Shards of Consciousness

In Podcast 55 - Meditation Breathing Exercises, I discussed two breathing exercises from yoga that are useful in improving your emotional and physical state and preparing for meditation, alternate nostril breathing and the skull shine breath. There is a third breathing exercise that falls into this category, the victorious breath.Read more

People blog for a lot of different reasons.
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Some days you just need to stay in. Vivekananda once wrote

The first sign that you are becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful. When a man is gloomy, that may be dyspepsia, but it is not religion....If you have a clouded face, do not go out that day, shut yourself up in your room. What right have you to carry this disease out into the world?

You are worth something.

Good message?

Poor message?

There is a program making its way across the country to give overdose kits to opiate users. Overdose kits. As in, if you find someone who has ODed, treat them immediately. Don't wait to get to a hospital. Don't leave it to the medical professionals. Treat them now. The drug is a nasal spray called naloxone which blocks the brain receptors that opiates lock onto, reversing the central nervous system and respiratory depression caused by an overdose. It instantly reverses the effect of the opiate. Naloxone is safe. It's been used for decades in emergency rooms. It's basically impossible to overdose on it. It isn't addictive. It has no long-term side effects. The most obvious short-term side effects are narcotic withdrawal symptoms.

Instead of death.

Naloxone in the emergency room has save thousands of lives. It's use in overdose kits by non-medical personnel has saved…Read more

Maybe our desks should have forty inch legs.

ABC News has published a report that research originally published in the medical journal Diabetes shows that one possible factor in the epidemic of increasing fat is sitting.

No, not lack of exercise. Just the sheer fact that we sit so much.

Recent research done by a team at the University of Missouri used rats, pigs, and humans. In one part of the research, fat tagged with radioactive dye was injected into the subjects. When they were sitting the fat went straight to adipose tissue rather than circulating through the bloodstream to be metabolized. Adipose tissue is a type of connective tissue around organs that holds fat. Fat buildup around organs is not a healthy thing.

In a second aspect of the research, the team looked at the activity of lipase, an enzyme that splits fat during the metabolic process. After several …Read more