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howard G Charing, and Peter Cloudsley join Amazonian Shamans, Javier Arevalo and Artidoro in discussions about the medicinal & spirit healing plants and their use.

Rosa Sisa

These are a kind of Marigold, and they are used in baths particularly for children with mal aire. This malady occurs when a family member dies and leaves the child unhappy and sleepless. The spirit of the dead grandfather - or whoever it was - lingers and makes the child sick. The spirit is sad to go and stays in the house after the person is buried and it tries to caress and comfort people in the family. This makes them ill. Rosa Sisa also controls vomiting in general, as well as being used in floral baths for good luck.

Typically an envious neighbour will grab a handful of earth from the cemetery and throw it into your house to spread boredom and heavy feelings. Again, when something is wrong in the house - people are bored or agitated - you get a bucket of water and add crushed Rosa Sisa flowers and Camalonga and wash the floors of the house with a brush to cleanse it.

Alternatively you could have the flowers in a vase in the house for the same purpose. many people grow them either side of the front door of their house to absorb the negativity of people who look in enviously to see what possessions they have. The flowers go black but later they recuperate themselves. Marigolds can also be used for making wishes, blowing with the wish in mind - like we do with a dandelion - because it is yellow, the colour of the sun.

Manchare or susto (fright) are maladies commonly suffered by children, and treated with Camalonga a tree which grows wild in the forest, but many people grow it in flower pots in the city. It smells like onions and garlic and can be macerated in alcohol to be rubbed onto the person. In cases requiring soul retrieval a prayer or chant would be used at the same time.

Typically a child gets Manchare when playing in the trees and jump down to the ground and receive a much bigger bump than they expected. In this case the Rosa Sisa is tied into a bunch with a white ribbon and brushed all over the body from the head down. This is because the spirit returns through the crown of the head. A little prayer is said to invoke the spirit back, using the name of the child. It can be used in emplasts for fevers too.

Huairacaspi

It comes in two varieties, a high tree with a thick trunk and a small slim tree with little leaves. It is the same tree as tornillo which is good timber. The branch can be bent double without breaking, and is good for doing yoga and for flexibility in general.

It is good for prolepses, chronic diarrhoea, hepatitis, arthritis, broken bones, and cold in the body. As a teacher plant it is good for disorientation, and sense of being lost. after drinking you need to take a shower as it makes you sweat out all the toxins.

Ushcaquiro

This plant is very little known and used. Like chuchahuasi, it is good after operations, mothers caring for their babies, vaginal discharge, cancer, cold. It is prepared in water or alcohol. Painkiller. Ushcaquiro, Huairacaspi and Chiricsanango together make a good treatment for arthritis.

Guayusa

Has a female spirit and makes you dream of beautiful things and takes the laziness out of you.

Albaca

This is good to have in the house, it works better than an aerosol spray for fresh air because the flowers burst into flower with a perfume. Also good for floral baths to make you smell good so you attract lots of friends. Also if you have a row with a friend, they will come back to you. In cases of gastritis, appendix or gale-bladder problems you can take it as a tea. Even when dry is still smells.

Shimi Pampana

Is a root like a potato and a constituent of Pusanga. It comes in male (white) and female (red) forms and tastes like yucca. It is very good for people with excessive anger. You grate it to get the juice, and put it in soup, coffee or whatever and sometimes it is put secretly into a persons drink to calm them down, especially when there is a lot of arguing in the family. You can bathe in it too. The dry powder obtained from drying the root, is good for sun burn, common in summer when the river is low and people go to the beautiful beaches to swim. It takes out the impurities of the skin without desiccating it.

howard G. Charing, is an accomplished international workshop leader on shamanism. He has worked some of the most respected and extraordinary shamans & healers in the Andes, the Amazon Rainforest, and the philippines. He organises specialist retreats to the Amazon Rainforest at the dedicated centre located in the Mishana nature reserve. He is the author of the best selling book, Plant Spirit Shamanism (Destiny books USA), and has published numerous articles about plant medicines. He was baptised into the Shipibo tribe of the Upper Amazon, and initiated into the lineage of the shamans of the Rio Napo. howard is also an artist who's paintings have featured in major exhibitions in London and elsewhere. His artwork has also been featured on book covers.

His website: http://www.shamanism.co.uk email contact: eagleswing@shamanism.co.uk

I keep hearing this nonsense about doing exercise in a hot room such as yoga. I am finding that the general public is very misinformed about human physiology and how our bodies react to exercising in hot climates. This is the first part of a 2 part article designed to give people some important information about what is exactly happening to their bodies when they attend these hot workouts, and how they may even be increasing their risk of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. I will also attempt to show you how many of the claims are completely false.

This is a short list of the most persistent claims I typically found about hot yoga on the internet.

Increased heat of the room allows for better flexibility and stretching

Increased heart rate allows your body to more easily burn fat and gives a cardiovascular workout

Increased Sweating helps your body eliminate toxins

Lets look at each one of these in more detail from a scientific standpoint.

