unmasking benefits of squatting vs. sitting

Modern biomedical researchers have not bothered to spend funding and the complications of a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial (RCT) on the vast potential benefits of squatting vs. sitting as we empty our bowels.  The methodology would be difficult to blind, and to find a placebo would be comical.
Anything that would be proven, like most non-drug interventions, would be easily questioned for the true conclusion of the study. In fact, RCTs bias all science toward drugs that can be masked, not lifestyle interventions. But without an RCT, how is any medical conclusion credible or reputable? Without NIH funding, does anyone who is trained in Science believe the research?

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 3, Morning Ablutions

kindling the fire

…When your fire is low, all the routines of the day should focus on nurturing the fire, kindling it and helping it to grow. Rest, light food, fasting, exercise, sex, cold baths, and certain herbs will kindle the fire.  When the fire is high, all the routines of the day should focus on keeping the fire centered in the gut …

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 41, Rasayana: Vitality and the Raising of Agni

brahma-charya

Discriminative and selective practices, and engagement with conscious intimacy, are believed to be the best path to hita, best translated as a harmonious and good life.  Often mistranslated in English as celibacy, brahmacharya does not mean the absence of sexual contact. This translation was probably propagated by the Christian, puritanical influences on Sanskrit translations since the 1750s. 

Brahma-charya is the charana, or walk, toward Brahma, the Creator, signalling an attitude toward oneness and mental purity.

As taught by the masters, brahmacharya is the purposeful engagement into relationships with other humans using choice. There is a choice to engage others on different levels: either only mentally and emotionally, as we do with family members and friends; or in physical proximity, as in housemates and family with which we live; or in both emotional, physical and spiritual intimacy, as with our sexual-emotional partner.

True brahmacharya involves conscious work to understand people who may harm our development by not supporting our mind’s growth. 

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 37 - Real Sex: Intimacy 

a brass bowl filled with mustard oil and turmeric

As tiny tots, my sister and I would spend some of almost every sunny winter afternoon on the patio naked.  At the time of our bath, we would start in the kitchen. Someone would get us completely unclothed, then sit us on the marble floor next to a brass bowl filled with mustard oil and turmeric.

The first step to a bath was to get oiled up.  This oil would first be massaged onto the top of my head, then my face, ears, hair, neck and slowly work its way down my limbs, under my feet, then my trunk and back, inspecting each part as it was oiled. We would then be sent out to the verandah with its high walls and marble floor to bake in the sun, especially in the winter to ward off the phlegmy, mucousy ails of the winter kapha season.

After our skin was hot, by which time coincidentally there were lots of tiny oily yellow handprints and footprints along the floor and walls of the verandah, we would be taken inside.

If there was any place where we were itching, it would be rubbed with a dry herbal powder, usually sharp in odor and smell, made of neem or babul. On Sundays, my aunt would inspect our nails, clipping as needed with a tiny pair of scissors.

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 17, Oil Massage