Usha paana chikitsa or water therapy

Usha Paana Chikitsa is an ancient Indian water therapy. It claimed to be able to cure of up to 30 diseases from headache to obesity to cancer.

Early warning: you may have read the following article dozens of times already. 99% of my search for usha paana chikitsa or water therapy shows the same result. One commented that it’s a hoax!.

The therapy says to drink six glasses (or 1.5 litres) of water as soon as you wake up, before even brushing your teeth or washing your face. The tip is to have a bottle or two by your bedside overnight since some of us (like me) are too lazy to get up even to reach for that air-condition’s remote when the room is too cold. 

No solid or liquid at least for one hour before and after gulping the seas of water. So how would you drink glasses after glasses of water in one go you think? I myself found it difficult at first so I started with two glasses on the first day; three the next day and so on. You may also go to the toilet a couple of times but this is normal after quite some time.

The following are the types of disease cured by the water therapy:

1.	Headache	2.	Kidney stones
3.	Blood Pressure/ Hypertension	4.	Urogenital diseases
5.	Anemia (Blood shortage)	6.	Hyper-acidity
7.	Rheumatism	8.	Gastroenteritis
9.	General Paralysis	10.	Dysentery
11.	Obesity	12.	Rectal Piodapse (?)
13.	Arthritis	14.	Constipation
15.	Sinusitis	16.	Hostorthobics (?)
17.	Tachycardia	18.	Diabetes
19.	Giddiness	20.	Eye diseases
21.	Cough	22.	Ophthalmic Hemorrhage
23.	Asthma	24.	Irregular menstruation
25.	Bronchitis	26.	Leukemia
27.	Pulmonary Tuberculosis	28.	Uterus and breast cancer
29.	Meningitis	30.	Laryngitis

# 12 and 16 - couldn’t find what these two are! Readers should not take this article as an alternative to medicine. I am not liable for any side-effect that readers might have as a result of this therapy but it’s worth a try. Let me know if the therapy work wonders for you or otherwise. I am trying this myself. 

Disclaimer:

Reflexology slippers

I
I bought a pair of reflexology slippers at one of the pre-Raya sales in Gadong. I have been looking for such slippers after trying a pair, owned by my sister. My family laughed when I bought the slippers and joked that I would be wearing them for Raya visits.

Nope, of course not. I wear them behind closed door when I clean my face in front of the dressing mirror. So instead of sitting down, I stand up with the slippers on (along with something else to wear) as I spend about 20 minutes applying toner, moisturiser and what-have-you on my face. It really feel good afterwards though you have got to use to wear the slippers first.

My first time using it, I could only stand for less than five minutes. Now I can boast about standing on those protruded, sturdy wooden soles for 20 minutes. The after-effect of wearing them is awesome. You can feel your blood flowing freely, in short these slippers are good for blood circulation.

The benefit is good for your overall body system. Read about reflexology here. I also didn’t realise there exist different types of slippers online such as the Nixper Reflexology Slipper (sadly item no longer available); Get Slim slippers (at USD40!); Weight Loss slippers (might try this) and Solemates slippers (thought its soul mate, otherwise will buy the His and Her pairs).  

Try the slippers. If those of you who would like to search for the one that I bought locally, they are only at Br$12 and are sold at that Indonesian furniture shop in Sungai Tilong or the spa at Yayasan.

Happy ‘slippering’.

30 days of night

 

Saw ‘30 days of night’ over the weekend. It is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen so far.

’30 days of night’ is an adaptation of a terrifying comic-book series of the same name by Steve Niles. The movie received a two and a half out of five rating from the critics while viewers gave it a three and a half (including me – yes, Titanic is still the best though of different category!)

Synopsis: Barrow town, Alaska, can have total darkness for thirty days every year due to its far north location in the Arctic Circle. The locals are accustomed to this but this year, its totally something else. Vampires roam the town and take control, feasting on the terrified local citizens, both young and old.  

 My (and others who saw the movie)’s comments: The ending could have been better. Can’t he just wait for just a few hours before sunrise? But then again, we can’t have happy ending all the time, can we?

The first and largest lifestyle hypermall

I received an invitation to the 1Borneo Road Show at the Empire Hotel & Country Club. A quick glance on the what its all about shows a property investment project in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah called, err, 1Borneo, claiming to be the largest and most revolutionary property development projects in Sabah (in terms of project size, variety of components and facilities).

