Sumangali.org: In The Spirit Of Serendipity

MOZART IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

Mozart’s music lowers stress, heightens intelligence and relieves heart disease. It could even improve your eyesight, and doctors may soon prescribe it for epilepsy. According to Roger Dobson in The Independent, Mozart is a Medical Maestro:

“Mozart soothes the beating heart. A study at Oberwalliser Hospital in Switzerland on the effects of music on heart-rate variability in 23 adolescents showed that listening to music may be helpful in heart disease. The study showed that listening to Mozart or Bach resulted in reductions of heart rate and variability.” [source]

It seems the benefits are not only available to connoisseurs of classical music, indeed it’s not even necessary to be conscious of the music for it to work its magic. Proof comes from the Agricultural University of Athens where scientists played Eine Kleine Nachtmusik to carp for 30 minutes at a time. The fish grew more and showed fewer signs of stress.

You might not recognise the second portrait above, as it was only unearthed last week. It’s deemed the most important painting of the great composer, considered more accurate than the most well known (first above), painted 18 years after his death. [source: The Telegraph].

BILINGUALISM IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

Separation between countries in Europe is becoming increasingly passé. That has to be a good thing in itself, but it also means bilingualism is on the increase, maybe even for us reluctant Brits. Why is that so healthy?

“Researchers found that bilingual people are far better at retaining their mental abilities into old age than the majority, who speak only one language, in fact that they were less prone to problems such as Alzheimer’s disease in later life.” [source: Agence Bretagne Presse]

According to Omniglot.com, we use different facial muscles, not just when speaking different languages, but when using different accents. So, all us Brits reluctant to learn a language can practise our Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and English accents and we’ll at least give our faces a good workout, even if we lose our marbles earlier than anyone else in Europe.

CHOCOLATE IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

Yes, yes, I know, lots of fat and sugar and calories and often very garish packaging, but bear with me. We don’t want too many of those nasty free radicals radicalling around so freely do we? What we need is antioxidants then, just as your mother always told you:

“Eating dark chocolate could help control diabetes and blood pressure, Italian experts say.

Researchers found eating 100g of dark chocolate each day for 15 days lowered blood pressure in the 15 person-study.

The University of L’Aquila team also found the body’s ability to metabolise sugar - a problem for people with diabetes - was improved.

But eating the same quantities of white chocolate did not have an effect, the researchers said.

The team said an antioxidant called flavanol was responsible for the effect because it neutralised potentially cell-damaging substances known as oxygen free radicals, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported.” [source: BBC]

A lot of disclaimers follow in the article above, so of course we must read them and take them very seriously before consuming large quantities, or at least consult a good chocolatier. Don’t consult your doctor, they’ve got enough to do.

Montezuma’s organic is my latest favourite chocolate in the world, especially their Emperor Chilli bar (pictured). If you haven’t tried chilli chocolate, (and especially if you have), you might want to get some (more) at Montezuma’s. No garish packaging there, and it’s good for you. Chillies are full of vitamins A and C, they stimulate the heart, kidneys and nervous system. Don’t get me started… [source: BBC]

(Did I tell you the one about the diamond burglar armed only with a box of chocolates? Chocolate is not only good for your health, but can be good for your bank balance. Don’t try this at home. No, really.)

BLOGGING IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

According to blogging scientists at Eide Neurolearning, it’s official: blogging is healthy. That’s very good news for all you lovely people on the left who have visited here recently (forgive me for not adding links to you all). Let me return the favour by telling you why blogging is so good for you. The Eides say:

1. Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking.
2. Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking.
3. Blogs promote analogical thinking.
4. Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information.
5. Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction.

Maybe we shouldn’t spend all day at our desks though, according to The Independent:

“Scientists have claimed that it’s as risky as smoking, increases obesity, and that it could lead to deep vein thrombosis if you do it for too long. Yet 59 per cent of us do it every day at work. Sitting at a desk, it seems, can be hazardous to your health.”

So what’s the answer to maintaining physical well-being while keeping our brains healthy with blogging? Get out more? Not necessarily, you could take up Deskercise: steppers, Swiss balls and neck stretches. Yikes. Find out more here, it’s a very good article.

