It is reported (Huffington Post) that Steve Jobs only downloaded ONE book to his iPad and that he read this book once a year since he first read it as a teenager. That book was: Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.

Amazon states: This acclaimed autobiography presents a fascinating portrait of one of the great spiritual figures of our time. With engaging candor, eloquence, and wit, Paramahansa Yogananda tells the inspiring chronicle of his life: the experiences of his remarkable childhood, encounter with many saints and sages during his youthful search throughout India for an illumined teacher, ten years of training in the hermitage of a revered yoga master, and the thirty years that he lived and taught in America. Also recorded here are his meetings with Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Luther Burbank, the Catholic stigmatist Therese Neumann, and other celebrated spiritual personalities of East and West. The author clearly explains the subtle but definite laws behind both the ordinary events of everyday life and the extraordinary events commonly termed miracles.

This also reminds me of Gandhi’s love of the Bhagavad Gita as a source of inspiration.

Tell others on this blog about a book that you have returned to time and time again.

Here are copies of both books for those looking for inspiration and insight into the richness of life. A richness that at first might seem crazy and impossible, but on continued inspection turns out to be even crazier yet also possible.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7452
http://uploads.worldlibrary.net/uploads/pdf/20121025235638bhagavad_gita_pdf.pdf

To listen to it: Autobiography of a Yogi

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Here are 2 great slideshows I found that outline how important the concept of neuroplasticity is for well-being. It delves into several areas for those familiar with positive psychology. The real added value for me was understanding the impact of food on the equation.

[slideshare id=17228288&doc=15-neuroplasticity-130315074538-phpapp02]

http://www.slideshare.net/duttamonasen/6b-phytochemicals

[slideshare id=17746329&doc=6b-phytochemicals-130327020724-phpapp02]

Jack Schwarz’s book “Voluntary Controls” gives some fantastic and alternative insights into the power of the mind as well as exercises on how to develop this power.

Here is some specific info on breathing.

Jack Schwarz’s book – Voluntary Controls

Who is Jack Schwarz? – Focus on Possbilities

Proper breathing will help to assure your spiritual devel­opment. You will have at your disposal your full intuitive and energetic capacities, and your body will be fully expressing this undiluted, unadulterated mental energy. Among the re­search projects in which I have participated, some concen­trated on the self-regulation of physiological processes through controlled breathing. We found that the respiratory rate has a tremendous influence on states of consciousness. As the sub­ject of these experiments, I had electrodes attached to my body to monitor changes in the electric patterns in my brain and in muscle tension and activity. We attempted to find out if cer­tain brain wave patterns correlated with specific breathing patterns. We noted whether the breaths were long or short and when most of the air was drawn into the upper lungs (thoracic breathing) or deep into the lower lungs (abdominal breathing). The results showed that when my brain waves were in the alpha state (usually experienced as a calm, relaxed state of mind), thoracic breathing was equal to abdominal breathing, both rather slow and steady. In the theta state (subjectively experi­enced as a deep, still, nonattached condition with some hypnogogic images), the upper lungs were filling with air only as a side effect of the action of abdominal breathing. Oddly enough, my diaphragm was exhibiting rapid rhythmic pat­terns of movement at this time. When instructing my classes in different breathing techniques, I have found that altering breathing patterns is very effective in creating alterations in consciousness. This is a voluntary method of amplifying in­ternal awareness as well as relaxing the body.

When we are not concentrating on our breathing, most of us are doing clavicular breathing. Movement is in the upper chest, in the region of the thorax where the clavicles are. This shallow type of breathing is very inadequate because it does not really fulfill our oxygen needs. The body cannot relax if it is constantly craving oxygen. In the meditative state, the energy level of the brain is not necessarily reduced, so oxygen is in as much demand as ever.

If we expand the area involved in breathing, deepen and broaden our intake using our nonexistent wings, this is inter­costal breathing. If we use the middle portion of the rib cage, the lungs can fill themselves a bit more fully. Both shallow and intercostal breathing, however, are characteristic of the beta brain wave state. Beta waves indicate a lack of concentrated energy; there is too much tension being produced by this limited breathing to receive and disperse the amount of oxygen inhaled.

