Month: August 2011
Kevin Rose Reveals “10 Steps to Having More Followers on Twitter”
This post is actually titled “Ten Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers“. Kevin Rose, for you who don’t know who he is, is the founder of Digg and an investor in Twitter.
- Explain to your followers what retweeting is and encourage them to retweet your links. Retweeting pushes your @username into foreign social graphs, resulting in clicks back to your profile. Track your retweets using retweetist.
- Fill out your bio. Your latest tweets and @replies don’t mean much to someone that doesn’t know you. Your bio is the only place you have to tell people who you are. Also, your bio is displayed on Twitter’sSuggested Users page. Leaving it blank or non-descriptive doesn’t encourage people to add you.
- As @garyvee says, “link it up.” Put links to your Twitter profile everywhere. Link it on your Digg, LinkedIn, Facebook, blog, email signature, and everywhere else you live online. Also, check out the great feedburner-like badges from TwitterCounter for your blog.
- Tweet about your passions in life and #hash tag them. Quality content coupled with an easy way to find it never fails. If others enjoy your content, they’ll add you. Learn more about #hash tagging here.
- Bring your twitter account into the physical world. Every time I give a talk, speak on a panel, shoot a podcast, present slides, or hand out business cards, I figure out a way to broadcast or display my twitter account.
- Take pictures. Pictures are heavily retweeted/spread around. This one from US Airways Flight 1549 has been viewed 350,000+ times. For mobile pics use iPhone apps such as Tweetie orTwitterific, both which support on the go uploading.
- Start a contest. @jasoncalacanis offered a free macbook air if he reached the #1 most followed spot. That never happened, but Jason added thousands of followers…brilliant.
- Follow the top twitter users and watch what they tweet. Pay attention to the type of content they sent out and how they address their audiences.
- Reply to/get involved in #hash tag memes. search.twitter.com lists the hot ‘trending topics. Look for the #hash topics and jump in on the conversation (see #4 for links to #hash instructions).
- Track your results. TwitterCounter will show you how many new users you’re adding per day andQwitter will email you when someone unfollows you after a tweet.
And Ade Rai Answered My Question in Public
This just in. One day I stumbled upon his column on TheJakartaPost.com and made up my mind to ask him the perpetual question on weight gain method. After a couple of weeks or so, I wondered somehow what happened to my email sent to Ade Rai. I scoured the site pages and found that Ade Rai picked two emails, one of which seems to be mine.
So here’s the question and answer Ade Rai provided me:
Dear Mr. Rai,
I love reading your columns in thejakartapost.com. If you don’t mind, please tell me what to do and eat for a hard gainer, a person with an ectomorphic body type to gain some more muscle mass (and thus, weight). What type of workout helps or doesn’t, as so far my regular workouts are brisk walking and yoga. Thank you so much. Looking forward to your answer.
Akhlis Purnomo
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Hi Mr. Purnomo,
Thank you for your kindness regarding this column. As to ectomorphic bodies, I am assuming you are on the skinny side and have relatively low body fat. You were spot-on when you said you wanted to gain some more muscle mass to add to your total body weight.
According to the literature and my own experience, taking up resistance training is the best way to stimulate muscle weight gain. Muscles don’t grow if we don’t apply enough force to break them down in the first place.
The systematic way to break them down is through a resistance training regimen. Try starting with three 30-minute sessions working out with weights. You can start by working out at home using your body weight, but as you grow stronger, you may want to join a gym for more challenges.
I started out skinny, 183 centimeters with only 55 kilograms to my frame. Proper intervals of quality meals (protein and complex carbohydrates), enough sleep at night and a lifestyle without unhealthy habits (smoking, alcohol or drugs) will help you gain the needed bodyweight.
As your body weight increases, please make sure you have your body fat level checked and try to maintain it if you are between 15 and 25% body fat. It will be a good indication that the majority of the weight you add is muscle.
I am holding the Bandung Fitness Conference again this year. Please check out this link for more info: http://binaraga.net/bandung-fitness-conference-3.html. I’ll also be launching my new books 101 Bakar Lemak and 101 Binaraga Natural there. Hope to see you all there!
It’s simply embarassing to find I was picking that address form, making me like a stiff nerd. “Mr. Rai”?? What had been going through in my head? Sounds more like a formal business email than a casual written dialog.
