Posts Tagged ‘india’

Yoga Guru Protests Corruption

Stories of corruption, tear gas, and police action don’t usually end up in Buzz. But this was the scene this weekend in New Delhi, as the popular Indian yoga guru Baba Ramdev embarked on a hunger strike to end government corruption.

Tens of thousands of people across India, Europe, Africa, and the United States joined Ramdev in a strike that began on Saturday in protest of alleged Indian government corruption. On Sunday, the police responded with tear gas into the crowd of more than 40,000 Ramdev supporters.

Ramdev.jpgPolice detained Ramdev, guru to millions of followers in India, then later deported him back to his ashram in Haridwar and banned him from entering Delhi. Now on his fifth day of not eating, the spiritual leader said he wouldn’t eat until the government returned millions of dollars illegally stashed abroad and imposed tough penalties on those who continue to put their money in safe havens, and, in a seemingly un-yogic twist, has threatened to arm his supporters.

Read the whole story on:http://blogs.yogajournal.com/yogabuzz/

When Medicine and Yoga Meet: Q & A with Loren Fishman, MD

It isn’t often that your doctor takes off his coat, puts on shorts, and leads a yoga class. Unless your doctor is

When Medicine and Yoga Meet: Q & A with Loren Fishman, MD

It isn’t often that your doctor takes off his coat, puts on shorts, and leads a yoga class. Unless your doctor is

Yoga May Help with Irregular Heartbeat

D20a.jpgoes yoga steady your heartrate?

A new study out of The University of Kansas shows that yoga decreases episodes of cardiac arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat whose symptoms can include chest pains, dizziness, heart palpitations, and shortness of breath.

The research was conducted by Jeannie Drisko, MD and Dhanunjaya Lakkireddy, MD. (The latter grew up in India with a yoga-teacher father.) Here’s what they did: Participants with arrhythmia spent three months doing their normal exercise routines. Over the next three months, they attended three yoga classes a week, which included pranayama, asanas, meditation, and relaxation.

At the end of the study, not only did the frequency of irregular heartbeat episodes decrease, but the participants also reported less anxiety and depression. Lakkireddy says:

“These
findings are important because many of the current conventional
treatment strategies for atrial fibrillation include invasive procedures
or medications with undesirable side effects.

Pretty Woman Converts to Hindu Woman

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America’s red-headed sweet heart has been seduced by the spiritual lures of India. Julia Roberts told Elle that she is “definitely a practicing Hindi” after her time in India filming the upcoming Eat, Pray, Love. USA Today followed up on the cover interview with a story Sunday.

According to
a 2009 Associated Press story relying on The Times of India
newspaper, Roberts’ children have been given Hindu names. It quoted a Hindu priest, Swami Dharam Dev, as saying
:

“I
have named her twins Hazel and Phinnaeus as Laxmi and Ganesh, while
Henry will be called Krishna Balram.”

No word yet on whether or not Roberts’ practices yoga, since of
course being Hindu does not require it. USA Today was also quick to distinguish the difference between practicing yoga and practicing Hindism, but couldn’t resist posting an image of Sarah Palin in Tree Pose as an argument for the “poses don’t have to be spiritual” side. (We couldn’t resist either.)

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