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A more satisfactory pattern is dual breathing, which in­volves both the thorax and the diaphragm. By bringing the abdomen into play, we give the diaphragm more space to move downward during inhalation, allowing the lungs to fill themselves more fully. This begins to achieve our main ob­jective, which is to make full use of all our capacities—physi­cal, mental, and spiritual. When our lungs are thoroughly filled by each breath, even the most sensitive parts of our or­ganism will receive prompt delivery of the energy they require in order to operate at their greatest potential.

The breathing pattern that is most suitable for meditation is paradoxical breathing, which is mostly abdominal and slightly thoracic. When an individual breathing in this pat­tern is monitored for brain waves and muscle activity in the chest and abdomen, these two indicators become synchronized. The energy patterns relayed to the monitoring machines (the electroencephalograph and the electrocardiograph) by the electrodes on the head and body are aligned, harmonized. This type of breathing may be contrary to the way you think you should go about consciously increasing your intake. It is not enough to expand your chest, to fill the lungs fully. The diaphragm has to be allowed to expand fully as well, and this can only be done by expanding the abdomen to make room for the expanded diaphragm.

To begin paradoxical breathing, inhale deeply, and volun­tarily pull in your abdomen. When you exhale, push it out again. This movement is contrary to normal abdominal breath­ing, during which the abdomen appears to expand as the lower lungs fill with air. It takes conscious effort to reverse this nor­mal pattern and breathe paradoxically.

Next, begin a cycle of timed breaths. The first breath is characteristic of intercostal breathing, which dominates in the alpha state, with inhalation time equal to exhalation time. Mentally count the time for each     movement:

Breathe in:        1,         2,         3,         4,         5,         6,         7,         8

Hold in the breath:         1,         2,         3,         4

Exhale: 1,         2,         3,         4,         5,         6,         7,         8

As you concentrate, your inhalation will quicken, leading to this new pattern:

Inhale:  1,         2,         3,         4

Hold:    1,         2,         3,         4

Exhale: 1,         2,         3,         4,         5, 6, 7, 8

Then:

Inhale: 1, 2, 3, 4 Hold: 1, 2, 3, 4

Exhale: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,   10,       11,       12, 13, 14,        15,       16

The ability to extend the exhalation so much longer than the inhalation shows that the inhalation must be very deep. The more oxygen you are able to hold in after a quick intake, the slower and longer your exhalation can be. The final stage of timed breathing that must be accomplished and set as a pattern for meditation is:

Inhale: 1, 2, 3, 4 Hold: 1,2, 3, 4

Exhale: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,   10,       11,       12, 13, 14,        15,       16,

17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22,   23,       24,       25, 26, 27,        28,       29,

30, 31, 32

Once you have achieved this pattern and your body can exercise it comfortably, cease concentrating on it. You have regulated your breath, and it is time to move to the next stage of meditation. Even at this preparatory stage, the three-part cycle of bringing something that is unconscious to your aware­ness, regulating it voluntarily, and letting it go must be com­pleted. Trust that it will retain the new form you have given it. In other words, trust yourself.

The next set of exercises will focus on another quality of breath. Visualizations that use the image of inhalation and exhalation can make you aware of the subtler psychic func­tions of breath as an energy that nourishes and cleanses you. Use these images (or other visualizations that you have cre­ated) whenever you feel that the particular awareness they offer you is helpful to your meditation. Alone, they are effec­tive in producing a relaxed but energized state of being. Re­member that all the exercises and methods in this book are ingredients that you can mix in your own ways for your own purposes.

While you are practicing these exercises (or any medita­tive technique), train yourself to disregard your breathing pattern. If you happen to notice that it is no longer in the paradoxical rhythm, do not stop your meditation in order to correct it. Complete the exercise. During the period of re­view, consider why a different pattern instated itself. Then, on the basis of the effectiveness of the meditation, evaluate this other pattern.

1. Envision the air that you are inhaling to be a pale blue cloud. Inhale all that cloud. Then exhale it, carefully noticing any color changes in the cloud. Perhaps it will have turned pale gray, perhaps some other tone. This shows that you have absorbed the nutrients within it while it was in your body.

1. Expand your breathing apparatus from your nose to your entire covering, the skin. Imagine that all the pores are inhaling and exhaling. You can feel the tingling electric quality of pores popping open and closing up over every part of your body. It is very much like the sensation you experience after you have been out in the snow and suddenly come into a warm room. Feel every part of the surface of your body breathing in and breathing out the cleansing, vitalizing oxygen in the air surrounding you.
2. In your imagination, place a crystal or jewel on the center of your forehead. Now breathe through the jewel. Notice whether the inflow and outflow of air are colored. Do they undergo any changes in color? What happens to the jewel itself? Imagine it to be one color, then another, and observe what effect the breath moving in and out has upon the color of the jewel.

