Yoga for Eyes: 5 Really Easy Poses You Can do anytime

We spend most part of our day in front of the computer screen, staring at word documents, excel sheets or YouTube videos. And all this while, we worry about our expanding waistline, our dull skin and drying hair. We worry that are stomach isn't flat enough, our legs aren't toned enough and our gluts aren't firm enough. But in the process, we forget about one of the most important parts of our body, the eyes. The ones that itch from sheer exhaustion and burn tirelessly after the end of a really long day.

You might not feel the need to exercise your eyes because well, there aren't any immediate symptoms or signs of weak or tired eyes but if you want to guard yourself from hazy spots and blurry vision in the future, then we suggest you exercise them as often as possible. And the best part of an eye workout is that you can do it at any given time of the day and all you need are a few minutes.

There are six muscles that connect the eye to the eye socket and help them move side to side, up and down and all around. When you read, drive or watch something over an extended period of time, it drains your eye muscles of flexibility and tires them out. This condition is known as eye fatigue and is only worsened by smartphones and computer devices. While eye fatigue isn't a very serious condition, if it persists overtime it can be. The one way to help relieve the symptoms of eye fatigue (burning, itching and tiredness) is eye yoga. Why yoga you ask? Yoga is a form of exercise designed to work on your health and consciousness i.e your mind, body and soul. So all the exercises help not just your vision but also your brain, reinforcing the fact that everything is connected. Eye yoga can also relieve you from disorders related to defects in the eye muscles like myopia and hypermetropia.
Jane Rigney Battenberg writes in her book 'Eye Yoga: How You See is How You Think', "Since the eye muscles are eight times stronger than they need to be, they don't have to be strengthened so much as stretched, relaxed and fine-tuned. You will need to balance the eye stretching and strengthening exercises, where the eyes learn to work and see together, with the relaxing, loosening exercises, where you re-pattern your eyes and brain to relax and see."
We've put together five simple yoga exercises that that will help ease out overused muscles, reduce tension in the face and eyes and help your eyes focus.

1. Blink - Open your eyes wide and then quickly blink about 10 times. Now, close your eyes for about 20 seconds and repeat this exercise four more times. The human eye should blink about 25 times in one minute. However, many of us don't, especially when we're focusing on something on our computer or smartphone. This exercise helps your eye nourish itself, relaxes the eye muscles and prevent dry eyes.
2. Palming - If you've gone for yoga classes at any point in time you'll be familiar with this one. Rub your palms together till they feel warm. Then place them on your eyes and hold the position till your palm feels warm. Concentrate on something and relax. This exercise is another form of relaxation which is something your eyes could use, especially after a long day at work.
3. Sideways & Rotation - So now you want to stretch your eye muscles. Move your eyes slowly from side to side and then all the way around in a circle. If you find that difficult, then use your finger and move it in a circle, and let your eyes follow. Make sure your neck doesn't move and repeat both those exercises about 20 times.
4. Sarvangna Asanaor the shoulder stand - This exercise doesn't just help your eyes but your brain as well. Lie down on a mat and using your arms, life your body waist downwards in the air so that your legs are straight and toes point outwards. This pose stimulates blood circulation in brain and optic nerve. You can also lay on your back and life your legs upward, as high as you can go. This exercise increases blood circulation to the eyes, brain, ears and nose, thereby improving their functioning. This pose also helps you detoxify and maximise the performance of all the other organs.

 5. Bhramari Pranayama - Also known as the humble bee breath, this exercise is really calming and can drown down the unnecessary noise in your head, making you feel relaxed with just a few breaths. Sit on the floor cross-legged or however you feel comfortable. Now place your fingers over your eyes horizontally. Exhale and when you inhale make a bee like buzzing sound. Make sure you apply very little pressure on the eyeball and keep your lips sealed.

Have You Seen Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra's Pinga Dance-Off Yet?

Just in case you missed it, the hotly-anticipated Bajirao Mastani dance number featuring Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra was released over the weekend.

Remember Dola Re with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Madhuri Dixit from Devdas? Replace the actresses, swap the Bengali red and white saris for heavily embellished ones in jewel tones, change the setting from a zamindar's mansion to a Peshwa's palace and you have Pinga, which is basically Dola Re 2.0.

Why change a winning formula, right?