And I thought my name isn’t fully shown there, but it is…
She Said If I can Write Fast and Well,I Set for Success
Then I said if I can write fast and well, I set for a higher writing career and longer lifetime (because I can spend more time walking instead of sitting).
Disclosure: What you read below is Ali’s (truncated)post about how to write swiftly and well, something I find challenging always…
Here’s how to massively increase your writing speed, in seven easy steps.
Step #1: Find Your Best Writing Time
This is crucial. Don’t kid yourself that all hours are equal.
You need to know when you’re most productive.
Step #2: Minimize the Risk of Interruptions
Here’s what to do:
- Turn off your mobile. Unplug the landline (or make sure that your partner/kids/roommate knows that it’s their job to answer it).
- Tell people in your household that you’re going to write. Explain that you’ll be free to chat at 12 noon, but you’d appreciate not being interrupted before then.
- Work in a room on your own, and close the door. If you’re sitting downstairs in the kitchen, you’re much more likely to get interrupted.
- If you really can’t get any peace at home, grab your notepad or your laptop and head out to a coffee shop.
Step #3: Cut Out Distractions
There are plenty of ways to cut out distractions. You might:
- Unplug your internet cable (or switch off your wireless).
- Use a program like DarkRoom (PC) or WriteRoom (Mac) so that you’ve got a plain, clean, full-screen writing environment.
- Clear away any distracting objects from the room. Do you really want to spend two hours trying to solve that Rubik’s cube?
Step #4: Write an Outline
One huge mistake is to leap into your piece without planning ahead. If you do that, you’re going to end up writing for a few paragraphs, then getting hopelessly stuck.
Outlining doesn’t need to be complex, especially if you’re writing something short (like a blog post). This post, for instance, started out as a title and seven subheadings. I spent less than five minutes on the outline – and it’s saved me a ton of head-scratching time.
When you write an outline:
- You can spot (and fix) any obvious flaws or problems. Perhaps it becomes clear that you’re trying to tackle too much, or that your topic isn’t very well thought out.
- Your subconscious immediately starts coming up with ideas for each point. Once you start to write, it’s a lot easier to get your thoughts down onto the page.
- The whole project looks much more manageable. You’ve broken it down into small steps.
As you write, the outline continues to help, by keeping you motivated. You can see exactly how far you’ve come – and how far you’ve got left to go. It’s easy to keep on writing when you know you’ve only got three points left to cover.
Step #5: Set a Timer
Timers are brilliant. When I know I’ve only got 20 or 30 or 45 minutes, I stay focused. I write faster. I don’t succumb to the urge to check emails – they can wait till my writing time is up.
Timers help you to write for short bursts. At the moment, I’m trying out a system where I write for 20 – 25 minutes then take a break to exercise for five minutes. It’s been great for my energy levels, and I’ve been getting more writing done in less time.
You can use your phone or an alarm clock as a timer, or use a site like Tick Tock Timer ore.ggtimer – whatever works for you.
Experiment with different timed bursts: try just five or ten minutes if you’re new to this, and gradually work up to more. While that timer is going, write. No excuses.
Step #6: Start Wherever You Want
You do not need to start off by writing the introduction or Chapter One.
In fact, it’s often a good idea not to. Instead, jump in to the middle of your piece. Write the first subsection – or the third.
That way, you’ll get moving much faster … and by the time you’ve finished the bulk of your piece, you’ll have a better sense of what needs to go in the introduction. Since you have an outline (see step #4), you won’t need to worry about getting off track or writing something that doesn’t fit in.
Conversely, if you like to start at the beginning and work through to the end, that’s fine too. There’s no “right” way to do this.
What matters is that you don’t spend twenty minutes staring at a blank screen, wondering how to begin. Just get moving!
Step #7: Don’t Edit While You Write
Write. Then edit.
Keep repeating that to yourself until it sinks in. Because it’s really important.
When you’re writing, you’re creating something. You’re putting words onto a formerly blank page, and you’re telling a story or explaining an idea or sharing your thoughts in a coherent form.
Don’t make this even harder than it needs to be. Don’t demand instant perfection.