When you have completed any visualization or meditation, begin to come back to waking consciousness by transferring your focus from your imagination to your breathing, following it in and out, until it brings you into the external world.

Spirit can overcome the material, or in more common language, thinking can overcome illness. For some this is as obvious as stating that “I am a better person when I am happy”. For those that are open minded but need a little bit more evidence to be convinced, then the work of Dr Simonton might be enlightening indeed even truly liberating…..because it is further evidence that positive thinking is backed up by hard science.

A sixty-one-yearold man we’ll call Frank was diagnosed as having an almost always fatal form of throat cancer and told he had less than a 5 percent chance of surviving. His weight had dropped from 130 to 98 pounds. He was extremely weak, could barely swallow his own saliva, and was having trouble breathing. Indeed, his doctors had debated whether to give him radiation therapy at all, because there was a distinct possibility the treatment would only add to his discom­fort without significantly increasing his chances for survival. They decided to proceed anyway.

Then, to Frank’s great good fortune. Dr. O. Carl Simonton, a radia­tion oncologist and medical director of the Cancer Counseling and Research Center in Dallas, Texas, was asked to participate in his treatment. Simonton suggested that Frank himself could influence the course of his own disease. Simonton then taught Frank a number of relaxation and mental-imagery techniques he and his colleagues had developed. From that point on, three times a day, Frank pictured the radiation he received as consisting of millions of tiny bullets of energy bombarding his cells. He also visualized his cancer cells as weaker and more confused than his normal cells, and thus unable to repair the damage they suffered. Then he visualized his body’s white blood cells, the soldiers of the immune system, coming in, swarming over the dead and dying cancer cells, and carrying them to his liver and kidneys to be flushed out of his body.

The results were dramatic and far exceeded what usually happened in such cases when patients were treated solely with radiation. The radiation treatments worked like magic. Frank experienced almost none of the negative side effects—damage to skin and mucous mem­branes—that normally accompanied such therapy. He regained his lost weight and his strength, and in a mere two months all signs of his cancer had vanished. Simonton believes Frank’s remarkable recovery was due in large part to his daily regimen of visualization exercises.

In a follow-up study, Simonton and his colleagues taught their mental-imagery techniques to 159 patients with cancers considered medically incurable. The expected survival time for such a patient is twelve months. Four years later 63 of the patients were still alive. Of those, 14 showed no evidence of disease, the cancers were regressing in 12, and in 17 the disease was stable. The average survival time of the group as a whole was 24.4 months, over twice as long as the national norm.’

Simonton has since conducted a number of similar studies, all with positive results. Despite such promising findings, his work is still considered controversial. For instance, critics argue that the individu­als who participate in Simonton’s studies are not “average” patients. Many of them have sought Simonton out for the express purpose of learning his techniques, and this shows that they already have an extraordinary fighting spirit. Nonetheless, many researchers find Si­monton’s results compelling enough to support his work, and Simon­ton himself has set up the Simonton Cancer Center, a successful re­search and treatment facility in Pacific Palisades, California, devoted to teaching imagery techniques to patients who are fighting various illnesses. The therapeutic use of imagery has also captured the imagi­nation of the public, and a recent survey revealed that it was the fourth most frequently used alternative treatment for cancer

We’re currently in the midst of the Muslim month of Ramadan. The holy month of fasting. All Muslims – of capable age and health – are expected to fast from sunrise to sunset. No water. No food. No sex. No dirty thoughts!

Why am I mentioning this? I’m not exactly the religious type.

I’ve always thought of fasting as something unpleasant, with no obvious long-term benefits. However, scientists have recently begun uncovering evidence that short periods of fasting, if properly controlled, could achieve a number of spectacular health benefits.

I watched a fascinating ’Horizon’ documentary on BBC television today. It’s available on BBC iPlayer on the internet if you can get access. The documentary was called ‘Eat, Fast and live longer’. The presenter ‘Michael Mosley’ was examining the science behind fasting. What he found was mind-expanding to say the least. You might not think it but fasting – or calorie restriction – can drastically improve your life-span, and help you to age gracefully. It can increase your life-span by decades, drastically reduce the probability of you dying from a heart attack or cancer, and make your brain cells grow so that you are at much lower risk of contracting Alzheimers and other brain diseases associated with old age.