Deepika stars as the Mastani of the title, the second wife of Maratha leader Peshwa Baji Rao I, played by Ranveer Singh. Priyanka Chopra appears as the Peshwa's first wife Kashibai. Bajirao Mastani, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali who also serves as composer, releases on December 18.

Pinga is now available on YouTube and if you haven't watched it yet, here you go:

He Fries Pakoras With His Bare Hands

Ram Babu sells over a hundred kilograms of fries each day and makes around Rs. 2000.

A street chef in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh has been dubbed super hands - thanks to his ability to dip his hands into boiling hot oil unscathed.

Ram Babu regularly attracts hordes of spectators, who come to see his astonishing ability. The 60-year-old snack seller can bury his bare hands into searing cooking oil heated up to 200C for frying fritters.

"People from far away come to see me frying pakoras without burning my hands. I have been doing this for more than forty years but have never suffered blisters or any burn injury," he says.

When Babu - who fries potato and eggplant wedges at his roadside stall - started selling the deep-fried snacks to make ends meet at the age of just 20, he never thought his small stall would see such a large turnout. But as the demand grew, Babu stopped using any apparatus to save time - opting to spoon them out with his hands.

"Using the heavy spatula was time consuming. One day, there was a throng of customers at the shop and I had no helping hand. In panic, I mistakenly put my bare hands to take out fries. Before I could realise, my hands were deep into the pan of bubbling oil. I immediately took my hands out expecting blisters covering my hand but surprisingly there was nothing," he recalls.

"Ever since that day I decided to not use spatula. I have never been hurt, it feels as if I am putting my hands in water," he adds.

Babu sells over a hundred kilograms of fries each day and makes around Rs. 2000. "People go bonkers seeing me doing this, they keep asking if I have done some magic - but I simply smile and say this is all God's magic," he says.

Over the years, Babu has earned a bevy of customers and a huge fan following over the years, who travel from across the capital region to sample his crispy fries.

Amit Singh who is a frequent customer at Babu's stall says: "It really surprises me when I see him pulling out the fritters straight out of the pan. One has to see to believe him doing this.

"I can never think of even touching that boiling oil but he astonishingly takes out crispy pakoras as if they have been fried in cold water. And the fritters taste really good."

And just like his customers, Babu's unique ability has also left doctors baffled. He says: "As my popularity grew, several doctors approached me for research. Many took the sample of my skin, but none found anything unusual. I do not know why I am like this but as long as I am unhurt and my ability helps me make money, I will happily fry fritters with my hands."

Story First Published: November 17, 2015 15:51 IST

After Veggies, Flowers to Bloom in Space This New Year

It is the first time that a flowering crop experiment will be grown on the orbiting laboratory. Image Credit: iStock

Washington:  After having a sumptuous feast of "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce grown in space, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are set to witness flowers blooming on the orbiting laboratory after the New Year.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren has activated the "Veggie" plant growth system and its rooting "pillows" containing Zinnia seeds on the space station.

Zinnia is a genus of plants of the sunflower tribe within the daisy family.

It is the first time that a flowering crop experiment will be grown on the orbiting laboratory, NASA said in a statement.

Growing zinnias in orbit will help provide precursory information about other flowering plants that could be grown in space.

"Growing a flowering crop is more challenging than growing a vegetative crop such as lettuce," said Gioia Massa, NASA Kennedy Space Center payload scientist for Veggie.

"Lighting and other environmental parameters are more critical," Massa added.

Lindgren will turn on the red, blue and green LED lights, activate the water and nutrient system to "Veggie", and monitor the plant growth.

The zinnias will grow for 60 days, which is twice as long as the first and second crop of "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce that grew on the space station.

During the growth cycle, the LED lights will be on for 10 hours and off for 14 hours in order to stimulate the plants to flower.

"Growing the zinnia plants will help advance our knowledge of how plants flower in the Veggie growth system, and will enable fruiting plants like tomatoes to be grown and eaten in space using Veggie as the in-orbit garden," explained Trent Smith, "Veggie" programme manager at Kennedy.

Researchers also hope to gather good data regarding long duration seed stow and germination, whether pollen could be an issue, and the impact on crew morale.

Growing tomato plants on the space station is planned for 2017.

