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When we say ‘yoga’, for many of you it might mean some impossible physical postures. Yoga means to be in perfect tune. When you are in yoga, your body, mind and spirit, and existence, are in absolute harmony.
When you fine-tune yourself to a point where everything functions beautifully within you, the best of your abilities will just flow out of you. When you are happy, your energies function better. Have you noticed that when you are happy you have endless energy?
Even if you don’t eat or sleep, you can go on and on. So, just a little happiness liberates you from your normal limitations of energy and capability.
Yoga is the science of activating your inner energies in such a way that your body, mind and emotions function at their highest peak. When your body and mind function in a completely different state of relaxation and a certain level of blissfulness, you can be released from so much suffering.
Right now, you come and sit in your office, and you have a nagging headache. Your headache is not a major disease, but it takes away your capability for the day. With the practice of yoga, your body and mind will be at their highest possible peak.
There are other dimensions to yoga. When you activate your energies, you can function in a different way. As you are sitting here right now, you consider yourself to be a person. You are identified with many things, but what you call ‘myself’ is actually just a certain amount of energy.
Modern science says that the whole of existence is energy manifesting itself in different ways. If this is so, then you are also a little bit of energy functioning in a particular way.
As far as science is concerned, this same energy which you call ‘myself’ can be a rock, mud, tree, dog, or you. Everything is the same energy, functioning at different levels of capability.
Similarly, among human beings, though we are all made of the same energy, we still do not function at the same level of capability. What you call capability or talent, your creativity, is a certain way your energy functions. This energy, in one plant it functions to create roses, in another it functions to create jasmine, but it is the same energy manifesting itself. If you gain some mastery over your own energies, things that you never imagined possible you will do simply and naturally.
This is the experience of people who have started doing these yogic practices. It is the inner technology of creating situations the way you want them. With the same materials that we build huge buildings today, people used to build little huts. We thought we could only dig mud and make pots or bricks. Now we dig the same earth and make computers, cars, and even spacecrafts.
It is the same energy; we have just started using it for higher possibilities. Our inner energies are like that. There is a technology as to how to use this energy for higher possibilities.
Every human being must explore and know this. Otherwise, life becomes limited and accidental. Once you activate your inner energies, your capabilities happen in a different sphere altogether. Yoga is a tool to find ultimate expression to life.
There is a place for complementary therapies such as herbal remedies and acupuncture in Australia’s hospitals, an academic says.
Professor Marc Cohen says the therapies should be part of the drive to make the nation’s hospitals more efficient, and it would also address an often overlooked area of risk to patient health.
Studies show up to 60 per cent of Australians routinely take “natural supplements” and, Prof Cohen said, many continued to do so in hospital without telling their medical carers.
“They take it in their little bag with the pyjamas … they are taking fish oil or multi-vitamins,” Prof Cohen told AAP.
“It’s not recorded on their hospital chart, or administered by the nursing staff, and if there was herb or drug nutrient interaction no one is recording that.
“It’s an unsupervised practice that is potentially dangerous, and those barriers need to be broken down.”
Prof Cohen, who is Professor of Complementary Medicine at RMIT University, pointed to a Victorian study which found 40 per cent of patients undergoing cardiac surgery were also taking undisclosed supplements.
Taking St Johns Wort as a natural treatment for depression was known to skew a person’s necessary dosage of heart medication, he said, naming just one example of a negative interaction.
It was not just about taking better account of a patient’s supplement use, Prof Cohen said, as where complementary therapies were shown to work they should be introduced to the regime of treatment options in hospitals.
Prof Cohen is overseeing a trial in two Victorian hospitals, in which people arriving at the emergency department with back pain, migraine or injuries like a sprained ankle are offered acupuncture for pain relief.
Early results of this study showed the ancient Chinese practice could be as effective as drug-based pain relief though the research will take another three years to complete.
“We have some examples where the patient has averted being given an opiate (pain-killing drug) by being given acupuncture, and can leave within half an hour,” Prof Cohen said.
“We know some complementary therapies are very effective in chronic conditions, often they are very safe and their costs are far lower than pharmaceuticals.”
Hospitals could also offer massage, meditation, yoga and even hypnosis, said Prof Cohen, and more research into the effectiveness of different complementary therapies was needed.
He will present a paper on the issue at the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine annual scientific meeting in Melbourne on Tuesday (November 17).
CONSCIOUS VENTURES 