Day 7: 60 day Bikram Yoga Challenge

Posted on January 13, 2012 by horizons

So like many folks these days I failed at one of my new year’s resolutions; juicing. I was just not able to go 60 days on nothing but juice. I decided to stop the juicing not because I couldn’t keep going or had crazy yearnings for solid food but because I noticed that I dropped too much weight and was not getting the protein in my diet that I need.

Like I had said previously I don’t need to loose weight since I’m already skinny. I wanted this to be something healthy and I saw the experience becoming unhealthy so I terminated it a week in. I will however keep going on a restricted diet until I finish the 60 day bikram yoga challenge. This means minimal carbs ( I eat too much pasta), no chocolate, candy or high fat foods. I will continue to juice but add healthy amounts of lean meats and other healthy protein like avocados. My goal is to just eat healthy for the remainder of the 60 days.

As for the yoga challenge today is day 7 of the challenge, although I did do 2 extra days before hand. I’ve seen my body fat percentage drop 2% since the start of the year and that’s good. The poses are becoming easier each day and am enjoying the daily practice which offers me time for meditation in the class. After all yoga is a moving meditation.

Bikram yoga is comprised of 28 postures and I’ve decided that throughout the challenge I will spend one day talking about each posture, its correct methods and my issues as a student of the practice with perfecting them as well as how I cheat the yoga and how I’m trying to erase all the cheats from my practice. Do not cheat the yoga!

 

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Day 2 of 60 day Bikram yoga challenge

Posted on January 8, 2012 by horizons

I had doubts going in to class today about how I would do since I felt tired this morning from the past 3 days but I actually got better. In standing head to knee I was able to hold the posture the entire 60 seconds on my left leg and about 50 seconds on my right. That’s a huge improvement since starting again a few days ago when I kept falling out of posture.

I found myself in the floor series before I thought it was time which felt great. I’m starting to feel that the 60 day Bikram yoga challenge will be easier than the juice diet. I don’t feel like I’m going to be able to keep up my protein intake high enough with juicing. Since I’m doing this for other reasons than loosing weight I’m considering changing the time length. I’m not sure anymore why I chose 60 days in the first place.

My goal was to try a vegetarian diet for 60 days but since I can’t digest fiber I chose to juice rather than eat it. For the same reasons I don’t do well with legumes which are the normal vegetarians’ form of protein. For now I think I will continue. I feel like since I started this I should at least do 10 days and I’m not there yet. If I do cancel I will do so by only adding extra calories from protein. Tofu, chicken, fish etc. I feel this might be necessary to maintain proper health which is my main goal, therefore no pizza, burgers, soda etc. It will be 60 days of proper strictly healthy dieting with juice the entire time.

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Day 3: Juice Fast

Posted on January 6, 2012 by horizons

Today was day 3 of the juice fast. It went well enough the first half of the day. I was really sore from yesterday’s yoga class but went back for more anyways. It was the biggest class I’ve ever been to, I counted over 100 yogis! After the class there was a party in the lobby to celebrate the grand opening. Current and old teachers were in attendance. There were more speeches and thanks given to those who made the new studio possible.

The hardest part about the party was the great food available. There was lasagna, cookies, hors d’oeuvres and more. There were people coming up to me offering delicious foods in platters but I held out the entire time and just kept sipping on my juice that I brought. I should have started the fast tomorrow. But that is part of the process, resisting. I’m sure its not the last party that I will have to endure in the coming weeks so getting some practice at resisting while I’m still fresh may be good in the long run. I also resisted going out to lunch with my family to a restaurant today. I will probably have to do that at least once a week.

To help me in my quest (or to make it harder probably) I officially signed up for the 60 day Bikram yoga challenge that starts off tomorrow. Bikram yoga, which is an intense 90 minute yoga practice in a 105°F room burns up to 1400 calories per class. Its going to take a lot of juice to make up for that amount of calories during the next 60 days.

Before leaving the studio I picked up an “Angel card” at random from a bowl by the door. Angel cards are these small little cards that have a word written on them, they are supposed to be used to meditate on for the next year. Cards can be “love,” “friendship,” “peace,” “ego” etc., mine was blank. I was going to get another card but a wonderful lady at the studio explained to me that when you get a blank card it means that you are supposed to come up with your own word. I said “that figures” when she explained it to me for which she responded “everything happens for a reason.”

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Day 2 Juice Diet

Posted on January 5, 2012 by horizons

Today was good. I felt at times like I was drinking too much juice. I’m making 2 or three pint glasses each time I juice. Pear juice is delicious, I really have to add more pears to the shopping list. The thought that I have so many days ahead is a little troubling even at day 2. I see temptation around every corner and while I am able to hold off easily so far I doubt it will be so easy 10 days in.