The 4.8m square feet of property consists of the hypermall, autocity (wow!) hotels, condos, oceanarium and discovery centre, spa and fitness… the list just go on and on.

http://www.1borneo.com/

“There are 9 anchor tenants including a hypermarket to be operated by an international hypermarket operator, a departmental store, handicraft & batik gallery (with heritage centre), harajuku concept stores, “Jalan-Jalan” street bazaar, 36-lane bowling centre, 9-screen Cineplex and a large aquarium integrated with an ocean science discovery centre. Another anchor player is the upscale 35,000-sqf auto gallery. This will consist of a stylish showroom offering different models of vehicles and an elaborate bonded warehouse, yet unseen in the whole of Borneo.”

A quick look at the design struck me as I really think its somewhere near to our ‘The Mall’ especially the dome. [Pls see above]

So what does this mean to Bruneians like me? If I have enough fund, I will buy a property there, most probably a condo, so my family can stay anytime they like when they visit KK, without having to stay at a hotel. KK, being a short 40-minute air flight from Brunei, would make this as an ideal idea. Otherwise it will just be visiting it.

Now I am off to the Empire to check this largest lifestyle hypermall! [Will write about Hua Ho Petani Mall as well]  

Essential oils

According to Michael A Bengwayan, a writer on environment and community development issues, there are some 3,000 known essential oils from Asian forest plants of which approximately 300 have commercial importance as perfumes and medicine. He said, soon world’s skin and hair products like The Body Shop will come down to Brunei for the country’s rich non-wood forest products.

So here in Brunei we have the expensive eaglewood or kayu gaharu which can be made as perfume and Ylang Ylang which exudes strong fragrance from its flowers resembling lemon. Our woody trees are renowned for having hard wood and fragrant as well, used for timber, weapons, crafts, medicine and adornment. What else do we have; expensive resins and turpentine like Benzoin and elemi, used for paints, inks, aromatic scenes and other products.

Our forest is huge and has a lot to offer. Go out and grab something out of our forest guys, but do so wisely. Like a sign at the Belalong Field Centre that says: Leave your footprint behind and take your garbage with you.

Traditional healing

When I was young, my late grandma (may God bless her soul – miss you Nini) used to rub hot ointment on me every time I had headache. (Don’t know why I have headache at that age, maybe puberty?). Carefully and gently with her shaking, skinny fingers, she would rub around my head while reciting verses from the Holy-Quran (which later I found out later was the Al-Fatihah, the first verse of the holy Quran and the Selawat or praises to Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him).

That was very calming and soothing. I grew up liking the scents of hot oil, like Minyak Zarafah, Minyak Kapak or Minyak Kayu Putih. Now that I have grown up (like, a lot) I came to know that all these ointments have one basic ingredient, the eucalyptus oil. Read more here on this miracle oil.

Which lead me to my topic on traditional healing. Traditional healing have been around for thousand of years. The Chinese claimed that they have their acupuncture for more two thousand years now, that’s like 0 B.C. Check it here.

The Hindus said their Ayurveda (meaning knowledge of life), was originally a Hindu medical system and had its beginnings more than two and half thousand years ago! Ayurveda soon developed outside of the strictly Hindu community and was taken up and adapted by Buddhists and other religious groups. It has survived until the present day and is in fact undergoing a renaissance both in India and throughout the western world, which sees it as a necessary compliment to the clinical model. More here.

So what do Muslims have? Of course we have ours. We have the good old bekam or cupping. Bekam is a treatment in which a cup is attached to the skin surface, usually on the back, and the air within the cup is evacuated to suck the skin in and increase local blood flow. The practice has numerous variations including burning alcohol or another substance (eucalyptus oil can be used) within the cup to create the vacuum and increase the heat.

I had mine done a couple of months ago. It’s a bit difficult to get a good one here in Brunei. So far I found out at least two places, in Batu Besurat and busy-Kiulap as the best so far. The former is operated by a husband and wife team and the latter by an older woman.

My experience with both, it hurt when the practitioner made small cuts on my back on the specified area to be cupped. After some painful minutes, the suction cups were removed as some thick blood clots oozed from the cuts. I usually have a good look at the clots. Yes, such clots gave you pain like headache and muscular pain.

I don’t mind feeling the pain from the cuts as I feel refresh and have that pink glow on my skin for days. I think its time to have another one soon. I will show pics here next. (Not pics of me of course, adele). Also, just for info, Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) advised his umah to do the bekam as he also did it.  72 types of disease may be healed through it, God willing.

Read here from the State Mufti’s Office on berbekam.