Science is beginning to catch up – and this is what the latest cutting-edge science has to say:

The normal daily recommended calorific intake of 2,000 calories for men puts the body in ‘work’ and ‘growth’ mode. When the body is in ‘growth mode’ cells divide, DNA replicates and the body burns calories and lays down fat deposits. Effectively the body is in go-go mode. In gear five. This is all triggered by a chemical called IGF-1 (Insulin like growth factor). When you eat the normal recommended amount of calories the blood IGF-1 levels are high. It is the IGF-1 that puts the body into growth mode.

If you go into fasting mode, or if you drastically reduce your calorific intake, blood IGF-1 levels are drastically reduced and; this is the key thing, the body then goes into ‘repair mode‘. Faced with a reduction in calories, the body instead of diverting resources to grow cells, replicate and all other growth responses, it starts to repair itself. It’s almost like the body has a breather and goes into gear 1, and starts to repair DNA damage, repair cell membranes, repair internal structures and even repair brain cells. As levels of IGF-1 hormone drop, a number of repair genes appear to get switched on.

But it’s not simply about eating less. It’s about stimulating the body to go into repair mode, and the way you do that is to take a drastic reduction in calories for a couple of days. You can help by eating less protein and more plant matter. One current area of research is the 5:2 diet. That’s 5 days of eating normally followed by 2 days of a restricted calorie diet of about 600 calories per day (500 for a woman). If you do this diet for say 5 weeks you’ll lose weight, your IGF-1 levels will drop so your body will go into repair mode for considerably longer, your blood glucose and cholesterol levels will also drop – and you’ll feel great. If you can sustain this diet the risk of you suffering from diabetes, cancer, heart disease and much much more – drops dramatically.

I am currently reading Michael Talbot’s book, “The Holographic Universe” and have discovered a fascinating part of the human psyche of which I had no idea of before.

Multiple Personality Disorder or Dissociative Identity disorder is an affliction that describes a person who has multiple distinctive characters as parts of their total personality. The reason I find this so fascinating is that it is still further evidence that our minds are far more mysterious and powerful than the established scientific thinking would allow us to believe.

What is so amazing about people with MPD or DID is that they can for example be allergic to certain substances with some of their personalities yet non-allergic when other personalities take control and even more bizzare behaviour than this. Below is an excerpt from the book. Once you have digested this info a question that forces itself into consciousness is this: How much of my illness/well-being is physical and how much is mental? The liberating conclusion has to be that human beings have an enormous capacity to transform themselves by transforming their thinking. Our bodies are only prisons as long as we remain ignorant of the power of the mind.

from “The Holographic Universe”

Another condition that graphically illustrates the mind’s power to affect the body is Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). In addition to possessing different brain-wave patterns, the sub personalities of a multiple have a strong psychological separation from one another. Each has his own name, age, memories, and abilities. Often each also has his own style of handwriting, announced gender, cultural and racial background, artistic talents, foreign language fluency, and IQ.

Even more noteworthy are the biological changes that take place in a multiple’s body when they switch personalities. Frequently a medical condition possessed by one personality will mysteriously vanish when another personality takes over. Dr. Bennett Braun of the Inter¬national Society for the Study of Multiple Personality, in Chicago, has documented a case in which all of a patient’s sub personalities were allergic to orange juice, except one. If the man drank orange juice when one of his allergic personalities was in control, he would break out in a terrible rash. But if he switched to his nonallergic personality, the rash would instantly start to fade and he could drink orange juice freely.

Dr. Francine Howland, a Yale psychiatrist who specializes in treating multiples, relates an even more striking incident concerning one multiple’s reaction to a wasp sting. On the occasion in question, the man showed up for his scheduled appointment with Howland with his eye completely swollen shut from a wasp sting. Realizing he needed medical attention, Howland called an ophthalmologist. Unfortunately, the soonest the opthalmologist could see the man was an hour later, and because the man was in severe pain, Howland decided to try something. As it turned out, one of the man’s alternates was an “anesthetic personality” who felt absolutely no pain. Howland had the anesthetic personality take control of the body, and the pain ended. But something else also happened. By the time the man arrived at his appointment with the ophthalmologist, the swelling was gone and his eye had returned to normal. Seeing no need to treat him, the ophthalmologist sent him home.

