Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath. He was a poet, visual artist, playwright, novelist, educationist, social reformer, nationalist, business-manager and composer whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He became Asia's first Nobel laureate when he won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature.

A Pirali Brahmin from Calcutta, Bengal, Tagore first wrote poems at the age of eight. At the age of sixteen, he published his first substantial poetry under the pseudonym Bhanushingho ("Sun Lion") and wrote his first short stories and dramas in 1877. In later life Tagore protested strongly against the British Raj and gave his support to the Indian Independence Movement. Tagore's life work endures, in the form of his poetry and the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.

Tagore wrote novels, short stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays on political and personal topics. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are among his best-known works. His verse, short stories, and novels, which often exhibited rhythmic lyricism, colloquial language, meditative naturalism, and philosophical contemplation, received worldwide acclaim. Tagore was also a cultural reformer and polymath who modernised Bengali art by rejecting strictures binding it to classical Indian forms. Two songs from his canon are now the national anthems of Bangladesh and India: the Amar Shonar Bangla and the Jana Gana Mana respectively.

Rabindranath Tagore was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal and which attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of Hinduism as laid down in the Upanishads. He was educated at home; and although at seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there. In his mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms.

He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideals of education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the political father of modern India, was his devoted friend. Tagore was knighted by the ruling British Government in 1915, but within a few years he resigned the honor as a protest against British policies in India.

Tagore had early success as a writer in his native Bengal. With his translations of some of his poems he became rapidly known in the West. In fact his fame attained a luminous height, taking him across continents on lecture tours and tours of friendship. For the world he became the voice of India's spiritual heritage; and for India, especially for Bengal, he became a great living institution.

Although Tagore wrote successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. Among his fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari (1894) [The Golden Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914) [Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes]. The English renderings of his poetry, which include The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), and The Fugitive (1921), do not generally correspond to particular volumes in the original Bengali; and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912), the most acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works besides its namesake.

Tagore's major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber], Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi (1926) [Red Oleanders]. He is the author of several volumes of short stories and a number of novels, among them Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World], and Yogayog (1929) [Crosscurrents]. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas, dance dramas, essays of all types, travel diaries, and two autobiographies, one in his middle years and the other shortly before his death in 1941. Tagore also left numerous drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music himself. Rabindranath Tagore died on August 7, 1941.

1 Lift weights
Testosterone levels are at their highest 48 hours after lifting weights, according to a study at Baylor University in the US. And the harder you train, the more you increase your natural levels of testosterone, so base your training around compound exercises such as squats, bench presses and seated rows using heavy weights.

2 Watch football
Men who watch their favourite sports team compete experience a similar testosterone surge to the players, say researchers at the University of Utah. They found that a fan’s testosterone levels increased by 20 per cent when his team won but fell 20 per cent when they lost. So avoid watching England games and you should be all right.

3 Eat good fats
By ‘good’ fats we mean the monounsaturated and omega 3 type – found in avocados, peanuts and oily fish – that help your body preserve protein. A study in the Journal Of Applied Physiology found that men who ate recommended amounts of these foods had the highest testosterone levels.

4 Gobble some eggs
Eggs improve levels of healthy HDL or ‘good’ cholesterol, an important building block needed for your body to manufacture testosterone. They are also loaded with protein and have plenty of testosterone-boosting zinc. Plus Paul Newman looked pretty manly when he ate 50 of ’em in Cool Hand Luke.

5 Don’t overtrain
Excessive exercising increases cortisol, a stress hormone that competes with testosterone and breaks down muscle. Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that overtraining can lower your testosterone levels by as much as 40 per cent. Resting isn’t slacking off – make sure you take time out.

6 Get enough sleep
Poor sleep quality and having less than seven hours a night can slash your testosterone levels by more than 30 per cent and dampen growth hormones, restricting your muscle-building potential.

7 Scoff cabbage
Cabbage is rammed with indole-3-carbinol (IC3), a phytochemical that increases your testosterone according to a study at the Rockefeller University Hospital in New York. The study also found that when men were given IC3, their levels of the female hormone oestrogen reduced by 50 per cent – reversing the effect caused by watching the Sex And The City movie.