GIVING IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

The BBC released an article yesterday about the proven health benefits of giving to others, based on some recent Canadian research, in: Charity Makes You Feel Better. Giving to others makes you happier, and therefore healthier. It could even save your life:

“Those who spent the cash on others reported feeling happier at the end of the day than those who spent the money on themselves, no matter how much they had been given.

Dr Dunn said: ‘This study provides initial evidence that how people spend their money may be as important for their happiness as how much money they earn.’

‘And spending money on others might represent a more effective route to happiness than spending money on oneself.’

Dr George Fieldman, a psychologist at Buckinghamshire New University, said: ‘Giving to charity partly makes you feel better because you’re in a group. You are also perceived as being an altruist.’

‘On an individual level, if I give to you, you are less likely to attack me and more likely to be nice to me.’”

…and not just giving, but forgiving is especially wholesome:

“In one study, people who focused on a personal grudge had elevated blood pressure and heart rates, as well as increased muscle tension and feelings of being less in control. When asked to imagine forgiving the person who had hurt them, the participants said they felt more positive and relaxed and thus, the changes dissipated.” [source: Science Daily]

• While we’re on the subject, a very nice article also came out yesterday at Sri Chinmoy Inspiration: Harnessing the Power of Self-Giving
• Image: A favourite photo by Sharani Robins, who wrote a great post recently called Kindness and the Unexpected

SALT IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

Well, not all salt. According to a recent article in The Independent, if you put a sea fish into a table salt solution it will die. The sodium chloride most of us keep in a shaker on the dining table strains the heart and chivvies the blood-pressure, so too much of it will send us the same way. Unrefined rock salt, however, contains more than 84 different minerals.

“‘These mineral salts are identical to the elements of which our bodies have been built and were originally found in the primal ocean from where life originated,’ argues Dr Barbara Hendel, researcher and co-author of Water & Salt, The Essence of Life….

Without mineral salts, says Dr Hendel, there would be no movement, memory or thought and your heart wouldn’t beat….

Mineral salts, she says, are healthy because they give your body the variety of mineral ions needed to balance its functions, remain healthy and heal. These healing properties have long been recognised in central Europe. At Wieliczka in Poland, a hospital has been carved in a salt mountain. Asthmatics and patients with lung disease and allergies find that breathing air in the saline underground chambers helps improve symptoms in 90 per cent of cases. ” [source]

You can find out more about Himalayan rock salt at Indus Salz. They even make it into table lamps. Wizard! Must have.

INDIGO IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

According to the ancient code of Feng Shui, different colours affect us very differently, and indigo is noted for its healing properties. So are green and blue.

“Yellow is a happy color that promotes creativity and vitality. Use it in a kitchen or office. Green is a healing and calming color. It is great for living rooms or bedrooms. It renews and keeps us in balance. Blue is also a healing color as well as a mentally relaxing color. Add blue to a room when someone is sick. Blue will keep the room’s occupants calm. Indigo is not only relaxing but is also to keep good health in your home.” [source: Essortment.com]

Colour therapy is a well-established art. Everything you ever wanted to know about the science of colours can be found at ColourTherapyHealing.com, where we find that indigo is calming and good for studying. It also helps heighten intuition.

But what of the spiritual significance of colours? Kedar Misani has recently completed a beautiful and informative series of videos on the subject. It’s based on spiritual master Sri Chinmoy’s book Colour Kingdom, where indigo is found to signify unity. That seems to be a good note to end on; if bilingualism and self-giving are good for the health, then unity certainly must be. You can enjoy the videos and find out more at Sri Chinmoy TV.

By far my greatest fear when I was younger was one of deep water. I suppose as fears go that’s quite a rational one. It was perpetuated by Jaws—a movie surely unavoidable by anyone alive in the late 1970s. At the time, Jaws served as confirmation that fear of the sea was absolutely justified and almost constituted common sense. Those who ventured beyond the shallow end of a pool I crowned in my mind as heroes, and as veritable demigods those who would dive head first from a board. Those who would wade out far enough to lose their footing in the ocean however, I labeled as reckless dolts who did not properly value the life they had been given.