After a while, however, the anesthetic personality relinquished control of the body, and the man’s original personality returned, along with all the pain and swelling of the wasp sting. The next day he went back to the ophthalmologist to at last be treated. Neither Howland nor her patient had told the ophthalmologist that the man was a multiple, and after treating him, the ophthalmologist telephoned Howland. “He thought time was playing tricks on him.” Howland laughed. “He just wanted to make sure that I had actually called him the day before and he had not imagined it.”

Allergies are not the only thing multiples can switch on and off. If there was any doubt as to the control the unconscious mind has over drug effects, it is banished by the pharmacological wizardry of the multiple. By changing personalities, a multiple who is drunk can instantly become sober. Different personalities also respond differently to different drugs. Braun records a case in which 5 milligrams of diazepam, a tranquilizer, sedated one personality, while 100 milligrams had little or no effect on another. Often one or several of a multiple’s personalities are children, and if an adult personality is given a drug and then a child’s personality takes over, the adult do¬sage may be too much for the child and result in an overdose. It is also difficult to anesthetize some multiples, and there are accounts of multiples waking up on the operating table after one of their “unanesthetizable” subpersonalities has taken over.

Other conditions that can vary from personality to personality include scars, bum marks, cysts, and left- and right-handedness. Visual acuity can differ, and some multiples have to carry two or three different pairs of eyeglasses to accommodate their alternating personalities. One personality can be color-blind and another not, and even eye color can change. There are cases of women who have two or three menstrual periods each month because each of their sub personalities has its own cycle. Speech pathologist Christy Ludlow has found that the voice pattern for each of a multiple’s personalities is different, a feat that requires such a deep physiological change that even the most accomplished actor cannot alter his voice enough to disguise his voice pattern. One multiple, admitted to a hospital for diabetes, baffled her doctors by showing no symptoms when one of her non diabetic personalities was in control.^^ There are accounts of epilepsy coming and going with changes in personality, and psychologist Robert A. Phil¬lips, Jr., reports that even tumors can appear and disappear (although he does not specify what kind of tumors).’

Multiples also tend to heal faster than normal individuals. For example, there are several cases on record of third-degree burns healing with extraordinary rapidity. Most eerie of all, at least one researcher—Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, the therapist whose pioneering treatment of Sybil Dorsett was portrayed in the book Sybil—is convinced that multiples don’t age as fast as other people.

How could such things be? At a recent symposium on the multiple personality syndrome, a multiple named Cassandra provided a possible answer. Cassandra attributes her own rapid healing ability both to the visualization techniques she practices and to something she calls parallel processing. As she explained, even when her alternate personalities are not in control of her body, they are still aware. This enables her to “think” on a multitude of different channels at once, to do things like work on several different term papers simultaneously, and even “sleep” while other personalities prepare her dinner and clean her house.

Hence, whereas normal people only do healing imagery exercises two or three times a day, Cassandra does them around the clock. She even has a sub personality named Celese who possesses a thorough knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and whose sole function is to spend twenty-four hours a day meditating and imaging the body’s well-being. According to Cassandra, it is this full-time attention to her health that gives her an edge over normal people. Other multiples have made similar claims.

We are deeply attached to the inevitability of things. If we have bad vision, we believe we will have bad vision for life, and if we suffer from diabetes, we do not for a moment think our condition might vanish with a change in mood or thought. But the phenomenon of multiple personality challenges this belief and offers further evidence of just how much our psychological states can affect the body’s biology. If the psyche of an individual with MPD is a kind of multiple image hologram, it appears that the body is one as well, and can switch from one biological state to another as rapidly as the flutter of a deck of cards.

The systems of control that must be in place to account for such capacities is mind-boggling and makes our ability to will away a wart look pale. Allergic reaction to a wasp sting is a complex and multi¬faceted process and involves the organized activity of antibodies, the production of histamine, the dilation and rupture of blood vessels, the excessive release of immune substances, and so on. What unknown pathways of influence enable the mind of a multiple to freeze all these processes in their tracks? Or what allows them to suspend the effects of alcohol and other drugs in the blood, or turn diabetes on and off? At the moment we don’t know and must console ourselves with one simple fact. Once a multiple has undergone therapy and in some way becomes whole again, he or she can still make these switches at will.’ This suggests that somewhere in our psyches we all have the ability to control these things. And still this is not all we can do.