Indian Health Medical Wisdom and Wellness

As I watch the changes of time affect myself, my friends, and my extended family, I keep thinking of the wisdom of other cultures that has been overlooked in the colonialism of westerners and their science.

India's tradition of yoga is an age old methodology of ways to maintain and improve the function of your physical body. How to take care of it with food and water. How to exercise it. It's like the owner's manual for a car, except yoga has been around alot longer. I am struck the the simple common sense and self care techniques presented in Secrets of Hatha Yoga. He addresses everything from proper hydration and chewing your food well, to how to relax and sleep well. Another book I have been enjoying is The Eight Human Talents: Restore the Balance and Serenity within You with Kundalini Yoga which has simple exercises listed according to chakras and also describes which organs and systems the exercise addresses. In her decades of practice she has seen students reverse conditions such as Hepatitis C and AIDS as well as depression.

Ayurveda, the traditional Indian medical science has been around since 3000BC. Along with herbal pharmaceuticals, they had techniques for surgery. There was even a kind of mudpack MRI used to diagnose internal disease! There is a wonder movie called Ayurveda: The Art of Being that gives an overview of this ancient medical science. It shows places in which Ayurveda has answers and solutions where Western Medicine does not.

After my Babadham pilgrimage I had a terrible cough that left me winded. I suspected it was exhaustion and nutrition related. A local friend took me to a ayurvedic doctor who gave me some herbs to take for a few days. I was skeptical.... I had envisioned a proper Ayurvedic evaluation determining my "type" and taking my pulse etc. Instead I was asked a few questions and given herbs. I took the herbs and figured I might go to the western doctor if need be. I avoided the western doctor because I feared antibiotics or an asthmatics inhaler, both of which I knew had harmful side effects. In spite of my doubt of the Ayurvedic prescription, within a day I was breathing better and within a week I felt nearly back to normal. Like with any medicine, there is always margin for errors and effectiveness, as well as good and bad practitioners.


In my travels in life, I am constantly amazed at how beneficial being proactive in your own life and health can be. I meet people my age and younger who give in to "old age". I've always sought to improve and strengthen my body. If I get knee pains or muscle pains, I seek to remedy the situation. Often I have found drinking more water alleviates such things. I remember a book by Hulda Crooks (Conquering life's mountains: A collection of writings), a woman who started hiking in her forties and started backpacking and climbing at age 75. She said of her first mountain ascent how she found herself exhausted part way up and started thinking she was perhaps too old. Instead of giving in to the thought, she took a short rest, drank some water, and ate. She was revived! She continued climbing into her 90s and died at the ripe age of 101. http://www.llu.edu/news/today/dec3/llu.htm

I think of quantum theory and how each thought we make is a prayer, an intention, and a form of self hypnosis. If you are thinking "how weak I are" you will surely find yourself less strong than if you are thinking "how strong I am".

I look at the elders in the Indian mountain tribes and wonder at their physical prowess as they carry large loads from their heads and trek up and down steep mountains with dexterity and balance. I wonder at the ability of older yoga practitioners to sit crosslegged and with more flexibility than I perhaps have ever had. And yet it's not about gymnastics, but rather being able to enjoy your body while you are in it!

I wonder a bit at the colonial attitude of Western Medicine and Science in discounting ancient sciences and traditions that have been around longer than it has. I oft think of the subjectivity of discounting something because you haven't developed the technology or wisdom to measure it. We are all entitled to our experiences whether or not they have been proven. Slowly things are changing and circling around. Years ago, herbs were mainstay. Then science and industrial entrepreneurs came in and extracted isolates from the herbs and discounted the herbs to corner the market. Now herbs are on a comeback as people find the nature has wisdom in keeping herbs complex... in ways that help prevent overdose, toxicity, and side effects that can occur with isolated compounds. Conveniently for capitalists, regulations help ensure their market. Who would buy a product for comforting their stomach if they could step outside their door and pick some mint? And on the flip side, some of the folklore was inappropriate, and the cultural context has dissipated. The witches were burned and the local natural healer in the village have been burned at the stake or lost in the winds of "progress" and movement.