Earlier, Expedition 44 crew members, including NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, cherished the fruits of their labour after they harvested a crop of "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce from the "veggie plant" growth system on the orbiting laboratory for 33 days.

The astronauts cleaned the leafy greens with citric acid-based, food safe sanitising wipes before consuming them.

"Having fresh food like these available in space could have a positive impact on people's moods and also could provide some protection against radiation in space," said Dr Ray Wheeler, head of advanced life support activities at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

The "Veggie" unit can also be used by astronauts for recreational gardening activities during deeper space missions including Mars.

Story First Published: November 17, 2015 19:05 IST

China to Release Fifth Giant Panda

Representational image.

Beijing:  Another giant panda bred in captivity will be released into the wild in China's Sichuan province on Thursday, officials said on Tuesday.

The two-year-old female Hua Jiao, the fifth candidate of the country's programme to send artificially-bred giant pandas back into the forests, has finished a two-year wilderness training programme, said Huang Yan, chief engineer of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP).

Hua Jiao, weighing around 50kg, is the younger sister of Tao Tao, the male panda released in 2012, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Hua Jiao has met all wilderness training targets and she is absolutely an A graduate," said Huang, who is in charge of the training.

"We are hoping to introduce more artificially-bred pandas into wild to diversify the gene bank of local panda community," he said.

Hua Jiao is currently living in the wilderness training reserve at Tiantai mountain. She will be released into the Liziping Nature Reserve in Shimian county before undergoing a physical examination. Her elder brother Tao Tao was released in the same reserve.

China began releasing captive-bred pandas into the wild in 2006 when Xiang Xiang, a five-year-old male, was released in Wolong National Nature Reserve. However, Xiang Xiang died roughly a year later after fighting with other pandas over food and territory.

In 2012, 2013 and 2014, three more, Tao Tao (male), Zhang Xiang (female) and Xue Xue (female) were released in the Liziping reserve, but Xue Xue died in November 2014.

Researchers have been following Tao Tao and Zhang Xiang with the help of GPS collars, radio positioning tools and DNA. Monitoring data shows the animals are doing well.

Giant pandas are one of the world's most endangered species. Fewer than 2,000 pandas live in the wild, mostly in the provinces of Sichuan and Shaanxi. There were 375 giant pandas in captivity at the end of 2013, about 200 of them at the CCRCGP.

Story First Published: November 18, 2015 08:01 IST

Want to Avoid Conflict? For Just $10, You Can Outsource Your Breakup

The Breakup Shop. Image courtesy: The Breakup Shop, Handout/The Washington Post

Just in time for the holidays, two Canadian brothers are selling the heartwarming gift of avoidance: Starting at just $10, you can pay someone else to end your relationship for you.

The Breakup Shop is the vision of 20-somethings Mackenzie and Evan, who declined to use their last names publicly for fear of inciting the wrath of a scorned sweetheart. ("We're really just the messenger," Mackenzie says.)

The brothers, who described themselves as university-educated entrepreneurs, launched their business Nov. 9 with a crisply designed website that offers an array of ways to ditch your significant other. These include a breakup text or email (starting at $10), a standardized form letter (starting at $20) or a phone call ($29 and up). If you must be single by Saturday, rush orders are available; and if you care to soothe your soon-to-be-ex's pain, you can always send the $80 "Breakup Gift Pack," which includes a Netflix gift card, a box of Chips Ahoy! Rainbow cookies and either "The Notebook" on Blu-ray (for those who want to cry) or the "Call of Duty: Ghosts" video game (for those who want to blow things up).

It's the kind of gimmick that gets passed around and gawked at online - which can create a bit of a fiction, because although the service does exist, only a handful of people have used it.

Mackenzie says he and Evan were inspired to create the Breakup Shop after Mackenzie was recently "ghosted" by a woman he was dating: Instead of just telling him she didn't want to see him anymore, she stopped communicating and disappeared. Mackenzie was bummed.

"My brother and I were commiserating, and talking about our experiences with relationships in the 21st-century modern dating world, and saying - you know, if there's all these apps and services to help you get into a relationship so easily, why isn't there one to help you get out of a relationship easily, with compassion and empathy?" he says.

Nothing says "compassion and empathy" quite like the phrase "end-of-relationship technology solutions," as Mackenzie puts it.

