Bless yourself with " Emotional-Cleanse "

God knows how we hate the feeling of being choked on last night's binge that isn't just ready to pop itself out. Such is the feeling of physical discomfort that leaves us with no better resort than to push it all out. Since the physical effects are prominent enough to make us act on them, we become rather fine judges of finding our way to a physical cleanse. But what about times when our brain feels stuffed and we can't help but be overwhelmed with even a minuscule decision or responsibility? 

That's when a whistle warning for our "Emotional Cleanse" shall blow. But, we can loosen ourselves a bit as this one does not require us to survive on blended greens. "Emotional Cleanse" is more of an approach to get rid of undigested or overprocessed emotions by mindful exercises. Each emotion in us holds a value and overpassing it would only undermine our journey to thorough nourishment. So every unsettling emotion in our mind needs an acknowledgment and an exit, at the right times.

This detox can be inculcated in our daily life very easily and does not require heavy efforts for its start. We can learn to process our emotions in a simpler way by involving a few premeditated steps in our regime. Few of them being :

• Get Real - Acknowledgement of emotion is the first step to healing and addressing the same helps us get to the root cause of the associated feeling.

• Find your tribe - Identify people you trust and do not shy away from asking their help when you feel you require their assistance.

• Soak what feels good - Treasure experiences, people, places, etc. which fill you up with joyful emotions (love, care, trust, happiness, etc)

•  Forgive yourself and others - Grudges feed on our mental health, causing plague inside our mind. Forgiveness and acceptance can be the two most effective antidotes to this problem.

•  Spend time on self-care - Self-care is an important step to incorporate into your self-love journey. Spending time alone and recognizing your true self can make the cleansing process easier for you.

Since our bodies are connected to our spirits, they do not benefit from these toxins released due to clogged emotions. Neglecting our emotional health for a long period of time can result in dangerous outcomes like chronic tension, depression/anxiety, easy distractions, abrupt weight gain/loss, hypertension, etc. Therefore, we must not forget to reset the release button for our emotions from time to time.

How to stop subconscious promotion of gender bias

Living in a society where we are tagged along with gender as soon as we are pushed out of our mother's sack, makes it impossible for us to think apart from it. We have been conditioned to streamline almost every attribute that belongs to us, under certain criteria. This results in a millennial disease of "Gender-Bias", whose antidote, "Gender-Neutralism" fails to save us from diving into this deep-rooted issue. However, there are minuscule efforts from our end that can assure us of doing our bit to uproot this issue. As this article progresses, I'm sure we all will be aware of our choices and could answer whether they support/promote the bias, in any way.

First of all, we need to stop urging our minds to wander places when we see someone who we feel does not fit under our "gender criteria". We should plea for courtesy and seal our lips when prompted to ask someone of their gender as we do when the topic shifts to body weight. Also, we should try and skip any form of literature and media that focuses on representing gender in stereotypical ways (Eg. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus). What we can practice is the usage of gender-neutral words like Humankind for Mankind, Postal Worker for the Postman, Actor for the actress, etc. This would help us support the fact that anyone can perform a task/job irrespective of their gender identity.

Secondly, we must introspect how we are clenched into this bias through basic choices (eg. what to eat, to wear, etc). We are surrounded by so many irrational and nonsensical theories with respect to gender that we can't help but end up being a victim of it. In the clothing industry, for example, we see a comparatively tighter fit for women with compromised comfort and fewer colors with less fluctuation in trends for men, pointing to bias that manufacturers have been long supporting. Sadly, portions of our food have also been dictated by this bias leaving us in the qualm of over/under-eating. A place where we can achieve the freedom of wearing whatever we want or eating whatsoever quantity of food is distant from reality.

We can round off the number of ways in which we are hostage to these stereotypes that serve us no good purpose. We should try and be more inclusive of choices that people make, without hanging them on the radar of being off-gender choices. Each one of us is worthy of equality par our gender and we should therefore be careful of not letting our choices make a strong case for this vicious bias.

CATASTROPHE

I shut the blinds, disguised in darkness,

picking the leftovers of tattered optimism.

Sulking in an effort to fence my mind 

from places where misery hits my loved ones.

For I can't unsee a dying man's breath hanging onto

lips of his woman.

and I can't benumb myself from the horror stretched

along the corpse, 

turning a dead man's dignity to insignificant.

