What are the secrets that keep Shilpa Shetty happy and healthy always?

Shilpa Shetty: I go by the philosophy of the Oneness University. That gives me immense happiness. I can’t explain exactly what it entails, but it’s a better way of living life. Along with that is my own spirituality. I am connected with God and I believe I am His special child. I don’t need a reason to be happy. Happiness is something you convince yourself of and, I believe that I am happy at all times in any given situation. There are two ways of looking at life — the positive and the negative. I believe in the positive. This positivity keeps me happy.

Is this something you have developed over a period of time?

Shilpa Shetty: It’s come with life and experience, though I veer towards being cheerful. My mum tells me that I have always been a happy child, but my happiness now comes from the way I perceive life today. Earlier, if I was happy, it was more a thoughtless happiness. You don’t think too much as you go through life. But now, I measure things more and realise how fortunate I am, how good life has been to me. It’s all about perception.

Your association with yoga has shot into prominence only recently. But you are among the fittest actors in the industry. How have you maintained your youthfulness and your health over the years in spite of your long innings in a highly competitive, stressful industry?

Shilpa Shetty: I didn’t take up yoga to look good. I’ve never given a good figure too much importance. Fitness was more my target. I went to the gym not to look good but to feel good and be fit. I worked out and I wanted to maintain a healthy body. Like Bhagavan says, [Bhagavan is the founder of the Oneness University] if you want to be successful, if you want to achieve something in life, you need to be fit. If your immunity is low, it’s not going to allow you to work as hard as you would otherwise have. It stems from this understanding. I wanted to promote yoga wherever I could because as a celebrity I’m given a platform. It is unfortunate that yoga is a product of our country and we don’t value it. I felt it my duty that if I was to come out with a DVD on fitness, it shouldn’t be about weight training but about yoga.

Shilpa Shetty: My initiation into yoga was a very gradual process. The yoga shown in my DVD is the ashtanga yoga — it’s the oldest form of yoga. I took special training before I made that DVD and I wanted to know the nitty-gritty and the benefits of every asana I was doing. Earlier I was doing general yoga; I got into ashtanga yoga two years ago. Yoga targets the mind, body and soul — it’s this three-in-one practice. It is the holistic approach to life. It is a scientific way of being fit. It cures you if you are ill, tones your body, and keeps you fit. If you are unwell, you can’t do any other form of exercise but yoga. It is quite brilliant.

What is the Oneness University and how has it influenced you?

Shilpa Shetty: This originates in a district called Chittoor, and Amma and Bhagavan are the founders. Their aim in life is to help people achieve their dreams. The core belief is that you can achieve anything if your personal relationships are in order. This includes your relationships with your parents, brothers, sisters, and husband/wife. In life, there are problems and if you are not able to achieve success, it goes back to your roots. So when you sort that out, anything and everything is possible. These are very simple lessons which we have forgotten. We’ve forgotten our culture, our value system, and our very roots in this fast paced life.

This is a beautiful way to get connected with things that are of paramount importance.

I got initiated into this by chance. A family friend from Chennai spoke of this and we went to meet Amma and Bhagavan. It was the most surreal experience of my life. I’ve met several gurus because my parents are both very spiritual. But earlier, while I took all this very lightly, now with age and experience, we know logically why we need to follow it. Although the University started just 6 years ago, it has among its followers international celebrities like Nicole Kidman, Meg Ryan and Madonna to name a few. People are looking to India to fulfil their spiritual needs.

At the University, they teach you certain philosophies — women want to marry and the next stage to marriage is motherhood. Right from conception to the age of seven the child is completely influenced by his mother. It is intriguing. It is a huge learning process to realise how much you influence your child’s life right from conception. And it’s all very scientifically taught starting from the diet you eat. Most people abroad suffer from amnesia because they have a lot of bread and butter. They advocate a high protein diet and your memory comes back.

Do you practise yoga regularly?

Shilpa Shetty: Yoga has become a way of life for me. But that’s not all that I do. I also do weight training. I’m starting my film early next year and for that I want to look muscular, so I do weights but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped yoga. I alternate it with yoga. I will tell you how my association with yoga became known. When I went as an inmate into the house of Big Brother [a reality television series broadcast in the UK], I used to meditate a lot because there was nothing else to do. I used to practise yoga because there was no equipment to workout, no treadmill, weights — nothing. To do some form of exercise, I used to do yoga; that’s how people got to know that I practise yoga and it became famous.

So, even if practising yoga was involuntary, what are the payoffs in terms of health?

Shilpa Shetty :Well, I can’t say that I’ve become calmer. The reason I started yoga initially was because I had a terrible neck problem. I started doing bhujang asana. My physiotherapist asked me to do yoga and I felt she obviously knew what she was talking about. I started practising it and was more and more intrigued by it. But again I had done yoga a very long time ago when I was doing karate — yoga was a part of the karate training but after that I lost touch with it.

What yoga does is that it just opens up all the windows in your body. When you start breathing right everything else falls into place. Even if you just do pranayam, it will help you.

Did it help in other ways like boosting your self confidence, and improving relationships?

Shilpa Shetty: I can’t attribute it all to yoga. The Oneness University has done a lot for me. It has opened me up more to life and living. It has made me more confident than I was. They say if you want to achieve something, you have to think about it. If you have the capability to achieve it, you just have to keep the goal in your head and work towards it. It can make you attain and manifest what you want.

Tell us something about your daily diet plan. Do you follow any diet regimen? What is your typical consumption? Do you eat with a purpose — to fulfil a nutritional need?

Shilpa Shetty: I am a foodie. I love food, but I eat the right food. I have a healthy diet. I keep one day in the week when I eat anything like cakes, kulfi, and gulab jamuns.

My day starts with aloe vera juice. It is great for your immune system; it’s great for your skin. Then I have porridge and tea. I avoid white sugar as far as I can and have only brown sugar. My theory is to replace everything white with brown — be it brown bread brown rice or brown sugar. I don’t eat steamed or boiled food. I eat normal food but cooked in a healthy vegetable oil or olive oil.

For lunch, I have dal rice [brown] or chapatti and chicken curry and one vegetable. If I am hungry in the evening, I’ll have one brown toast with two eggs and tea and, at night, I try and eat early. I eat a salad, soup and one chicken dish. My diet is very simple. It’s easy to follow.

Sticking to a diet regimen is not an easy task. How often do you feel like going on a binge?

Shilpa Shetty: I believe if you are really tempted to eat something, go ahead and have it. But if you indulge yourself too often, then it’s not temptation, it is greed.

What was the most sinful food you had in the last one week?

Shilpa Shetty: Today, I had two gulab jamuns from Jhama’s [A sweet shop in Chembur, Mumbai famous for its gulab jamuns]. I was shooting for Big Boss in Lonavla and, on my way back, I stopped at Jhama’s. He keeps the most amazing sweets. I had two gulab jamuns there. Here again if you want to eat such stuff have it during the day not at night! But I kind of make up for it by not touching sweets for the next few days. I maintain a 2000-calorie diet.

Do you have a dietician or nutritionist you consult regularly?

Shilpa Shetty: No.

If you were not in the film industry, would you still have given so much importance to your diet and fitness regime? In other words, do you think your health consciousness is a personal preference to remain fit in mind, body and soul, or is it just a choice that arises out of the demands of your profession?

Shilpa Shetty: Maybe. I started off as a volley ball player and my culture of fitness came from there. When you are a sportsperson, you are very conscious about what you are eating and how you are looking. I wear a waist chain and that always keeps me in check. If I put on a little weight, the chain comes higher and I know I have to lose it.

But aren’t you naturally thin too?

Shilpa Shetty: When I joined the industry, if you remember my first film, Baazigar, I was really plump. I feel my body has gone through a whole reinvention now. I try to make it look different. The first few years I barely even worked out. It’s a misconception that you can work out and look exactly how you want. You have to find a balance between a controlled healthy diet and exercise.

You have mentioned [in previous interviews] that co-stars like Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt [who are fitness freaks themselves] have provided tips on staying fit. How important to do you think it is to have a fitness buddy? How do they inspire and motivate you?

Shilpa Shetty: Salman taught me to have a great backside. I had a good backside but you know how you want to fit into your jeans attractively? He taught me a couple of exercises for it. Sanju taught me calf raises. I had very thin legs and that helped. It’s very important to have a fitness buddy. They’ve been there they’ve done it and their experience is valuable. The other day I heard that a woman was watching a yoga programme on TV and she tried sheershasana and she’s paralysed for life because there was a clot in her nerve. You need to do things the right way. In my yoga DVD, I haven’t attempted anything that is remotely dangerous. Not even the suryanamaskar because you may injure your back. Especially if you are weight training, it is important to have someone watch you when you are exercising. Do’s and don’ts are very important. I think a fitness buddy is great.

What makes you happy today?

Shilpa Shetty: Happiness is a state of mind and my goal is very clear. I set it for myself. As I move towards it, I feel happy. My family support keeps me happy. I know people love me.

How do you deal with lows?

Shilpa Shetty:I’ve been through tremendous lows, but I’ve had this attitude that I may be down but I am not out. There have been times when the press has written me off but I’ve kept my positive approach. God has been extremely kind to me. I feel His support, and that keeps me going.

What kind of relationship do you share with God?

Shilpa Shetty: A very special one. I believe I am His special child. I am very fortunate to be given so many opportunities — at 32 to have seen so much — to be given a doctorate, to win an international show, to be a household name in the UK, to be given so much respect even in this country.

Do you have a role model?

Shilpa Shetty: Madonna.

Which two people come to mind here as the fittest Indians?

Shilpa Shetty: Rekha and Jeetendra. Jeetendra saab is so fit, he is amazing. He dances so youthfully and is still so light on his feet. And Rekhaji for obvious reasons.

What would be your message for the readers of Complete Wellbeing?

Shilpa Shetty:Follow a healthy diet. If you don’t have time to work out, try and walk from your home to the station or use the stairs instead of the lift. Walk at least two kms a day. There is nothing wrong in eating sweets, only eat them in proportion.

For mental happiness — be positive.

In many ways, he is like a Jack-in-the-Box. Every time the media decides it is time up for the actor, he springs back with rejuvenated energy. He has been doing this for almost four decades. His career, his personal life and even his medical history is the stuff best sellers are made of. He has travelled from B&W [black and white] to colour films, from Dolby to Sync sound, from single screens to multiplexes. From small budget movies to multi-starers and English films, and from working with older to younger co-stars and directors. the list of his accomplishments is endless. In his career spanning 40 years and 182 films, he has played all kinds of roles, donned all kinds of costumes, befriended different animals—tiger, falcon, an Alsatian, even a dolphin. He has walked on fire, rolled in mud, flown over a carpet and jumped over bombs. He has played urban, rural, young, old, the good and the evil.

He is the first to be regarded a sex symbol in his autumn years. The first to stage concerts of international standards, his celebrity status transcends national boundaries with fans in every corner of the globe. And this, without having to go through Hollywood.

He is the sole survivor of his contemporaries—the only actor to be discovered at every turning point of Indian cinema.

Conversations with the legendary patriarch.

What kind of a child were you?

Normal.I would say, quite reserved and not particularly argumentative.

What do you recall of those early days?

It’s strange, but early memories remain vivid even after so many years. There are times when I’m not able to recall what happened ten years ago or sometimes, even ten days ago but memories of childhood are imprinted on our psyche. Probably because life at that time was much slower and little moments left an impression. Today, everything occurs so swiftly and rapidly, that it’s impossible to recapitulate events. I have vibrant memories of my childhood.I remember the various homes we lived in, our daily routine, our conversations at the dinning table.

Was growing up turbulent?

Not much turbulence. To a large extent, the sobriety of living life on an even keel came from the family. All our problems were referred back to mom and dad. The first major conflict came soon after completing college. It was the beginning of the uncertain phase—of not knowing what to do.or where to go. These are conflicts everybody has to go through

.

Can you share some of the early memories with your father?

Dad was always either at his desk, or away at work. My predominant memories of him are of him behind his desk, writing. He was very focused, very disciplined and spent most of his time in the study. He worked 12 to 14 hours every single day and the discipline continued even when we shifted to Delhi and I began to attend college. Or even many years later when I started working in Calcutta and then shifted to Mumbai. There were times when he was consumed by his writing and totally shut out from the rest of us for days at a stretch but no matter how busy he was, he was always accessible to us.

Milind Soman is guilty of many charges—of being 44 and not showing it, of making women go crazy with his looks, of being one of the most successful male supermodels India has had till date, of not only being fit but also healthy, of being intelligent, of being the quintessential alpha male.Did you know that he wanted to be a swimmer and that he is a qualified electrical engineer? But he went against the tide, and how. Today, he is an actor, a producer, a model and an entrepreneur. Recently, he surprised everyone by running continuously for 24 hours for the NDTV Greenathon in Mumbai. The man just doesn’t stop. Keep reading to know what eggs him on.

• What do health and fitness mean to you?

  Health and fitness are the two most important things in my life. Without feeling physically, emotionally and spiritually the way I do, I may not have been able to live the way I want. At this point in my life, looking back, I think it is so simple and so easy. I just allow my body and my awareness to guide me in everything I need to do to keep fit. The food I eat, the activities I enjoy are all in synch with my body and mind. The human body is designed to maintain an equilibrium of efficiency and all we need to do, is to allow it to do its job without interference. For example, I believe that in the absence of any medical disorder, any diet regimen is unwarranted.

  To read more of Milind Soman’s suprisingly mature answers to questions on health and happiness, pick up the July 2009 issue of Complete Wellbeing magazine

Shiamak Davar is a hugely successful and spiritual person. And he attributes it all to the wisdom he received through the book, The Laws of The Spirit World, which is an account of the communication Khorsheed Bhavnagari had with her deceased sons Vispi and Ratoo through automatic writing.

