AUGUST 26, 2013

Against The Stream

Posted by Dorothy under Community Interests, Interesting Reads, Philosophy, Wellnessno responses

The Importance of Defensive Driving Techniques

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Learning to drive is often considered a rite of passage. In the haste to get that coveted driving license, young drivers often forget all the safe driving lessons that their instructors try teaching them. In Australia, safe driving is considered a crucial part of driving education and teaching defensive driving is a part of the curriculum even in driving instructor courses. In today’s world where everyone is in a hurry, the need for defensive driving is paramount. While driving skills are important, defensive driving also involves road awareness and staying alert when driving. Defensive driving techniques are the ways in which a driver can drive safely and avoid getting into an accident on the road. It helps protect the drivers, their passengers, and the pedestrians too, ensuring everyone stays safe and healthy.

What are the Main Defensive Driving Techniques?

Defensive driving means using some common safe driving methods to identify potential hazards and adapt your driving accordingly. Here are a few main defensive driving techniques everyone should know about:

Maintaining Safe Following Distances

One of the most obvious defensive driving techniques is to maintain a safe following distance from the vehicle in front of you. It is one of the first lessons a driving instructor will teach you. Maintaining a safe distance allows you to be prepared in case the vehicle ahead of you stops abruptly or gets involved in a crash.

Hazard Perception and Response

Hazards are any obstacles that hinder your driving or cause you to shift attention away from the road. Potential hazards can be anything from a vehicle merging into your lane to a pedestrian suddenly walking onto the road. An alert driver is always aware of the road environment and can recognize potential hazards.

Avoiding Distractions

Anything that diverts your focus away from the task of driving can be considered a distraction. For some people, listening to music can be distracting while others may find eating while driving distracting. No matter what it is, if an object or situation causes you to lose focus while driving, you should try to avoid it when you’re behind the wheel.

Understanding and Adapting to Different Road Conditions

Road environment and conditions consist of a lot of things. Road signs, traffic signals, pedestrian crossings, etc. are all a part of the road environment. When driving, a driver needs to be very aware of his/her surroundings. Keep checking the road and surrounding areas regularly and read the road signs correctly. Checking your mirrors regularly, braking early, checking blind spots, and keeping an eye on the pedestrian crossings and side streets is helpful in recognizing a potential hazard and responding accordingly.

Advantages of Defensive Driving

Defensive driving has many advantages for both the pedestrians and the drivers. Safe driving techniques help you avoid situations that might result in a collision. It enhances your driving skills and increases your understanding of the road and surroundings. It also helps develop your hazard perception and response skills. When drivers follow safe driving methods, we can avoid collisions and even reduce the rate of accidents on the road. When you’re aware of your surroundings, even in a serious situation, you can reduce the severity of the accident. Moreover, defensive driving also has some personal financial benefits. Compared to rash drivers, defensive drivers get benefits and lower costs for safe driving. Learn more at myimprov.com/traffic-school/california.

Significance of Driving Instructors in Defensive Driving Training

Driving Instructors are essential in defensive driving training. Along with basic driving skills, driving instructors also impart important knowledge on defensive driving techniques. They develop a safety-first mindset in their students, teaching them the importance of understanding the road environment and making decisions proactively. They also help develop the drivers’ ability to perceive hazards and respond to them. Another thing that instructors help with is the road rules and standards. In Australia, where road rules differ from state to state, this is very important. A driving instructor in Sydney would be able to help students in following rules specific to Sydney, and the same is true for driving instructors in canberra, Melbourne, etc. With their guidance, drivers can learn to drive safely and responsibly. They can also encourage drivers to follow traffic rules handle challenging situations and reduce the risk of accidents.

Conclusion

Road safety is important not just for drivers but also for pedestrians. Instilling safe driving habits in the drivers is a good way to achieve road safety. Defensive driving techniques can help a driver drive safely and by following a few rules and developing road awareness and hazard perception. Professional driving instructor schools like the Academy of Road Safety offer special training to driving instructors to help them teach safe driving techniques to students easily and effectively. By adopting defensive driving, we can significantly reduce the number of road accidents and create a safer road environment.

