Are you one of those people who suffer so much from blocked nose and sinus congestions that you wished you can just flush water down your nose to get rid of the blocked nose and sinus problems?

If you are one of them, open your doors to welcome the neti pot to your life. Yes, you can literally flush water down your nasal passage with a neti pot, and Voila! You have a clear nasal passage, your breath will be flowing in and out at its full capacity and you will finally get to know the inexplicable joys of  breathing. [Read more...]

You go to the doctor for a stiff and painful neck.

The doctor says, “This is an age related problem, the spinal joints at your neck have degenerated”.

Aging? You are barely 40! You look at him, hoping to hear that it can be reversed.

The doctor continues, “The bones are compressing your nerves, and that’s why you are having the pain”.

You wonder what that means… Is painkiller the only option or is there really a cure?

My interest in cervical spondylosis was sparked by N, my most senior Yoga student (by age). She has been suffering from chronic pain due to cervical spondylosis, and the only treatment prescribed to her was to be on painkillers.

N falls in the group with many others who have been told there’s no help except pain killers and no hope except surgery. Luckily being a nurse before,  N knows that she cannot suppress the symptom and mask it with painkillers. Being very comfortable with Yoga, she started doing Yoga poses that helped ease her pain naturally.
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I was one of those girls in high school, who never really paid much attention during Breast Cancer awareness talks given by visiting nurses. The habit pursued me till late, I never used do a routine monthly self examination, breast cancer was not something I paid attention to in my life, there were always other more important things to do.

Last September, when I was asked to work with a very respectable elderly social worker to spread breast cancer awareness among the rural women at a small town, it was something I took up mechanically as another task.  

During this time, we started having informal chats on her experiences with breast cancer patients. Most of her life she worked very closely with a very popular breast cancer specialist, and all that she had to share was coming from her own encounter with the patients, their families, their struggles and their journeys. Her stories moved me. 

One particular story stuck to my head. It was about a woman who lived for the next 12 years after being diagnosed with breast cancer.  Though she never really got rid of her cancer, at her death bed she died a happy and content person because she had made the right life style choices that gave her enough time to shape her children’s future, see them through college and become independent. A question struck me at that point, if I can make the right lifestyle choices from now, won’t I be able to avoid breast cancer totally?
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