When did you first realise that dance is what you want to do?

Shiamak Davar:I never knew. I was always a signer-actor. I used to live out whole movie scripts in the living room of my house. I would open the curtains, play the piano and sing to entertain my family. All my life I knew would be a singer-actor, because that’s what I did. I never danced, really; I was never interested. In school, I used to do theatre and win all the singing competitions. Then Alyque Padamsee picked me up for Evita after he saw me in a musical called Greece. Then I did a cabaret, worked with Karla Singh. I was doing a lot of theatre at the time.

So when did dance happen?

Shiamak Davar: I went to London for my acting and singing workshops. Once when I was passing by the Pineapple Dance studio in London, what I saw through the glass walls interested me. So I enrolled. In my first class itself, the teacher said to me that I was very talented. She said that I danced like I was trained and that I should develop this art. So I decided to try it for fun. Over the course of my training, I realised that dance was coming to me naturally. But, I still wanted to go abroad and become a singer and actor.

How did you finally make the decision?

Shiamak Davar: During this whole process, my spiritual guides Khorsheed aunty and her son, Vispi were always there by me. I used to tell them that I didn’t want to dance or become a “dance master” as they are called in Hindi films. They explained to me that everything happens at the right time and that I needed to go step-by-step. Finally, at the age of 24, I acted on their advice. I started my dance classes with just seven students.

Were your parents supportive?

Shiamak Davar: They were fantastic. They just said, “Finish your education and then do whatever you want.”

How was it back then, to become a dance trainer?

Shiamak Davar: It was a humiliating experience because everyone made fun of me. They used to say things like ‘dancing is effeminate’ and ‘only pansies dance, boys don’t’. They called me all sorts of names. Even girls hesitated to join my class as dancing wasn’t considered “nice” 25 years ago.

During your difficult times, what made you stick to your decision?

Shiamak Davar: The knowledge I received from The Laws of the Spirit World and the love that Khorsheed aunty and her son Vispi gave me all the time in their messages to me through automatic writing. It was a horrible time but through the pain, I realised that there was a strong hand over my head that always pulled me up when I was low. Some voice would whisper to me saying, ‘Stop being stupid, don’t be insecure. Go ahead, do what you’re doing.’ Because, I was doing the right thing!

Interview with Gul Panag

• Click for bigger image(50K)

How is Gul, the person?

Gul Panag: I am fun, spirited, fearless and always ready for a challenge.

So where do books fit in? We know that you are an avid reader.

Gul Panag: Books are an integral part of my life. There is no end to the influence they’ve had so far and continue to have on me. I think reading truly broadens one’s horizons.

You have a degree in mathematics and you are an actor. Where do they connect?

Gul Panag: [Laughs] Not sure if they connect, but I thoroughly enjoy both.

You have changed 14 schools in your schooling. How did it feel?

Gul Panag: Fantastic! The experience has made me flexible, understanding, adaptive, tolerant, accommodative and, above all, adventurous. It gave me the chance to meet and interact with people of different cultures, from whom I learnt a lot.

You have won several competitions in your life, the biggest being the coveted Miss India. How important is winning to you? How do you deal with failure?

Gul Panag: Competitions are all about wanting to win; else you wouldn’t be in them. Winning gives you great confidence and boosts your self-esteem, while failure is an opportunity to look inwards, introspect and improve.

Then, what is success?

Gul Panag: Success is relative. In life, success is more about giving things your best shot than winning. For me, career-wise, the journey from the Miss India pageant to television to films has been about utilising my abilities to the best and acquiring skills along the way. But above all, it has been about putting my best foot forward, always. If you are able to do that, you are successful, irrespective of the outcome.

A Miss India is considered to be the perfect combination of beauty and brains. What is your idea of beauty? Is it just skin deep or does it go beyond the physical?

Gul Panag: Unfortunately, there are preconceived notions of beauty that govern such things. But, for me, beauty has always been about something that emanates from within.

Since we feel emotions from within, do they affect our skin too?

Gul Panag:Not just our skin, but our health and longevity too are totally dependent on how we feel. I have always felt wonderful and attractive when happy and the reverse when low. So, make it a point be positive and happy through everything.

Gul Panag’s favourites

Favourite book

George Orwell’s 1984

Favourite food

Mexican

Favourite attire

A nice fitted dress

Favourite person

Too many!!

God is …

Inside us and not in a temple or church

Health is …

In your hands

First success

Winning a 200m heat in school

First failure

Not coming 1^st in class V

Happiest moment till now

Every day has so many moments. I do not live in the past

Motto in life

I am an incorrigible optimist. For me, every day is a new challenge, something more to be done—something new to be achieved

For more of Gul Panag, grab the Dec 2009 copy of Complete Wellbeing magazine today!

Richard Bach is a pilot and author of several bestselling books including the 1970s magnum opus Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Most of his books have been semi-autobiographical, using actual or fictionalised events from his life to illustrate his philosophy. He started flying planes since the age of 17 and his love for flying is evident in all his books.

Manoj Khatri [MK]: You have a great number of fans in India, me included. We all want to know more about Richard Bach, the soul beyond the writer/pilot.

Richard Bach [RB]: It’s a pleasure to know I’m not alone, practicing these odd ideas.

MK: You speak of alternate realities. What would you have become if not a pilot and a writer?

RB: I don’t speak so much of alternate realities as of alternate worlds of appearances, alternate worlds of seems-to-be. I don’t share the belief that we create our own reality. To me, there is only one reality: the Is—that incandescent Love that exists beyond all our presumptions of space and time. All the rest is games of separation and believing.

That said, in each of these alternate worlds we’ve made different choices: different parents, perhaps, different societies, different planets [or no planets at all], different systems of expressing life. Some differences are extremely subtle…the same lifetime as we know, but with one shifted choice. And all these lifetimes are going on simultaneously, right now.

A world in which I was not a pilot and a writer? I went to sea; I’m an engine mechanic; I’m a warrior killed in his first battle; I’m a fish imagining a world of air; I’m a deep-space creature with a body of stardust, stretching light-years between galaxies. Like everyone else, I’ve taken indefinite number of forms, knowing all the while that every form is illusion—that the only eternal is our no-form oneness with that radiant Love.

MK: Your books have always highlighted that we are more than our bodies—not limited by laws of physics. When did this realisation come about? Has flying, leaving the ground, defying gravity, somewhere helped you think beyond limits?

RB: Flying sure helps. I’m a slow learner, so it’s easier for me to learn the perspective of thought when I take literal perspective from altitude, flying a little airplane. When the villages below look like toys, it’s not so difficult to realise that they are toys; that they and all our inventions are the tools we use to express ourselves, to learn that in truth, our being far transcends the beliefs of the worlds we create. I’ve had many lessons, flying airplanes.

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Vidya Balan is like the ocean, active on the surface and calm and deep within. She is a sensible person, self-made and prefers not to talk much about her good deeds. Few know that she is associated with AmFar [Americans for AIDS Research] and Hale House, a home for children born with HIV and affected by drug addiction. She also involves herself with the Harvard AIDS Institute, by hosting forums and participating in events throughout the year. Vidya has learnt to achieve the fine balance between caring for others and loving oneself.

What kind of person are you?

I am friendly and love being with people close to me.

But the media thinks you are haughty.

Nobody has ever told me I am haughty, and if anyone thinks that way, it’s a misconception. It’s just that I can’t multi-task or do many things at a time. So when I’m working, which I enjoy doing immensely, I focus on it single-mindedly. At that time, to others, I appear reticent.

Moving on.You had lost a lot of weight? How do you maintain it?

I have been training with Vilayat Hussain, for a while now. He teaches me Callisthenics, a form exercise that comprises a variety of simple movements, which I do 4 – 5 times a week.

Why callisthenics?

Because it is an extremely dynamic workout that takes care of all the elements of exercise from toning and strengthening muscles to cardio—all in one. And since these exercises use my body’s own weight for resistance, I can do them anywhere.

Besides, I need to do a workout that is innovative and different; going to the gym or doing the same workout daily bores me. I have tried it all—hatha yoga, ashtanga yoga—but could never stick to any, as it got repetitive after a while. Callisthenics have kept my interest going.

“I will cherish this compliment forever”—Sachin Tendulkar

He is every bit the all-rounder you thought he was, on the field and in life. A true role model for India, Sachin Tendulkar, thinker, philosopher, and a complete family man speaks his heart out to Sunandan Lele. He was stumped when he was told that he is India’s hero even off the pitch. Befitting a legend, Sachin Tendulkar is humbled by the overwhelming love of his countrymen…

In a nationwide poll, people have voted you as the healthiest and happiest Indian. How do you feel about it?

Sachin Tendulkar: [Breaks into a heart-warming smile] Goodness me! Is it true? My countrymen think that I am the healthiest and happiest person in the country? What a compliment! I am truly overwhelmed. I will cherish this compliment forever.

This compliment means more to me because people have also chosen great individuals like APJ Abdul Kalam, Amitabh Bachchan, Sonia Gandhi, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Anil Ambani, Salman and Shah Rukh Khan. There is no doubt that all these great Indians have contributed immensely to their respective fields. People from any small town or metro knowthese great Indians because of their hard work. That is why being in this elite group gives me immense satisfaction.

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Robin Sharma, the author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, is the founder of Sharma Leadership International Inc., a globally respected training firm used by organizations such as Microsoft, GE, IBM, FedEx, and others to help employees perform at their best, Robin who holds two law degrees including a Masters of Law, has published books on leadership and personal development in over 60 languages.

Who is a true leader? Is s/he someone who has an influence over multitudes?

Everyone has the opportunity to lead each day. Leadership isn’t about your job title, the size of your paycheque or your office. It’s about your attitude. About your devotion to excel at everything you do. It’s about being inspirational and leaving people better than when you found them. About pushing the envelope, living your potential, being an example of possibility and doing your part to be a better human being. That to me is a true leader.

The greatest leader that I’ve ever met was Desmond Tutu. We recently met in South Africa, and just by being around the man you could feel “inspiration” and “leadership” oozing out of him. He has been an inspiration to millions, and is certainly one to me.

What is true greatness? And how can each one of us become great?

Greatness begins with a simple decision: to be great in everything you do. To lead by example. To inspire people you meet. To take risks and to create a great life. Because the greatest risk in life is to live without a risk.

Above all else, leadership and greatness are about making a difference and having an impact. Life is very short and before we know it, we will all be dust. What will really matter at the end of our lives is the kind of people we have become and the difference that we have made. Greatness is about leaving a legacy. Success is important but significance is more important.

My father once said, “Robin, when you were born you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries when you rejoice.”

Leaders are often both spontaneous and efficient. Which is more important?

Efficiency and spontaneity are quite opposed to one another. Efficiency is all about getting things done quickly in a more or less orderly manner—reducing costs, time, and resources. On the other hand, spontaneity is about acting on a whim, creativity, and responding to your subconscious.

Without efficiency, a lot would not get done in an organisation or in one’s life. Without spontaneity, life might appear to be dull and the creative engine of the arts, literature, business, etc. would lose momentum. Like everything else in life, here too, striking a balance is crucial.

Why be great? Is leading an ordinary life not fulfilling?

Because we all have the ability to live a more happy, healthy and more fulfilling life. I have been spreading my message for over 10 years and have seen many people from different walks of life profoundly improve their lives. This gives me the confidence to share that ordinary people truly can create extraordinary lives. And it all starts with small daily steps. These small daily steps create striking results over time.

A lot of us want to change for the better but don’t know how to begin.

A lack of change, or being stagnant in life, is often because people are scared to face fears and try new things. Facing your fears, taking that proverbial leap off the cliff is the first step. Whether it be a fear of public speaking, or writing that novel you always thought you could—confrontation with that fear is the only solution. Change starts with action, not inaction.

What is your philosophy for happiness?

Happiness is being in the process of creating what’s most important to you in all significant areas of your life [including work, home and personal]. Happiness is not about reaching the destination, but about enjoying the process of getting to your own personal mountaintop. Happiness is also about being true to yourself and living life on your own terms rather than according to the values and dreams of others.

How important is health in the pursuit of greatness?

A healthy mind always starts from a healthy body. In the break of one of my seminars, a gentleman came up to me and slipped me a piece of paper. It said: “Health is the crown on the ill person’s head that only a well person can see.” Health is wealth and without it, we have nothing.

Any tips for our readers?

On most days, I get up between 4 and 5 o’clock and take an hour for myself. I call this my holy hour. In that time, I plan my day, read, write my journal and reflect on what I want to stand for during the hours that will come. I have elaborated on this technique in my book, The Greatness Guide and it has helped many to become world-class. It’s a technique anyone can follow.

Every once in a while you come across a person whose warmth and wisdom stay with you long after the interaction is over. Actor and winner of the Miss Asia Pacific title, DIA Mirza is such an individual. Not only is she beautiful, but she is also warm, wise and articulate. One interaction with her and you realise that the glow that she exudes doesn’t just emanate from her beauty, but from her highly evolved being. Here are some excerpts from a very enlightening chat Dia had with MANOJ Khatri

Manoj Khatri [MK] Where do you place health in the list of your priorities? Do you think good health is overrated or do you believe that health is true wealth?

Dia Mirza: ‘Health is wealth’ is not just a saying that we have heard over the years; it is the biggest reality of life. Unfortunately, it is in times of ill-health that we realise the importance of health.
There’s a song called the Sunscreen Song, which says that your body is the greatest instrument you will ever have. But I think it can only be your greatest instrument if it is well. Good health is key in every kind of purpose you might want to meet in life—it is important to be healthy in order to think clearly, to make rational decisions, to be able to function at your optimum, to be able to execute your ambitions, dreams and desires. Good health is also essential to be able to support the ones you love. It is the key to sustenance. the key to everything. It is the one thing that empowers.
I think most humans are selfless by nature. But as much as we care for the ones around us, we don’t care for ourselves. We do not pay attention to what we eat or how we live. We do not concentrate on what is good for us and all this takes a toll on our basic wellbeing.

