Mandala March

Mandala March

Crying is cathartic
“Pushpa, I hate tears,” a very famous line from the movie Amar Prem, is widely used to quieten those going through an emotional meltdown. But Mr Kamlesh Masalawala considers crying a magical wand that heals and releases extreme stress and grief.
Mentioned in the Limca book of records, Mr Masalawala is also the first laughter trainer in the world who can make anyone laugh with his great sense of humour. But soon, he realised that this healing journey was incomplete without paying attention to crying: the other side of healing.
“Even after the presence of so many people in life, there are times when we find no shoulder to cry on. Also, as we grow older, we avoid crying in front of others and sometimes, even alone. Children are more emotionally and physically healthy because they cry without any uneasiness. They express what they feel and eventually stay happy. This is how an adult too should be in terms of expressing. Crying is not something to be ashamed of. Instead, it is liberating yourself from all the burdens and starting everything afresh,” said this 62-year-old expert.
With the motto ‘from tears to cheers,’ Mr Masalawala founded India’s first Crying Club in Surat in 2017. On the last Sunday of each month, between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. people gather for communal bawling with emotional music being played in the background. People in this club are made to confront all the sorrows that burden them the most and are asked to vent them out in tears.
Apart from emotional healing, Mr Masalawala shares information on the biological benefits of this crying agenda. He says, “Happy and sad tears have different chemical composition. Our body releases certain hormones like cortisol whenever we encounter anything bad in life. So, in that case, tears act as a valve by releasing these extra released hormones. If left unchecked, they play havoc with our body, leading us to suffer from various chronic diseases.”
Bad days come to pass. After all, no one is promised a perfect life. So, when in stress, it is okay to cry like a child and let out the waterworks. This contributes to our feeling better and bursting into joy after a woeful episode. Have a good cry!

Meditation on the go
After focussing on virtually transporting users to beaches, rain forests, and other dreamy locales, meditation apps, today, are also trying to appeal to those who are actually travelling to such places. Several apps offer special meditation sessions for travellers making their way across the ocean, across the town, or even while waiting in transit.

Buddhify has a friendly interface that guides modern technology users in meditation practices. It has a rainbow wheel with the question: “What are you doing?” Users can select slices of the wheel with sessions like ‘walking in city.’ Each topic has timed meditations from five to 30 minutes, and you can rate your relaxation level and keep tabs on your progress. There are over 80 excellent custom-guided audio meditation tracks. It also has a Buddhify kids wheel with around 60 meditations that you can do with your kids. 

Another free app, Insight Timer, has a clean user interface which shows a map depicting all the users across the world who are currently meditating using the app. It has five menus that allow you to easily flip from guided to silent to timed meditations. You can also customise your profile and view your meditation stats as you continue to grow in your practice. You also have a large directory of free meditations to choose from, including meditations on topics like healing and forgiveness. 

Om Swami’s Black Lotus app focuses on spreading compassion, kindness, humility, and love. Completely free, the app allows you to meditate privately on calmness, forgiveness, peace, bliss, compassion, and many other emotions at your own pace, with carefully-curated lovely music. You can choose to meditate live with the renowned Himalayan mystic Om Swami and thousands of other meditators around the world (once every fortnight). With five categories—events, meditation, wisdom, chanting, and random acts of kindness (RAK)—the app takes a clean, minimalist approach. You can select a variety of random or timed tracks for meditating. The RAK section invites you to do random acts of kindness and earn points, like donating pet food or giving up your spot in a queue. 

The Meditate OM app has a list of some 20-odd Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, and Hindu mantras. In this free app, each mantra comes with complete meaning and translation. What’s more, the mantras can be set to repeat for the desired number of times—perfect while you travel! So, the smartphone that you are using to flip through emails could be the ticket to workday or travel Zen!

-Raji Menon Prakash

Miraculous healings
“I run one of India’s largest dental centres and know many doctors but did not know what to do for my daughter,” says Dr Sanjay Arora, an eminent dentist based in Delhi. At the age of 16, Dr Arora’s daughter started suffering from extreme allergies. She had a heart rate of above 145 most of the time, severe tiredness and itching, and she was put on Atenolol (used to lower stress on the heart) on six occasions. He shares, “Many top doctors, including an eminent cardiologist, simply gave up on her. Some even labelled her mentally unstable. While her psychology scores were the best, none could bring her pulse rate down without medicines.” With heavy doses of medicines, his daughter suffered for two and a half years; she could not breathe the normal air outside, thanks to pollution, or stand perfumes, dust, or pollen. 

Dr Arora was referred to Dr Shahroze Rizvi, a renowned Magneto Acupressure Therapist with 18 years of experience, by his patient who herself was suffering from multiple sclerosis and had benefited from Dr Rizvi’s therapy. “After exhausting all other means, I went to Dr Rizvi. Miraculously, my daughter got cured in just five days through his treatment. The girl, who could not climb five steps without having her pulse rate increased dramatically, is now doing two hours of heavy gymming for the last four months every day,” Dr Arora happily shares.

Magneto Acupressure Therapy is a non-invasive, modernised version of the original acupressure therapy in which micro magnets are applied on acupoints. When a micro magnet is fixed on the surface of a body part (mostly hands and feet) in such a manner that its north pole touches the skin, tonification takes place, which means the energy level at that point increases. If the south pole touches the skin, sedation takes place, whereby the energy level at that point decreases. The micro magnets, as tiny as a bindi (a decorative mark worn in the middle of the forehead by Indian women) are fixed to the body surface with the help of surgical adhesive tapes for a duration of a few hours daily. The magnetic energy level of the micro magnets is powerful enough to stimulate the acupoints, thus leading to the healing and curing of the human body.

Operating from CareHeal Humanity Institute in New Delhi, Dr Rizvi is consulted by almost 100 patients in a day and has cured lakhs of patients suffering from chronic diseases such as skin cirrhosis, multiple sclerosis, hypothyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, heart ailments, depression, and so on. After meeting him, I too started using magnets, as this therapy is quite simple and doable. I recommend it to all for their complete wellness.

-Jamuna Rangachari