Though what I can dodge 

is the urge to soak in the normalcy.

And nothing calms my sore heart 

but the promise of a silvery world

that lets us be.

Shweta Sharma

Are you in harmony with your hormones?

Ever wondered why you sometimes shriek your lungs out on the first person who calls your name and the very next minute you are cooing by their side to make up for this baffling behavior. Now that I've got you thinking, I'd like you to self-assess yourself on a few pointers. Do you find yourself over-indulgent in shopping as a result of frequent changes in your weight and you can only save the energy to buy them online as an idea of an actual cart leaves you in fatigue? Do you get frequent anxiety bouts when you see more hair clinging onto your brush than on your scalp? Do you experience changes in your body that normally pertain to the opposite gender? Do you miss all the bedroom fun owing to an absent sex drive? If you can nod your head in assertion for more than a couple of questions here, then chances are you are being a scapegoat to your two-faced hormones.

It goes without saying that you cannot let these hormones and their silent partner, your endocrine system, take over whatever's left of your sanity. So here's when you shift your focus to three D's :

1) Diet 

Eating a balanced and rotatory diet can do wonders for your endocrine system. A handpicked diet, consisting of healthy fats (coconut oil, clarified butter, nuts, flax seeds, fish, etc) can assure you an optimal generation of hormones like progesterone and estrogen. For testosterone generation, in addition to healthy fats, you can include eggs, leafy vegetables, and protein in your diet. Replacing sugar with jaggery also pulls the parity in taste and elevates the nutritional density of your dish. 

2) De-stress

We cannot put stress on how important it is to de-stress. Stress elevates the cortisol levels in your body, giving you a complimentary buffalo hump (also known as the Cushing Effect). To manage your cortisol levels, you must be on track with your sleep cycle and not just fetch eight hours of it but also regulate the timings for it. Also, giving just 1% of the total number of minutes in a day to meditation and yoga can make a considerable difference in lowering your stress levels.

3) Delete

We often tend to ignore the endocrine disruptors present in the environment which have underlying effects on our hormones. A few examples of these endocrine disruptors are plastic equipment, unwashed grocery items, chemically treated water, pollution, cell phone radio-frequency radiations, etc. You can use natural detoxifiers such as lemon, cilantro, beetroot, basil, etc to cut down the effects of toxins on your body in case you are not able to avoid the usage of these disruptors completely.

While there are many concluding verdicts for the reparation of your broken ties with your hormones, what you must not brush off are the seemingly small symptoms that they cause. The dangers of untreated hormonal imbalance can be massive and thus shall be acted upon without a delay. So it's time that you stop letting your hormones boss over you especially when you have your 9-5 for that.

Are we chewing on a sustainable diet ?

As much as we love the idea of having an exotic dietary plan hung on our refrigerators ,we cannot deny that what's inside of that refrigerator (in most times) in no way circles around the word 'Exotic'. The logic lying on the surface : Exotic foods cannot be hoarded because of  the price and lack of availability. Exotic healthy food items or imported healthy food items generally carry a price that makes us weigh the nutritional value directly to their price. Also, premium price of such food items makes it difficult for our pockets to stock it up unlike our local food items which are available on our beck and call. So is it a striking plan to put our bets on these 'hard-to-get'  player ingredients ? 👀

I vote no and I can soothe you with an example to support my vote. Example here being : A couple of years back I ordered 2 medium sized Avocados from a retailer online (costing me INR350) with an expectation of spooning the buttery fruit and smashing it, all while imagining the health benefits that I could reap from it. With all the big words put out, breakfast recipes imagined, I was not expecting to receive two unripe fruits I had no idea what to do with. This was one of my many failed experiences with fancy food items. 

One thing I learned while juggling between various food items was that even if you expertise in dealing with them, you cannot continue being reliant on them or reap their full benefits. Especially when we have locally grown substitute for each one of them. We can always chew on readily available nuts rather than putting our hopes in a ripened avocado. Some other local items which ace as substitutes can be : 

• Indian gooseberries for expensive blueberries
• Amaranth/Buckwheat grain for Quinoa
• Curd for Kefir
• Indian Basil seeds for Mexican chia seeds

The above listed examples are neither pricey nor outlying. So let's pledge on munching our way through local superfoods. Also, the more we shoutout to push the popularity of our local products, the more it will benefit our small vendors and of course, none of us would mind a simultaneous social contribution. 😉