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JULY 23, 2013

Homemade Kitchen Beauty

Posted by Dorothy under Community Interests, Interesting Reads, Natural Highs, Wellness1 comment

If you are looking for a cheaper, safer and gentler way to nourish your facial skin, look no further as you can start with your local produce. With only 5 ingredients which are easily attainable in the local Asian supermarkets, you can concoct homemade facial masks to hydrate and moisturise your face and neck. They are cheaper than branded cosmetic products and do not contain added chemicals which will harm your skin in a short or long term period. As a bonus, you do not have to head to a spa for an expensive treat because you can do it regularly in the comfort of your home for 10-20 minutes at a time. The 5 ingredients commonly used are cucumber, yoghurt, turmeric, honey and coconut oil.

a) Cucumber
This cooling vegetable helps soothe sunburnt skin and is used as one of the ingredients to help absorb excess oil from oily skin. It has a large amount of ascorbic acid which can help decrease water retention and reduce puffiness around the eyes. The antioxidants and silica within a cucumber also reduce dark circles.

b) Yoghurt
The content of lactic acid in yoghurt aids in loosening dry skin to help in exfoliation. Whereas zinc cools sunburnt skin and  also acts as a moisturiser. The existence of animal fat in yoghurt helps moisturise but is not suitable for oily skin unless mixed with oatmeal, lemon ore turmeric powder.

c) Turmeric powder
This yellowish looking spice promotes anti-aging, acts as an antiseptic and anti-inflammatory. Therefore it is useful in fighting age spots, acne and helps stimulate blood flow to reduce the formation of wrinkles.

d) Honey
A sweet treat which has good hydration property for dry skin as it traps moisture in skin. Not only that, it soaks up impurities from the pores and ultimately is a form of cleanser. Like turmeric, it has anti-aging properties, is antibacterial, antiseptic and a type of antioxidant.

e) Coconut oil
Because of its oily properties, it is definitely not for oily skin. It is highly absorbent through skin which makes it helpful in replenishing moisture loss for dehydrated skin, hence it helps increase elasticity of age old skin. Acne prone and dermatitis suferrers should try this too.

Here are some recipes or combination of ingredients which you can benefit from:

1) Yoghurt
Types of skin: Dry and sensitive

2) Yoghurt and cucumber
Types of skin: Dry and sensitive
Method: Blend equal parts of yoghurt and peeled cucumber in a food processor until near liquid

3) Yoghurt and coconut oil
Type of skin: Dry
Method: Mix 3 parts of yoghurt to 1 part coconut oil

4) Yoghurt and turmeric powder
Types of skin: Any
Method: Mix 3 parts of yoghurt to 1 part turmeric powder
Be careful not to get it into your eyes or on your clothes

5) Yoghurt and honey
Type of skin: Dry
Method: Mix equal parts in a bowl

6) Honey
Type of skin: Dry

7) Honey, yoghurt and turmeric powder
Types of skin: Any
Method: Mix equal parts of honey and yoghurt and half part of turmeric powder
Be careful not to get it into your eyes or on your clothes

8 ) Turmeric powder
Types of skin: Any
Method: Mix turmeric powder with water until it forms a paste
Be careful not to get it into your eyes or on your clothes

9) Cucumber
Types of skin: Any
Method: Peel cucumber and blend it in a food processor

With all the above recipes, you can choose whichever suits you, then take 20 minutes twice a week, turn on some music and just relax while all the goodness of your homemade face masks feeds your skin.

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JUNE 27, 2013

Your Sadhana Should Strictly Be A Private Matter

Posted by Dorothy under Community Interests, Interesting Reads, Philosophy, Wellnessno responses

Yoga practitioners have always been taught to leave their ego aside not only in the yoga class, but also in all aspects of their lives. But sadly this is not the case with the big revolution of modern yoga. Some practitioners encourage competitiveness in their practice and stroke their ego by boasting about their achievements. These ego filled practitioners tend to forget that yoga is a personal relationship between the practitioner and the practice itself. At the end of their daily practice, one should be grateful with whatever happens, whether there is progress or not, as the focus needs to be in the now. There is no need to beat yourself up if you do not achieve what others in class or people you admire have achieved. On the other hand, you should not get too proud and announce it to others or feel egoistic if you have progressed, but be thankful and  have gratitude. In The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Verse 11 states that:

Hatha yoga is the greatest secret of the yogis who wish to attain perfection (siddhi).