Once you’ve created something, then you can start to be critical about it. You can look at whether your paragraphs are in the right order, and whether you need to add more transitions. You can tweak your subheadings to make them snappier. You can reword any clunky or confusing sentences.
I’m not going to suggest that you tie yourself in knots over this. It’s fine to hit the “delete” key occasionally, if you type something wrong. It’s okay to change your mind and restart a sentence if you need to.
Just make sure that most of the time, you’re making forward progress. And don’t stop half way through to edit paragraph one – that can wait until the end.
If you follow all the steps here, you could double or even triple your current writing speed. So give them a try – and let us know how you get on! The comments are open…
Ali Luke is a writer and writing coach. She’s got a free mini-ebook, How to Find Time For Your Writing, with ten short chapters and ten exercises to help you get your writing done – however busy you are. Find out more – and get your copy – here.
Yoga Gembira ‘Sermons’
Iftar at My (Boss’) Office
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A Flag Worshipper Kid (A True Story of Mine)
I, if my memory served right, worshipped Indonesian flags very much as a kid. I didn’t remember since when I fell in love with this glorious red-and-white flag. Yet every time I saw that flag, my heart jumped in utter joy. Nothing could beat the enjoyment of watching flags blown so hard by the gusting wind.
It might be my late grand father (of my mom’s side) who introduced me to the grandeur of “Sang Saka Merah Putih”. He was a retired military official (purnawirawan) at the time, which was why he named me after the title (‘purna’ in Indonesian pronunciaton-> ‘purno” in Javanese -> ‘purnomo’), He was once serving as a local legislator as well.
I mostly spent my childhood with my grand father. You know what a grand father will normally do with his first grand son. That’s why almost all my childhood memory revolved around him. I loved him but never did the cigarettes he stuck in his mouth every single day. Oddly enough, he taught me to hate smoking by being a heavy smoker.
Back to the topic, I still remember when I was ‘abandoned’ in offices. Yes, my childhood was all about one office to another. My grand father quite often brought me with him while he paid a visit to Pepabri office in Kudus (FYI, I don’t know what Pepabri actually stands for). As my grad father mingled and had a warm chat with his friends, reminiscing their past and sharing current life details mostly related to health issues (no wonder, at such age), I was all alone and found the flag placed in the front yard of the office sexy enough to gaze. Then my mother, a teacher of an elementary school nearby, was busily writing math problems with the chalk on the wooden blackboard while I collected all the tiny red-white flags placed in every teacher’s desk at school and ran to and fro just to see them wave in the air. Or I’d rather go outside, at the yard, staring at the tip of flag pole. The waving graceful movement of flag lured me into standing there. I just stared like a statue, couldn’t care less about anything around me. My dad, who was back then a principal of an elementary school, pretty much did the same thing to me.
The Struggle of Grabbing a Ticket
As recent as last Sunday..I finally got this ticket in my hand. It was costly enough but who cares. I’m not booking me an airplane. I love buses. Yes,call me archaic,but this transportation mode saves me lots of money. Never mind the pain of sitting 16 hours straight….I won’t complain.
This picture was taken right in front of the agent office. Because the bus agent is from Kudus, somehow there I found a restaurant selling soto Kudus, a culinary delicacy, next to it.
You might notice the same identical design of the high rise in front elsewhere (to me it reminds me of Ciputra Mall in Semarang) other than Daan Mogot, West Jakarta. But that’s Ciputra Hotel strategically located around the intersection of Grogol.
I arrived around 7.15 am, got the ticket about 1,5 hours after that, and quickly went home before the sun dehydrated me further.
In the afternoon, I skipped my yoga class. Felt a bit guilty afterwards, especially as I felt unwell. Ugh, even my body screams for yoga!
Never Start Any Topic about Comma with a Bunch of Language Enthusiasts
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Indonesian writers are very comma happy.
12 hours ago · Like ·
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Ari Poespodihardjo likes this.
