Sleep We all sleep: infants and children more than adolescents, adolescents more than adults, and some adults more than others. But a periodic alternation of sleep with wakefulness is universal, and suggests that sleep fulfils a basic biological need of the organism. On average, human beings spend one third of their lives in sleep. What happens in sleep is that our consciousness withdraws from the field of its waking experience; it is supposed to be resting, suspended or in abeyance, but that is a superficial view of the matter. What is in abeyance is the waking activities, what is at rest is the surface mind and the normal conscious action of the

Frontal section of the pelvis showing both hip-joints Healing by visualization and concentration The trouble in my hips had been evident for a long while. It was during a complete medical check-up just before I left the Royal Navy in 1965 that the orthopaedic specialist first told me there were signs of arthritis developing in my right hip, and to a somewhat lesser extent in the left one. I asked him if there was anything I could do about it and he said that certain exercises could help to delay the deterioration of the condition, and that shortwave therapy could alleviate the symptoms for a time.... Then q

Preface A question that has assumed in our times a great importance in pedagogy is: in what does our true fulfilment consist? And, in .that context, what is the nature and content of that knowledge which all human beings should pursue and possess? It is, indeed, possible to ask whether the human search can ever truly be fulfilled and whether it is not wise to limit ourselves to some immediate utilitarian or pragmatic goals. As a matter of fact, a large number of pedagogical programmes have been designed in the context of what is pragmatically useful to individuals and to society. This pragmatic approach has its own justification; but it seems that the time

The Mother Physical Education Of all the domains of human consciousness, the physical is the one most completely governed by method, order, discipline, procedure. The lack of plasticity and receptivity in matter has to be replaced there by an organization of details, at once precise and comprehensive. In this organization one must not forget, however, that all the domains of the being are interdependent and interpenetrating. Yet, even if a mental or vital impulsion is to be expressed physically it must submit to an exact and precise procedure. That is why all education of the body, if it is to be effective, must be rigorous and detailed, fores

Part IV Physical Education and Excellence of the Human Body Physical Education and Excellence of the Human Body Introduction There are three great miracles in regard to the human body. Intricacy, complexity and automatic coordination in the body under the guiding power of the brain is the first miracle. That human body automatically tends towards health is the second miracle. It is this miracle that has provided a vast field of exploration of the means and methods by which the natural and automatic processes of healing can be aided and accelerated. That the human body can be ed

Painting : Shakti, Auroville Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea In 1980, American-born Steven Callahan, age twenty-nine, sold everything he had to design and build a small cruising ship that would, he hoped, take him across the Atlantic Ocean to England. Steven had been sailing since the age of twelve. "I fell in love with sailing instantly," he writes, "everything about it felt right." Steven named his twenty-one foot long boat Napoleon Solo. Not many boats this size had made the crossing, but there had been a few as small as 12 feet. "I was not interested in setting a record," he says. "For me the crossing was more o

Interview with Narottam Puri (Narottam Puri is a well known sport journalist and commentator in India) About common attitudes in India We, Indians, have a tendency to copy the West. To take an example, Hatha Yoga was almost a forgotten art here in India till the West took it up. As a medical man, I consider the basis of yoga to be sound in termsof health; for instance, the importance given to breathing. But Yoga has also a spiritual meaning, which may be the reason why it practically disappeared from the average man's life, as it was too deep. In India , we made the mistake of not pursuing th

What is Health? Modern physics has presented entirely new theories about the world and how it behaves. These theories have been widely accepted, and yet conventional medicine has been reluctant to incorporate them into itself and continues to view the body as a clockwork mechanism in which illness is viewed as a breakdown of parts. In his remarkable book Space, Time and Medicine, Dr. Larry Dossey shows how medicine can and must be updated. Drawing on his long experience in the practice of internal medicine and his knowledge of modern science, Dr. Dossey opens up startling questions. Could the brain be a hologram in which every part contains the whole? Why ha

Dance Introduction Dance is fundamentally a subject of aesthetics. But the artistic culture of the body that it involves requires us to include this subject under the scope of this book. One of the greatest dancers of our modern times was Anna Pavlova, and a few glimpses of her personality can be gathered from the extracts that we are presenting below from a book written by Agnes deMille. Agnes deMille was born in 1909 in New York City. Her father was the playwright William deMille, and her uncle the famous film director Cecil B. deMille. As a young girl she saw the great Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova perform, and from that moment onwards her life was devot

Hatha Yoga Pradipika (A few extracts) The two main and very practical tools used in the discipline of Hatha Yoga are the Asana and the Pranayama techniques. The word asana comes from the verb as, "to sit" and can mean "sit ting position", but, more than that, 'refers to any specific body position described by the founders of Hatha Yoga. In the technique of Asanas, the body is taught to remain immobile in certain special postures. Why immobile? Because the usual restlessness of our body is just a sign that it is unable to hold even a limited amount of energy that enters into it. It immediately wants to dissipate it. By remaining absolutely still in the most