8 Don’t booze
Happy hour can wreak havoc on your manly hormones. Numerous studies have found that alcohol consumption reduces testosterone levels for up to 24 hours. It also increases cortisol and lowers growth hormone levels.

9 Eat more seeds
You may feel like you’re munching bird food, but seeds are full of vitamin E and zinc, which send your testosterone levels soaring. They’re also bursting with protein and monounsaturated fat.

10 Get some sun
Exposing the skin to sunlight for just 15-20 minutes can raise your testosterone levels by 120 per cent, says a report from Boston State Hospital in the US. The research also found that the hormone increased by a whopping 200 per cent when genital skin was exposed to the sun. Stick to the privacy of your own garden though – we don’t want any arrests.

How many times have you swallowed a seed while eating a fruit? Happens to most of us. But what if that seed sprouts in your lung and grows in a plant. Well, yes that's what happened to a man in Moscow who swallowed a seed by mistake and it somehow got nurtured in his lungs and grew in to be a fir plant. Weird!

Twenty years old Artyom Sidorkin, went to doctor complaining of acute chest pain and coughing up blood. Doctors were certain that he has cancer after checking out his x-ray which looked exactly like a normal tumour in lung.

Hence, they decided to perform biopsy, but when they cut the tissue, they were amazed to see a 2 inches fir tree branch touching the man's capillaries, thus causing him sever pain.The branch was finally removed from patient's body. While few believe, Artyom swallowed a seed others think he breathed in a branch while working in the woods, as he studies plants for a living.

We wonder how the plant survived inside his body without any water, carbon di-oxide and sunlight. Whatever it is, we will get the answers soon, as a part of his lung with the fir tree has been preserved for further research.

Till then, follow what mother asked you to, don't swallow the seeds as you eat your fruit.

Short-form Tai Chi Improves Standing Balance of People with Chronic Stroke.

Writing in the journal Neuro rehabilitation and Neural Repair, the researchers reported improvement in volunteers after as little as six weeks of training. The lead author was Stephanie S. Y. Au-Yeung of Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

In earlier research, one of the article’s co-authors, Christina W. Y. Hui-Chan, found that tai chi improved balance among healthy elderly people. For this study, the researchers wanted to see if the same effect would occur among stroke patients. They took 136 people who had a stroke six months or earlier and divided them into two groups. Over 12 weeks, one group did general exercise, the other a modified version of tai chi.

The tai chi group met once a week for an hour, and were asked to practice at home about three hours a week.

While the exercise group showed little improvement in balance, the tai chi group made significant gains when they were tested on weight-shifting, reaching and how well they could maintain their stability on a platform that moved like a bus.

The benefit of tai chi, the researchers said, is that once the forms are mastered, they can be done without supervision.

Still, they said, some patients lapsed in their practice after the training was over. They might be more likely to continue, the study said, if tai chi were available at places like community centers.

Sex therapies, Viagra or energy pills, yoga classes etc ... you may have tried innumerable ways to boost your Regular exercise can boost your performance sexual performance.

What not try routine exercises that can add spark to your sex life? Several studies have shown that fit adults have a more electrifying sex life than individuals who lead sedentary lifestyle.

Exercise not only piques sexual desire, but also makes sex more enjoyable. It enhances sexual functioning and increases testosterone levels in both men and women, which ensures a better sex life. We bring you a few simple exercises that will not only enhance your performance in bed but also let you enjoy the act like never before.

Pelvic lifts: One of the most common and important exercises, it improves sexual performance by strengthening the pelvic area. It also helps in evoking powerful sexual feelings and enhancing your endurance. During any floor exercise, we train the core muscles and when a same thing is repeated again, it strengthens the body part being worked upon. As for sexual benefit, it's a fact that a strong body can sustain for long, so more the endurance of your pelvic muscles, the more you'll enjoy the prolonged act.