MK: Exercise plays an important role in maintaining good health. You too had undergone rigorous training for a movie…

Dia Mirza: That was for Acid Factory. The film needed extensive action and I had to train for it. In fact, my countdown for filming the movie was pretty regimental in terms of exercise. There was an optimum level of fitness that I had to achieve. But more than my fitness levels, it was about increasing my endurance levels. I needed to gain a lot of strength and flexibility in order to carry off the stunts.

MK: Are you calorie-conscious when you eat?

Dia Mirza: I am aware of the basic parameter of 2,000 calories a day and I am conscious about it. To achieve optimum energy, you need to give your body enough natural sugar. Your body also needs enough nutrients to function well.
The basic idea when I eat is to eat more fatty food in the first half of the day and reduce the carbohydrate intake by the evening.

MK: Are you equally sensitive towards personal successes and failures in life?

Dia Mirza: To me, no failure is big or small. I feel that failures are more important than success. And I am a big believer in this. Failures take you inward. They bring about a great sense of realisation, understanding, discipline and respect for whatever it is that you do. Great passion always arises out of failures.
Success is a high. It’s something that you feel and enjoy. It’s quickly forgotten. But failures have a deep imprint on your mind and they make you a stronger person. Failures are the biggest gift from the universe to us and it is important to treat them such. Understand that every time you fall, it is only to rise up stronger. That’s how I look at every failure.

MK: When you don’t get something that you badly want, how do you react?

Dia Mirza: Well, the instant reaction is disappointment, and then determination to work harder and ensure that I get what I want [laughs].

MK: Advice to CW readers

Dia Mirza: Well, if you are reading this magazine, then you are already on the right path [laughs].

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Being the grandson of a great healer and the son of a renowned Toltec teacher, one would think that he would find it easy to follow in their footsteps and carry on their legacy. But don Jose Ruiz walked a lesser known path, learning his lessons while stumbling a few times over, until he finally found himself.

Manoj Khatri met up with Jose Ruiz to talk about his latest book My Good Friend The Rattlesnake, in which he reveals breathtaking details of an extraordinary life that made him the messenger of love that he is today.

Here are excerpts of the chat.

Manoj Khatri: What made you write My Good Friend the Rattlesnake after co-authoring The Fifth Agreement and Ripples of Wisdom with your father?

don Jose Ruiz: I’ve been fortunate to be able to share the Toltec teachings in conferences and lectures around the world. After one point, I started sharing my experiences, rather than standing on a pedestal and preaching. I started opening my heart out to the audiences. When I began doing that, it was like a cleansing for me. Sometimes people from the audience would come to me after the session and ask me to make my lectures into a book, but I didn’t think about it much. One day someone came to me and said, “When you share your story I feel that enlightenment is reachable. Before that I always felt that it was a point I could not reach, that it was not for me. But when I listen to you I feel that we are all the same.” And when I heard that I told my partner we have to make this happen, we have to bring out the book.

Writing this book would have taken a lot of courage; you have revealed a lot of uncomfortable stories about your past. Was it difficult to be so open?

Yes, initially I found it challenging. But when we were putting it onto paper we said, “You know what, this is powerful. As we are voicing it out, we are able to listen to ourselves. If we are aware of what we want to let go of and delete, it will be deleted. But if we’re not honest and just pretend, the negative will always remain inside of us.” I have learned that no one else can judge me if I don’t judge myself. I have realised that judgements are mere illusions. With this awareness, I began voicing out my past. I said to myself that if I’m able to voice my life honestly, no one can step on my tail. At that moment I became free from my past.

What made you choose such a unique title?

I believe that we are all a bit like the rattlesnake. When the rattlesnake is young it cannot control its poison. Even a small bite and its poison can kill you. But when it grows and becomes mature, it learns to control its poison.

In the same way, when we are young we are full of anger or hurt, we say things we don’t really mean and we cannot control our negativity. But later, just like the rattlesnake, we also mature; we learn to control our poison. To be honest, there is negativity inside my head even now—the difference is that now I can control it. I’m in charge of it, so it cannot get out and hurt me or others.

Tell us more…

When I began writing the book, it was for me. Later, I felt that this book will help anyone who is willing to see their own past—all the judgements and all the shame—they can look at them and let it all go. They will learn that it is possible for them to let it go, as I did.

When I was going through a rough patch my father asked me, “Why are you living this kind of life?” and I gave him all kinds of excuses. And he said to me, “You are suffering because you are addicted to suffering.” And when I heard that, a part of me wanted to defend myself. It was the mask I was wearing that was defensive. But the truth was that I was indeed addicted to suffering.

When the rattlesnake sheds its skin in the desert, it leaves its skin behind and goes forward. It doesn’t look back at that skin. One day I was thinking to myself that if I was a rattlesnake, I would not appear as a little snake crawling, but a big mountain of dead skins. Because I had been collecting all my dead skins in the form of negative past memories [laughs]. When I used to speak to a person who is going through some suffering at the moment, I would go back in my memory and pull out one of my dead skins—lets say skin number 67. And then I would just speak about myself and not even listen to the other person. That’s what addiction of suffering means.

How do we drop this addiction? How do we let go of the shame and guilt we feel for the past?

The first cure for suffering is to admit that you are addicted to it and that you have hurt yourself with the things that you may have done [or not done]. And in the Toltec tradition, there is nothing to learn but there are things to unlearn. The word Toltec means artist. Artists do away with everything that takes their inspiration away—so that they can deliver the purest and divine art that they create from the heart. While writing these books with my partner, I discovered the meaning of my life is to take care of ‘Jose’. Because I know what makes Jose happy and I know what makes Jose suffer. And how do I speak for Jose? Because I am Jose! [laughs]. Like everyone is himself or herself.

So when we are suffering, we have to look at it with honesty and acceptance. And ask: what can I do to change it? That’s how we bring the light where there was darkness. With this we are able to reach a level where we can have respect, both for what’s in us and what’s outside us. From that point on, we can live the ultimate dream, which is service. But we cannot give what we don’t have. Only when we serve ourselves we can serve others. Because when we serve others but we don’t serve ourselves, we are preparing something that is going to end up poisoning us. When we build love inside of our heart and make peace, then it is the resurrection of the embodiment of love. And this is the whole point of this book—to show that anyone can resurrect the embodiment of the love because that’s what we really are. It is just to let go the illusion of the past.

What was your turning point in life?

I was born with an open happy heart, but then every little kid wants to grow up fast and hang out with the older kids. The first time I got invited to a shamanatic ceremony, I was accompanying my father. I was the only kid there, so I thought, “Wow, now I’m like one of the adults.” And I noticed that everyone was doing a ceremony. There was a large stick with eagle feathers on top of it and they passed it around. The person with the stick would get a chance to talk. And everyone told a story of suffering. As the stick was passed on, it seemed as if they were competing on who was suffering the most. And then when it came to me, I didn’t have any such story. But it planted a seed in my head—that in order to be an adult, you need to have drama, suffering and pain in your life. So my little mind went to look for it and I started hanging out with the negative crowd. And all of a sudden I became lost in this crowd; I became a part of it. I went into drug addiction and gangs until one incident that changed my life.

I was planning to go with my friends to the beach one day when my father came to pick me up. I told him that I didn’t want to go with him, that I wanted to go with my friends. But he took me home with him and later I heard the news about my friends’ car being involved in an accident; my best friend passed away in that accident. That’s when it got me thinking—it could have been me. And that incident represents a line in my life, a line where I made the jump from the negative side to the positive side.

Are you saying that suffering is like an infection we acquire from the adults around us?

Yes, it is something that is passed on to us; especially the stories. Because, the emotions are real, but the stories are not. And we go to war for our stories. But they’re just stories, you know. When we wake up, we will know that there is nothing to debate on, we just have to accept everybody’s art because we all are artists.

You mean, we have to appreciate the differences

Absolutely! We can’t be promoting competition or nurturing envy—we have to just accept one another. We have to accept that individuals express art in different ways—in action, words, songs, actions, paintings, our work or in anything we ‘be’ or ‘do’.

In your teenage and young adulthood, there seemed to be a pattern of destructive behaviour. When you look back, do you think those things were necessary for you to arrive at where you are today?

Every negative event in my life was supposed to happen. First of all, because it happened; I cannot say it was not meant to happen. But thanks to them, I know how we create suffering and pain when we go against ourselves. Every morning I have a tickle in my brain when I think, “Oh my God! I survived that kind of life.” So what does that make me? It makes me grateful to be alive and to know that there is nothing to do but to serve. Because this body is lent to us to serve the divine; even those who serve negativity are, in one sense, serving the divine. How is that, you ask? Because it helps the divine wake up and gather the courage to stand up—that’s what my negativity did for me.

“While writing this book I discovered the meaning of my life“

And how do we deal with the negativity inside us?

I can tell you how I deal with it. There’s a story of Jesus of Nazareth going to the dessert to talk to the serpent, who represents the devil. I know from my understanding that that serpent was his own negativity. So when I get into a moment of negativity, I move away from my loved ones. I don’t want to say things I don’t mean; for, when we are in pain, we say things that we do not mean [that’s our way of calling for help]. So I go away and wait till I get calmer, and when I’m completely calm, when I can feel it in my body, it’s time to take action. Your body is like a pet—it’s loyal to you no matter what you do.

You share a wonderful relationship with your father but at any point of time did he find it challenging to raise you?

My father always had unconditional love for me, he was very supportive. It was me who was running away, wanting to get attention. Once I read an interview of my father in Oprah Winfrey’s magazine where Ellen DeGeneres asked my father, “Is there something that makes you react, may be when someone cuts you off in a traffic?” And my father said, “It’s my son Jose, he’s 17 years old. As a parent, having the patience is tough.”

When I read that, I realised I’m hurting my father so much. My father was always present. I can say that it was me trying to get attention and manipulating his love. For when he would talk, I pretended not to listen, but I always listened.

Can you share some experience where you witnessed the power of the four agreements that your father teaches?

One of the things that my father teaches is to be impeccable with your word, which I now practise. I know that it is a gift to be able to think impeccably. But you have to apply this in a disciplined way.

Once I wanted to die and I jumped into the ocean. I was being tossed around in the waves; the current was so strong that it seemed to pull me down further and further under the surface. My body felt like a rag doll, and the ocean threw me around, beating me up as if it were angry at me. I struggled and struggled until I finally gave up and relaxed my body. I felt myself becoming submerged, and I knew I was drowning, so I began praying to Mother Ocean. “I don’t want to die, I want to live. If you let me go, I give my word that I will spend my life serving others by doing what my family does.” And at that moment, something magical happened. I know that the ocean is alive because I spoke to it, and it listened and it pulled me out and it saved my life. Each time after that, if I went off my life’s path, my life would turn into complete chaos. That’s when I really understood the first agreement of my father—to say what we mean—because when we say what we don’t mean, that’s going to happen. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, we blurt out mean things to a loved one: “I don’t want to be with you” and “I don’t love you anymore”—then that is going to become a reality. You are going to hurt your dream just because of one petty negative moment. That’s why it is so important to be impeccable with our words.

What’s your advice to parents?

We have to have the awareness that if we don’t mould our own children, somebody else will. So it’s better to give what you have in our heart, share the positive—if they listen, they listen; if they don’t, they don’t. I can tell you that I was a very rebellious kid and did a lot of things that my family didn’t approve of. I was in the dark and going against myself and in those times the things that they had taught me stayed in my head. My father had given me those tools to return back home.

Another thing is to always remember that you are your child’s parent—not her friend. And this is crucial in the growing up years, before they become adults.

What, according to you, is wrong with humanity today?

We don’t value our authenticity, we don’t value our love for creativity, we are programmed to put ourselves down, to judge ourselves. Its like my grandma once said, “We’re like the scorpion that stings itself with its own tail. It paralyses itself with its own poison.” This will stop the moment humanity wakes up. And I’m very happy to say that humanity is waking up and now, with the power of technology at our disposal, it’s even better. You know, when the young boys from the villages speak up—about the abuses and the injustices they face—they speak with courage. And that courage wouldn’t come alive if fear wasn’t present. When I was growing up, fear was a big teacher—it taught me to stand up for myself. And when I stood up for myself, fear became an ally; it warned me now to take care of myself and not to paralyse myself.

don Jose with his legendary father and his brother

In your book you say, “The world is getting more and more aware of and open to the idea that humanity is a whole and there is no separation”. What makes you so optimistic?

We all have dark moments, but those who go through darkness and return, bring the light with them. They bring answers of how to deal with the negativity. There are only two languages spoken around the world—negative and positive. And if you speak the negative language, everything will be negative. But the moment you get tired of speaking the negative language, [that could happen by an experience that wakes you up] then you choose to speak the positive language. And then your whole world begins to light up.

It is my belief that all of us will get to that point; some may take longer. Take my own example: every time I made a mistake and then rectified it, my father would say to me, “Welcome back home.” And then, when I made more mistakes, he would keep saying “Welcome back home”…again and again and again. No matter how dark our past, no matter what horrific thing we have done, we can always return home. Because we’re always home, we just didn’t want to believe it.

Someone once said to my father that I wish humanity would make it. And my father replied, “But it is making it”. Especially in the last 150 years, changes are happening. And when everyone becomes authentic to themselves, the world will completely change.

You visited India when you were 17. Tell us what you remember most about that experience?

