“Sexual tastes are moulded by an individual’s experiences and their culture. These tastes are acquired and then wired into the brain. We are unable to distinguish our ‘second nature’ from our ‘original nature’ because our neuroplastic brains, once rewired, develop a new nature every bit as biological as our original.” - Dr. Norman Doidge There is a very interesting scene in 'Tudor' - a series on Netflix, about Henry The VIII, The King of England. When the king beds Anne of Cleves on wedding night, he finds her unappealing and doesn't like her. Evidently because she was very naive and less responsive being a virgin and inexperienced as compared to the king who had immensely deviant and abnormal sexual appetite. Notwithstanding his innumerable flings and indiscretions, the king had married six times, out of which two were executed for infidelity, two marriages annulled, one died during child birth and one outlived him by one year ultimately to perish. I...
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When my body is saying it's time for a nap, My poor aching muscles are starting to frown, Least they would, if they could 'cause they're making it clear- They are screaming 'Hey buddy, it's time to lie down'. - Neil Dunn As we progress technologically and scientifically, we are also becoming increasingly sleep deprived. Our busy days creep into our nights, stealing our sleep time, and when sleep tries to encroach upon our wake cycle to reassert its glorious realm, we shake it off to again, fall prey to gadgets and our busy professional lives. Most people presume that getting 8 hrs of sleep at night is enough and taking a nap in this busy life is a luxury they can't afford. So, whenever they feel groggy, they try to shake it off by a cup of coffee or go for a brisk walk, as napping is seen as an activity of a sloth or a lazy person. But, the Spanish consider siesta (sixth hour from the dawn) a very essential part of their daily routine, ...
One bright morning, a man went walking along the beach and there he saw a fisherman fishing with a bait bucket beside him. As he drew closer, he saw that the bait bucket had no lid and there were live crabs inside. “Why don't you cover your bait bucket so the crabs won't escape?” he asked. The fisherman replied, "I don't need to put a lid. If there was only one crab in the bucket it would surely crawl out very quickly. Things are different when there are many crabs in the bucket, because, if one tries to crawl up the side, the others will grab hold of it and pull it back down so that it will share the same fate as the rest of them." This also points towards very typical human behaviour which we see around us all the time. If someone tries to do something different, chalk out a different path for themselves, or dream big, other people especially those who are unable to manage themselves, will try to drag that person down to the bottom with full fo...
It's said that sleep is the most essential part of being healthy and alive. Seriously! How! For me, it's a state where you are half dead and during most part of sleep you don't know what's happening around in terms of physical safety, and one doesn't know if one will ever get up alive! Hey! aim is not to scare you and cause Insomnia in you, but if you think closely, that's what happens. When early man must have experienced this dangerous situation, he would've searched for safe shelters where he could satisfy this biological need and wake up alive. In Hinduism, 'Ratri Devi' or 'Goddess of Night' has a prominent place in shlokas and shrutis, where she is worshipped for providing sound sleep, praised as a protector and one's physical and spiritual safety during sleep is attributed to her. This was such a huge psychological respite which helped in initiation of sound sleep, and acted as an armament against fear of safety during...
If Hans Selye, the 'father of Stress' had not experimented with his lab rats by injecting them with various biochemical extracts, and formalin, human race would have not known the word "Stress". The mothers would have still reacted the same way with young kids jumping around, and fathers would have screamed with the same intensity in and around the house. The teenagers would have fretted the same way defying the authority of adults, and still would have got alarmed if their mobile phone went into scanner. But, this much sought after single word brought such a huge difference to our lives and made all our sufferings easy to communicate. These two words - 'Stress' and 'Anxiety' are thrown around so much, and are quintessence of our present day life. But, do we really understand why we feel stressed and anxious? What changes in our body when we are stressed /anxious? How does it affect our life and relationships? Stress is a natura...