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Sadanand Dhume How do they do with apostrophes? India’s a disaster zone.12 hours ago · Like · 1 person -
Devi Asmarani We don’t really use it in our language. But the excessive use of comma is pretty irritating. It’s like they write the way people talk, which would be a healthy rule of thumb in many languages, unless you take into account that some people here talk with too many unnecessary pauses and never think of ending a sentence to begin a new one (too many commas, not enough periods). Oh look, I’m doing it myself :).12 hours ago · Like · 1 person
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Akhlis Purnomo Perhaps because we think the longer the sentences are and the more complex the ideas get, the more we look erudite to our readers…just saying 🙂12 hours ago · Like · 1 person -
Priya Tuli And paragraphs, let’s not even go there… great big chunks of text seem to be the current trend, despite the fact that we know it’s all about 3-sec bytes of info now. Were writers always so verbose? Or has my attention span just shrunk drastically?11 hours ago · Like -
Akhlis Purnomo complex sentences are cool! aspirin anyone?11 hours ago · Like · 1 person
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Devi Asmarani Akhlis: Yeah, definitely. the longer the sentence the more intellectual you are. Doesn’t matter if what you say makes you sound like a douche bag.11 hours ago · Like · 1 person
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Devi Asmarani Priya: Writers used to be even more verbose (don’t even get me started on Tolstoy or some Indonesian pujangga), but at least they did it correctly and with great style.11 hours ago · Like · 1 person
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Akhlis Purnomo i prefer Ernest Hemingway though. talk about simplicity vs simpli-shitty…11 hours ago · Like · 1 person
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Tom McCawley That may be, but don’t forget some incredibly warped mind dreamed up a journo drama called, “Dunia Tanpa Comma’11 hours ago · Like · 1 person -
Priya Tuli Hahaha you guys… am loving this thread! BTW my comment was equally directed at Indian writers, seeing as that’s where I’m from…11 hours ago · Like
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Akhlis Purnomo Priya loves all the comments so much s/he can’t help clicking those LIKE buttons…oh my my…hhaha11 hours ago · Like · 1 person
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Tom McCawley @ Priya, yeah, ok, let’s not go there. 😛 It was indeed an Indian who have an 8-hour speech at the UN. I don’t know if there were commas, I can only hope.11 hours ago · Like · 1 person
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Akhlis Purnomo 8 hours straight? I beg for my mama…11 hours ago · Like · 1 person
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Priya Tuli Akhlis: I have an itchy trigger finger and it’s safer to click ‘like’ than go out and shoot someone 🙂 BTW where do you live?!
McCawley, I’m anticipating comma-induced nightmares tonight, so I suggest we switch to semi-colons; half-a-colon is better than none? And btw, we Indians can talk the hind legs off a donkey, I think the phrase might have been coined in our honour, so do be warned. (3-comma sentence :-P)11 hours ago · Like · 1 person -
Tom McCawley @ Akhlis, no Indonesian mama would put up with an 8-hour speech.11 hours ago · Like · 1 person
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Akhlis Purnomo Priya, I live in Jakarta, just a hundred meters away from Devi’s crib.11 hours ago · Like
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Akhlis Purnomo Tom, yes…even the toughest Indonesian mama would cry for her mama with that kind of verbal torment.11 hours ago · Like
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Akhlis Purnomo this thread is epic…11 hours ago · Like
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Priya TuliOh dear. You should never have told me where you live, Akhlis. I have a gun. Could anyone tell by looking at this thread, you think, that we’re a bunch of half-crazed writers, bug-eyed from staring too long at our screens doing meaningless …See More10 hours ago · Like · 1 person
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Tom McCawley @ Priya, you might need a high (semi) colonic, a cleansing practice in India long before it caught on in California. Go for a full colon if you want, but Devi, a yoga teacher’s better placed to advise.10 hours ago · Like
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Akhlis Purnomo Devi’s gone….so must I *cast a blank stare at piles of unfinished translation gigs*10 hours ago · Like
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Priya Tuli Tom, are you saying I’m full of sh*t? If affirmative, I shall have to park something unsavoury on your wall, directly related to the procedure you mention above 🙂10 hours ago · Like
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Akhlis Purnomo and hereby the debate shifts from comma to colon…. from punctuation to digestion….10 hours ago · Like
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Devi AsmaraniI’m here! Loving this thread too, despite the direction it’s taken. Had already retired to my bed (to read a book on digestion system too!) after a whole day spent deleting commas, inserting periods and sending numerous wordy paragraphs to …See More9 hours ago · Like
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Priya Tuli Scatalogical. Strange how it always ends up there. Ah yes, basti! I’d forgotten what it’s called. Not in the market for it, but curious to find out more; websurf 2mrw. Tks Devi, for reminding me!6 hours ago · Like
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Sarah Lacy’s Story: “Stop Worrying. It’ll Turn Out OK”
SarahLacy.com | Welcome to a day in the life of a (Silicon) Valley girl.