During one of my last days in India, as I was preparing to travel home, Master Kaleshwar said to me, “Do you want a spiritual name?” I said, “I’m just happy to be in your presence and it is enough for me.” And he asked me, “Do you love India?” I said I love India very much and it’s funny because that day I was wearing an ‘I Love India’ t-shirt and I showed it to him [laughs]. And he said, “With great honour I would like to give you the name Kaleshwar.”

Other than the Toltec teachings, who else has had an influence on your spiritual growth?

Many masters. I remember having an altar in my home where I have idols of different masters and deities from different cultures. One friend came to visit me and said, “Jose, you’re contradicting yourself right here.” I said, “No I’m not, I’m just being grateful to all the messengers of love that have different gardens of love. Because they all represent how to deal with negativity and suffering. They all help us to go back to the heart. Some people like roses and others like daisies—you just embrace whatever inspires you. There is no competition or separation.

It has been a pleasure talking to you Jose. Thank you for sharing your insights with us.

Thank you for the opportunity, brother.

This was first published in the February 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing

The post “I have realised that judgements are mere illusions” — don Jose Ruiz appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

What is SaveLIFE Foundation [SLF] and what is its scope of work?

SaveLIFE Foundation is a non-profit and non-governmental organisation focused on enabling bystander care for road accident victims in India. Bystander care is the immediate care that police and community volunteers can provide a critically injured person in order to improve his or her chances of survival. Our focus is to achieve this enablement by facilitating establishment of legal, ethical and training standards in our society. By mid-2011 we plan to establish a call centre in Delhi that will locate and mobilise trained volunteers to respond to road accidents and other medical emergencies in Delhi. By then, we will have a pool of over 3000 police officers and 12,000 community volunteers trained by SaveLIFE Foundation and our partner hospitals in Basic Trauma Life Support.

We have also, recently, started working with various governmental and non-governmental groups to enhance road safety in order to prevent serious accidents. Our effort in this area is to push for better licensing and driver’s training norms and awareness initiatives that people can relate to [unlike present initiatives].

Considering the population of people and vehicles on the Indian roads, the goal of SLF is monolithic. What roadblocks did you face or continue to face in your efforts?

The sheer size of India in itself is a challenge when it comes to expanding the initiative, but we strongly believe in innovation and technology and their potential to overcome these challenges. Our model provides a community-driven emergency response system to cities at the cost of buying and running just two advanced support ambulances. And the model is scalable and replicable. We, therefore, intend to partner with credible groups or non-profit outfits in different cities and enable them to start SaveLIFE in their town or area. Over the next 12-18 months, we plan to expand to Mumbai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Bangalore and Chennai.

Our only continuing road block at present is limited capacity driven by limited sources of funding. Hopefully, with contributions now coming in from the Rolex Award, corporate India and philanthropists, we hope to overcome this challenge one day.

In your opinion, how does India/Indians compare with other nations and their citizens with respect to responsiveness to road accidents?

Most people in India are afraid to touch a victim for fear of getting involved in a legal hassle. This leads to thousands of deaths every year that could have been avoided, had someone rushed the victim[s] to a hospital or provided the necessary care by the roadside. There is a great need for our state and central governments to bring in legislations that will not only protect citizens who help road victims but also recognise and reward them for their acts.

Several countries in Europe and America have legal standards that encourage common people to help those in need of urgent medical care. I still remember the scene from 30th April 2009 when the Dutch Royal Parade was attacked by a car driver who ran over several people. Six people including the driver died in the incident but seven others were saved because bystanders and police provided immediate care to them. The absence of such help would have certainly taken more lives. This is what my vision for India is—to make India a place where people can help others without fear of harassment or prosecution.

So, the main reason why a lot of people don’t approach roadside victims is not because lack of medical training but because they fear getting involved. Does SLF do anything in that regard?

SLF’s main objective is to help establish legal, ethical and training standards for bystander care. While the training aspect is the most visible part of our work, we do have an ongoing effort where we are pushing for policies and laws to be revised to create a better environment for people to use the training that we provide. In the interim, we will provide each trained volunteer a special identification signed by local Police and SaveLIFE officials that will enable them to help accident victims with skill and confidence.

If we understand correctly, as of now, SLF operates only in New Delhi and Noida. Do you plan to expand SLF’s operations to other cities?

We are in discussions with groups in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. We are also actively looking for partners in other states and would like to invite medical and non-profit groups to partner with us by way of this article in Complete Wellbeing.

Is there scope for volunteering with SLF? How can a common individual help the cause?

There are three ways by which volunteers can support us: ? become trainers and spread the knowledge, ? help us start SLF in their area, and ? help us with our organisational activities such as cause promotion, coordination with police and hospitals, coordination with media and government, fund-raising, website management, and the like.

Apart from health-conscious readers, we have thousands of specialist doctors among our readers—do you have a message for them?

Doctors are our most important partners because it is their knowledge that we are spreading to the community. We invite them to partner with us, become community trainers and help us establish bystander care in India. Doctors can contact us if they wish to establish SaveLIFE in their area and we will provide them all necessary support to do so.

You recently received the Rolex 2010 Young Laureate Award for your work through SLF. Can you tell us more about the award?

The Rolex Award for Enterprise is given to individuals who have ideas that can positively impact the world. This year, besides me, there are four other winners of this prestigious award given every two years: Reese Fernandez from Philippines, Jacob Colker from USA, Nnaemeka Ikegwano from Nigeria and Bruktawit Tigabu from Ethiopia. The award includes a financial grant. Most importantly, it gives you access to some of the brightest minds from around the world who have made a significant contribution to humankind. I consider myself truly privileged to have become a part of this family. Personally, it has been a very humbling experience for me. The award has helped SaveLIFE enhance its capacity, get access to innovators from around the world who have shared new ideas with us and the benefits of global publicity of the initiative.

Tell us three things that a person can do to help a roadside accident victim.

The simple mantra for helping someone is CHECK-CALL-CARE. Check the scene for your own safety first and then the condition of the victim[s]. Call or ask someone to call for help immediately. And then start providing care. The three things to remember are:

• Assume that the victim has a spinal injury. Never lift the victim with a jerk, as it may aggravate the injury. If possible, use a stretcher or a flat board to lift the victim but ensure that the neck and spine are supported, and the victim is rushed to a hospital soon.
• If the victim is unresponsive, check for a pulse by placing two fingers on the neck, under the place where the jaw bone sticks out the most. If the pulse is missing, start CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation] by immediately placing the heel of your palm in the middle of the victim’s chest and pressing it 30 times in 18 seconds followed by two normal breaths. Continue even while rushing the victim to a hospital.
• Control the bleeding by applying pressure on the wound. Even if you have tied something, ensure there is enough pressure on the wound to restrict further blood flow.

The post A bystander who cares appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Yuvraj Singh is labelled as confident and aggressive on-field, cocky and laid-back, off-the field. How exactly is the real Yuvraj?
Yuvraj Singh: I am exactly all those things. I take my game seriously and have to show confidence and aggressiveness on-field as the game requires that. When I am not playing cricket, I am a super laid-back person—I love watching movies, chilling at home, hanging out with friends and going on holidays with family. I also like reading books—The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari and The Secret are my favourites—it is one of the best ways to unwind and relax.

Doesn’t the pressure of performance affect you personally?
Yuvraj Singh: I am a cricketer… that is my job. And that job comes with a price; it always gets into my personal life. But over the years, I have reconciled the fact that being a cricketer comes with a lot of responsibility. I have learnt to deal with it and not let it affect my personal life.

Similarly, do you also manage to keep your emotions in check when you are on the field? [we’re referring to the Flintoff episode]
Yuvraj Singh: The Flintoff incident was because he made me angry and I decided to tell him off by performing with the bat. I am glad that he got the message when I hit a six for each of his six balls in an over.

I try not to get my emotions involved in the game; cricket is a mind game and emotions can ruin that sometimes. However, we are all human and sometimes our emotions do take over us.

So does your heart guide you or your mind?
Yuvraj Singh: My mind; there are many things my heart desires, but I have to make sure that they are right for me. So, my mind always makes my decisions. And I have a very strong mind. When I decide that I want to do something, I make sure it happens. For instance, when I decided to be a cricketer, I set my mind to it and put in my 100 per cent.

Is your body equally strong? What do you do to maintain your fitness levels?
Yuvraj Singh: For me, physical fitness is crucial, as I have to maintain my stamina to run on field. For that, I exercise at least for 30 minutes every day—it could be running or swimming or weight training [thrice a week]. I also am careful about what I eat on a daily basis.

Does that mean you have to make a lot of compromises in your food habits?
Yuvraj Singh: Not necessarily; I eat whatever I want, but in moderation. Eggs, chicken—in fact, any form of protein—forms a large part of my diet, as it helps in muscle strengthening. Having said that, I also include carbs in my diet, as they too play a key role in an athlete’s life due to the energy they provide.

Does it also help you cope with injury?
Yuvraj Singh: When you are injured, physical rest is the most important thing, as your body needs time to recover. It is also important to be happy mentally as that makes your mind stronger for recovery. Along with the medical treatment and rest, I always find that being at home and spending time with friends and family always helps recover faster.

Moving on…you had said in an interview that you “learnt a lot about life” during your Vengsarkar academy days. What were the lessons?
Yuvraj Singh: Yes I had said that. At that time I used to travel by the local trains in Mumbai and that’s where I learnt how hard life is for some people. I also learnt that each one of us has his/her own struggles in life… it taught me to appreciate the good that I have in my life and I always thank God for that.

Coming back to your game… you get high praise for playing well and a good thrashing when you don’t. How do you handle such opposite reactions?
Yuvraj Singh: I have learnt to ignore them. I don’t take either the praise or the thrashing very seriously. At the end of the day, my game is what matters the most. I just have to continue focussing on my game and let my game talk for itself. If I let the trash talk get to me, I won’t be able to concentrate on my game.

But the outcome must be affecting you to some extent…
Yuvraj Singh: Cricket is a religion in India and the country has a lot of expectations from cricketers. So, when I don’t play well, I do feel like I have let a lot of people down. But at the end of the day, even I am a human being just like everybody else and only capable of so much.

Still, I try my best to stay mentally strong to keep doing my best; that is all I can count on.

Is that how you tackle tough times?
Yuvraj Singh: When I am going through my rough phases, my family and friends help me in staying mentally strong. Especially my mother—she is my biggest support system. I turn to her for everything. She has been my greatest strength so far.

What about the rest of your family?
Yuvraj Singh: It is during rough times in life that you realise the importance of family. My family members have always supported me for everything I have done. I get my inspiration from them.

But your dad didn’t support your passion for skating…
Yuvraj Singh: I was so young that I didn’t understand fully what I was getting into. Things just started happening for me with cricket and I leant to enjoy the game with time. When I look back now, I thank my father for pushing me so hard to become a cricketer. If not for him, we wouldn’t be having this conversation…[laughs]

A bit about your other relationships…
Yuvraj Singh: We all have are our relationships; you learn so much from all kinds of relationships and I give great importance to having good relations with everyone.

Your advice to readers of Complete Wellbeing?
Yuvraj Singh: Tomorrow is a new day, let yesterday go and look ahead.

The post Yuvraj Singh: "I have a very strong mind" appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

It was Dr John Gray who first said that men are from Mars and women are from Venus and that they both speak different languages. Through his books on the subject, he acted as the interpreter helping each understand the other better thus saving many marriages.

When we say men are from Mars and women are from Venus, are we not oversimplifying complex traits and classifying them into two neat and mutually exclusive categories?

There are millions of differences between human beings. And there are differences between men and women—our bodies and brains and our hormones are so different. We’re different in how we react to stress. But we can still make generalisations and be very accurate. What is important is that these generalisations be expressed in a positive way so we have a better and positive understanding of each other rather than some stereotypical negative generalisations.

So men and women are different by design?

You are absolutely right. When you understand what these differences are, then it begins to make sense that we are a perfect fit together—we complement each other. We’re not in competition with each other. Women are capable of making babies and men are not, so it makes perfect sense that a woman’s brain be different from a man’s.

So is it childbirth that makes a woman different from a man?

Well, women are genetically different, their brains are wired up differently, their hormones are wired up differently. Whether she has babies or not, her body is designed to make babies. And the hormone oxytocin is a major hormone necessary for childbirth. So, whether she has children or not, the hormone helps her cope with stress. Once she does have children, the differences show up even more because it awakens in her an awareness of her need for the support of a man.

How different is a woman’s brain from a man’s?

Since women have been making babies for thousands of years, there’s a part of their brain that keeps them feeling responsible for the babies and the children all day long and all night long. Men, however, can turn their brains on and off. They can be responsible for work and forget the problems at home and they can come home and forget the problems at work. Hence, they cope well with stress. But women can’t turn their brains on and off like men. When they are at work, they worry about problems at home, and when they are home, they worry about problems at work. And it’s important to understand these differences so that we can support each other better.

Do these differences serve any purpose?

Women are designed to respond and react to all the small problems, which could be very useful if you have to look after six or seven children. While a man stands guard looking for the big problems. He is not disturbed by the little problems—a woman is. This is just one of the ways the differences between men and women help.

But do these differences really matter?

Younger women today are often unaware of how different they are. That’s because today, women can choose behaviours that are more masculine and men can choose behaviours that are more feminine. And they think that that’s fine. But as time passes, you realise that certain needs are not being met. As they grow older they recognise these differences exist. For fulfilment they need to satisfy their own unique needs.

Women are believed to be emotionally stronger and more resilient than men… is that true?

I would not say that women are stronger or more resilient than men. That’s a generalisation that’s not true. It’s not one or the other. It’s just that some people are more resilient than others. What we can say, though, is that a woman’s brain becomes eight times more emotionally reactive under moderate stress. A man’s brain becomes reactive only under major stress.