When harboured and reinforced for twenty years, even the most rational fear can reach irrational proportions and formidable strength. It seemed God had to carefully engineer an opportunity for its final dismantling, starting with a phone call from a friend—out of the blue so to speak. My friend had planned and paid for a scuba diving holiday in the Caribbean with a partner who had since gone off in a huff about something, so would I go instead? Many excuses came to mind, but you can imagine that none of them would be very convincing faced with such an offer. I accepted, viewing it gravely as a service, and nervously hoping more specific and robust excuses would present themselves when faced with the ocean itself.

It was with much trepidation and considerable self-transcendence that I completed my training and gained my diving license, graduating from the shallow end to the deep end of a pool somewhere in Alabama, then to the murkier regions of a former quarry. I would use up my air in half the time of my peers due to my anxiety, but by that time I had resolved to face The Deep once and for all, and I would not be deterred by any amount of cajoling.

I had to be pushed off the boat on my first adventure in the open sea. With all that outer paraphernalia and inner baggage, the physical and mental strength to do it myself had to be developed over time. I was enraptured though, from the very first moment. The harsh sun, the growl and fumes of the boat engine, the nauseous movement of the waves, the weight of the equipment, were all replaced by purity and gentleness on the other side of the ocean’s skin. Fear turned to awe as I entered a world where I did not belong, but which had ample room to house me. How humbling to be at the mercy of such a body of vastness, floating in a medium of which the human body is largely composed, but which alone would not sustain it for more than a few seconds. Up to then such tranquility was unknown to me, but seemed a perfect natural state. My breathing became slower even than it was on land, and I used less air then even than my peers.

There was no sound then except that breath: the husky drawing in, and the chink of exhalation, releasing plumes of amorphous bubbles. Colours were completely new; their hue and luminosity changed constantly, with a freedom alien to the flat shades known to land. Freedom of movement in all directions was also new and brought boundless fun, though my own mammalian efforts took me nowhere in comparison to the sleek agility of sea creatures. Stillness was a favourite practice, controlling the posture and breath to hover inches from the seabed. Movement without effort was the crowning joy, drifting with the tide over coral gardens, tiny fish hovering and darting, as would bees over blooms.

The creatures seemed to look on us as bumbling enigmas. They showed no irritation by our presence, neither fear, as they knew any lazy flinch of theirs would easily outsmart us. Some were notoriously intelligent, and many seemed positively hospitable, even taking time from apparently busy schedules to play games. The beauty, power, and harmony of that vast and strange environment have etched themselves on my mind and heart. I can still see a flock of eagle rays emerging into view, their massive wings forming slow, graceful arcs suspended in a saline cathedral. I can still catch the cheeky glance of grouper snatching chunks of raw fish from my pocket. I can still feel the specific majesty of depths beyond 100ft. I’d have imagined the form of a shark in those depths would have caused me to expire from sheer fright a few weeks before. In reality its beauty disarmed me, and I saw only the grace and efficiency of movement. The perfection of that creation brought tears to my eyes. In The Deep, to my surprise, I seemed to meet the Creator in myriad beguiling guises.

I have visited other oceans since, but I no longer hanker for sub-aquatic charms. Perhaps it is the growing sense that such peace and beauty are in-built, requiring only the key of meditation for their discovery. An ever-deepening Deep seems accessible without need of a license or expensive airfares, without the use of weights, wetsuits, and cumbersome canisters, and without the job of conquering fear.

Image: Prashphutita Greco at Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries

It was an ordinary day in Ningbo, China, but an extraordinary miracle took place in a muddy 5-metre ditch.

Was it really a miracle, or simply the wise employment of a meditation technique? Maybe a combination of the two.

The Times reports:

“Wang Jianxin was working at a construction site in the booming city. The job that day for the 52-year-old worker was to dig a five-metre ditch…

“Without warning, a wall of the ditch collapsed, burying Mr Wang under a huge pile of earth. Like most construction workers in China, he had little in the way of protective equipment except for his tough plastic safety helmet. It was to be enough to save his life.” [original article]

The peak of his hat trapped a small amount of air in front of his face, which doctors said would usually have been enough to keep someone alive for five minutes. It was two hours before he was rescued. Mr Wang survived by practising Buddhist meditation techniques to stay calm, and minimise his use of oxygen.