Technique : Lie on your back with your knees bent and slightly apart, feet flat on the floor and arms at your side. Inhale clenching in your stomach and hips and lift the pelvic from the floor until your back is straight. Hold this position for 10 seconds and exhale as you lower your body. Repeat this at least 4-5 times for desired results.

Another pelvic raise could be where you lie down on the bed and as you inhale, you raise your legs to a 90 degree angle. Then while exhaling, you pulse them towards the ceiling. For those, who can't take their legs up to this angle, they can just make an L-shape angle and push their legs upwards along with a proper breathing technique, thus making the abdomen and pelvic area very strong.

Kegel Exercise : Many might not know about the 'secret' muscles that are active during sex and by strengthening these, couples can enjoy intense sex. Kegels are very safe and simple and work on the entire pelvic floor area. Kegel is basically a contraction of the internal muscles attached to the pelvic bones, so it tightens the vaginal muscles, helping women gain better control, prolong sex and reach orgasm more easily. It tightens the entrance of the uterus, which evidently enhances your gratification level during sex."

Technique : Contract your pelvic muscles and inhale as you squeeze (as though stopping urine), hold them for 5 seconds and release as you exhale. Start with just 10 or 20 squeezes. The best part is that you can do Kegel nearly anytime, anywhere. Try them while having your meals, sitting at your desk, talking to people or watching television, do at least 100-200 squeezes a day. It's very effective for women in their post delivery stage, as it tightens the loosened muscles."

Butterfly Stretch : Another important part that works actively during sex is the inner thigh area. During a butterfly stretch, the emphasis is on strengthening the inner thighs to make them flexible. Apart from greater flexibility, as you stretch out your legs during this exercise, it's almost a similar position that you have during a sexual act.

Technique : Sit on the floor with your feet together, as the souls touch each other and the knees are kept apart. Try and take your feet as close as you can to your hips and use your elbow to push down your knees below, so that your inner thighs are under pressure.

Cat Pose: In addition to the lower area of the body, the abs and abdomen are also highly functional during sex. Cat Pose works well for the abs as throughout the exercise, you flex your abs. As you round your spine in both an inward and outward position during this exercise, you strengthen your abs a lot many times. Simultaneously, it also works on your back.

Technique : Lie down on the floor, arch your back with your head and abs dangling down (inward position), pull your abs inside to make them look nicely arched, and ensure that your belly is not hanging loose. Then reverse the pose by rounding the other way with your abs elevated and stretched out (outward position. In both the positions, you are on your fours (hands and feet) and the abs area is flexed.

Superman Pose : A gratifying sexual act needs a fit body and the lower back forms an essential area that needs to be stable. The Superman Pose works mainly on your lower back, as this is the most active body part for maintaining various postures. As you are holding all fours (hands and feet) going against gravity, the full load to maintain the position makes the back muscles strong. If you're lower back has any problem, you'll frequently shift around to other side to be comfortable, so this exercise helps a lot and lets you enjoy more."

Technique : Lie down on the floor, place your hands in an upfront position, and raise the upper portion of the body as much as you can without putting any strain on any of the muscles. You can also raise your feet, so that only central part of your body is on the floor. It strengthens your lower back area.

Cardiovascular Workouts : Since sex is an act of endurance, improving cardiovascular fitness with exercises like walking, running, cycling or swimming helps both partners perform longer. Cardio exercises help in improving blood circulation and works on the overall body muscles. For, women who stay dormant at home, these cardio exercises are really helpful, as it activates the entire body muscles. Cardio workouts also keep the heart and arteries healthy, thus reducing the risk of erectile dysfunction by ensuring a good flow of blood to the genital organs.

Technique : Anything such as running, cycling, jogging and swimming that ups your heartbeat rate is useful. Practice the cardio workouts for at least 30 minutes in a day. Apart from ensuring proper blood circulation to all body parts, it also tends to warm up your body. Factors like age, ailments, breathing rate and clinical history must be considered before practicing any cardiovascular exercise.