Can you tell us three qualities of women that make them unique and special?

One, women by nature are much more nurturing than men. It’s not that men can’t learn to nurture but women automatically tend to have a much greater capacity to nurture other people’s needs and to think of others.

Two, women have an ability to appreciate little things. Men tend to think you have to do big things to feel successful. Women can appreciate the little things of life.

Three, women have a greater sense of the inter-connectedness—of how everything fits together. For example, women understand the relatedness of family members and how important it is to include everyone, whereas, men tend to focus on just one thing and forget the importance of family, relationships and the essence of life.

Is that why women tend to be the backbone of the family?

Yes. Because women can make babies, they are much more connected to their children. Also, their bodies reward them with good feelings when they focus on the needs of the family on a personal level.

Does that mean it’s only women who are family oriented and not men?

They both are, but in different ways. Men go out and do things in the world to earn money and to provide for their family. And that’s often where a man’s interest primarily is. He does have an interest in his family. He loves his family, cares for his family but men’s brains turn on and off to cope with stress.

A woman’s brain never turns off. Family is a 24-hour job for her. So she is much more intimately connected to the children, to the needs of everyone in the family. It’s more important for her own sense of happiness and wellness to have that connection, and hence is seen as the backbone of the family.

You may also call her the heart, and the man the head, of the family. Both have important roles. And neither is more important than the other.

If their roles are different, are their expectations from relationships different too?

Yes indeed. Women and men have different expectations from relationships. And in the last 10 years those expectations have changed dramatically. That is what causes the stress today between men and women. They have unrealistic expectations. Earlier a woman depended on a man to provide for the family. Her main expectation was that he would go to work and support the family. She would work as well, but she didn’t do the kind of work he did. So he would carry the major responsibility.

Today, women too carry that responsibility along with the man, and that causes a much greater stress on them. To cope with that stress, a woman has new needs, which have never been identified before. Our cultures, which are thousands of years old, have supported women and men in different ways. Now that women are doing men’s jobs, there is a need to create a new culture which supports women and men in a new way.

And what do you think this new culture requires?

There are several ingredients. One of the ingredients of this new culture is romance. Never in history has romance become so important in a woman’s life. Because when women are under stress, the hormone oxytocin helps them cope with it. And oxytocin gets stimulated through romance and the anticipation of romance. When the romance need is met, women are much happier, much healthier.

Can you give an example of how a woman’s health suffers due to the cultural changes?

Sure. Do you know that a woman living in a village in India is at a low risk of getting breast cancer? But, as soon as she moves to the city, her chances of getting breast cancer dramatically go up. Breast cancer is a sickness that happens when your immune system is weak. And your immune system becomes weak when your stress levels are high. When women move to the city, they get a job which is far more stressful than the kind of job they would do in a rural area.

Whenever women are in the situation of urgency, emergency and uncertainty, the threshing around stimulates the hormone testosterone, which helps men cope with stress, but not women.

It’s oxytocin that helps women cope with stress. But living in the city and taking on traditionally male jobs produces testosterone even in a woman. It doesn’t lower her stress like it does for a man and consequently her health suffers.

What will help women cope with this stress?

When women are in a co-operative, collaborative, non-competitive, mutually supportive, communicative type of environment, it lowers stress for women.

To compensate for stress, women need a new kind of support in relationships. They need to learn to communicate better to create romance.

Women should learn to ask for help around the home in ways that are positive rather than simply complaining and expecting men to respond in a positive way.

Does that mean only women are under greater stress today?

No, men too are under greater stress than ever before. But the man’s stress has a different reason. Today it is much harder for a man to feel that he can support his family. And when a man can’t support his family, his sense of success goes down. And that causes major stress for him. To compensate for this, a man needs more messages from his woman that he is a success.

What can help men and women build a better relationship?

Relationships have become a major source of stress because women simply expect men to help out more around the home. Women feel they are alone and have no support—that causes major stress too. They expect men to suddenly be more interested in what they have to say and expect them to be more romantic. These are new things for men, and add further stress on the relationship. Men have to learn the importance of these things.

Similarly, women have to learn to ask for these things in a friendly way and not just expect men to do them. Learning to ask a man for romance, asking him to listen, and do little things around the house to help can be a major stress reducer for women.

Men don’t understand the important role they have just as women don’t understand their important role which is to learn to make themselves happy. Think of it like this. By asking him to do things you make yourself 90 per cent happy. When he comes in and does the task—the rest of the 10 per cent—you give him full credit and that makes him very happy too.

So you are saying that women need to be more expressive, more communicative…

No, I’m saying women have to communicate what their needs are in a different way. Today, women often communicate their needs but it sounds like they are complaining, criticizing, nagging and demanding. This just pushes the men away.

Moreover, today as more and more women have jobs where they are more independent financially, they become more masculine and that makes women very unhappy if they don’t balance it with the feminine side of life. This is why there is increasing amounts of divorce.

Women are not satisfied in their marriages. When they are not satisfied they always think it’s the man that’s making them unhappy but the true cause of their unhappiness is the new world, which doesn’t support the hormones of happiness in their bodies. They are not learning to make themselves happy.

Has modern-day stress changed a woman’s demands from intimacy too?

In the last 50 years, women have shifted from the traditional arranged marriages to marrying someone they love. And when you are in love with someone, there is a physical chemistry. This chemistry is delicate. It needs to be preserved like a flower plant in the garden. You have to learn to take care of the plant so that the flowers continue to bloom. And women have very, very different needs when it comes to feeling sexually attracted to their partner. When men do romantic things and women have the opportunity to express their feelings, it stimulates oxytocin. Women cannot respond sexually or climax in the bedroom unless they have enough oxytocin. And women today want more romance and more sex than ever before because sex is one of the number one oxytocin stimulators, which helps them cope with stress.

Is it the same for men too?

For men, it’s different. They don’t need oxytocin in order to be in the mood for sex, men need testosterone. For a man who’s under stress the whole day, sex helps reduce stress. But sex is not the way to reduce stress for women. It’s something women want to enjoy, but only after they’ve lowered their stress levels. For men, sex itself is a way to lower stress and hence men are more interested in it and want to do it more often. But a woman can’t feel the need for sex or experience fulfilment unless she already has a certain amount of oxytocin. So, going on dates, planning things that are romantic stimulates oxytocin in a woman, which helps her cope with stress. Then she is in the mood for sex.

What’s your relationship advice to readers of Complete Wellbeing?

When it comes to relationships, the road to happiness is to remember that a woman loves ‘a man with a plan’ and a man loves ‘a woman with a smile’. So my advice to women is: focus less on making men happy and focus more on making yourself happy. This way, not only will you be happier, he will be happier too.

To men, I say this: recognise that women are always busy in their brains much more than you. So plan something for her—a date for example. It’ll free her from having to plan everything. And that’s a great source of fulfilment for her. When you plan special activities, she doesn’t have to do it.

On weekends, many men ask their wives at the last minute, ‘what would you like to do?’ They think they’re being very loving and supportive by saying I’ll do whatever you want to do. That puts a burden on her to once again figure out what to do that will make everybody happy.

When you can take on that burden sometimes, it will relieve her and make her feel special and loved. Such a small thing could make a huge difference in her life.

This interview was first published in the March 2009 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Viswanathan Anand has made India—no, the entire continent—proud by winning the World Chess Championship title. Despite being the first Grandmaster from India and the recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, and the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna awards, what is important to this man is not the titles he gets, but the love of the game, the satisfaction of a job well-done and spending time with family and friends. Not only does ‘Vishy’ [as he’s lovingly called] have his head firmly on his shoulders, but he uses it well…

How is the person behind the legendary name?

I am just a normal guy who got good at chess. I am laid back and love to chill at home when I’m not playing. I like listening to music and reading on politics, science and economics.

You started young…

I started playing chess when I was six and just enjoyed it. I used to play at a chess club on weekends. I particularly enjoyed playing blitz games and it’s there that I started playing fast.

Was it very difficult back then?

In the 80s, India still didn’t have a Grandmaster so we didn’t have the benefit of professionalcoaches. So till 1991, I trained by myself.

For my tournaments, I had to travel a lot in Europe. And in those days, it was much more difficult to travel. You had to get a lot of permissions for foreign exchange, and other things. But my parents would try and see that all these problems were sorted so that I could enjoy chess.

As for me, I didn’t really mind all the travelling, and actually enjoyed travelling and playing in tournaments. I just wanted to play… so any opportunity I got, I played.

Were there challenges and sacrifices?

Well, every sportsperson has to make a lot of sacrifices and choices along the way. And in each stage of your career, the challenge differs and you have to rearrange your talent to be on top.

Since I was the only Indian in most tournaments, information was more difficult to access. As an Indian, you were behind the Soviet Grand masters in preparation. Today, thanks to technology and the Internet, there is a more level-playing field and geographical locations don’t matter much.

How important is mental fitness to you?  What do you do to stay mentally fit?

Quite. I think mental fatigue is more difficult to handle than physical fatigue. When the body is tired, we can sleep really well. But if the mind is tired or worried, it’s very difficult to sleep. I try to keep my mind calm and happy. So before an event, I try to switch off and take some time for myself—take a small holiday or do something different just to recharge my batteries.

And what do you do to stay physically fit?

Being healthy is very important especially in sports. In chess, since we have to prepare for about 7 – 8 hours a day, physical fitness is as essential as mental fitness.

Also as sportspeople, we travel for 6 – 8 months to different countries. If we are not healthy, our bodies will not be able to keep up. Very simply, even if you have something as common as ‘common cold’, you can’t compete at your 100 per cent. So we try to improve our stamina and our general resistance to withstand the strain of competing.

How important is eating right for you? Do you have any secret brain foods?

Eating right is important for a healthy life. I don’t really have any brain foods. But I try to eat correctly and avoid heavy foods before a game. I try to get a good breakfast and a light lunch when I am playing or working.

Moving on, does your play get affected by your emotions?

For me, as it is for everyone, feelings determine performance. Only when you are happy or feel good about yourself can you play well. I try to keep my life simple, as chess itself is very complicated.

What makes you most happy?

When I do something well, it gives me immense satisfaction; I feel very happy. In life, there are many things that make one happy—being with family, travelling, competing.

What do family and friends mean to you?

They make life special. Family and friends like you for what you are rather than ‘who’ you are. I meet up with school friends often and after the first five minutes, I stop being Viswanathan Anand, and become just Anand who sat in the second row in high school.

Any really close friends?

I have some friends who have been more like family. When I used to travel in Europe for tournaments, I found it very difficult to go back to India and return between tournaments.

Nieves and Maurice, my closest friends in Spain, would insist that I stay with them. They more or less adopted me and I am more like a son to them.

And your family…

I have been quite fortunate to have a lovely family. My parents never forced me—either to play chess or to study. They allowed me to enjoy my childhood. Even when chess was taking me away from school and college, they were very understanding.

Now, my wife travels with me and it’s nice to have someone with you, whom you can trust and who shares your joys and defeats.

Does failure affect you?

It’s impossible to be unaffected. When failure stops affecting you, you stop being a sportsperson. I try to be practical: learn what went wrong, and swiftly move on.

How do you handle the criticism that follows failures?

I have won every rapid title many times over. Someone once told me that it’s news when I lose a game and not when I win… it’s strange.

I think if you lose one game, it’s not the end of anything. If I kept answering to what each one said, I would never have had time to be World Champion.

Winning in chess requires strategy. Does one need strategy to succeed in life as well?

Of course! Both chess and life are inter-related. My strategy [in both] is to be happy, enjoy what I do and constantly learn.

Once you feel you are invincible, you become vulnerable. So I try to learn new areas in chess and experiment with my play. At first, the results may not be as you expect, but you have to hang in there.

Your advice to Complete Wellbeing readers…

Each one has a dream. You should follow your dream, have ambition and focus. Moreover, you should follow your own dream and not someone else’s. The path is never smooth but you should learn to enjoy the journey.

This interview was first published in the October 2009 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

The post Feelings determine performance: Viswanathan Anand appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

She first gained fame when she appeared in a Bombay Dyeing commercial. Since then, Lisa Ray has made a career for herself in modelling and films, both commercial and independent. Now though, she is better known for having publicly chronicled her struggle with Multiple Myeloma [MM], a type of blood cancer, on her blog.

Breaking the taboo that surrounds discussing cancer publicly, she no longer feels the need to keep up any image and treasures authenticity. As a result of her treatment and changes in her diet and lifestyle, the cancer in now in remission. Meanwhile, she has successfully resumed her media career and now also finds time to support several philanthropic campaigns. Here are excerpts from our interview with this confident, brave and inspiring woman.

Your father is Bengali and mother is Polish, you grew up in Canada, married a man of Lebanese descent, and spent time in London—how does the world look like to a person who has had so many cultural influences?
Lisa Ray: I feel blessed. To be honest, my mixed blood and diverse cultural references caused a lot of confusion and identity issues when I was younger. However, today I understand that my differences are my strength. I have unique experiences and a unique view of the world. I am very open and accepting and curious about the world to this day. I was a global citizen even before there was such a concept. However, at my core, I am very Indian. I came to Mumbai when I was 16—it was ‘Bombay’ then—and I spent more than a decade in India, so a lot of my cultural references are still Indian. I call myself a global Indian.