There are countless legends from India of yogis, (obviously very advanced in their meditation practice) allowing themselves to be buried alive, and surviving for weeks or even years. I’m not about to discuss the verity of such stories, (let alone their questionable spiritual worth), but if a construction worker can survive for 2 hours on 5 minutes’ worth of oxygen, who’s to say those legends aren’t true? Just when you think you know what’s possible in this world, and what’s not…

“Be not afraid of the impossible.
Be brave!
God is always ready to help you
Conquer the impossible.”
—Sri Chinmoy
Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees #19030

• Image: Kedar Misani at Sri Chinmoy Centre Gallery
• You too can learn to meditate here

Continuing the theme of selfless insects…

My mother told me the other day (after watching BBC Springwatch) that if there were suddenly no bees, humans would survive only another 4-6 years.

Yes.

…

It certainly took me a while to recover from that small but gobsmacking addition to my knowledge. How come I never knew that?

What amazed me even more than the fact itself (I can’t find anything in print to support it, but as it came from Auntie Beeb via my Mum there’s a good chance it’s a fact), is that it must have been a fact from the dawn of our species… or any species… anywhere in the world.

This makes the news that bees are struggling to survive all the more alarming. I read an article recently in Celsias about Colony Collapse Disorder, and again in Science Daily.

I’m not about to dwell on the magnitude of these findings (or if I do, I’ll do it on my own time, not yours, and not in this serendipitous blog). Instead I’d rather dwell on that amazing fact: the humble bee continues to save our lives.

A prayer for their well-being (ergo yours and mine) would then perhaps be a more positive approach than alarm. In a small, incomplete, oblique way, this forms a response to Jennifer’s tag at Goodness Graciousness. She postulates: “To heal our world we need a new vision of what is possible.” So in at least partial response, I’m imagining healthy, happy bees (ergo healthy, happy everyone and everything).

Albert Einstein is reported to have said, “The single most important decision any of us will ever have to make is whether or not to believe that the universe is friendly.” Is that not lovely, and true?

Is the Universe friendly? A loaded question perhaps. How can it not be if we owe our survival to these fuzzy little chaps, saving the human race while busying themselves, — for their own good, due to some inherent incomprehensible selflessness, or just for friendliness?

Every day I watch them with fondness, during this, their busiest time of year, pollen trousers weighing them down yet more than their own fur and chubbiness. Now I watch them with nothing short of reverence. I have always loved them, at least ever since Winnie The Pooh, (who has always been, so that’s forever to me). Now I love them more.

More proof that bees (specifically bumblebees) are very special, is that their natural aerodynamics have stumped human engineers.

“The mystery of natural flight has endured for centuries and captured such great minds as Leonardo DaVinci, who designed several “ornithopters,” flying machines that copied birds. Early in the 20th century, engineers came to the conclusion that bumblebees “can’t” fly—at least they shouldn’t be able to, given their ratio of body weight to wingspan. The pronouncement sparked an enduring scientific “urban legend”; there’s even a self-help book out there called Bumblebees Can’t Fly, intended to inspire people to transcend their perceived limitations.”
— Beth Saulnier, from The Truth about Bumblebees and other insects

I really don’t want to know how they do it; the mystery is surely more inspiring than a formula could ever be. On that note, here’s food for thought from my meditation teacher:

“Each thought is a prayer.
Each prayer is a satisfaction.
Each satisfaction
Is God in preparation
For His own Self-transcendence.”
—Sri Chinmoy, from Transcendence-Perfection

Image: Science Daily

A story just caught my eye at Good News Network, in the Inspired! column. A Portuguese man made a will, aged 29. Seems like the sort of sensible grown-up thing one should do at that age. He had no family, but his sense of duty wasn’t about to be dampened so easily; he picked out 70 names at random from the phone book.

Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara still had nobody to carry on his name when he died (although such a name deserves to be carried, and very carefully so). His estate—2 houses, a car, and few thousand in cash—thus went to complete strangers at around £6000 apiece.

This reminded me of a site to which a friend recently drew my attention, called Random Acts of Kindness. I particularly like their quotes section, where I found these two. I think as a pair they are particularly warming, as they display commonality between religions:

“Help your brother’s boat across, and your own will reach the shore.”
—Hindu Proverb

and…

“If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path.”
—Buddhist saying

Image: Pavitrata Taylor

You can read more of Sri Chinmoy’s inspirational quotes, like the one pictured, at SriChinmoyLibrary.com