Amah or domestic worker

I over-heard in the radio on a chat between a Radio DJ and a caller (sound like a teenager) as follows:

DJ: Hi. Who is this?

Caller: XXXX

DJ: So where are you calling from?

Caller: XXXX

DJ: What’s the weather like over there?

Caller: It’s fine

DJ: So what have you been up to since this morning? I know it’s almost lunch time now.

Caller: Nothing much, since it’s non-school day today. Had my brunch at 10ish and now listening to your station.

DJ: Thanks for tuning to our station. So you have been basically hanging around your house and nothing much else to do, is it?

Caller: Yup.

DJ: If I may ask, what did you have for your brunch?

Caller: The usual Bruneian stuff I guess, like noodle and Nasi Goreng with fried chicken.

DJ: That’s sound full-filling to me. Do you prepare your own or you have your mom doing it for you and the family?

Caller: Yup, my mom is doing all the cooking, I just eat. (Laugh)

DJ: Luck you. I have to cook on my own and for my cat. So I assume you help out with the dishes?

Caller…(More laughing)…Nope. That’s the maid, like every Bruneian teenagers, I don’t do any housework.

By this time I was appalled. Now what make you think that caller would make such statement? Is she assuming that everyone in Brunei owns a maid? I don’t. My brothers don’t. Others in the family who don’t have small children don’t. Some of my neighbours don’t. Not everyone in Brunei have maid as claimed and yet this is the kind of thinking coming from a teenager?

Lets talk about having a maid or ‘amah’ as we Bruneians called them. Why do we need one in the first place? For obvious reasons for those who have young children, to look after their children. I have a 15-month old baby at the moment and God knows, I have been running around like a headless chicken because I don’t have an amah to look after my baby. I have one when my baby was born but she made all sort of excuses the moment I gave birth. I couldn’t stand such person. I would hope that she would just tell me straight to my face that she couldn’t cope with handling a baby.

I hired her because I was pregnant at that time and she knew it all along. Anyway, now I don’t have one and the wait to have the next one is too unbearable for me to type here. I have problem with the local maid agency who took my deposit (Br$500 for that) and another agency also took my deposit (another $600) and gave me all sort of excuses, like the agent in Jakarta is holding up the process, etc, etc….

Of interest, I stumbled across an online news from Jakarta Post on an Indon amah who celebrated Hari Raya with her family after ending her two-year contract. I couldn’t help but think that there are people in the world who are not that lucky like us here in Brunei. Btw, the salary stated should be Brunei Dollars and not ringgit, isn’t it?

 http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20071023.T02&irec=3     

Almost…the end of Ramadhan

Today is the 28th day of Ramadhan and tomorrow we will know when it ends and the start of Syawal. I feel sad….

So for the past four weeks, I have done my fasting religiously and pray that God accepted it. Another thing which pleases me was that my sis commented this morning that I have slim down and asked how did I do it? I was puzzled myself at first but then I answered, just my fasting – no eating and that’s that. Seriously, the past week, my appetite have reduced so I wasn’t into the mood of eating. I ate dates and sipped water  and that’s it. I may drink more water before bed.

Wow! This is good, isnt it guys. I dont have to go for that expensive slimming programme though the owner promised she would reduce my bill if I am to appear in their advert. I would be happy to appear in any adverts that portrays care to the community, like stopping paedophiles. I hate them! [Not getting carried away now]

Anyway, I hope and pray to meet the next Ramadhan, insya Allah. Amin.

Paedophile – the lowest creature on earth

 Have you guys seen this man?

He is now in the Interpol’s Wanted list for web paedophile. The pictures have been digitally altered to disguise the man’s face with a swirly pattern, but the German federal police agency, the BKA, worked with Interpol’s human trafficking team to produce identifiable images. Picture: Reuters.

I hate paedophiles. They are the lowest level creature to roam the earth. The thought of them manipulating helpless children make me sick. I can’t understand why they have the heart to abuse children just to satisfy their own lust (not necessarily sexual desire). Its so pathetic.

I can’t help but cry whenever I learn that yet another child has been raped, tortured or abused. If there is justice, than justice should teach those shame-less predators by cutting-off their ….. I’m so mad everytime I think of this subject.

 I better cool-off first….Astagah…

Rizqun treat

What a pleasant suprise! My other half had promised me not to treat me on my birthday by checking in to a hotel, like he always do for the past couple of years. I think its just a waste of money (though he is paying, hehe). I mean you can use that money you spent on a hotel room into something useful, (to me) like a two-hour full body massage or a hair spa or a one-month membership at that glamorous gym (you-know-where).