now, “I wish it was that easy. Of all the advice you have just given this would probably be the most difficult for me to do. I have been trying to get my weight down for several years now with no success. Now that I have a bad knee and can’t even walk, much less run, how am I going to lose weight?’

Here is the good news:

If you do everything else that is listed above, you don’t have to worry about how to lose weight, your weight will normalize naturally.

10 > Keep Connected to This Website

You can use this site as a resource to help you to heal yourself.

Many of the points that you will be working with to heal your knee will be further explained in other articles. Even the healing of a condition that you are not dealing with can be beneficial because there are principles that apply to all healing.

In the stories of others who have healed themselves you will find inspiration and guidance for your own healing.

Then, hopefully, one day you will share the story of your own healing to help others to heal themselves.

Namaste’

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

Q. What can I do about fatigue? It seems that no matter how little I exert myself, nor how much more I rest, I still feel tired. My doctor says I have no medical problems.

It sounds like you might be going in the wrong direction: resting too much and exerting yourself too little.

One of the Biggest Causes of Fatigue Is Lack of Circulation Due to Too Little Activity.

I know that there is a very common tendency to try to rest more when you don’t feel like you have a lot of energy. But if your tiredness is due to poor circulation, you can actually make yourself feel more tired by resting. These conditions can be compounded in modern living where long sedentary periods seated before a TV or computer, or in an automobile during morning and afternoon work commutes, tend to inhibit the natural tendencies of regular physical activity.

Assuming that your doctor is right and that you have no medical problem that is causing your tiredness, consider these other possibilities.

How Overeating Saps Your Energy

Sometimes in an effort to get more energy from food, you may unwittingly develop the habit of overeating. Remember, even healthy food becomes a dross to the body when taken to excess. Overeating puts a tremendous load on the digestive system and causes an imbalance of energy since so much energy is diverted to the digestive organs. This can create such a drain on the other parts of the body that you can feel very tired as your body attempts to deal with the overload of food.

Notice how you feel groggy after a big meal?

Worse yet is the coronary attack that follows when the energy needed for the heart is pulled away to deal with a heavy, hard-to-digest meal.

Too Much Rest Will Slow You Down

Yoga Science teaches that too much sleep makes you lethargic. One reason for this is that lying motionless for a long time causes a decrease in the elimination of waste material due to lessened circulation. That is a reason why the longer you sleep, or lie around, the less flexible you are upon awakening.

Oxygen intake is cut down due to slow, shallow breathing.

Get Your Energy Flowing

To improve this situation, the first thing that most Yogis do in the morning, besides meditating, are techniques to get rid of waste material and to increase circulation, oxygen, and flexibility. In other words, they prepare their bodies to behave like open conduits for the free, unobstructed flow of energy.

Improve Your Flexibility

If you lack flexibility, it is difficult for energy to flow easily. Because stiffness limits the range of motion of your body, circulation decreases. which increases your stiffness, which further slows your circulation, and on and on in vicious downward cycle. As your circulation slows so does the ability of your body to eliminate toxins, which in turn slows the free flow of nutrients to the cells. When toxins are not completely eliminated, deposits form in your joints, organs, glands, and blood vessels, and your flexibility diminishes.

How Hatha Yoga Asanas Will Help You

To combat this problem the yogis discovered Hatha Yoga, a unique system of Asanas (Postures or Poses) designed to improve circulation, energy flow, flexibility, and eliminations.

What makes Hatha Yoga such an efficient system is that all these benefits come about without the production of a large amount of waste byproduct, as happens in most other forms of exercise. If this waste material is not eliminated, your muscles will feel sore later.

When you do exercises of such a nature or in such a way that your muscles ache the next day, you will find it difficult to improve flexibility. In fact, many runners find that the more they run, the stiffer they become.

On the other hand, when you practice Hatha Yoga correctly, you will find a steady improvement in flexibility, eliminations, circulation, energy, and strength, with a minimum amount of effort, regardless of your age or present condition.

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

I very much would like to hear from those of you whose success with Yoga might inspire others.