Regular Combo workouts : To have a satisfying sex experience, the body in totality needs to be fit. Hence, once can't ignore the benefits to be derived from routine exercises like crunches combined with push-ups and sit-ups. These not only help in a better physical appearance, but help in achieving better endurance. The combo of these three regular exercises is really helpful, as it works on your shoulders, chest and abdominal area, all of which are active during sexual intercourse. By strengthening these muscles, you add to your stamina, which further adds to prolonged and more pleasurable sex.

Technique : Crunches in particular works on the upper and lower abdominal area by tightening them and adding more strength. Do at least 3 sets of 10 each for crunches. Push-ups and sit-ups are more relevant for men, as they need to be strong with their arm muscles. Do at least 4 sets of 10 each for sit-ups and push-ups, taking a little break between the two workouts.

Dance fitness, also known as “beat-based” fitness, is becoming big business in gyms and dance studios and a hot favorite among celebrities. Dance fitness is a dance oriented fitness class choreographed specifically to change with the music. Dance fitness can vary greatly depending upon the instructor. The purpose of the class is to move with the beat and lose you in the rhythm. It is both a mental and physical workout that fosters on sheer exhilaration. Usually quite over the edge and choreographed to the latest music, this is the future of fitness.

Who can participate?
Each person brings a different energy level, experience, and personality to the class. Combinations can range from difficult to simple, but all levels are generally accepted in an open class.

Dancing as an exercise
Dancing strengthens muscles. It works out the muscles that we do not even know exist. Dancing is very different from walking on the tread mill or jogging. For example, ballroom dancing works out the lower back, thighs and buttocks, in a very different way, from other exercises. So if you have been wondering how you would lose those extra pounds and get your cellulite-heavy thighs in shape again, then the answer is dancing.

Any form of dancing, whether Indian, Arabian or African has a positive effect on your body. A quick look at some contemporary and popular Latin American dance forms will show you how. You can learn one of them, or may be all, and keep getting better by the day.

Some of the most popular dance fitness forms:

Flamenco
The Andalusian Flamenco dance with graceful moves and dignified expressions builds stamina and mental alertness. Moving on the tunes of the guitar chants and claps creates a powerful feeling. The Spanish dance can make your blood circulation better. It is said, 'People don't watch flamenco they feel it'.

Jazz
What clapping hands are to flamenco, tapping feet are to Jazz. Jazz originated from a regional Afro-American dance. It is connected to styles like tap and ballet. Since tap dance was performed in the 1950's the term "Jazz Dance" is often referred to as tap dance.

The Cakewalk, Black Bottom, Charleston, Jitterbug, Boogie Woogie and Swing dance were the popular forms back then. Today Jazz is present in many different forms. Hip hop is one of the contemporary styles.

The slow movements of the tap technique strengthen the body and improve balance. They boost correct posture. The strong sharp turns and jumps keep the body agile. They tone every muscle in the body and the sweating during dance sessions open up skin pores that make the skin glow.

Salsa
Salsa is beautiful, but only if you have the right partner! Salsa dance is just like the spicy Spanish sauce that peps you up. Once the music plays, the energy and excitement can take over your senses.

Salsa is a fusion of many dance styles, from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Latin and North America. With a strong influence of African music the Salsa is usually performed in pairs, sometimes special solo performances are also performed. The Salsa is based on beats. Most dancing is done from 80 - 140 beats in a minute.

The presence of dynamic and active movements while doing the Salsa improves blood circulation and breathing. And the calories burnt are only a bonus. Just find the right partner and every step will be fun.

Rumba
Quick, Quick, Slow. This is how a basic lesson in Rumba begins. Rumba is a dance form that gave birth to different dance forms. It is the spirit and soul of Latin American music and dance. It is the most popular form of ballroom dances.

Rumba grew in Cuba. It spread its influence in the 16th century when the black slaves were imported from Africa to America. Rumba is best performed on staccato music beats. The dance performed at present is a slower version of its native counterpart. Performing Rumba needs concentration and alertness, yet an ability to enjoy the movements and music, with a free spirit.

Ballroom dancing
It fuelled by recent reality TV programs which put well known names through their dance paces - is experiencing a renaissance in the UK and Europe. Bring a sense of grace and elegance to your life, as well as a heart pumping workout. Posture is enhanced as well as balance and flexibility. No doubt about it this is strenuous exercise - but at its most graceful and fluid.

