Off Topic: Romance Contest in My Other Blog (Pond’s Kit at stake)

(Note: this contest is now closed.)

For yogis and yoginis who are married — just a heads-up that my other blog, Here’s To Life!, has tied up for a blog promo where the prizes at stake are up to 5 Pond’s Age Miracle Microdermabrasion Kits!

All you have to do is share how you keep the fire of romance burning in your marriages. Open to husbands and wives who are residents of the Philippines. Entries accepted till midnight of March 27, 2009.

For rules, click HERE.

Positive Affirmations for You

This was shared with me by a blogger buddy on a day when I was totally sapped of positive energy. Thanks for sharing, Manuel!

Now it is my turn to share this video with you. May it uplift you whenever you need it. But what is probably a great addition to all the affirmations here is this: God is always a part of, and in control of, my life!

May your life always be beautiful, meaningful and full of love.

Wii YOGA!!!

I was having lunch with Juned and Jayvee last week at La Maison in Greenbelt 5 when Jayvee, a super techie guy who blogs about anything techie (AND did the Crane Pose in his first yoga class ever!!!) mentioned to me that the Wii Fit, the newest techie “toy” in town, includes yoga.

My thought bubble: You must be kidding! How can you ever do yoga on a skateboard-sized mat?

Well, this is what I found out about this thingamajig:

- the Balance Board, as it is called, is actually more than just a scale. It can read your movements and bring this to life on the screen. Of course, as with the other exercises that go with the Wii Fit, it allows you to set your physical properties, training goals, and history of your activity results.

- an animated yogi (or yogini, if you choose) demonstrates the poses and you are supposed to follow along while listening to a voice-over of the trainer.

- Yellow circles set the boundaries for the center of gravity. As you do a pose, the Board detects where you are putting pressure and moves the ball accordingly. You need to try to keep that ball within the yellow circle.

- At the end of each pose, how you do on the left and right side is evaluated through a numerical rating (the closer the ratings to each other, the more balanced you are). An overall grade is also given so this seems pretty useful during yoga competitions among friends.

As a practicing yogini who is also a bit techie, this gadget holds some fascination. But would I go out tomorrow and buy it? No, I don’t think so.

This is a FUN thing to do among friends and may be the only hope to get couch potatoes out of the uhhhh…couch.

But if you are a serious yoga practitioner, this won’t give you the workout that you get from the real thing. Moving around, jumping and hopping like I do during my yoga practice can never be done on this teeny-weeny electronic board. I cannot even imagine how I would do the Shoulderstand or Headstand on this contraption.

I think I will wait this one out and see what happens. Maybe I will just go a-looking for a blogger friend who has one and do some tests on it (Jayvee, call me when you get one!).

But for those of you who are dying to get your hands on this thing and are wondering how yoga is done on the Wii Fit, watch this YouTube video:

(Off Topic) iblog4: The Bloggers’ Summit

Are you an active yoga blogger? Then come join the Manila bloggers’ summit on April 26!

Last year, about this time, I came across an announcement about iblog3. Imagine, it was already the 3rd year running and I never even heard of such a summit. So, curious me decided to go attend even if I knew absolutely no one in the crowd. My first blog was just weeks old then and I knew next to nothing about stuff they talked about (problogging, Google Adsense, SEO, podcasting — DUHHHH!!!)

By the end of the 2-day conference, I had a pile of business cards from bloggers: probloggers, media bloggers, personal bloggers, and even vloggers. Not only that, I came to know the faces behind the more famous blogs you come across, got more-than-I-could-digest blogging information and even won a raffle prize.

This year, it will just be a 1-day event but still packed with very useful topics you could bring back home for your own blogs. Best of all, it is FREE!!!

Date: April 26, 2008 (Saturday)
Time: 9am – 5pm thereabouts
Place: Malcolm Theater, College of Law, UP Diliman

It’s better to reserve early so that you are sure to get a kit with handouts and be enrolled in their mailing list.

Here are some useful links:

iblog4 homepage

Register for iblog4

List of iblog4 registrants

Since joining iblog3 laslt year, my blogging life has never been the same. I now have a public blog called Here’s To Life! as well as this yoga blog. I  joined several blogger events and now count some of these long-time bloggers as my good friends.

Hope to see you there!

Dharma Finds Its Way into Business

I never thought I would mention “Dow Jones” in this yoga blog. After all, that name is usually associated with business-speak. But just this once, I have to.

In step with its reputation for product innovation, Dow Jones created dharma indexes — a “family of faith-based equity market indexes that screen companies for compliance with Dharmic religious traditions.” This was done in cooperation with Dharma Investments, launched only last January 2008, to provide Hindu and Buddhist faith-based investing.

Dharma is a spiritual concept central to many religions originating in South Asia, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. About.com states that “Hinduism describes dharma as the natural universal laws whose observance enables humans to be contented and happy, and to save himself from degradation and suffering. Dharma is the moral law combined with spiritual discipline that guides one’s life. Hindus consider dharma the very foundation of life.

The Dow Jones site further describes dharma:

“Dharma has a range of meanings that include ‘duty’, ‘law’, ‘ethics’, and ‘fundamental principle’ in Hindu traditions, and ‘teaching’ or ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ in Buddhism.

