Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Time to use your non-dominant hand
Home » Leisure » The Better Life Last Published: Thu, Oct 13 2016. 05 38 PM IST Time to use your non-dominant hand Using the non-dominant hand not only improves willpower and self-control, it opens up aspects of the brain we are not in touch with Shoba Narayan Be hands-on. Photo:iStock Like over 90% of the world, I am right-handed. Actually, I am a suppressed lefty, not in the ideological sense but in the physiological. There are many theories on why the human race is overwhelmingly right-handed. Some say it is based on how we were positioned in the womb. If the right side [...]
Health at your fingertips
Home » Leisure » The Better Life Last Published: Thu, Oct 27 2016. 05 14 PM IST Health at your fingertips In mudras’ (hand gestures, used in most Eastern religions) ease lie their beauty and healing qualities Shoba Narayan Photo: iStockphoto It is the end of the day. You are tired. You don’t want to stretch; you don’t want to squat. You just want to vegetate in front of the TV. How do you optimize this experience? An easy way is to learn some mudras. Mudras are hand gestures, used in most Eastern religions. As Ramaa Bharadvaj, a dancer and teacher with the Chinmaya Naada Bindu gurukul in Pune, [...]
How to stay active all the time
How to stay active all the time Walk while on conference call, or do butt crunch while waiting at the bakery counter—some ways to exercise Shoba Narayan Home » Leisure » The Better Life Last Published: Thu, Nov 03 2016. 05 00 PM IST Any activity done in an intense way, offers benefits similar to those you get when you exercise on a treadmill for 45 minutes. Photo: iStock A growing number of studies point to the benefits of HIIT, or High-Intensity Interval Training. A study, published in 2014 in the journal PLOS One, highlights the benefits of shorter but intense spurts of exercise. Apps [...]
Sujok Seed Therapy
Home » Leisure » The Better Life Last Published: Thu, Nov 10 2016. 05 11 PM IST The healing power of ‘desi’ seeds Seeds have pure potential—they are holders of the life force Shoba Narayan Pressing seeds—mustard, fenugreek, peppercorns—over the ‘third eye’ point helps stimulate the master gland, according to the ancients. Photo: iStock The star of this week’s column is the humble fenugreek, or methi seed, famed in Ayurveda for improving lactation among new mothers and hair quality among women and men. This is why your grandmother ground up the seed and slathered it on your hair as a child, so that you could [...]
Lunges in the elevator
Lunges top me time in elevator Or, if you are a start-up entrepreneur, practise your elevator pitch Shoba Narayan Home » Leisure » The Better Life Last Published: Fri, Nov 18 2016. 12 26 PM IST The best thing to do in an elevator is to lunge In 2010, technology firm IBM surveyed some 6,500 employees across 16 cities in the US to find out how much time they spent waiting for elevators and inside them over a 12-month period. Turns out that New York workers spent a cumulative time of 92 years waiting for them and 5.9 years inside them. Readers of this newspaper [...]
The two spoon indulgence
Home » Leisure » The Better Life Last Published: Thu, Dec 01 2016. 05 07 PM IST The two-spoon indulgence Whenever you eat something that is highly calorific and tasty, stop after eating two spoons. It is a simple enough instruction, and therefore you cannot avoid it Shoba Narayan Photo: iStock Eat less is one of those phrases so vague as to be almost meaningless. Everyone who knows that you are trying to lose weight trots it out—trainer, nutritionist, even the random passerby. The problem with this instruction is that it is hard to implement. Of course, I want to eat less. I just don’t [...]
A Walk in the Park
Home » Leisure » The Better Life Last Published: Thu, Nov 24 2016. 05 25 PM IST A walk in the park Shoba Narayan on the benefits of taking long walks in the open, amid nature Shoba Narayan Photo: iStockphoto Walking your way to health is a cliché. Everyone advocates it. In his book Thinking, Fast And Slow, Nobel-prize winner and economist Daniel Kahneman even talks about the speed of walking. A stroll at your normal pace, he says, is good for mulling over or coming up with new ideas. Power-walking at high speed, in contrast, requires effort and attention from brain and body, leaving less [...]
Eat Slowly
Home » Leisure » The Better Life Last Published: Thu, Dec 15 2016. 05 30 PM IST Tricks and tips on how to eat slowly Pace yourself with the slowest eater of the table or pause while eating Shoba Narayan Photo: iStockphoto LATEST NEWS » MGNREGA compensation delayed by Centre or states in around 50% cases: study Govt to sell up to 25% stake in 4 defence PSUs via IPO Elon Musk’s renewed interest in hyperloop casts shadow over competitors China’s investments under CPEC safe, Pakistan’s new PM tells Beijing Infosys declines Narayana Murthy’s request to make probe report public As a child, my parents [...]
Worship and Workout
Home » Leisure » The Better Life Last Published: Thu, Dec 22 2016. 06 05 PM IST Worship and workout Religion offers great scope for exercise Shoba Narayan Photo: iStock Whether or not you are religious, there are activities in religious places that can be incorporated into your daily routine in healthy ways. You can kneel in a mosque and bend forward into a shashankasana or hare pose for a wonderful backstretch. Prostrating yourself before the gods (the south Indian namaskaram) is a great exercise because you have to squat, bend, stretch your back and rise up again. It involves multiple muscle groups. Do this, oh, about 30 [...]
Get into the zone
Home » Leisure » The Better Life Last Published: Thu, Jan 05 2017. 05 16 PM IST Get into the zone There are several activities that get people into what is sometimes called ‘the zone’, where the mind empties and thoughts flow Shoba Narayan Photo: iStock I have always been a hard-working sort of gal—and no, this is not a preamble to some irony-laced witty statement. Sadly, it is exactly what it is. A combination of a middle-class Indian upbringing compounded by the puritan work ethic of the north-east US where I went to college has made me into a worker bee and occasional drone. [...]