Increased Temperature means increased flexibility
Increased core body temperature of approximately 3 degrees has been shown scientifically to be the threshold where connective tissues like ligaments, tendons and muscles become more elastic and flexible. This temperature increase has been shown to be possible with exercise. For example 20 minutes of cardio such as running or biking can get your core temperature up enough. External heat like heat patches applied directly to muscles have been shown to be ineffective at increasing the temperature of these tissues. If these hot workouts provide an increase in flexibility I have yet to find research to substantiate it. But if you like the way it feels I cant argue with anyone on that point.

Increased Heart Rate means increased fat burning and cardio fitness
The increase in heart rate you get from exercising in the heat is a result of excessive fluid loss from profuse sweating. The heart has to pump more often because there is less blood volume per beat. This is an early sign of dehydration. This has nothing to do with fat burning or cardiovascular fitness. This will also cause you to fatigue prematurely and cause your body core temperature to heat up even more as now your heart is working even harder. This starts a vicious cycle of increasing body temperature and sets you on a path to heat illness or heat exhaustion.

Excessive sweating causes you to sweat out toxins
Sweat does not remove toxins, this is a complete lie with no scientific proof at all. The only potential way sweat could be used for detox is rehab from drug addiction if at all. In these cases the rehab should be under the supervision of a medical practitioner, and even this is very poorly represented in the scientific research and mostly shows up in alternative medicine articles. Sweating in hot environments is your bodies way of cooling down through evaporation of water. In a humid room the sweat is much less effective at cooling your body down. Toweling the sweat off also interferes with the ability of the sweat to cool your body off. If the room is humid (and from what I am reading hot yoga rooms are meant to be at approximately 50% humidity) the sweat is even less effective at cooling you off. This starts a vicious cycle of your body temperature increasing, then your body sweats more to try and cool you off, and then you become more dehydrated. This is also a dangerous situation if you stay in the heat for too long. All of this extra sweating is just a recipe for dehydration and heat exhaustion. There is simply no such thing as sweating out toxins. This is an idea that has been laid to rest by the scientific medical community decades ago. The fact that it still persists in pop culture is absolutely ridiculous.

Part 2 of this article will explain heat acclimatization, why I think this hot workout trend is simply a marketing angle, and some of the real benefits of yoga.

John Barban is a certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and a varsity strength and conditioning coach. His trademarked http://www.6minuteCircuits.com Circuit Training workouts have helped thousands of women with weight loss and fat burning in less than 45 minutes three times per week. http://www.grrlathlete.com John's female sports training articles will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment. You can ask John a question on the http://www.grrlathlete.freeforums.org a womens workout forum to help you lose fat and get in shape with circuit training and nutrition.

People seeking a deeper spiritual meaning in their lives have found Kriya yoga. Yogananda brought Kriya yoga to the West in the 1920's. He established the Self-Realization Fellowship as a total yoga experience that addressed the spiritual as well as the physical, all most other western yoga disciplines concentrate on.

A Kriya yogi, as described by Yogananda, mentally moves his life energy around the six spinal centers - the medullar, dorsal, lumbar, coccygeal, cervical, and sacral plexuses. These each relate to the twelve zodiac signs. This subtle energy revolution progresses his evolution, and it is said that this 30 seconds of Kriya is equivalent to a year of natural spiritual growth.

Kriya yoga is based on Kundalina yoga and includes similar asana and meditation methods. Kriya adds some spiritual and esoteric guidelines. It does have its detractors that point out Kriya does not maintain your power comes from within, but that you need a teacher, or guru, to release your spirituality. Although it sounds like an admirable goal, Kriya's attempt to eliminate obstacles begs the question, are the obstacles there for a reason? Is the guru the right person to decide how and when to remove them? It is very important to go into Kriya yoga with a strong sense of self. Never allow another to hijack your self-determination!

Advocates of Kriya yoga believe they can achieve self-realization faster by combining three other yoga methods:

1. Karma yoga is concentrated on the movement of the soul, both out in the world and the inner actions of the mind.

2. Bhakti yoga aims to achieve peace with all the elements of your life through the power of love. It is often stated as "oneness with all creation and cosmic consciousness."

3. Jnana yoga is concerned with intellectual discipline leading to wisdom gained from spiritual knowledge giving freedom of the mind.

Thus, Kriya joins the three into a single discipline. It highlights the relationship between breath and mind. Breath control is self control. Breath mastery is self mastery.

Preparation is the first step in Kriya yoga. The body is prepared with a hatha yoga exercise routine. For beginners or the less flexible, other alternative preparation routines are provided.

Mind preparation comes next. Here you focus your mind by studying general conduct, analyzing your overall health, cleanliness and purity. You may even study your relationship to certain metaphysical principles. These reflective studies help to prepare the mind for later techniques intended to refine and improve the nervous system.

Mantras are taught in Kriya meditation in order to tune the mind and body to a single frequency. Again, the detractors point out, one must be careful that YOU are the chooser of the destination and your mind isn't being controlled by another, even a trusted other.

Although one of a handful of more controversial yoga paths, Kriya yoga has helped many attain spiritual levels they couldn't quite reach with other methods. It may be right for you, but go into it with your eyes open and your protection activated.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Yoga