Belly dancing
It is good for balance and posture. This dance strengthens the back and the muscles of the pelvic floor. It tones hamstrings, thighs, abs, glutes and hips. It’s a great place to start for beginners but, as you progress, dance moves can be faster and more aerobic giving you a full body workout. Great for toning the abdominal flab and developing core strength - gently.

Line dancing
It is considered low impact but it definitely has the ability to get your heart rate up. Forget the old country and western image - line dancing has expanded its horizons. The music can be soulful, swing, Latin, jazz, urban nightclub, and even the waltz and foxtrot can be done in a line - no partner needed.

Pole Dancing
It is a new fitness craze, but it isn’t for the unfit. Good upper body and core strength are key to success on the pole. Think of it: one arm is supporting most of your weight as you try to propel yourself into a move or two. Women are loving this very aerobic form of exercise, but it’s not “aerobic” until you can support yourself and swing off the pole…more than once.

Benefits of various dance forms
Getting into the groove can transform your very personality. It is said that two hours of dancing everyday can keep you two years younger. Dancing is also an aerobic activity which makes it heart-friendly. Here is a quick list of benefits that you can enjoy with dancing.

•Builds endurance and stamina
•Helps lose weight
•Relieves stress
•Helps you release toxins via sweating
•Helps lower blood pressure and improve cholesterol levels
•Reduces heart rate over time
•Improves posture and tones muscles
•Maintains flexibility
•Helps prevent lower back problems
•Tones and firms arms and shoulders
•Helps lose weight
•Helps prepare women for childbirth
•Reduces stress
•Tones muscles
•Helps mental development and alertness
•Builds agility
•Increases memory power
•Strengthens bones and hips
•Prevents cardiovascular problems

1. Never drink water while exercising
This is wrong. You shouldn’t even wait until you are thirsty. If you feel you are losing water, you should immediately replace it. And if you intend to exercise the first thing in the morning, you should drink a glass of water before you start.

The body cells depend on circulation in order to get the energy they need, and to get rid of their waste products. When you become dehydrated, the fluids that bathe the cells diminish. The cells cannot function properly until it is restored. When that happens, your muscles cannot keep up the work they are doing and your heart receives an added strain. Part of the fluid you’ve lost is blood fluid. This means that the heart has to pump that many more times to re-circulate the diminished supply of blood.

2. Sugar taken before exercise raises the energy level
Sugar ingested before a contest or workout can do more harm than good. Even the intake of preparations like honey and lemon juice is counter-productive. Sweets can trigger an insulin reaction. The effect is to drive the body’s sugar into the storage organs. The only time you need to eat sugar to replace the amount that has been depleted is after an hour-and-a-half of steady exercise, such as a marathon race or a golf or tennis match.

3. Avoid certain foods before activity
Extensive tests at the University of California (LA)’s Human Performance Laboratory have yet to prove that the kind of food you eat makes the slightest difference in your performance levels. The literature on this subject has been combed. Every food on the forbidden list was offered free to campus athletes. Heavy foods, gas-producing foods, and spicy foods - they were given all. Neither on the playing field nor in the laboratory could players or researchers discern any difference. Nor did any of the players become sick from the forbidden foods.

5. Don’t eat before swimming
Cramps have rarely caused drowning. People who have supposedly drowned from cramps probably had heart attacks. The theory against eating before swimming is that it draws the blood into your intestine; when you start exercising, the circulation to the intestine shuts down and the blood goes to the muscles.

The most you might get if you exercise after eating is a stitch in the side. But cramps do not seem to be related to food at all. For example, a young American swimmer ate a hamburger with onions and mustard, and four candy bars, and drank a coke, just before a 1968 Olympic race, and broke her own world record. This isn’t to suggest that you should eat, a big meal before swimming in a race. Any violent activity after a meal will cause nausea. But you can certainly paddle around a warm pool to your heart’s content.