Q. You recommend fasting as a way to rest the digestive system, eliminate toxins, and improve health. If I don’t eat at night, I have trouble sleeping. Wouldn’t it be wrong for me to fast?

That depends on how you prepare yourself. Can you mentally accept the idea that you don’t need three or four meals every day to be healthy? If you can believe that fasting will improve your health, then retrain yourself to gradually break your dependence upon food to help you sleep.

Because the digeestive system slows down considerably when you sleep, food that is eaten before bedtime tends to ferment instead of digest. This can result in catarrh of the alimentary canal.

Furthermore, because energy is pulled from the brain to digest the food, your sleep might become restless. You may fail to experience truly peaceful sleep, even though you may not be aware of or remember this on the conscious level.

How You Can Break the Habit of Drugging Yourself with Food

You can break this habit the same way you would break a dependency on sleeping pills. Cut down on the amount until you can do without it. One of the uses of food that few people are aware of is food’s use as a drug.

What else can food be but a drug when it is used beyond its need to nourish the body?

Even the best food becomes a poison to the body, when it is taken to excess.

While you may easily accept the psychologists’ idea that many overweight people drug themselves with excess food in order to compensate for feelings of inferiority, can you also realize that when you are used to eating an excess that stretches and overloads your stomach to bring on drowsiness so that you slip into an afternoon siesta, that you are doing the same thing: Drugging Yourself?

Use Deep Breathing to Help You Sleep Better

If you have trouble relaxing or falling asleep, you would be far better off doing some slow, deep breathing exercises to relax yourself, than overloading your stomach to bring on drowsiness. In addition to relaxing you, the slow, deep breathing exercises will cleanse the lungs, bloodstream, and cells of carbon dioxide, make more room for oxygen in the bloodstream and cells, and recharge the cells with energy. In short, instead of drugging yourself, you will be rejuvenating yourself.

Q. You have talked about diet, fasting, and exercise for bettering your health. While I can understand that all of these are important, I feel that it would be too complicated for me to make all of these changes at once. If I were to start with just one thing, what would you recommend as the most important that I work on first?

ATTITUDE. If you will concentrate upon improving your attitude, than all else will follow. Conversely, if your attitude is not good, then there is little chance of anything else succeeding for any length of time.

Let go of the idea that you can’t help what you are or how you think. At any time you always have a choice.

Choose to think those thoughts and entertain those ideas that will take you to better health and happiness.

Choose to think positive, constructive thoughts that will make a better future for yourself and for all concerned.

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

I very much would like to hear from those of you whose success with Yoga might inspire others.

Q. You said you would give us a simple diet to follow, but this almost seems too simple. Do you mean that if I make my diet raw fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, cheese, milk, eggs, beans and peas, I can relax knowing that I have perfect nutrition?

The Difference Between Diet & Nutrition

No. Sorry, but diet and nutrition are not necessarily the same thing. Diet is what you eat. Nutrition is a result of what happens to what you eat. This is one of the least understood aspects of health.

The Role of Exercise in Nutrition

While it is important that you begin with good food, it may be of far greater importance how you digest and assimilate this food. You can have an excellent diet supplemented with high potency vitamin formulas and still fail to properly nourish all the cells of your body, if your digestive system doesn’t extract the nutrients and the blood stream does not carry the nutrients to where they are needed. This is why exercise, and especially the Hatha Yoga Asanas (postures) are so important. When you practice the Hatha Yoga Asanas correctly, you will increase your digestive fire, improve your circulation,  and do a much better job of  eliminating waste materials.

Q. I’ve never cared much for exercise, even when I was younger and in much better shape. How can I make myself run,  or work hard in a fast-paced aerobics class?

You don’t have to. Be reasonable and enjoy what you are doing. The best way is to just start where you are and slowly increase the amount of exercise you do. For most people just walking one mile a every day would result in a tremendous improvement in their circulation, health, and feeling of well-being. If you find that it is difficult for you to walk one mile, then walk a half-mile or a quarter of a mile. And if even that is too much, then do one block. More important considerations are that you find an activity that is pleasant to you, within your capacity, and that you begin. One of the biggest causes of failure in exercise programs is that the person tries to force himself into an activity that is against his constitution.