Two ethical principles relevant to the context of Dharma and crucial to the formation of the indexes include:

• Ahimsa/Karuna or non-violence
• Loka-samgraha/Metta or the concept of stewardship”

The Dow Jones Dharma Indexes then are the world’s very first indexes that aim to track the financial performance of companies all over the world that conform to dharmic principles. Aside from a global index, there will eventually be indexes for U.S., UK, Japan, India and China.

Over 3,000 companies worldwide will be tracked and screened for compliance. An advisory committee composed of religious leaders and scholars will observe these companies’ core values and mission, corporate governance, human rights, labor relations, socio-economic involvement and many other standards that conform to dharma. I guess on the top of the criteria list would be companies that encourage protection of the environment as well as non-violence towards animals. Sectors that would be considered “unacceptable” would be those engaged in tobacco, alcohol, gaming, casinos, defense, adult entertainment, and even pharmaceutical companies that use animals for their tests. Even mining and logging industries may be taboo since they affect the environment.

Yoga purists probably would never think of delving into investments. Would my yoga teacher/s make such investments?

But with such strict screening for dharma-compliance, one now gets a chance to invest in companies which are in accordance with one’s personal and religious beliefs.

I wonder how long it would be before we see a Philippine dharma index. Just looking at the unacceptables in the list above, you can almost imagine how many locally listed companies will be eliminated from the dharma list straight off!

Ever since quitting work years ago, I stayed away from playing the stock market (which I did quite actively and heavily when I was earning relatively well). Instead, I played safe with the family’s savings, knowing that resources would be limited and the kids were growing up with growing needs.

But if ever the time will come and a dharma list of Philippine companies gets drawn up, I will seriously look into investing once again.

Sanskrit’s Link to Tagalog

This is a slightly off-topic post but I thought it was interesting to tackle the similarities that I see in the Sanskrit language to one of the major dialects in my country — Tagalog.

(May Śiva bless those who take delight in the language of the gods. ( by Kalidasa)

This curiosity was always there ever since we began hearing the different names of our asanas. When I first started yoga, Pio would call out the poses in English. He would say Lotus, Forward Bend, Downward Dog, Shoulderstand, etc. After a while though, he started calling them out in Sanskrit.

One day a FilAm yogini, Kristina, left a comment on this blog and told me she studies a lot of Sanskrit in New York. Now that sounded interesting for someone living all the way across the globe! So I began searching for common words I knew in Tagalog which take its roots from Sanskrit. After all, when I stayed in Indonesia for several months, I always delighted in little day-to-day discoveries of Filipino words which were the same as Bahasa: gunting (scissors), payong (umbrella), anak (child), halo (mix), lima (5), nasi (rice) and salamat (thanks).

Here are some Tagalog words I found which are taken from the Sanskrit language:

asa (hope) – asha in Sanskrit

salita (speak) – cerita in Sanskrit

balita (news) – berita in Sanskrit

karma (karma)

mukha (face)

guro (teacher) – guru in Sanskrit

dalita (suffering) – dharta in Sanskrit

In the site Tagalog 101, this is what they say:

“Philologically, Tagalog belongs to the Malayan branch of the great Malayo-Polynesian linguistic family, which extends from Hawaii to Madagascar and from Formosa to Easter Island west of Chile, including New Zealand, Tonga, and Samoa, as well as Borneo, Celebes, Java, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippines from east to west, a distance of 180º, or half the circumference of the earth.

Tagalog, together with other civilized tongues of the Philippines, such as Visayan, Pampango, Ilocano and Bicol, has preserved the verbal system better than any other. The basis for the comparative study of the family must be taken from the Philippine tongues and not from the more cultivated Malay, Kawi, or modern Javanese, all three of which have been profoundly affected by Sanskrit and to a lesser degree Arabic, something as English has been affected by Latin and French elements. The number of roots or primitive-idea words in Tagalog seems to be about 17, 000 there being 16, 842 words in the Noceda and Sanlucar dictionary of 1832. Of these some 284 are derived from the Sanskrit, and are evidently borrowed through the Malay. Many of these are names for the things unknown to the primitive Malayan peoples, but others are abstracts and various words, some of which would seem to have supplanted a primitive Malayan word. Thus in may cases Americans and Tagalogs use words in their own languages which are from the same remote source in India, and coming around the earth east and west to meet again in the Philippines.”

Next time your teacher calls out asanas in Sanskrit and you feel all strange about it, just remember that we are historically linked to it.

Namasté (नमस्ते [nʌmʌsˈteː]

Sending You Peace and Love for Christmas

I am now taking my Christmas break in the province of my in-laws where the entire side of this island is surrounded by the sea. It is a wonderful place to do yoga. Quiet, countryside home. No sounds of traffic. Just the birds, trees abounding, and the honking of geese, neighing of horses, and other animals that wander freely around the manicured lawns of our family home. It is a great time away from the frenetic pace of Manila. It is becoming my own individual yoga retreat.

Today, I did some yoga in our room which overlooks the greenhouse. No distractions. Just myself and nature. Wonderful!

As the time for Christmas draws near and the New Year is just around the corner, I would like to wish all my yogi and yogini friends as well as all of my blog readers…

a SERENE CHRISTMAS and a PEACEFUL NEW YEAR AHEAD!

Namaste!

(photo courtesy of CardsDirect)

May You Live a Life That Matters

Joy, my yogini friend, sent me an email with a picture of this clock.

Click on the clock to follow the link to Susie’s site, read its message and see how your life can be transformed so that it matters. May its message bless you this Christmas and for the rest of your life.

Thanks to the author of “What Will Matter“, Michael Josephson.