What made you write the “The Yellow Diaries”? Where did you find the strength to be open and vulnerable like any other common man or woman?
Lisa Ray: The Yellow Diaries started from a simple impulse to try to decode and process my Cancer Journey. I wrote to understand. It was like journalling, except I chose to upload those words onto a blog. I can’t explain exactly what motivated me to start a blog—but I can tell you that I started writing when I was on steroids and sleepless at night. Words have always been important to me, and using them to express what I was going through helped me connect with my vulnerability and the truth of the moment. When I was facing my mortality, it made me realise how much I value truth and authenticity and it released me from the efforts of maintaining an ‘image’ for the media. I simply wanted to share a very human experience and I’m fortunate that people supported me through it. I guess Cancer made me brave.

Writing is known to be therapeutic. Do you think blogging about your disease contributed to your healing?
Lisa Ray: I think my healing journey involves so many aspects of my life today, from food and nourishment to lifestyle changes to detoxifying techniques to healing old emotional and mental wounds to meditation—but the courage to begin to make those changes in my life started with blogging. It also helped me connect with others. I will never forget the full hearted support I got from India. I think that blogging also helped to challenge the fear factor around cancer. There’s a taboo in India—and to a lesser extent abroad—about discussing a serious disease openly. I couldn’t understand why? Keeping it a secret for the first two months of my treatment was difficult and painful and it made me think about other cancer patients who are suffering in silence. Writing the blog helped challenge this cultural taboo.

My priorities have completely changed for the better. Today my actions and priorities are in line with my values and my heart’s desire

In your journey towards remission, did you feel weak at times? How did you deal with your weak moments? Did you ever contemplate giving up?
Lisa Ray: Of course I felt weak and even depressed, but never hopeless. After getting diagnosed, something was unlocked in me, an unlimited potential for hope. But during my weak moments, I turned to humour, writing, meditation and contemplation. I truly believed that there was a reason for my disease, that it was connected with emotional and mental traumas and that I could heal—though it would not be easy.

What role does the mind play in healing? To what extent did your attitude and your thoughts help you in your tryst with MM?
Lisa Ray: I believe the mind plays a huge role in healing. Holistic medicine, ayurveda and even traditional western medicine draws a strong connection between the mind, body and spirit in health and healing.

Before you got diagnosed, you had been practising yoga and meditation for several years; you were also a seeker of spiritual traditions. Did that help in your healing?
Lisa Ray: Without a doubt, my yoga and meditation practice helped me through my cancer treatment. What’s interesting is you practise and you practise more, but in order to reap the benefits, you need to be in a crisis. For instance, I think my relationship to fear and control over fear was different because of my meditation. I was able to manage my anxiety much better due to my yoga practice.

Tell us something about your term “cancer graduate”—what made you think of yourself as a graduate than a survivor?
Lisa Ray: I’d like to point out a crucial fact about MM, the blood cancer I am living with: it is considered incurable. There are many new treatments and the prognosis is looking increasingly bright but the fact remains that I am living WITH the cancer. It is under control due to medication and lifestyle and diet changes I have made. In fact, I relapsed in early 2013 and ended up attending a three week Life Transformation programme at a holistic healing centre called The Hippocrates Health Institute, where I started applying healing techniques like juicing and releasing emotional blocks. Fortunately, due to my medication and these changes, I went back into remission after a few months. That’s why I call myself a ‘graduate’, since it’s an ongoing learning process. I’d also like to share that I’m participating in a clinical trial right now, which is very promising and has the potential to cure. I believe with my heart I will be cured and heal completely, but I’d like to emphasise that I’m living with this condition at the moment.

Every triumph and misstep has made me who I am today

How have your priorities evolved from the pre-diagnosis time? What excites Lisa Ray now?
Lisa Ray: My priorities have completely changed for the better. Today my actions and priorities are in line with my values and my heart’s desire. Health, wellness, writing, giving back and spending quality time both with myself and with my family are activities for which I never had time before. I still love acting and being in front of the camera; however today whatever I do is rooted in intention and values. I’m doing a lot of writing and painting and discovering full expression in other art forms. I’m planning on spending half my year in India and the other half in Canada. I also practise gratitude and try my best to focus on what I have and not on what I don’t. Travel is also still important, but with balance. I led a crazy, unbalanced life for so many years that it is taking time to heal from that lifestyle.

Has life changed after being married? If yes, how?
Lisa Ray: I have a soul mate and a partner-in-crime to share adventures with. We have so many common dreams and I’m so excited to make our dreams come true.

Lastly, if you could, would you change anything about your past? What and why?
Lisa Ray: Not a thing. Every triumph and misstep has made me who I am today. And a big part of healing is acceptance—because life is a gift.

The post “I believe with all my heart that I will heal completely”—Lisa Ray appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Thursday, 2^nd February 2006. Just another ordinary day for the world; but not for Danny Moorjani, whose wife Anita had just slipped into a coma after battling with cancer for four years. Danny rushed her to a sophisticated hospital in Hong Kong on the advice of her oncologist. When the comatose Anita was bought in, her doctor was shocked to see her condition. “Your wife’s heart might be still beating, but she’s not really in there. It’s too late to save her,” she said to Danny.

But Anita was aware of everything that was happening around her. She could see the doctors working furiously on her near-lifeless body, even as her loved ones looked frightened. Her Mom was crying. But when she tried to comfort her, no one could hear her.

Meanwhile, she could see that her doctor had called for another senior oncologist and together they were working hard to save her. She could see the scurrying around of nurses, the portable oxygen tank, the needles and tubes through which treatment was being administered. She could see her helpless family and other people who came to see her. She was acutely aware of every minor detail that was happening, not only around her immediate space but even beyond. Though her eyes were closed, the sharpness of her perception was more intense than usual.What’s more, she could not only see her loved ones but also feel their fears and hopelessness. She even knew how, in spite of all their efforts, the medical team had essentially given up on her.

But strangely, she didn’t feel frightened. On the contrary, she was experiencing a freedom that was as light as it was liberating. For the first time since her cancer diagnosis four years earlier, she felt no physical pain, no sorrow, no sadness, not even any emotional attachment to her physical body. She felt weightless and became aware that she could be anywhere, anytime.

“There’s nothing we can do for your wife, Mr Moorjani. Her organs have already shut down… she won’t even make it through the night,” she heard one doctor tell Danny, who was visibly anguished. She called out to him, to let him know that she’s perfectly fine but she just couldn’t voice her thoughts. And though she wasn’t attached to her own body, she could feel the despair of her husband. But, when she tried to comfort him, she felt she was being pulled away from the drama with a knowing that everything that was unfolding was part of a grander plan.

That’s when she felt her awareness expanding and her sense of separation with the others kept diminishing until there was no separation at all—she was in the other realm. There, she felt the presence of her late father and her best friend, who had succumbed to cancer a few years ago. She even conversed with them, though spoken words were not employed to communicate.

There’s a lot more that she experienced during that coma, which she later knew was a near death experience or NDE. She describes her glorious experience in her book Dying To Be Me, a beautiful piece of work that is evidence of the incredible transformation of Anita.

Her NDE transformed her in more ways than one. Not only did she experience miraculous remission of her ‘incurable’ cancer, she also witnessed a change in her perception of life, so much so that her whole life took on a new meaning.

Manoj Khatri caught up with Anita to get a glimpse of the magnificent wisdom that she now embodies. Here are the excerpts from the interview:

Manoj Khatri: “Death is the ultimate leveller.” How do you explain this popular expression in context of your NDE?

Anita Moorjani: I agree absolutely! You cannot take what you have here into the other realm. My NDE brought that home to me; it made me revaluate what is actually important in life. When we don’t realise this—that death is the ultimate leveller—our priorities are very different. But once you have a glimpse of it… when you actually experience it and bring that feeling back with you, you realise: Wow! All these things that I thought mattered lose all significance on the other side. It rearranges all your priorities in life—how you live, your emotions, everything. It makes you realise that the life we have created here, on the physical plane, is completely back to front. If you were to step out and look at it from the grander perspective, from the perspective of death, you see that everything we have created here is absolutely the wrong way around.

Manoj Khatri: You mean we’ve put the cart before the horse, so to speak?

Anita Moorjani: Yes, we’ve put the cart before the horse. You know we’re very much full of contradictions. What stands out for me is this: There are people who believe that being spiritual and religious means really trying to live as though the afterlife is here. So, on the one hand you have people saying that you have to renounce the world and give up materialism, you have to detach from all this, and that is how you get close to ‘spirituality’. Then you have all these people who live as though the only real world is this physical world and all they want to do is amass wealth, indulge in greed and consumerism. So you have these two extremes.

Interestingly, what I actually sensed in the other realm is that neither of these two is ideal. Because, on the one hand, if you surrender and renounce everything, there is no point of being here. You’re here to experience physicality, not to pretend that you’re already in the afterlife. You’re not here to give up everything and just wear orange robes and sit on a mountain top and meditate because you might as well not be here if you’re going to do that.

On the other hand, the way we’ve designed our world has got all of us on a rat race, where we work just to make money. We’re constantly on a treadmill. Of course, we got that completely wrong too. So people seem to be going from either thinking one or the other.

Manoj Khatri: So how does one bring this balance in our perspective? And what really is the purpose of being physical? Do you even think that there is any purpose?

Anita Moorjani: The purpose is to experience life. It’s to experience being in the physical. Because in the other realm we don’t have a physical body and we can’t know who we are. The other realm is a realm of non-duality. Here, we are in a state of duality. Only in this state of duality can we know who we are. Because, it’s only by comparison with others, by knowing who we are not, by knowing opposites—that you can’t have good without bad, negative without positive—do we know who we are. All that is only possible here. Only here can we feel our emotions, fall in love, get hurt and really experience life to know who we are. None of this happens in the other realm. You can say that this is reason we take form, we take birth here.

So, you don’t want to fall into the trap of escaping life by thinking you’re being spiritual by just becoming a hermit on a mountain top and meditating. On the other hand, you don’t want to part of the treadmill that I’m talking about that just goes to work everyday and doesn’t enjoy life.

What I suggest to people is that the thing to do is very simple. Just ask yourself: What brings you joy? What makes you happy? And that is your biggest signal into your heart. What has happened is that we have become a society of people that live from the head. But it is our heart that is actually the doorway to our soul and the doorway to our infinite self. So start living from your heart and ask yourself everyday, “What brings me joy?” Everything you do, whether you are going to work, or praying, or meditating, ask yourself, “Am I doing this out of love for myself, out of love for the people around me, out of love for my life?” Or “Am I doing this out of fear of the consequences?” and interestingly—nine times out of 10—you will find that most people do something not because they want to do it, but because they are afraid that if they don’t do it, there will be consequences.

Many of us even pray out of a fear. We go to temples or churches and follow religion out of fear; not because we want to attain higher levels of consciousness but because we fear what will happen to us in the afterlife if we don’t. So that’s actually the crux of my message. The biggest shift we can make is to make every decision from a place of love, and not because we feel fear of not getting ahead, or not having enough money and so on. For instance, when you choose everything you do from a place of love, then everything you eat, you will eat it because you love the food or because you love your body, or you love your health or you love your life… and not because of some fear such as, “If I don’t eat this, I’ll be unhealthy” or “If I eat that, I’ll become fat.”

If we start choosing everything from a place of love, our lives take on a completely different level. And this is the most upside-down thing we can do—to rearrange our priorities.

Manoj Khatri: When you use the term ‘the other realm’, do you really mean to say that there is just one realm or, are there layers and layers, and you’ve just entered one and there could be so many others beyond than what you just experienced?

Anita Moorjani: This one’s a little harder to explain because I say ‘the other realm’ due to the limitations of our language. Here, in this realm, we have all these divisions. Like here, when you’re in the physical, we think in terms of linear time, and even in terms of different dimensions. That is all something created by our minds that are only capable of understanding in physical terms. Once you’re no longer thinking in physical terms, there is no more separation, no more division. But if you ask me, are there other galaxies and are we connected to them, I can’t answer that. I believe that we are, even though I didn’t have a direct experience of other beings from other planets or other galaxies. But what I did have an experience of was this feeling of being able to be anywhere at anytime. And when we are not in this physical body, when we are just pure consciousness, and when time and space is not an issue and you can be anywhere at anytime—that literally covers every realm available to you. There is no division, no walls—nothing to keep you separated from anything.

Manoj Khatri: You said that in order to be healed you had to let go of the need to be healed and trust and enjoy the ride that is life. Yet, letting go came to you after immense struggle. In your own words, “When it became too difficult to hang on anymore, I let go”. Do you think letting go is possible without the struggle? How?

Anita Moorjani: What I’d like to advise people is: Don’t wait until your life becomes a struggle. Now, I practise letting go, every single day. I don’t wait for my life to become a struggle before letting go. Every morning, I just surrender myself to the universe and it’s almost like allowing the universe to work through me and allowing the universe to use me as its channel. Surrendering in this way does not mean giving your power away. When you give your power away, you weaken yourself, drain yourself. When you give your power away, you allow others to manipulate you. Surrendering, on the other hand, is empowering. It means allowing the entire universe, it means having the power of the entire universe, to work through you. It’s like you’re flowing with universal energy rather than going against it.

Before my NDE, I was just fighting, and fighting, and fighting against [cancer]… until that point when it was too hard to fight, and I let go. But since that experience, I understood that fighting is of no use. So now when I wake up, I just say—to no one in particular, to my highest self, to consciousness, to the universe, whatever you want to call it, even if you believe in God you can say it to God—I just say: “I surrender myself to you” and then allow the day to unfold and whatever is meant to come my way will come to me today. At night I just let go again… I release everything and go to sleep.

I have found that this really works for me. And the way my life has been unfolding since I have learnt to surrender and the things that have happened—I wouldn’t have been able to script it better. I couldn’t even have thought of setting such goals or dreaming such dreams. By surrendering and allowing things to happen, I have lost the need to pursue or chase anything.