In India those changes are still in their midst. I think it must be similar to the USA's patterns in the early 1900's as industrialization and "progress" disrupted the village communal life.

Perhaps it's time to stretch and take a break from sitting at this computer!!!

One World, Food, Money Perspective

As I reflect on my travels about the world and my feelings of culture shock, I am most often struck by the extreme wealth we take for granted in the USA. I don't see wealth and poverty as good and bad... in fact I don't even like the judgment associated with those terms. I think true wealth is enjoying life which means food, family, friends, health, shelter, and an attitude of peace or bliss. I don't think wealth and poverty can be measured in economic or physical terms. These things are hard to quantify.

I often think of the family I visited with in Sikkim. The extended family lived in a small compound of several houses and barrack like structures. Several Aunts, Uncles, some of their children and grandchildren lived there... along with the matriarch Grandmother. They lived in a small village among Temi Tea Garden, a large tea estate. Most of the village obtained some employment at the tea estate as pickers or managers etc. They had some small gardens and a few cows and calves and goats and kids. Grandma, one aunt, one 20 yo grandchild and another in his 20s with children tended to stay home during the day. The rest worked off the "farm". The two young men cut a few baskets of fresh fodder to feed the stock with. One of the Uncle's milked the cow before work. Grandma and the Aunts distributed fodder and cleaned the mangers. Overall the family seemed healthy. Their home seemed adequate... simple by western standards but moderate and comfortable by theirs. Built of local materials. A TV and phone were the modern appliances. The adults at home took care of the basic chores of walking the little tykes to school, cutting fodder and firewood, laundry done by hand, gardening, etc. The 20 yo boy said he wanted to make money and have luxury. They see such things on TV and hear of them from tourists. Overall the family seemed healthy. Overall they had a quality of life... friends, family, sufficiency, community, and free time, that is rare in the USA.

I see how much clutter and material things we have in our homes in the US. I wonder if our quality of life is any better than the family in Sikkim?

In contrast, in Bihar I saw families of what I consider poverty... poor health, squalorly shelters of plastic sheeting. In Leh, Ladakh, I saw a ghetto of apartments for unemployed, "educated workers" that were educated to live outside of the generation old, traditional agrarian system that sustained families in the past... before they were given electricity and a bill for it that demanded money of them and broke them out of their self sustaining way of life. Public schools took children off the farm where they'd been an integral part of sustaining the household, where they had learned and known how to build and create homes and farms that would sustain them in that climate. The schools left the families unable to work their land and grow their own food. The schools trained the children not about practical things for their homeland, but of industrial and urban life. The schools trained the children for college and jobs. Jobs that weren't available. Ladakh has an active Women's Collective that is trying to redevelop markets for their farms, bans plastic bags to try to save their land and cows from the toxicity of the bags, and strives to generate empowered and esteem building projects and endeavors for the women and families to become sustainable.

Its a world culture now. The children in Sikkim are treated to such western luxuries as World Wide Wrestling on satellite TV. They see the mass produced clothes of the tourists. It's getting so that the locals in the third world don cheap mass produced casual pants and button shirts... mainly hippie backpacker travelers, and a few hill tribes wear any amount of locally produced clothing. Electronic gadgets. They see cars and want them. They don't appreciate that they can live without the debt, pollution, and clutter of a car. That they can walk to their neighbors. That they can commune with their neighbors. They can walk to wherever they need to go for the items that they are not producing themselves. Or, that if necessary to travel further, they can go to the nearest road and catch a shared jeep or bus to the nearest town.

I wonder at the environmental impact of these billions of people donning plastic clothes, and having a few electronic gadgets with permanent clocks and lights draining away electricity.