One indication that you are doing the right exercise for you is that you will feel better for doing it. There is a saying in Yoga, “For a thing to be good, it must be good before, during, and after.”

If your exercise leaves you feeling stiff, exhausted, or sore, something is wrong. Either the activity is not right for you, or you are doing it too fast or too hard.

Q. What if I can’t find an activity that I enjoy?

Of course you can. Just be open to the idea of changing your attitude. Think Harmony. Remember, your natural state is activity. You were created with a system that requires activity to be healthy. In order to be inactive, you must resist the natural laws of the universe. And that takes a whole lot more energy than it does to exercise.

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

I very much would like to hear from those of you whose success with Yoga might inspire others.

Do you frequently wish you could feel better?

Do you wish you had more energy? Are you tired of being tired?

Do you wonder if you will ever win the battle to control your weight? Alcohol? Cigarettes? Drugs? Prescription as well as recreational.

Would you like some simple, easy-to-follow plan of diet and nutrition?

Do you wonder if there is such a thing as vibrant health? An enjoyable exercise program? For someone your age?

Have you at times wondered if there were methods of tension-control that someone like yourself could learn?

Would you like to be free of backache, headache, neck ache, stiffness, muscle and joint pain? Do you long for a restful sleep?

Are you curious about meditation? Are you wondering if it is true that meditation can help you lower blood pressure and cholesterol, heal heart disease and cancer, improve your memory and intuition, expand your consciousness, and help you understand the meaning of life and the existence of God within? Do you need a Guru, or is meditation something you can learn on your own? Do you long for peace of mind?

Welcome to the Science of Yoga

My purpose of writing this blog is to share with you what I have learned about healing, improving, and maintaining health and well-being in over forty years as a student, teacher, and therapist of the Science of Yoga. Using these ideas will enable you to help yourself to better health and happier living. Here you will find workable health tools that will serve you regardless of your present condition or past training and experiences. Since these articles will be in a Question and Answer format, I will begin with a frequently asked question.

An Ideal, Easy-to-Follow Diet

Q. Some time ago I realized the importance of good nutrition for bettering my health and I began reading health books in an attempt to find the diet right for me. The more I read, the more confused I became. Even the experts don’t agree. Can you recommend some simple method for choosing my diet?

Have the better part of your diet consist of fresh, raw, fruits and vegetables with some lightly-steamed vegetables. These are the foods that put the least strain on your digestive system, leave the least toxins in your body, and have the greatest cleansing effect. Also, they are rich in minerals, vitamins, and enzymes. Additionally, they tend to have a more positive effect on your mind, causing neither agitation nor lethargy, as do some other foods. For all of these reasons, you would be better off choosing organic foods when available.

Using fruits and vegetables as the base, you would then add natural whole grains, and non-meat proteins, such as eggs, milk, cheese, nuts, seeds, beans, peas, and avocados. Meat is not recommended because, although it contains high quality protein, meat will leave many toxins in your body and may cause deposits to form in your arteries, joints, and muscles.

Q. You recommed a diet high in raw fruits and vegetables. If I eat more than just a small salad, I get excessive gas. Certain foods, like cabbage, I haven’t been able to eat in years. How can I possibly follow this diet?

Just do the best you can. If you have been used to eating mostly cooked vegetables, your stomach may have difficulty handling much raw vegetables. Try to increase the amount gradually. The food you eat must also be food that your body can handle. From among the most nutritious foods, select the best food for you. Then stick to that diet.

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Please feel free to ask questions and make comments below, which will require you to sign in with your name and email address in order to prevent spam comments. Your email will not be posted on this blog nor will it ever be sold or otherwise distributed without your permission. I dislike spam as much as you do…Norm

I very much would like to hear from those of you whose success with Yoga might inspire others.