Manoj Khatri: How do you deal with scepticism and cynicism? More accurately how do you stay insulated from other people’s opinions? Especially, the reaction of the medical fraternity. Have at least some of them reconciled that they just don’t know enough? Or do you find them rationalising away your inexplicable healing?

Anita Moorjani: Initially, I encountered a lot of scepticism but it’s decreased a lot now, which is good. And yes, they do try to rationalise. And the other thing is that many of them never take into consideration that mine is not an isolated case—there are thousands of such phenomena out there. But they deal only with one case at a time, then they argue with you as though you’re the only one that has had this experience. And they use their materialistic arguments and reductionism to explain it away. What they invariably fail to take into account is that there are thousands of people that have had these kinds of experiences. But if somebody has made up their mind, then there’s no way we can convince them.

Having said that, I have realised that there are two types of so called sceptics I’ve come across. The first kind is the one where I can sense that they want to believe, they are trying to believe, but their minds somehow won’t allow them to. They are so entrenched in their conditioning that they don’t seem to get out of it. But they are trying. And I can deal with those kind and quite like them. They have a natural skeptical mind but they are open, they want to understand.

Then there’s the other kind who I call the “debunkers”. Those are the ones who have made up their mind and for them it’s more like a sport. They try and disprove everyone and everything. I don’t really give these debunkers much time because the minute I sense what they are doing, I tell them: I don’t think it is my responsibility to convince you of anything. Because, I don’t actually try to convince them of anything. I just share my story. If it doesn’t resonate with them, that’s fine. If people think that everything that happened was only in my mind, that’s fine. So I just say to them, “I respect you for what you believe” and then I move on.

But if they are people who want to believe, I tell them that I have the medical records to prove that the cancer healing did take place. And it was more rapid than anything else. The healing itself is medically inexplicable. And then I tell them that I know that it was a consciousness shift. If they say, “But how can you be certain that your healing came about because of your NDE”? I tell them, “OK, so let’s just say that I don’t know what happened. Now I leave it to you. These are the facts on the medical side and I leave it to you to come up with an explanation.” So I give it back to them.

Manoj Khatri: Talking about healing, do you think that there is a radical change that is required in the current approach to medicine, if we are to truly heal people of diseases?

Anita Moorjani: Absolutely! Very, very radical… because I think that what medicine fails to take into consideration is that a person is much more than just a physical body. A much more holistic approach needs to be taken. Now, I don’t undermine medicine. Very often illnesses do need to be managed with medicine, but at the same time, I really think that potential doctors as well as people in the medical field really need to be taught to tell their patients to look at all the reasons why they are getting the illnesses, especially cancers, chronic illnesses, allergies, and anything that weakens their immune system. Why are these people’s immune systems becoming weak? What are they doing to constantly destroy their immune systems? A person is not just their physical flesh. There is so much more. There is their emotions, their identity, their self worth, their spiritual practice.

A much more holistic approach needs to be taken for sure. And we have actual proof… there are so many tests done with placebos and so much anecdotal evidence of people being healed because circumstances in their life change, or their emotional circumstances change, leading to better physical health. There is just so much evidence, too much to ignore and yet in medical schools, doctors are still not being taught all these things. We’re still dealing with most illnesses, I would say, in a very medieval and almost barbaric way—the way that we treat patients and the way that we only improve our diagnostic tools but we’re not broadening the way that we look at illness itself. I think that the way medicine treats people, the way they use diagnostic tools to treat very specific parts of the patient is no different from the way a garage repairs a car.

Manoj Khatri: Moving on from health, you have Indian origins and you have mentioned that your own culture caused you to put others before you. On the other hand, the western culture is often the other extreme—hedonistic, self-before-others. Urban Indian kids are getting more and more influenced by western lifestyles and beliefs. In this context, what advice would you give to parents, especially Indian parents, about raising children?

Well, I think the most important missing ingredient that parents are neglecting to teach their children—regardless of culture—is self-respect and self-love. The problem with kids these days is that they feel they are not meeting anybody’s expectations. They feel that they are letting down everyone—their parents, their peer group, their friends. Moreover, kids feel lost with all the coverage they see on TV, Internet and other media which exposes them to these different values.

What happens is that if these kids don’t love and respect themselves, they start blaming their parents for not letting them follow that other culture, for not letting them wear the clothes that they see the others wearing.

One thing that even I recall as a child—and I believe that many kids feel this way—is that when we are being punished, we feel our parents don’t love us at that time. Kids believe that they’re loved only when they meet their parents’ expectations. And I don’t know why it never occurs to us to recall this when we become parents, because we’ve all been children. When I tell this to people they say, “Yeah, that’s right! I used to feel that way too and I would do things so that my parents wouldn’t punish me.”

If parents really want to teach kids their own cultural values, the first thing they have to teach them is very good self-esteem. Kids need to know that they are loved unconditionally, even when we punish them.

We need to tell the kids, “If you behave badly, you will be punished, but we will still love you.”

What I strongly believe now is that it’s really important for parents to reassure their children from the time they are very young. Parents need to tell them, “You are loved absolutely unconditionally. You are a beautiful person with a lot of strengths. If you stay true to your nature, if you maintain your own culture, you will be more interesting to your peer group. Don’t be afraid to be different. You are unique and it’s good to be unique. In fact you should be unique, it makes you more interesting and these are your cultural values”. Children who know that they are valued, unique, and loved, have a healthy self-esteem. Then they can hold on to cultural values even when they are amongst people who don’t necessarily share their values.

Manoj Khatri: That’s so true, self-esteem is one ingredient that is missing. We all experience that when we are growing up. And I don’t think that it is particularly the parents’ fault because they themselves have been brought up like that. But somebody needs to tell them.

Anita Moorjani: Yes, it is not the parents’ fault at all. Everybody is doing the best they can with what they know. And many people, even young parents today, don’t realise it until someone tells them and then they go, “Yeah you have a point”. But the real missing ingredient has nothing to do with being exposed to different cultures or being exposed to TV or moral values or anything; all that is only on the surface. The real issue is that most of us grow up feeling unloved, lost and we feel that we need to conform to something to fit in and we feel that we’re letting everybody down. Somebody—namely our parents—need to tell us. And if we are parents, we need to tell our kids that you are perfect the way you are; you’re amazing, you’re beautiful and so on. And many people worry that this will make the kids bigheaded and too egotistical but it’s actually the opposite. Kids who turn out to be spoilt, bigheaded and egotistical are actually the kids who are neglected, and not the ones who are loved unconditionally. There is no such thing as loving a kid too much. The reason for the problems of kids and most adults today, is that they have too little love. There is no such thing as too much love.

Manoj Khatri: This brings me to another assertion you have made in your book. You said that perpetrators of crime and terror are the ones who suffer the most and need most sympathy, which on deep analysis seems to be true. Why are people so reluctant to accept this?

Anita Moorjani: Because, they don’t realise that these perpetrators are only a symptom of the problem of our society and we cannot deal with them in isolation. But then, we are conditioned to see everything as separate. You see, all these things—like the Delhi gang rape or the gun violence in the US—these are just symptoms of a deeper problem. And the deeper problem is not ‘their’ problem. It’s our problem. We’re all in it together. We, together, have created this problem and we now have to resolve it. But many people don’t want to feel that way. They are so entrenched in this physical ideology of separation, of believing, “I’m not them, they are not me, and I would never do something like that,” that it keeps them stuck in judgement. We’re always judging—they did this, they are wrong—that intrinsically we have become a very judgmental society.

Manoj Khatri: Isn’t this similar to the erroneous approach to health that you touched upon earlier—that we isolate one thing and try and treat that, whereas the whole organism needs to be addressed?

Anita Moorjani: Yes, and I think it starts with our education. It starts at a young age. But slowly people are starting to change and that is my hope. That is one of the reasons why I wrote my experience and I speak about it. It’s because people really need to see things differently if we want to see any real change. And what I’m really happy about is to see how people are speaking about things like the gang rape etc. At least the public is speaking out about their discontent toward the government and they are exposing so many problems. This was just the tip of the iceberg—they are exposing so many problems. Even in the US, they are exposing loopholes in laws that allow people to carry guns, which people believe they are doing for their own protection. But at the end of the day, they have to ask themselves: protection from what? Basically all these things are happening because, at the core, we have become a very fear-based society. Everything we do is from a place of fear. Every single thing. That’s why we have guns.

Manoj Khatri: So what should we do to address this deep rooted fear that is so entrenched in our genes now? What’s the message you would give to the readers who understand that fear is the root cause and would like to operate from a position of love? How does one make that shift?

Anita Moorjani: The only thing you can do is make the shift within yourself. You can’t go out and rally for all to do it. Because the minute you start doing things like fighting or rallying, you’re adding to that same fear-based energy. And it will again create resistance and cause people to fight back. So the minute you start fighting and telling everybody else to make the shift, they will resist and again it means that you are judging them. So all that we can do is see through it for ourselves and take the stand: “This is how I’m going to live… this is my life.” Just embody it. That’s all you can do. Just be it and what you will find is that you will actually touch the people around you and they will then touch the people around them. That’s what I have been doing since my NDE seven years ago. I was able to see through everything. I knew what I knew, I knew everything that I am telling you now, but I never actually ever attempted to go out and convince anyone else. All I did was embody my truth and then just watched what unfolded. And already, I see how things that I have written have gone viral, the interviews are happening, the book came out… so all you can do is just embody it. And that’s what I tell people, when they ask me, “What can we do?” I say to them, “Don’t go out and try to change the world, because people will resist you and you will only add to the same energy that’s fighting. Because you will just be judging those people and they will fight back.” In a way, I feel that’s what Mahatma Gandhi tried to say when he said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Manoj Khatri: Finally, can you speak a little about relationships? Has the idea of ‘love’ changed for you? What is the most profound insight that you have gained about love post your NDE?

Anita Moorjani: When we learn to love ourselves unconditionally, we are able to love other people unconditionally. And if you are having an issue in your relationship, the conversation I would really like to see you have is something along the lines of saying to your partner, “I love you unconditionally enough for you to have whatever you want in life. But, if what you want goes against my values for myself, I love myself unconditionally enough not to have to put up with it.” In other words, in regular love as we tend to practise in physical life, we tend to place conditions, we tend to have contracts like marital contracts and we expect people to stand by the contracts, whether they feel love for us or not. Unconditional love is when you love somebody so much that what you want for them is for them to have what they want for themselves. And when what they want for themselves is not quite what you want in the relationship, unconditional love for yourself allows you to leave the relationship. And if that person doesn’t want to lose you, if they love you and want to give you what you want, they will stay in the relationship, but it will be a much more real relationship than a conditional one where two people are doing it out of obligation.

Manoj Khatri: That’s absolutely beautiful. Well, thank you, Anita, for sharing all the practical wisdom with our readers. It has been an absolute pleasure speaking to you.

Anita Moorjani: Thank you for giving me the opportunity, Manoj.

The post “The only thing you can do is make the shift within yourself” (Interview with Anita Moorjani) appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Vishwanathan Jayaraman, a mild-mannered runner, is something of an oddity. It couldn’t be any more refreshing though, as this wiry runner is an inspiration to countless people struggling to find themselves in a world that’s moving way too fast. The 53-year-old, who works for the South Western Railways, is an IITian with a degree in electrical engineering and also a Gandhian! As a chain-smoker who had been struggling to kick the habit, running was the lifeline that helped him overcome his addiction. Since then, Vishwanathan has run several marathons across the nation and has also taken up barefoot running. While running may have given him a new lease of life, his dedication to barefoot running and his commitment to Gandhian philosophies brings new hope to a cynical world.

Grazilia Almeida-Khatri caught up with him to find out the secrets that keep him healthy, happy and peaceful.

Did you always run barefoot? If not, when and why did you take it up?

I have been running since 2000, I started running barefoot in 2013. As a runner, shoes were always a major item of expenditure and this pinched my conscience and, more importantly, my wallet. I felt a sense of unease and discomfort about pursuing such an un-Gandhian passion. At that time, my rough calculations had shown that at an average price of Rs. 5000 per pair of shoes, having a recommended life of 500km, it cost more to run in shoes than for me to travel by an auto-rickshaw! So, when Barefoot Ted [of ‘Born to Run’ fame] addressed runners before the Auroville Marathon about how barefoot running is the natural way to run and how Indians can easily take to it, I gave it some serious thought. After a month’s practice of walking barefoot, I undertook my first barefoot run of 26 kms on 18^th March, 2013. I haven’t looked back since. Nonetheless, I must admit that I do use slippers [Hawaai chappals as they are better known] when the surface gets too rough,
too dirty or too hot.

Is there a particular terrain that you find best-suited for barefoot running?

I have found that the concrete surface, like the airport runway, which you have in some cities is the most barefoot-friendly surface after the synthetic track found in indoor stadiums. Interlocked concrete pavements and tar roads are also fine. Broken roads and loose gravel paths are the worst for bare feet. Among the marathon events, the Mumbai marathon course [except for a small stretch at the mouth of the Worli Sea Link] is the best course for a barefoot runner.

Did you face any mental blocks before you went barefoot, especially about the lack of hygiene on Indian roads?

Frankly, the likelihood of physical injury and the fear of ‘what people would think’ were mental blocks before I started out. But, the ease of running and reduced trauma to the body made a much better case for running barefoot. Besides, it contributed to increased mileage and faster recoveries. Interestingly, once I started running barefoot, my speed showed a drastic improvement in the next year’s Mumbai marathon, from finishing around the 3:50 mark I finished at 3:36.

There’s a school of thought that believes that running is unnatural for humans as we’ve not evolved to be long distance runners. What’s your view on that?