I wonder at my country. I lived on $400/month as a tourist. Locals could probably live on half or quarter of that. I think of how easy it would be to feed a family in one of these countries. I wonder how many friends we would have in the world if we gave out some food instead of bombs... I often think of Afghanistan an 9/11 think that the few Afghani terrorists allegedly responsible for 9/11 would have been ousted by their countrymen if we'd sent food to the country and increased our friend base there. Instead we bombed Afghanistan, even though the terrorists on the planes in 9/11 were supposedly Saudi Arabian, and now created a country of enemies. It's like if we had bombed McVey's entire county after he did his bombing in OKC.

I was astounded to learn the amount of money we spend on war:
Ben Cohen explains the Federal Budget
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sOIe5Ql0v8

As the Kinsey Sicks sing, "We Arm the World!"
Click here to see their performance.

I have long heard that money and food amounts are not the problem in the world... distribution of them is the problem. I wonder at World Bank policies of encouraging countries to abandon their relative self sufficiency in order to chase world money through cash crops. Ethiopia's drought I have heard is attributable to the monoculture of sugar cane they were encouraged to grown instead of their traditional self sustaining crops. The world economy and corporate money chasing leave us all victims to the changes as we become outsourced by the constantly changing most efficient and cheapest country. Increasingly, things are outsourced to the country with the least environmental regulations as well.

These thoughts, and judgments swirl through me. I try to keep outside of them. I try to focus on positive solutions, rather than dwell on problems.

I wish I could find the online video I saw a few years ago that showed the percentage of people in the world who have various "luxuries".

Some Videos of India found online

Here are some videos I found searching online that give an idea of what it is like in India:

This is a short documentary on the issues of the Ganges aka Ganga River:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVgqcZl-c6g&feature=related

varanasi 3: This photo montage shows typical street and river scenes in Varanasi from laundry wallahs to shoe wallahs...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PvrZ3bd5gs&feature=related

varanasi and the ganges: This video from a boat in the river shows bathers and typical river scenes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrWs00VOw08&feature=related

varanasi traffic shows the variety of conveyances in the streets of varanasi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvrs7Vxds8A

This video views typical traffic patterns from above a street corner. You can see how drivers aim for "the gap", continually move forward if possible. It seems helter skelter to the Western mind. It reminds me of a San Francisco driver telling of a stop light being out on Market near Castro in San Francisco... a very busy three street intersection... the driver said it seemed safer and more efficient with the light out because people looked around instead of trusting the light, they kept moving slowly through the intersection letting cars flow through from each side simultaneously. I'd love to see some engineering studies. Even such chaos as cars lining up on both sides against each other at a railroad crossing seems to clear out relatively quickly compared to queuing as we do in the west, even though it rattles and boggles the western mind....
india driving: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM&feature=related


Excellent view of typical scenes complete with live sound effects!
india traffic 2006: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAM_zOolyK0&feature=related
india traffic scenes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1dlTcxukvI&feature=related

Video from a taxi cab:
more india traffice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I9ETTL2mHo&feature=related


And what could be more complete than sounds and views from bus ride and hair-raising cliff hangers:
himalayan bus ride: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQK0_Kg1mBM
bus ride in shimla: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMz_lUN2pCo
honking bus rid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcx8O6WTQu0

This video on dabawallahs gives some idea of the amazing difference in culture and ways of life there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3nHLhaevWc&NR=1

It's hard to explain the difference in the world. I drove from Upstate NY to Delaware a couple of days ago and pondered at the difference in the experience. In India, there are most always people except in some of the highest mountains. In the USA, the freeways seem distanced from people and the landscape. In India, you feel you drive through the middle of a milieu. There are always people outside. In the US, people seem to be hermetically sealed in their houses... or perhaps they are away at the Mall. In the USA, you are lucky to see a pedestrian or bicycle outside of a city. In India, the road carries all sorts of travelers: pedestrians, bicyclists, ox carts, pony carts, bicycle rickshaws, porters, trucks, buses, and assorted livestock.

I often thing we ought to introduce Holy Cows into the USA for traffic calming, milk, visual entertainment. They ad a reminder that we are interdependent on nature, they slow us down, they help keep us present... especially when we drift off and don't pay attention and step in a pile of dung! It brings your right back to the present!