I also restarted my Bikram yoga practice. It was my first day back and the first day of the new studio. By around the 5 posture I had a big smile on my face and had concentration of breath. I enjoyed the class so much that the 90 minutes flew by that before I knew it we were in final savasana (corpse pose), in which we finish the class.

The new studio next door to the old one is three times as large. I believe I heard there were some 78 people in the class. Afterwards there were ambassadors from the center of commerce of San Jose for the official ribbon cutting of the new studio, a short speeches from Michele Vennard studio owner and guests; finishing off with a sparkling cider toast. I toasted with my apple juice that I brought from home.

The new studio has wonderful hypoallergenic carpet that looks like hardwood floors. I absolutely love it. The locker rooms are huge now. There is a wonderful meditation area as well. Saturday is the 60-day challenge kick-off. I had such a great class today that I feel like going tomorrow. So I will end up doing 62 straight days of Bikram yoga and juice into day 57 of yoga. Its such a small difference that I feel like juicing a few more days just to finish together. However I’ll leave that decision up for later.

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Day 1 of 60 day Raw Juice diet

Posted on January 4, 2012 by horizons

Today I started the first of a 60 day diet. I will not eat any solid food for the next 60 days, instead I will be juicing raw vegetables and fruits in my juicer. While I have gone a few days in the past on nothing but raw juice the thought of 2 full months on nothing but juice seams a bit much today.

I went to the kitchen a couple hours ago and saw a bag of chips. My first instinct was to reach out and eat one. I then remembered what I was doing. While the temptation was there I was able to resit but with a bit of sadness. Salty foods like chips will not be enjoyed for awhile. Later seeing a family member eat chocolate made my cravings go. I am a chocoholic and not eating any for the next 60 days will be one of the biggest challenge that I will face.

As if this wasn’t hard enough I will be starting a personal 60 day Bikram yoga challenge. The timing will not overlap perfectly but there will be a huge overlap which will make the first months of 2012 a personal challenge.

Why am I doing this? Well my body needs a recharge and letting my intestines relax for a couple months will definitely help my overall health. As for the yoga, it was a personal promise I made myself a few months back that the next time my yoga studio had a 60 day challenge I would do it. It was just a coincidence that they will be overlapping.

Tomorrow will be my first day back to doing bikram yoga in a few months. While I have kept up a yoga practice it has not been as rigourous as that of bikram yoga. For those that don’t know Bikram yoga is a 90 minute yoga class that is performed in a heated room of about 105°F. It is the same series of postures every time; 26 postures and 2 breathing exercises.

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Fukushima

Posted on November 17, 2011 by horizons

Recently, rice being prepared to be sold for consumption was found to be radioactive. The farms that grew the staple crop are located about 40 miles from the Fukushima power plant that is still contaminating the surrounding area with radiation after the tsunami back in March crippled the cooling systems.

Cesium 137, which was found in the Japan’s staple food, rice, has a half-life of 30.17  years, making farming in the area dangerous for at least a century. Japaneses eat about 125 lbs of rice each year. Japan produces 7.2 million metric tons of rice each year, second in production behind milk at 79. M metric tons/yr.

Back in July, meat from cows grown in the area were found to have 3 to 6 times the legal limit of radiation. [NOTE: these limits are subjective, any exposure to radiation is harmful to cells].

According to BBC News ASIA :local governments have been conducting their own testing of food before reaching market and  Tokyo began the process last week. In the meantime only a request to the 156 farms to stop on any shipments of rice from the Oonami region around Fukushima is in place while authorities decide what to do.

The rice had approximately 630 becquerels of Cesium/kg, legal limits stand at 500Bq of Cs/kg. Farms whose rice have been found to contain 10 times the legal limit have been banded from selling there rice.

The Fukushima disaster remains a level 7 disaster according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), tying it with the Chernobyl disaster.

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Occupy Wall St Riot

Posted on November 16, 2011 by horizons

Around 1 am Monday morning protesters at Zuccotti park were confronted with hundreds of police in riot gear ready to evict them from the park. Police passed around flyers explaining what they were about to do. An hour after the flyers were passed around police started to move in and raise the encampment. Tearing out all the tents, the people’s library, med tent, communication center and had everything taken to the dump. This was in opposition to one of the statements in the flyer which stated:

“If you fail to immediately remove your property, we will do so and transport it to the Department of Sanitation parking garage at 650 West 57th Street, where you’ll be able to recover it as of noon today with proper identification.”

Ydanis Rodriguez, a New York city council member was among the roughly 70 protesters arrested. Mr. Rodriguez was at the park representing his constituents. Around 200-300 protesters remained in the park after the initial police warnings and gathered together, interlocking arms in an act of peaceful civil disobedience.  The protesters who remained were pepper sprayed and beaten with batons by police.