The joy I see on the face of a young kid when they run and the joy I experience while running, contrary to the grumpiness I exhibit on the days I don’t run, makes me believe that we were born to run. As for long distance running, I find that to get the same joy, I now have to run longer distances than I used to run just a few years ago. I love running to the extent that it is an addiction!

The theory of evolution and the logic in the book Born to Run about how the human race has survived from being quadruped to becoming biped to making tools/weapons is very well reasoned and appealed to me. The way the book covered running fascinated me.

Can you share any memorable experiences from the marathons you have run?

The sheer warmth shown by the spectators makes every marathon run in Mumbai special to me. However, the midnight marathon I ran on 14^th December 2013 was intensely emotional and spiritual for me—it was the day my father-in-law expired and was cremated. I had not had a wink of sleep from the previous night and was exhausted. My brother and daughter were running with me, and I am sure my departed father-in-law [who was greatly supportive of my running!] would have been applauding from up above.

How has running affected your performance at work?

There has been no physical stress due to running on my performance at work. In fact, running has given me more equanimity and stability. Having a ruling passion, other than work, has made me approach work with a certain sense of detachment and clarity. In fact, the solutions to the most intractable problems both at work and in my personal life have appeared to me while on my long runs.

What inspired you to become a Gandhian?

Belonging to a middle class family, being economical with my money was always ingrained in me, but becoming a Gandhian was never about spending less. I found Gandhi to be one of the few historical figures who was open about his certain imperfections. His life appeared capable of being followed by an ordinary person like me. I have been unabashedly copying the great man and am even, by my own assessment, still a very poor copy. One life is not enough to even become a decent copy of him. The process has been thoroughly enriching for me.

What are the other Gandhian philosophies that you live by?

I took to spinning on a charkha I purchased from Sabarmati ashram back in 2009 and contribute the yarn to make my own cloth. I have been wearing at least one article of khadi to work and as my running attire. I had given up smoking and drinking but I also gave up eating eggs and non-vegetarian food, which I used to consume occasionally. Finally, I gave up all dairy products and turned fully vegan on 12^th May 2013 after reading an article highlighting the cruelty perpetrated to dairy animals.

Besides sartorial and dietary changes, I have tried to minimise my requirements and simplify my life. I have become more empathetic towards my fellow beings [including animals]. I have become more conscious of environmental protection through practices like segregating waste. The scene of Gandhi asking young Jawaharlal Nehru to feed potato peels to goats when the latter tried discussing the political scenario in the country from the Richard Attenborough’s movie Gandhi springs to my mind. I have been carrying vegetable waste during my morning run and feeding it to cattle on the way. I recycle the plastic cover used to carry garbage. I have started washing my own clothes and dishes, using washing soap made by khadi industries. I either walk, use a bicycle or public transport to work. All these ideas were buried within me; but running has given me the courage to do my own thing without caring for what people might think or say!

Any incidents where you were able to use a Gandhian philosophy to tackle a situation?

I used to run on highways in Hubli and the drivers on the highway are notorious for being rash. I consciously started wishing and waving to each driver I crossed on the NH-218 during my daily runs. It is unbelievable, but in a short time most of them became my friends and used to give me the right of way. Presently, I am conducting the same experiment with the drivers in the big city of Chennai and am in the process of proving that Gandhigiri works!

You’ve mentioned earlier that you realised that ‘the way people saw you was all in your head.’ So how have you changed your thoughts to deal with their reactions?

The comment you are referring to was made by me in one of my blogs on how I coped with my decision to go topless whilst running. Initially, I used to be shy and would not look people [especially of the opposite sex!] in the eye when running topless. I then realised that this made them awkward as well. Once I got comfortable with my own nudity, I found that if I looked people in the eye without a sense of shame, which happens when you are convinced of what you are doing, the reaction of people automatically changed. That is when I realised that it is all in our minds! I have seen this with other decisions, like riding a bicycle to work or wearing khadi to work. The hindrance to any change one wants to bring about is mostly in one’s mind itself, and once that is dealt with, your conviction will shine through in the act and you will meet with none of the opposition or ridicule that one anticipates.

Tell us about your dog Biscuit.

He is very affectionate, disciplined and that’s just his natural demeanour. He has taught me to derive joy from simple things. When people ask me how I can run day after day for such long periods on the same route, I can only think of Biscuit. He shows such enthusiasm and vigour when walking the same route, smelling the same trees twice a day [and sometimes more] that he inspires me to appreciate the world around me, no matter whether I’ve seen it all before!

What is the greatest lesson that running has taught you?

The lesson running has taught me is that the body is but a mere slave to the mind. As is true of any other activity, in running too, the physical act is very simple—taking one step after another! Once the mind is focussed on the act, no distance or goal appears unachievable. I have been able to use this positively while trying to bring about changes in my work and personal life. Running has given me the courage to express myself and I have been blogging about my running and life in general, this has given me a lot of satisfaction.

This was first published in the January 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

The post ‘The body is a mere slave to the mind’ —Vishwanathan Jayaraman, barefoot runner appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Yoga is known for its powers to transform lives and here is one such splendid example. While living in the fast lane, Bijay Anand’s life seemed to be headed in the wrong direction. He was caught in the whirlpool of ill-health, addictions and depression. Fortunately for him, he discovered yoga and it turned his life around. The actor and art consultant even went on to get a formal training in yoga from the Kundalini Research Institute, Los Angeles and founded Anahata Retreats, an organisation that brings together yoga and wellness gurus to offer retreats to people across the globe.

Now after a long sabbatical he’s back to acting but with a renewed perspective on life. We caught up with Bijay Anand for a quick chat on his journey so far.

Many years ago, you suddenly quit films and TV. Tell us what happened?

Bijay Anand: I was in the glamour world for 16 long years. I started with modelling and worked in more than 300 commercials for brands like Raymonds, S Kumars, Chiclets and Vadilal ice-cream to name a few. I did 15 television serials after that stint and then my career peaked with the movie Yash and then Pyar to Hona Hi Tha, which went on to hit a silver jubilee. Being one of the lead actors in the film, I was offered around 26 films immediately after its release. Many of those offers were tempting and hard to refuse. But somehow, I had just switched off from the film industry, acting, glamour and fame that came my way. Art was my newfound love and an exciting adventure that I was eager to undertake. It was then that I decided I would not act anymore and I would only pursue art and took up my role as an art advisor/consultant.

When did you get into yoga?

Bijay Anand: As an art dealer, I had a lot of time to travel. Most of my work was via emails—that is how we bought paintings as well as sold them. With that kind of free time [and easy money], I took to travelling with a passion. A lot of my trips somehow drew me towards exotic spas and resorts and several others took me to destinations like Europe, Thailand, Bali and Rishikesh. These are hotspots for yoga and that is how yoga happened to me. It fell into my lap due to my nomadic, adventure seeking, hungry-for-knowledge quest.

Did you dabble in various other forms of yoga before you discovered Kundalini yoga?

Bijay Anand: Yes, I tried almost all forms of yoga before I accidentally stumbled upon Kundalini yoga at the week-long International Yoga Festival in Rishikesh. I was dazzled by this “gang of white angels” led by Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa whose class I took on the last day of the festival just out of plain curiosity. First five minutes into the class and I knew I had finally come home.

What difference did Kundalini yoga make in your life?

Bijay Anand: The discovery of Kundalini yoga brought a new meaning into my life. It showed me clearly who I was and it changed me in ways that surprised and then amazed me. Then one day, during my meditation, I saw that my purpose in life was to spread the joy that this science had brought into my life. I felt that this is what I was meant to do for the rest of my life. So I taught Kundalini yoga for a little over two years and also founded my company Anahata Retreats, which organises yoga retreats. I do this because I don’t want people to go through what I went through in my life. The anger, pain, sorrow, addictions [smoking, gambling and alcohol] and also the diseases that I was struck with like arthritis, high cholesterol and depression… I don’t want others to go through the same. [Read Bijay’s first person account of how he quit smoking]

What brings you back to acting after a break of 17 years?

Bijay Anand: One day I received a call from Nikhil Sinha’s office inviting me to play the role of King Janaka, Sita’s father for his show Siya ke Ram. Since the past many years, I had refused several acting offers. So at first I refused this role as well, but still went along to meet the director. When I heard Janaka’s character and read the script, it was like an epiphany. Every word that I was teaching in my classes, workshops and courses around the world was repeated in those dialogues. As Nikhil Sinha put it, “You are not an actor playing Janaka’s role. You are Janaka.”

I realised then that whatever I was teaching 30, 40 or sometimes even 200 people, I could teach the same philosophy as Janaka and reach out to millions of people to spread my message of love, compassion and an organic way of living.

And that’s how I am now back to acting, after 17 years.

What’s special about the role you are playing?

Bijay Anand: Janaka is quiet, still, calm, strong, loving, compassionate, and not only wise and knowledgeable but also hungry for more wisdom and knowledge. Janaka is a ruler who believes in the Karma of loving unconditionally and without any expectations. He is a great ruler, the perfect husband and also the most doting and loving father to Sita.

For an actor, a role with such a range of emotions is a dream and I am so excited about playing it. Getting to play this Janaka is also special for another reason. Many years ago, when Ravi Chopra was casting for his new project, Ramayan, even before he decided who will play the character of Ram, he had made up his mind that I would play the role of Laxman. When asked what made him so sure he had a one-line answer, and, I quote, “Have you ever, ever in your entire life seen anyone as hot-tempered and aggressive as Bijay? End of discussion.” That was some 20 years ago, and today I am being cast for the role of Janaka.

I am grateful to Kundalini yoga for having changed me from being an actor always cast as an angry, aggressive and belligerent young man to being cast as a calm, wise and knowledgeable king who epitomises love and compassion.

How does it feel to face the camera after such a long gap?

Bijay Anand: I feel like it never left me all this while. It is an amazing feeling to be facing the camera again and I’m loving every minute of it.

How much has changed in the film industry since you left?

Bijay Anand: Not much and yet so much. What we see outside is only but a reflection of our own soul. In that sense I see so much has changed now but I guess it was always there before.

All the wisdom you have gained from yoga has evidently changed you as a person—has it also changed you as an actor?

Bijay Anand: Tremendously. 17 years later, I certainly know more about human emotions than I did back then. More importantly, I know today who I am. It is only when you know yourself does your ego finally break down and you see the light. It also helps you to internalise scenes, emotions and situations as an actor and play these roles with more authenticity.

Who do you consider as your gurus/idols… in yoga, in acting and in life?

Bijay Anand: My first guru is Osho. I had listened to only four tapes of his when I was around 15 and these four tapes [Love, Death, Compassion and Guilt] changed the course of my life. I’ve never heard any of his tapes hence or read any of his books but I believe him to be my guru and an original philosopher.

The are many teachers for who I have utmost reverence and respect. Some of them are Jehangir Palkhivala, Jawahar Bangera, Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, Gurushabd, the eminent lawyer Harish Salve and Kamal Choraria who have given me so much in terms of understanding the world and existence.

The post “Kundalini yoga brought new meaning into my life” — Bijay Anand appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

The first time I met Dada J P Vaswani was in 2008, just before his 90^th birthday. I did not know then that the opportunity to interview this humble master would touch my heart so deeply. Many more meetings followed over the next few years, each leaving my heart joyful. Little wonder then that I was always looking for an excuse to meet him, talk to him, be in his presence which so calmed my being.

One such excuse arose soon after my first meeting. Our beloved Mumbai city had faced its worst crisis on 26^th November 2008 when a handful of terrorists unleashed unprecedented violence on its unsuspecting citizens. There was shock, pain, anger, fear—not just in Mumbai but across India and the world. I, too, was disturbed and angry and was trying to make sense of the tragedy. A trusted friend was among those who lost their lives in the massacre that had lasted four long days. My mind was confused, my heart was in pain. Yet, I wanted to feel love and practise forgiveness. I kept Dada’s strong emphasis on forgiveness in mind but it seemed extremely difficult to put into practice in that instance. So I decided to reach out and ask him directly and he graciously agreed for a one-to-one meeting.

The 1000w smile

As usual, being in his presence was, in itself, soothing enough that the mind became peaceful and all questions vanished. His smiling face was like a 1000w bulb that banishes all darkness from your heart. His humble demeanour aroused in my being a sense of compassion that cannot be described. All I can say is that feelings such as anger, anxiety, hatred and resentment have no place in presence of the light of compassion.

Suddenly, I knew that everything that was happening was in divine order. The apparent injustice pervading the world isn’t something to be angry about or afraid of. What is needed is to connect with the source of wisdom that in intrinsic in each of us and then follow its guidance. I realised that the world out there is only a reflection of my inner world and so all change must begin with me. The world will change when I do.

I was silent. Dada’s loving presence had worked its magic. Since all my turmoil melted away, I let my mom, who had accompanied me, interact with him. She had been very keen to meet Dada and he, too, was delighted to meet her. He made sure she felt comfortable and heard. That’s the thing about him—his love doesn’t discriminate. Since then, every time I met Dada, he never failed to inquire about my mom.

Message to the world

Later, I requested him to say a few words, a message for the world, in the wake of the terrorist attacks. I had carried an amateur video camera, just in case he agrees, which he did. As I turned on the camera to record, Dada began speaking, compassion and love oozing out of his every word. His message was just like him: simple and practical, yet extraordinarily profound. In his impeccable diction, he underlined the importance of faith and urged people to focus on cultivating character. He said that there is an invisible force that is always with us whether we know it or not. If we have faith in this force, we will have courage. And with courage, we can meet any challenge, no matter how arduous or perilous it seems. (Watch the video clip below)

Dada, the epitome of love and compassion, himself merged with the invisible force exactly a year ago. Of course, he is still available to you whenever you feel the need for his loving guidance. Just tune in with faith.

Watch: Dada’s message on the important of cultivating character

The post All you need is faith appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.