Happy New Year - 2012

1. Great message
2. Perfect illustrations 
3. Nice mix of quantitative and qualitative proof

Vibrations - Energy - Life

I find this fascinating. One of those mystical and universal things about life. Vibrations. Sound. Music. This is where the concept of Energy begins. Positive energy. People we get along with. Good things. Success. Happiness. Almost everything.

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From DailyOm.com

Good Vibrations
Sound Healing

Everything in the universe is in a constant state of vibration, including our bodies. Sound is vibration that can be translated by the delicate structures of our inner ear, but it moves more than just those tiny receptors. It is part of the spectrum of energy vibrations that affect us on the mental, physical, and spiritual levels. Long ago shamans recognized the power of sound when they first used chants and drumming to heal people. In ancient Egypt, Greece, and India, the use of sound and music for healing was a highly developed sacred science. Sonic vibration has been one way of experiencing the energy of the universe for much of humanity’s history.

When the vibrations of our physical and spiritual bodies are out of harmony it can cause disease. Sound healing gently massages the molecules back into the right places, clearing blockages and restoring harmony. Ancient healing systems such as Chinese medicine and Indian Ayurveda associate specific musical notes with subtle-energy systems of the body, such as in yoga where particular notes of music correspond to each of the seven chakras. In Tibet, priests have long used bells and bowls over and around the body to tune and clear the energy centers. Chimes and tuning forks are other tools that have been used to heal not only the body but the energy in a room as well.

Knowing that sound has the power to heal, we should also try to remember that sounds from modern life can have a negative affect. Choosing silence over discord may help us maintain a state of equilibrium. As we seek soothing and harmonizing sounds to surround us, we may be doing more than creating a balm for the noise of the world. We may actually be performing an act of self-healing that connects us with one of the most basic vibrations of the universe.

Preserving India's Knowledge

Almost three years ago, I posted about my discovery of the Bangalore-based FRLHT – Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions - and remember vividly that I was quite excited about it at that time. Now, three years of evolution or rotting (depending on the way you look at it ;-)) later, I followed the Twitter profile of a person (Mani) who happened to retweet one of my tweets (this is a distraction, nevertheless, in case you are curious what my retweeted tweet was about and are lazy to click on the link, let me tell you. It was about a KM product company – Trampoline Systems, if you want the name as well - that is adopting a crowdfunding approach to finance its future) and found something there that rang a huge bell in my mind and brought back memories of my spotting the FRLHT office bus. When I glanced through Mani’s recent Twitter updates, I was lucky enough to spot one of his tweets about the existence of an organization called CIKS - Centre of Indian Knowledge Systems! One look at the organization’s home page and I was mighty impressed by their projects, vision and achievements. Not surprisingly, as I glanced through the Trustees page, I realized that the key person behind FRLHT is one of the members of CIKS as well. That bell in my mind was spot on! Ding Dong! :-)

CIKS seems to focus on preserving India’s agricultural knowledge amongst other things and speaks of some inspiring and admirable project areas to help India’s rural population through well-designed programs. Most of the projects revolve around organic farming methods but I guess the scope and potential for expanding this concept is immense! Not many weeks ago, I was having a conversation with two of my friends about the possibility of using KM in non-profit ventures and for social benefits and we’d touched upon areas like Education, Agriculture, Health-Care and Infrastructure. CIKS is a brilliant example of what can be done in the agricultural arena. More so because of the rich agricultural history that India has. Even though the focus at present seems to be only on preserving conventional agricultural knowledge, it would be quite easy to extend it to facilitate sharing of knowledge across farmers, providing them with the platforms and practices to network, collaborate and innovate! If proven to be a success here, I can’t think of any reason why it can’t be replicated in the Education and Health-Care sectors as well. Speaking of Education, I am reminded of India’s traditional and inspiring Gurukul system.

There is an urge to come back and look into this at length and expand on the ideas…..but what do you think?

A Beautiful Vision

I recently attended a conference on "Women 2.0" (revolving around Women in the Technology Industry) on the occasion of Woman's Day - March 8th. Missed a few sessions in the first part of the day but caught up with some sessions in the afternoon. Quite a few interesting topics like Entrepreneurship, Juggling Professional & Personal Life, Feminine Leadership, Skill Building for Women, and Innovation were on the agenda in the afternoon.

To be honest, I guess I was not fully engaged all the time as the presence of a friend forced me to indulge in some chatting and giggling as well. But what I want to share here is something on innovation (a topic that gets me enormously excited, all the time, every time).

The session on Innovation was a panel discussion involving 3 women with many patents to their credit, a HR head, and a facilitator from an Innovation Consulting firm. As I sat listening to them, the facilitator revived my interest in the Aravind Eye Hospital (I've heard and read about it many a time and also got to read a really huge case study/story on this a year or so ago). She spoke about how Dr. Venkataswamy (the key person behind Aravind Eye Hospital) got innovative and learned from an industry nowhere related to the medical field** and succeeded in making a difference to many poor people across the country. She also mentioned about the availability of a video of the story on YouTube, that I'd not heard about before. (In case you're interested, I found it to be here). The video is nicely done and worth your time.

Two things about the story that strike me as fascinating and wonderful are that one can be inspired by something that is seemingly ridiculously irrelevant (the process of conducting surgical operations a la McDonald's business operations :-)) and Dr. Venkataswamy's thought at the end of the video - "Intelligence and capability are not enough. There must be the joy of doing something beautiful". Now, I am going to take the liberty of adding that "beautiful" here means something that touches people/society....something related to the welfare of people/world at large....something that one will feel proud of....something that makes life better, for many people!

** As I've reflected before on this blog, we should not underestimate the power of analogies in the area of innovation.

Did you know?

Did you know that there was a foundation for revitalization of local health traditions (FRLHT) in Bangalore? Wow! It has Sam Pitroda, among others, on its Governing Council.

How did I get to know? Saw their office bus going past mine a few days ago and noticed the name of the foundation printed on the bus and actually gaped at it as I really did not imagine we had such interesting initiatives to preserve our good old knowledge of medicines! Would be interesting to know what else this foundation does apart from research on ancient Indian medicine theories. Their mission talks about medicinal theory, practice and yes - perhaps the most important – lasting social impact. But well the truth is that it is yet to impact a laywoman like me…! I hadn’t even heard about the existence of such a foundation till I saw their office bus but I am to be blamed for that. If not for my poor newspaper reading habits…

But on scanning some press releases linked to the FRLHT website, it appears that there was one initiative that tried to touch laymen - An effort to get some cities in TN to grow medicinal plants. BTW, many homes in South India do grow Neem and Tulsi both of which are well-known for their medicinal values.

FRLHT Mission

To demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Indian Medical Heritage by designing and implementing innovative programmes related to
A. exposition of the theory & practice of traditional systems of medicine,
B. conservation of the natural resources used by Indian systems of medicine
C. revitalisation of social processes for transmission of the heritage, on a size and scale that will have societal impact.

Dr. Blog

How many doctors you know blog? How many bloggers you know are doctors? (and hey, are you a doctor who blogs? :-))

How are they benefiting out of it? Are they able to connect with other doctors and learn from them or teach them? Are they able to connect with existing and potential patients through their blogs and ergo do a better job? I came across a doctor who blogs, but I have no clue how much he is able to get out of it in terms of connecting with other doctors and patients. There seem to be few comments and little interaction on his blog... :-()

The issues that doctors could have with blogging would be patient privacy and, obviously, lack of time....