Just read Mrs. Lacy’s career journey. Found it quite inspirational, to me.
A few weeks ago someone asked me if I could go back in time and give my 12 year old self advice, what it would be. The only thing I could come up with is: “Stop worrying. It’ll all turn out OK.”
And I keep thinking how true that actually is. Like most kids, I used to agonize in those (very) awkward years (and later) over whether I’d ever find someone to marry and what on earth I’d do for a living. And somehow, it did all turn out OK. Better than OK.
This is the happiest I’ve ever been in a full time job, I’ve been lucky enough to spend two years traveling the world, I’ve written two books, I’m married to the best person I’ve ever met, expecting a healthy baby boy in eleven weeks and somehow on a writer’s salary we’ve managed to buy a house in San Francisco. I can’t really imagine what more I could want. I even get along great with my in-laws.
I owe a lot of people for that. My parents, of course. A bunch of teachers. And my awesome husband for marrying me and solving that whole soul mate dilemma.
When it comes to my career– the unbelievable fact that I get paid to write about some of the most fascinating people in the world– there are also a lot of people to thank. But chief among them is a man named Barney DuBois. A lot of people have been hugely pivotal during my reporting career, but without Barney it may never have even begun.
Barney was the founder and publisher of the Memphis Business Journal, but I knew him first as the father of a girl I went to high school with. My senior year I was the editor of the high school paper. I know in retrospect that sounds like I always knew I’d do this, but believe it or not, I had no interest in going into journalism. In fact, it didn’t even occur to me. Back then I associated being a journalist with daily newspapers and writing stilted AP style pieces about school board meetings. That didn’t sound too enticing. (Probably didn’t help that Memphis didn’t have the world’s greatest daily paper.)
At any rate, as editor I inherited a huge deficit. We were still publishing the paper by moving print and it was expensive. We only had enough money to produce six four-page issues for the year. Lame. I decided to get someone in the community to “underwrite” the paper, and picked Barney as my target. He was the only person remotely in the journalism world I knew.
So I nervously went to his office downtown and pitched him on an offer he couldn’t possibly refuse: Help us move our paper over to computers, send your staff to train my team how to use the programs, let us use your scanners, and let us piggyback on your print run. And throw in a redesign. In exchange I offered our paltry budget and a line in the staff box that said we were underwritten by the Memphis Business Journal. He accepted, clearly out of a mix of pity, amusement and obligation since his daughter went to my school. The Business Journal underwrote my highschool paper until they were sold to American City Business Journals years later, totally changing what the students were able to produce.
Over that summer and my senior year of high school, we put out more papers than the school ever had, with longer page counts, vastly improved photos and graphics and still ended with a surplus. Every month around midnight, I’d finish wrapping up each issue in the school’s computer lab. (My family didn’t have a computer.) I’d go drop off the floppy disks and the photos at Barney’s house. He’d open the door– sometimes in a bathrobe, usually holding a glass of scotch, still working late on his own paper. And every month he’d say the same thing: “You’re going to be a reporter. It’s in your blood.”
Every month I told him he was wrong.
Fast-forward three years and I was taking a semester off college and utterly disillusioned with other careers I thought I’d go into. A summer working for Memphis City Council convinced me politics wasn’t for me and an internship at a law firm dissuaded me against law school. My parents were teachers, but I didn’t think that was quite for me either. Someone suggested I go into PR. Or pharmaceutical sales. You know, the vague careers for outgoing girls with liberal arts degrees. Yeah….I didn’t have to do an internship to know neither of those were for me.
Then I ran into Barney’s wife, who edited two of the MBJ’s smaller publications. She asked what I was up to, and I asked if I could have an internship. I remembered what he’d said and how much I’d enjoyed editing my paper in highschool. I still didn’t think I’d go into journalism, but thought it could look nice on a resume and could be fun. She said sure. And within the summer, I fell in love with the paper the two had created and began an all-consuming life-long career of business reporting. A few years later, the editor of the Business Journal came to my desk and asked me if Memphis had any venture capitalists– a chance conversation that ended with me moving to Silicon Valley in 1999. You know the rest.
