LONDON, U.K., February, 2011: Practitioners of Ayurvedic and other traditional medicines in Europe are bracing themselves for a tough licensing system similar to that for Western medicines. The EU’s Traditional Herbal Medical Products Directive is set to come into effect on May 1, and requires any herbal medicine sold over the counter to have either a Traditional Herbal Registration or…
What I feel right now is just bliss. Daily life tires the soul as well as the body. This one day, this one bath, is like a new birth for my soul. Vivek Ananda Shastri, 28, teacher, after bathing at the January 2001 Kumbha Mela Source
NEW YORK, February 8, 2011: Breastfeeding decreases the baby’s risk of becoming obese by the toddler years, a new study shows. Babies that were fed with ‘baby formula’ processed milk were six times more likely to become obese. Researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School studied the eating patterns of 847 children enrolled in Project Viva. About…
UNITED STATES, February 2011: An Ohio county court judge who argued that it was his First Amendment right to hang a poster about the Ten Commandments in his courtroom was overruled Wednesday (Feb. 2) by a federal appeals court. Judge James DeWeese of Richland County, Ohio, has sought over the last decade to post the biblical laws. In the latest…
NEW DELHI, INDIA, February 6, 2011: In order to stop yoga gurus from claiming copyright to ancient asanas, like Bikram Choudhury’s Hot Yoga — a set of 26 sequences practiced in a heated room — India has completed documenting 1,300 asanas which will soon be uploaded on the country’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), making them public knowledge. According to…
On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of space toward the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, who walked on the Moon in 1971 Source
[HPI note: This is not a summary, but the full report from our correspondent; you will not find this article elsewhere on the web.] NEW DELHI, January 11th, 2011 (By Rajiv Malik, HPI Correspondent): ‘It is a book intended to be an eye opener, a warning to us,’ said jurist and former Law Minister of India, Shri Ram Jethamalani, while…
UNITED STATES, February 2011: The world’s Muslim population is likely to increase by about 35 percent in the next two decades, going from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion, according to new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Globally, the Muslim population is projected to increase at about twice the rate of the…
HOUSTON, TEXAS, February 9, 2011: On a cold Saturday morning, I was gathered among Hindu youth from various colleges within Texas partaking in havan, a Hindu ritual that involved saying prayers and offering food to God while sitting around a ceremonial fire. The havan was part of Hindu Students Association’s second annual Gateway, a retreat where Hindu youth from Texas…
MUNDUR, KERALA, INDIA, January 25, 2011: In this rapidly modernizing country, new money is also reviving old traditions. A group of mostly urban professionals has teamed up to help conduct the fire ritual this spring in a village that last witnessed it 35 years ago. ‘We want to do our bit to ensure that Indian culture survives,’ said Neelakantan Pillai,…