Mayor Bloomberg, a billionaire and part of the 1%, ordered the raid in the middle of the night under the pretext of health and safety issues, did so without informing the protesters of the issues. Vocal protesters argued that the reasons were unfounded citing that the camp has its own fire squad with fire extinguishers in almost every tent, its own set of certified and registered EMT, nurses and doctors.

The legal team at Zuccotti park worked endlessly as soon as information was heard about the incoming raid. The legal team drafted papers and after contacting Judge Lucy Billings of the New York State Supreme Court for a restraining order against the NYPD. Daniel Alterman, a civil rights attorney who helped with the injunction, speaking on Democracy Now! stated that Judge Billings

“...who agreed to meet us between 5:00 at 6:00 a.m. to review our request for a temporary restraining order, restraining the police from evicting the protesters at Liberty Park, exclusive of lawful arrests for criminal offenses, and, most importantly, enforcing the rules published after the occupation began almost two months ago—or otherwise preventing protesters from re-entering Liberty Park with tents and other property utilized therein.“

The temporary restraining order against the NYPD was signed at 6:30 am with a hearing scheduled for later that day.

Jumaane Williams, another New York City Council member tweeted on November 14th:

“I can report that @ydanis, a #NYC Council Member, has been #arrested at #OccupyWallStreet & is bleeding from the head thanks to the #NYPD.”

After roughly 200 protesters were arrested, and the hearing later in the day which granted the protesters the right to return to the park but without tents, sleeping bags or allowing protesters to lay down. Mayor Bloomberg spoke at a news conference. He said:

“The First Amendment gives every New Yorker the right to speak out but it does not give anyone the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others. Nor does it permit anyone in our society the right to live outside the law. There is no ambiguity in the law here, the first amendment protects speech it does not protect the use of tents or sleeping bags to take over a public space.”

The city has stated they have a couple hundred of the books from the library but are currently debating whether to return the books.

 

 

 

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Voyager 2 Switching to Backup Thrusters as it Leaves the Solar System

Posted on November 11, 2011 by horizons

This artist's concept shows NASA's two Voyager spacecraft exploring a turbulent region of space known as the heliosheath, the outer shell of the bubble of charged particles around our sun. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

Voyager 2 which launched back in August 20, 1977 has traveled some 17.2 billion km away from the sun. Equipped with 6 thrusters, has received and confirmed orders to turn on the 3 back up thrusters and turn off the 3 main ones. The main thrusters have fired over 318,000 times. In comparison Voyager 1, Voyager 2′s identical twin fired its’ main thrusters some 353,000 times before switching to backup back in 2004.

The switch will let the 722 kg space probe save some 12 watts of power used to keep the fuel line to the main thrusters from freezing in space. This also means that if later on the main thrusters are needed again they will not be functional due to frozen lines. Both voyager get their power from the decaying Plutonium 238 which puts out some 270 Watts, enough to make sure the 2 spacecrafts have power until at least 2020.

Both Voyagers are traveling through the roughly 5 billion km thick heliosheath which separates our Solar System from Deep Space. The heliosheath is

“…the outermost layer of the heliosphere where the solar wind, which streams out from the sun, is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. source.”

Voyager 2 is controlled out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) where both Voyagers were built in Pasadena, CA. Voyager 2 will be switching to the backup thrusters on Sunday November 13, but mission control will not know until Monday November 14 if the switch was successful due to the fact that the radio signals from Voyager 2 take almost 16 hours to reach Earth.

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Google Lunar X Prize

Posted on November 10, 2011 by horizons

 

Google teamed up with the X Prize Foundation to offer a $30 million prize for the first independent team (teams must be at least 90% privately funded) to get a robot to the lunar surface, travel at least 500 yards on the surface of the moon record and transmit back HD video and pictures. The 26 remaining teams (seven teams have withdrawn from the competition) have until December 31, 2015 to complete their missions.

The first team to complete the mission will receive the $20M grand prize with additional prizes available for the second team ($5 Million) and a series of additional mission goals. The Lunar X Prize was announced back in September 2007 with the deadline for team registration on December 2010.

The X Prize which continues in a historical legacy of enticing innovation with incentives worth much less money than actually needed to complete a task. The same type of competition motivated the Wright brothers’ to the first airplane flight, the first flight across the Atlantic ocean and a few years ago the first non-government space ship to reach space, land and relaunch days later.

With the competition fully underway, the teams are competing to get to the moon before  the next government lunar landing scheduled for as early as  late 2013 when the $20 million grand prize gets reduced to $15 million. Russia has teamed up with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on Chandrayaan-2, and China’s Chang’e3 are both scheduled for launch in 2013 or 2014. The United States does not have any upcoming lunar missions that pose an additional challenge to the Lunar X Prize contestants.

Some groups are already well on their way with several groups testing landing methods and rover designs while others have dropped out of the race.