For the Memphis Business community, Barney and his wife Debbie created something that was every bit as powerful as TechCrunch is for the Silicon Valley business community. It dug out fascinating stories of very private business moguls the world might not have ever read about, covered the large public companies based in Memphis better than anyone else, and championed the small business man.
It was the place where I learned the basics of how to report, where I learned never to be intimidated by any CEO, where I learned to camp out in someone’s office until they gave me an interview, where I first felt the rush of knowing something that no one else knew and splashing it across the front page.
Playing on the Memphis Business Journal softball team also gave my husband– who played on an opposing team– the opportunity to court me. Never mind my boss heckled him for taking too many pitches. It’s never embarrassing when you are 22 and your Ed Asner-like boss yells at the guy you like, “SWING AT THE BALL, BOY!”
Mr. Lacy and I were driving around last Saturday talking about all of this. How weird it was that we’d fallen into such a great life, just by following a chance path that so easily could have not happened at all. Specifically how crazy it was that except for one person telling me I’d definitely be a reporter every month of my senior year of highschool, I might have never have even gone into an industry that has been such a perfect fit for me and consumed most of my waking thoughts since then. Not thirty minutes later we got an email from Memphis with the news that Barney DuBois had died. I felt like someone had punched me in the gut.
I read all the tributes to him in the Memphis area papers about what a great journalist he was, about the paper he created, about the wealth he amassed when he sold the paper and everything he’d been doing in recent years for Memphis businesses. But what was missing in that coverage were tiny stories like mine of people whose lives Barney changed just by intersecting with them for a year or so and giving them a little bit of his time for no ROI-driven reason.
I’m going back to Memphis in a week. I’m doing a book event organized by the Memphis Leadership Academy that’s semi-ridiculous. FedEx CIO Rob Carter– who really I should be the one interviewing– is interviewing me about entrepreneurship and the Mayor is introducing the whole thing. It’s all a big honor for me, and I’m happy my parents who are celebrating their 50th anniversary that weekend will be there.
But I can’t help but think fondly of the last book event I did in Memphis, which was much more casual and low-frills. The one where the Barney introduced me, told embarrassing stories about what a freak I was in highschool and reluctantly took credit for unleashing me on the business world. I’m glad I got the chance to tell him how much he’d changed my life before it was too late.
I don’t know but some lines are so…indescribable. Especially this.
” I still didn’t think I’d go into journalism, but thought it could look nice on a resume and could be fun.”
If a girl as outgoing and carefree as her might not consider journalism as her career path, then what about me? A silent, anti-social guy, and a crowd hater? Above all, I hate writing with deadline looming in my head.
And this….
“And every month he’d say the same thing: “You’re going to be a reporter. It’s in your blood.”
Every month I told him he was wrong.”
No one told me I’d be a reporter, or a translator, or a writer. They keep telling me I’d be a teacher or lecturer. I am not, in a full-time sense, but still am a teacher though. Life’s weird. It IS.
And why does Lacy tell this, too?
“My parents were teachers, but I didn’t think that was quite for me either.”
I can feel it, too. I never thought teaching would be my lifetime career. And I figured out why. Because I have this in my mind: One can educate others without being a teacher, either formally or informally. A teacher is merely a title but educator is NOT. Being a teacher requires me to observe a set of rules I can’t stand, getting along with the bureau-crazy that twists my mind. Besides, I’m not really skillful at dealing with not-so-well-behaved students, subjectivity,vested interests, and imperfection.
So what will I be? A reporter, translator, teacher, or….I have no idea but like she said: “Stop worrying. It’ll all turn out OK.”
We’ll never know what the future holds for us :))
How to Work Out in Ramadan without Leaving Us Dead Tired
As a disclosure, I should declare that this post is (again) based on what @erikarlebang tweeted. What I did is rearranging the whole tweets and makes this a nice-to-read blog post for you.
As for me, I know folks who think fasting is a perfect excuse NOT to work out or exercise in Ramadan. But that sounds pitifully misleading an assumption because in my opinion, a decent amount of physical workout when timed and done appropriately can help revitalize the overly-clogged system over 11 months.