Indeed, to be fruitful, it must be kept secret; revealed it become powerless.

The translation which resonates to my liking is the one by  Swami Satyananda Saraswati and Swami Muktibodhananda of the Sivananda lineage. I will not attempt to summarise the translation as everyone should read the actual text and form their own perceptions and conclusions. So enjoy the following wise words.

This sloka is typical of any yogic shastra expounding higher knowledge, i.e. the science should be kept to oneself. Whatever a sadhaka gains or achieves during the period of sadhana should be a private affair. This may seem a little out of context as the book itself appears to be disclosing the secrets of the practices, but in fact, when you learn under the guidance of a guru, you will find that Swatmarama has only stated the bare essentials as guidelines for the practice of asana etc, so that the science of hatha yoga will be preserved for humanity.

Originally, Gorakhnath had written much about hatha yoga in the form of prose and poetry. traditionally, a shastra must be in Sanskrit; local dialects are not accepted as authentic works. Therefore, Swatmarama is continuing Gorakhnath’s original work. What has been given here is the system of hatha yoga without too much elucidation. It is left up to the practitioner to find out from his guru what is actually involved. Swatmarama is not advocating the performance of a particular sadhana; he merely noted down the system and outline the correct methods of practice. Your specific sadhana is between you and your guru. When your sadhana is mastered, the result is siddhi or perfection, and whatever you have managed to perfect is your own attainment and what the guru has enabled you to become.

Gorakhnath used to tell his disciples that hatha yoga is the science of the subtle body. It is the means by which the body’s energy can be controlled. He said that hatha is the means of controlling the two main energy channels of the positive/negative currents.

The positive-negative nature of energy exists in every part of our being. Hatha yoga not only brings a balance in the energy, but also in the duality of the mind, and between the lower nature and the higher mind, between the individual soul and the universal spirit. It involves your self and the atma, so why bring anyone else into the picture?

In the Shiva Samhita it says that the practitioner should keep his practice secret “just as a virtuous wife keeps her intimate relations between herself and her husband quiet”. This develops the love between husband and wife. Similarly, if you have any respect for your own beloved, the pure atma, whatever experience and power you are bestowed with is your own affair and has to be cultivated privately.

This is a purely logical and scientific process. When you have a small light burning in a room at night, the whole room is illumined. If you take your little light outside into the vast, open space, the light is engulfed by the night and absorbed in the darkness. The same principle applies to the power gained through your sadhana. The power may enlighten your own consciousness, but displayed and dissipated in the magniture of the outside world, it loses strength.

Sadhana is like a seed and siddhis are like flowers. If you want a seed to germinate you have to leave it in the soil. If you dig it up to show your friends and neighbours how it is progressing, it will not grow any further, it will die. Likewise, the siddhi is just the germinating point of your sadhana. If you are trying to cultivate fully bloomed awareness of atma, you will have to act properly. Sadhana is not a biology lesson where you dig up the plant to investigate its roots. Sadhana involves the growth of your own spirit and it is like the process of giving birth. When a foetus is growing in the womb, we cannot peep into the intermediate stage of its development, we have to wait for the final product.

Keeping sadhana and siddhis under cover has a powerful psychological effect. If you talk about and display your attainments, the sense of ‘I’ or ego becomes very acute. ‘I’ have achieved, ‘I’ had this experience, or ‘I’ can do this. If you want to experience cosmic consciousness, ego or ahamkara is the greatest barrier. Siddhis never last long, they are impermanent. After a certain stage of evolution they disappear. If you associate yourself with the feeling that ‘I’ have perfected this and that, you will expect yourself to be able to perform a great feat and so will others. You will be living to meet the expectations of others, otherwise they will not think that you are great. One day when the siddhi leaves you, how are you going to cope with the situation? In spiritual life it is very important to keep ego under control.

Most of the great saints and siddhas who had powers rarely displayed them. Only the people who lived very close to them knew their greatness. many siddhas who did display their powers were persecuted. Therefore, for your own good and for the good of others it is said, as a warning rather than mere advice, that sadhana and siddhis are to be kept secret.

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