- Avoid stress: Start taking short breaks at regular intervals whenever working at the office or even at home. Eat foods like brown bread for carbohydrates instead of white bread, oranges and lemons for vitamin C and spinach for magnesium. A healthy diet and sufficient sleep help release chemicals like serotonin, which helps to reduce stress.
- Quit smoking: More often than not, people think that smoking helps in reducing stress, which is nothing more than a myth. Excessive smoking aggravates blood pressure, increases heart rate and reduces the supply of oxygen to the brain. You should immediately quit smoking for a disease-free life.
- Avoid alcohol: Alcohol is one of the most dangerous evils prevailing in our society; it is responsible for a plethora of medical ailments. Alcohol can worsen heart problems and cause cirrhosis of the liver. It triggers obesity and depression.
- Reduce intake of high trans fat, sugar and sodium-laden food: The majority of lifestyle diseases stem from our irregular and unhealthy eating habits. People who indulge in overeating and consume primarily junk food can develop long-term chronic diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart issues due to increased cholesterol and obesity. A balanced diet is the key; consume healthy meals, which have the required nutritional meals your body needs to function efficiently. Consuming small but frequent meals, which contain a sufficient quantity of fruits and vegetables, is key.
- Exercise daily: Include a 5-minute brisk walk and a 10-minute stretching in your things to do list whenever you get time. Regularly exercising also helps keep a check on hypertension and obesity.
Deepajyothi parabrahma
Deepa Jyotir Janaardanah
Deepo harati paapaani
Sandhyaa deepa namostute
“I prostrate to the dawn/dusk lamp, whose light is the Knowledge Principle (the Supreme Lord), which removes the darkness of ignorance and by which all can be achieved in life.”
Light is a symbol of knowledge, and darkness, of ignorance. Knowledge removes ignorance the way light removes darkness. The purpose of any ritual is to remove internal darkness and attain some knowledge.
Vedic literature recommends lighting a lamp daily as a part of puja ritual. Some do it once at dawn, others twice a day – at dawn and dusk ; while some let the lamp light continuously (akhanda deepa). No auspicious functions can commence without lighting of the lamp and the same is to be maintained right through the occasion.
Knowledge is an enduring inner wealth which is a means to accomplish all outer achievement. By lighting the lamp, we bow down to knowledge as the greatest of all forms of wealth. Knowledge about the self is the greatest wealth. It goes around achieving inner happiness by burning the negativity of mind full of lust and ego.
The traditional oil lamp defines this spiritual significance. The oil or ghee symbolizes our vasanas (lust) and negative tendencies (the wick & the ego). Lit by spiritual knowledge, the vasanas slowly exhaust and the ego perishes. The flame of a lamp always burns upwards signifying that only that knowledge should be acquired that takes us towards higher ideals.