6. Salt tablets are better than no salt at all
It is true that when you perspire copiously, you will get muscle cramps unless you replace the salt. But a salt tablet is a solid piece of brine, and a solid piece of brine resting on the mucous membrane of the stomach can cause nausea and vomiting.

If you know you are going to perspire during a workout or contest, you can take a little extra salt with your food beforehand. During the contest you can take some salt after your activity. But don’t overdo it. Be sure you are only restoring salt that you have lost by sweating. The body can’t store salt. If you overdo it, you may actually induce the cramps and muscular weakness you were trying to avoid. The fluids from the cells in your body will be drawn into the bloodstream and the digestive tract in order to dilute the salt so that it can be more easily excreted from the body.

7. Extra protein makes you strong
The body has tremendous reserves and is very adaptive. The idea that you have to eat specified foods in specified amounts every day to maintain performance is unsound. The average person has no business starving himself to lose weight. When he does, there are consequences. When we are active, our body uses its own fat and carbohydrate for fuel. A diet that includes animal and vegetable protein supplies all the body needs to replenish its stores. There is no superdiet for super performance. You need every kind of food. Avoiding any kind of food is just as wrong as ingesting food supplements.

8. Sleep extra hours before a contest
You can’t store sleep. You can’t catch up on sleep, either. If you try by sleeping twelve hours, you will be worse off than if got by eight. Bed rest does not give energy after eight hours, nine at most. Bed rest has a severe de-conditioning effect. All the body processes slow down. After six hours, the heartbeat gets down to its basal rate. The metabolism drops. The circulation becomes sluggish. The muscles become flaccid. The whole body begins it lose its tone. A person who has been inactive for three days has lost five percent of his strength. Remaining in bed beyond a maximum of nine hours only makes you weaker.

Lying in bed in a relaxed state, incidentally, is almost as restful as sleeping and your level of recovery is sufficient. Rather than remaining in bed beyond eight hours because you haven’t slept the night before, get out of bed - and promise to yourself to relax the next time you cannot get to sleep.

9. Work up a sweat before a contest
If you intend to go from absolute rest to all- out exertion in a few seconds, this could cause a failure in the circulation to the heart, which might be dangerous if your heart is weak. If you step up your activities gradually and play a game that is not strenuous, then working up a sweat is useless and could actually be disadvantageous if your activity is an endurance event. Warm-ups are okay for sprinters who want to practice their starts. Any skill warm-ups, as distinguished from sweat warm-ups, are okay. But distance runners are going to need all the energy they have, and they are going to need to stay cool for as long as they can.

There are two reasons why prolonged warm-ups and working up a sweat are counterproductive, they deplete nutritional stores, and the body heat they create saps the energy needed for the event.

10. Sweating gets you in shape
The basic rule of working out is to avoid excessive sweating whenever possible. Energy is required to cool the system. This energy comes from the activity of your sweat glands, millions of them lying just under your skin that use metabolic energy to secrete sweat. This energy is drained from the total energy you have at your command to do the work of your body. Your muscles have to share in this energy in order to function properly. If a disproportionate share of that energy is used to secrete sweat, then there isn’t enough left for your other bodily functions. The amount of work you can do lessens when sweat glands use energy. When exhausted, they stop secreting, and you are in peril of a heat stroke.

The second loss of energy when you are over-heated is in the cardiovascular system. When the skin gets hot, the peripheral vessels leading to the skin open. Blood supply rushes to the surface of your body. This deprives the muscles of the blood they need. The heart tries to make up for the loss by pumping harder. The load becomes so great that if it is maintained for a prolonged period you could collapse. Inducing sweat is dangerous- and it makes no contribution to fitness.

Sweating does make the heart work harder, which is an objective of a fitness workout, but it does so in a hazardous manner. Sweating does burn calories, but it is a dangerous way to reduce weight.

The first mention of Ashtanga yoga seems to have occurred in Pantanjali's yoga Sutras. The literal translation is "eight-limbed yoga." Ashtanga yoga embraced eight spiritual principles including moral restraint, posture, breath control, and meditation.

The eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga are:

Yama - code of conduct, self-restraint
Niyama - religious observances, commitments to practice, such as study and devotion
Asana - integration of mind and body through physical activity
Pranayama - regulation of breath leading to integration of mind and body
Pratyahara - abstraction of the senses, withdrawal of the senses of perception from their objects
Dharana - concentration, one-pointed ness of mind
Dhyana - meditation (quiet activity that leads to samadhi)
Samādhi - the quiet state of blissful awareness, super conscious state.

However, as practiced today in the West, ashtanga yoga has come to mean something different. Today, ashtanga yoga is sometimes referred to as power yoga. Its emphasis is less on the spiritual than on the physical ability to assume a set of complicated postures, such as the sun salutation, swiftly and gracefully. Ashtanga yoga places a strong emphasis on breathing techniques. Because if provides a full-body workout, it has found favor among many athletes and other celebrities who must keep their bodies strong and flexible.

Ashtanga yoga requires many difficult movements. Amateurs and even professionals may inadvertently injure themselves by pushing too hard or by forcing themselves into a posture they are not sure how to do. Therefore, people wishing to try ashtanga yoga are advised to take several classes to master the principles before trying to practice alone. It is also a good idea to purchase a yoga sticky mat or a rug to keep from slipping and falling while performing the postures. Some practitioners prefer rugs for doing ashtanga yoga, because the rugs absorb sweat better than mats do.

This Yoga style is also athletic, intense and rather demanding. In Sanskrit Ashtanga means “eight-fold path or eight limbs”. Here, every time the students do a series of postures in the same order. Ashtanga Yoga is rigorous because of the constant movement from posture to posture.

Russia is planning to launch three more Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) this year, Russian space agency Roscosmos said on 2nd April, Thursday.

Russia sent a Soyuz TMA-14 vehicle to the ISS March 26 this year to transport the crew to the space station.

"In line with international agreements, Russia will launch the Soyuz TMA-15, May 27, the Soyuz TMA-16, Oct 1 and the Soyuz TMA-17, Nov 20, from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan," Roscosmos said in a statement.

The Soyuz TMA-15 will transport three additional crewmembers to the ISS. It will be the 102nd flight of a Soyuz spacecraft since 1967.

The Russian space agency is planning to make a record 39 space launches this year from Baikonur and the Plesetsk space centre in northern Russia.

Model-turned-actress Freida Pinto of India, who has started going places after her small but effective role in the multiple Oscar-winning film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ has forged ahead of her Bollywood counterparts like Kareena Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, to become the highest paid Indian actress.

According to reports Freida Pinto is charging Rs 13 to 15 crore for her next Hollywood project, thus leaving behind actresses like Kareena Kapoor who charges about Rs 7 crores per film or Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who usually charges Rs 6 to Rs 7 crores per film. Even British born Katrina Kaif gets a package of Rs 6 crores for each film.

According to reports Freida Pinto is being paid up to £ 2 million for her deals. Anirban Das, CEO of her management company said 'Freida Pinto can't be compared to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan because we're not pitching her as an Indian girl in international films. Freida Pinto is a true global face'.

Thanks to ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ which has racked in a total collections estimated at over US$ 270 million till date, Freida Pinto has landed a series of lucrative roles with top Hollywood directors, including Woody Allen and Julian Schnabel. The actress who has recently signed a endorsement deal with Estee Lauder, is currently shooting in Israel for a new film that focuses on the interwoven lives of a Israeli and a Palestinian women through the early 1990s in Israel. Even Oscar winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow is scared that Freida Pinto might steal her £ 1 million-a-year contract with Estee Lauder. Incidentally Gwyneth Paltrow had replaced Elizabeth Hurley in 2005, as a younger and fresher face of Estee Lauder cosmetics.

According to reports "Gwyneth Paltrow makes millions through her sponsorship deals, and it's her commercial work that's keeping her rich. The news that Estee Lauder is talking with Freida Pinto caught her by complete surprise. Losing the Estee Lauder deal would be a huge loss for Gwyneth Paltrow, and is waiting for an exact outline of what Freida Pinto is doing for the brand and hoping she won't be sidelined."