Column: The Good Life: for Mint Lounge
Day 1: July 15, 2014
Did Brahmari Pranayama 11 times yesterday.
The Meditation Project
My inability to meditate properly is really stressing me out Shoba Narayan July 14, 2014 Updated: July 14, 2014 05:26 PM In his book, Focus: The Hidden Ingredient of Excellence, author Daniel Goleman talks about the different kinds of attention. The most obvious kind of focus, he says, is concentration where the mind is rooted to a task until a solution is reached. This type of focus is best suited to analytical work. Creative insights, on the other hand, occur when the mind is loose, open, and aware. There is a reason why psychologists like to put their subjects [...]
Mindfulness
To be obsessed with meditation seems like defeating the purpose. My problem is that I still haven't conquered this. How to sit "simply" and stare into space aka unfocus your eyes? How didn't all those rishis that I read about in the Amar Chitra Katha books do it? To the point where anthills grew over them? Crazy stuff. Reading and loving Haruki Murakami's "What I think about when I think about Running." Sejal Gulati, if you see this post, that book is for you. Reading Sunil Menon's translation of Mahabharata. Matsyabhangi-- now that's a name. Mindful wanderers When we think [...]
Takshashila and Deepak Nayyar
This promises to be a great event. Ummm....my husband is moderating and an organization that I am part of is organizing.
Intuition/Imagination for Mint Lounge
Leap before you think Before he began Apple, Steve Jobs spent seven months in India, something that is described in his biography by Walter Isaacson. In it, Jobs talks poetically about the difference between intellect and intuition. “The people in the Indian countryside do not use their intellect like we do,” he said. “They use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect in my opinion.” Jobs was not a fan of India. If he identified intuition as the one Indian [...]
Living Wills and how you wish to die. For Quartz
I first read about this in the Deccan Herald newspaper. I saw the name Periyakoil (which is a Tamilian name). That got me intrigued about the lady behind the name and so this article began. For Quartz It is time for Americans to start thinking about how they wish to die Shoba Narayan July 04, 2014 The default, if unconscious assumption when you fall ill and are admitted into a hospital is that the doctors will give you the best possible care—that they would do unto you what they would want to have done to themselves. We’d like to think [...]
Arshia Sattar/Storytelling
What a treat it was to discuss Sanskrit, storytelling, and cultures with Arshia Sattar. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/157268039" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]
Martial Arts
I have been listening to a fascinating podcast called "the military history podcast." I am not a military buff but this one is interesting because it links military things and objects to other aspects of life. When it comes to the martial arts, it is best to let experts take the fall. Given the civilised, urban environments that most of us live in, you would think that martial arts would be redundant. After all, it is not as if we walk on the streets deflecting attacks everyday. And yet, the world is obsessed with martial arts. They are thriving, with [...]
Choose pleasure over productivity
Something that I've been debating about with very productive friends
For British Airways magazine on Hyderabad
Andhra Thali, bangles, palaces, shopping. Things to do in this syncretic city.