With NASA in the meantime trying to establish the Apollo mission sites on the Moon as National parks to prevent its destruction. NASA for the time being is afraid that the Lunar X Prize robots will make track marks all over the area where teams have a chance to win an additional $1 million dollars bonus for a precise landing in one of the previous Apollo mission landings sites. NASA aims to create 1,200 acre no-fly zones around the first and last lunar missions; Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 respectively. The restriction would also limit future tourists to approach no closer than 82 yards from the famous first step on the Moon by Neil Armstrong back in 1969 where he said his famous “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

This is a story that I will following as it progresses in anticipation for Human’s return to the Lunar surface since 1972, if only with robots for the time being.

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“Hancock 38″ trial of MQ-9 Reaper Drones

Posted on November 9, 2011 by horizons

 

Over the weekend the five day trial of the Hancock 38 Drone Protesters drew to a close. The 38 nonviolent protesters were arrested back in  April 22nd (Earth Day) outside the Hancock Air National Guard base near Syracuse, New York. The 38 protesters participated in a “die-in” where they laid down on the road into the facility symbolizing the countless killed by the unmanned aircrafts. The 174th Fighter Wing of the Air National Guard remotely controls the drones which have flown over Afghanistan since late 2009 from the Hancock facility.

The group brought an indictment against the base that was yanked out of protesters hands and tossed to the floor at the protest. The group claim that the Reaper Drones go against the Nuremberg Principles under Principle VI. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark testified at the trial for over 4 hours over the illegality of the drones. He also said to the Post-standard newspaper:

“Drones inherently violate the laws of the United States and international law. They are associated with the concept of assassination and murder.“

Ed Kinane, member of the Syracuse Peace Council and among those arrested at the protest said the group has been trying to communicate with Col. Kevin W. Bradley for a couple years in hopes of establishing a dialogue but the base has not made any attempts to establish communication back.

At the trial Justice David Gideon presiding over the case questioned former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark for over three hours to see if he was qualified to testify in matters of international law; ultimately concluding that he was. The court discussed the Nuremberg protocols and how they apply to the laws here in the United States.

Col Kevin W. Bradley with NY senator in front of a Drone

Ret. Col Ann Wright, one of the 38 protesters arrested said  in connection with the trial that

“Citizens have a responsibility to take action when they see crimes being committed. This goes back to WWII when German government officials new what other parts of the government were doing when they were executing 6 million Jews in Germany and other places, that they took no action and yet they were held responsible later through the Nuremberg trials and that is the theory on which we are acting.“

DeWitt town Justice David Gideon has promised to have a verdict in the no jury case by December 1st.

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The Future of Many Paraplegics will be Upright.

Posted on November 7, 2011 by horizons


Technology has been advancing slowly since the 1960′s when the first attempts to create a bionic exoskeleton were made. That first attempt, Hardiman, a General Electric‘s powered exoskeleton failed due to uncontrollable violent motions in addition to the weight which made it impractical.

For some time after that, the idea went on hold as robotic arms and components were

improved. When technology improved and processors’ reached a needed threshold of speed the idea became feasible again. In 1989, Dr. Yoshiyuki Sankai -of the University Tsukuba in Japan-  started working on Hybrid Assistive limb (HAL) by mapping out the pathway that neurons take from the brain to the legs. He later used that information along with sensors on the skin to know when a signal to move a leg was made and to trigger the bionic leg’s movement.

Dr Sankai formed Cyberdyne in June 2004. Now working on the HAL 5, the hybrid assistive exoskeleton which are now available for use in Japanese facilities.

Meanwhile in Berkeley California another company, Ekso Bionics, has been working on their version of an assistive exoskeleton for paralyzed individuals to walk upright. The device called eLegs now in undegoing a  trial phase in 10 rehabilitation centers across the United States is scheduled to become available at more centers as early as next year. The device requires patients to relearn how to walk. eLegs has a battery that will last 4 hours currently.

In the future I hope that artificial muscles [1] [2], will be implemented around a more conforming suit that a person can wear underneath their clothes.  These and other concept of muscle wire which are already on the market, can be enhanced to create working muscles working in the exterior of a human. Combing hundreds of muscle wires together would create the strength that human muscles have. In essence copying nature’s muscles which are made of the grouping of individual strands of skeletal striated muscle. These suits could have an interface with our nerves through sensors as Dr Sankai of Cyberdyne has done. A step being done simultaneously would be to implant electrodes from the muscle groups to a point in the spinal column still functional to “jump over” damaged neural cells. In this way the message from the brain can reach the lower limbs. The combination of both an assistive suit which can possibly rebuild muscle with exercise and implanted electrodes might make someone regain upwards mobility. Lastly, adding to the equation, the hopes of stem cell therapy, we can conclude that the day when paraplegics regain their walking abilities in fast approaching.

 

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