They're not the first to become breakup middlemen. There was, for example, "IDUMP4U," launched in 2010 by a pragmatic Iowan who offered to handle people's breakups by phone for cash, according to the Globe and Mail; or "Sorry It's Over," an Australian breakup service founded this year by a former nurse, according to the Daily Dot.

For now, Mackenzie and Evan are the only ones fielding breakup orders at the Breakup Shop, although they say they're looking to recruit employees who have a background in counseling, writing and/or psychology. So far, people seem more interested in becoming a professional "heartbreaker" than hiring one.

As of this week, more than 500 people have applied to work at the Breakup Shop, Mackenzie says. The number of breakup orders? Fourteen - including one from Emanuel Maiberg, a writer at Motherboard who purchased a phone breakup as a stunt for a story.

The brothers like to keep the ordering process simple; they won't ask any invasive questions about what prompted the imminent split. "We don't want to be asking why or casting judgment on anyone who wants to get out of a relationship," Evan says.

But customers can choose to include personal information if they want, which is then plugged into the breakup message. (We're imagining something like a breakup Mad Lib: "Tobey no longer wants to be with you because he feels DISTRAUGHT when you MAKE HIM WALK THE DOG EVERY TIME and he thinks it would be better if you NEVER SAW EACH OTHER AGAIN but he hopes you can still be friends.")

In other words, the service seems slightly better than straight-up ghosting; still arguably worse than a parting Post-It note (la "Sex and the City" - at least it was handwritten!); and on par with getting Homer Simpson to deliver your message ("Dear Baby: Welcome to Dumpsville. Population: You").

But wait! Before we rush to judgment, the Breakup Shop's blog page includes two heartwarming stories from satisfied customers - Samantha, who eventually married her Candy Crush-obsessed beau after an icy text from the Breakup Shop inspired him to turn his screen-centered life around; and 24-year-old Vanessa, who found lasting love after she dumped her loser boyfriend, Steve, who couldn't support her and her kid because all he did was play in a band. Angry Steve then stole Vanessa's car, but then Vanessa became smitten with Mark, the lawyer who put Steve behind bars: "Before you know it, Mark was taking me to the opera, to fancy wine bars and taking my son Zachary to the zoo," Vanessa gushes.

But, wait: None of that is true. The fabricated testimonials are merely "intended to allow people to try to relate to how their experiences might be," Mackenzie says.

Still, Mackenzie and Evan say their commitment to the Breakup Shop is just as real as the testimonials are fake. "We want to grow to become the biggest and best out there, and the most trusted and the most well-respected," Mackenzie says. The brothers are talking to investors, he adds, and focusing on how to build the business.

"There have been articles saying, 'Oh, it's a cowardly service' and whatnot, but there are a lot of people in relationships who know they don't want to be in them and because of conflict they choose not to actually do the deed of doing the breakup," Mackenzie says. "I think, if anything, if our service is just a 'Hey, the cat's out of the bag' service, then it's served its purpose."

Fair enough. Considering how many breakups are plagued by second-guessing - Was it really for the best? Is there a chance this person was The One? - the Breakup Shop gives the gift of certainty.

And cookies.

© 2015 The Washington Post

Mumbai Woman, 89, Has a Confession For Husband Who Died 12 Years Ago

"My husband and I had the best time after he retired," says an 89-year-old woman from Mumbai on the Humans of Bombay Facebook page. Her post, about her favourite memories of her husband, will help you believe in true love, the kind that never ends.

In her post, the octogenarian explains how she and her husband spent their time doing different things and were never idle. They would paint, redecorate their house, watch the evening mass on TV, even cook their meals together.

"But his favourite thing to do was to go for long walks in the evening, where he would hold my hand during every crossing and only let go once we reached the other side," she recalls.

They followed this lifestyle until her husband died. "He passed away peacefully in his sleep 12 years ago, but I still want more time with him," she says.

"I try and keep myself busy by going to my daughter's house for lunch and dinner and going to mass whenever I can, but it isn't quite the same without him," she explains.

And she has a secret she never told her husband, a confession she never made. It is this and might make you cry a little: "At 89, I can say I've lived a great life and nothing really scares me... except one thing which I would have never admitted to him then, but I'm terrified of crossing the road by myself and I still can't do it without him."