When it comes to exercising in Ramadan, Erikar said it’s all about adapting to the changes. This especially holds true for those who don’t make money or earn a living as a professional athlete. Indeed, you don’t have to make yourself dying of hunger or thirst even before reaching the end of the day.
Why still work out in Ramadan?
With an apt method, fasting month is the best time for the body to detox itself. In terms of detoxification, lymphatic glands play a key role. Lymphatic glands resemble blood vessels, but it has no ‘generator’ (a group of muscles to pump the fluid just like the heart muscles) so it heavily depends on how active we move throughout the day. Physical workout really helps the performance of lymphatic glands so the detoxification occurs way better.
So here’s the DOs and DON’Ts list.
DOs
- Work out 1-2 hours prior to eating iftar. You don’t have to suffer from dehydration for too long a time. As soon as you’re done with the exercise, you can drink.
- As the sun sets (maghrib comes), end the workput and slowly take a sip of one or two glasses of room-temp water (Erikar said ‘cool’ -sejuk- but I guess he refers to a type of fresh, previously boiled water that is neither cold nor hot).
- Eat easily digested foods.
- If you want to resume your workout after that, please do but try to add some natural honey to your water.
DON’Ts
- Morning workout is just NOT a wise idea. Rather, it ‘kills’ us. Dehydration or fatigue risk is, I suppose, the best, most logical explanation. Instead of draining your energy (calories) and most importantly your water supply in the beginning of the day, try move your workout to afternoon hours.
- Drinking high-caffeine beverages dehydrates you. Coffee or tea may be your favorite early breakfast drink but you’ll soon find yourself urinating quite a lot, because caffeine provides dieuretic effect to the urinary system. In other words, it drains your water supply. Unlike tea or coffee or alcoholic drinks, fresh water can do us good.
That’s all folks! 🙂
My Favorite Yoga Poses
Yoga really explores my potential. I never thought I could bend my torso like this before.
So here I try to compile some of my most favorite pose and several details you may find interesting:
SCORPION POSE (VRISCHIKA ASANA)
At first I tried this once and I felt like my waist was going to break into two afterwards. These are the details:
Type of pose: inversion, backbend
Benefits: strengthens the shoulders (wish they were bulkier so as to create a bigger body image I’m dying to have), strengthens abdominals and back (definitely, my waist was terribly aching at my first attempt), improves balance (not an expert myself, so I still need wall as an aid)
Any menstruating women should never try to perform this pose, or any of inversion poses. Or try at your own risk!
For advanced yogis/yoginis, a more challenging version of this pose entails bringing the feet to rest exactly upon the head. At least for now, I am not going to do that. I’m not that flexible a guy after all.
KING OF DANCERS POSE (NATARAJASANA)
The type of pose is standing and balancing. And the benefits are to strengthen legs (because you have to support all your body weight only with a single leg), to improve balance (yes, balance really matters in yoga), to stretch shoulders (I feel like someone pulls my arms and torso backwards).
Want to give it a try? First of all you stand in tadasana (mountain pose), shift your weight onto the right leg. Bend the left knee and grasp the inside of the left foot with the left hand. Start to bring the left foot and the right arm toward the ceiling as you bring your torso forward. Hold 5-10 breaths. Repeat on the other side. Try to fix your gaze on something that doesn’t move so you’re not losing balance.
CHAKRA ASANA (WHEEL POSE)
The type of pose is backbend, obviously. The benefits are having your spinal flexibility a lot improved, stretching the shoulders and chest, and strengthen the arms.
As you may know in high school, you just have to lie on your back and lift your torso upwards. But one piece of advice is never try this after having a huge meal or else you’ll end up puking all over.
SARVANGA ASANA (SHOULDER STAND)
Next to the headstand, this posture is considered one of the best asanas. Why? Because by performing the pose, the thyroid gland works at peak efficiency. The gland is responsible for our ideal weight and youthful appearance. Besides that, it regulates the sex glands. It vitalizes the nerves, purifies the blood and promote good circulation, strengthen the lower organs and helps them to stay in place.
It is advisable that we retain this position for 15 seconds to 6 minutes, adding 15 seconds per week.
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