Yoga: Helping You Cope with Menopause

For a woman, her monthly menstrual cycle is a testament to her womanhood. It provides affirmation of her capability to give life and bear children. However, when menopause comes, it indicates not only the cessation of a woman’s capability to support life but also an unequivocal sign of aging. To a woman, the menopause is a bittersweet stage when one can look back with satisfaction at a life well loved yet looking forward at the sign that in a few years one will have to tackle aging problems. This can be a tormenting time for any woman, and it can cause emotional torment on her.

However, despite the dreadful imaginings that are attached to menopause, there is hope available that can provide relief from the emotional and physical woes with menopause.

One of these hopes is yoga. This ancient Indian art that is aimed at achieving Holistic physical and emotional balance offers hope that the woman’s menopause period need not be that difficult. Thanks to yoga, coping with menopause can be much easier.

Understanding the Benefits of Yoga

1)Yoga is a meditative procedure. Because of this, one will be able to achieve an inner harmony that allows one’s mind to be relaxed. In turn, this leads to better blood flow and promotes deep breathing that generally benefits the body.

2)With yoga, one will be able to learn to accept the inevitable things. This is because the art teaches people to become meditative and learn to focus on things other than those that cause strain on one’s thinking.

3)By its simple presence, yoga allows people to be preoccupied with something. This allows women going through menopause to have some diversions in their thinking instead of focusing only on menopause.

4)Yoga is commonly done by groups. Because of this, a woman will be able to cultivate friendships with various individuals. This is beneficial in that this system allows a woman to expand her social base. Likewise, this will also enable her to have more friends.

Knowing the Requirements for Yoga

Yoga can be done alone or with groups. When done alone, a woman must make sure that there will be the least disturbances. A key consideration here is to avoid doing yoga in the living room or in other areas where one is likely to be disturbed. Moreover, it would be better to have it during times when people are less likely to bother each other. At daytime, doing yoga at early afternoon is a great way to avoid distraction.

One must select a part of the house where one will have a dose of fresh air. Open the window and relish in the gentle breeze. The soft wind should be relaxing to both mind and body.

In order to make yoga more comfortable, one must sit on a praying mat that is comfortable. One must avoid doing yoga in bed or in soft mattresses because movements and shifting of these bases due to application of pressure can distract a person.

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New net timer could save sea turtles from drowning

Fishery managers trying to protect rare sea turtles from dying in fishing nets have tapped a Cape Cod company to build a device they think can help balance turtle protection with profitable fishing.

The "tow-time logger" is a 7-inch, silver cylinder that attaches to fishing nets and records how long the net stays underwater.

That time is crucial if a turtle gets snared in the nets dragged behind fishing trawlers. Federal research indicates the vast majority of sea turtles survive entanglement — but only if the net is pulled up in less than 50 minutes.

With the logger, regulators can avoid other, potentially more onerous, restrictions on perpetually struggling fishermen — such as shutting down fishing areas or requiring turtle-saving gear that doesn't work well in all nets. In fisheries where they decide time limits would work best, they wouldn't have to depend on an honor system to make sure nets are pulled up in time.

"Turtles have also been around since the time of the dinosaurs," said Elizabeth Griffin of the environmental group, Oceana. "They're cool animals that I think most people want to see continue to exist."

The logger was built under a $25,000 federal contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by Onset Computer Corp., a Bourne-based supplier of data loggers for energy and environmental monitoring. It starts recording water depth every 30 seconds once the net drops below two meters. If the net stays under beyond a preset time limit, the logger records it, and the infraction can be discovered when regulators download its data.

The device's early tests at sea have been successful, and work is ongoing to toughen it for the real-life rigors, such as being banged on fishing boat decks. The company expects it to cost between $600 and $800, an expense that would fall to fishermen.

Even when the logger is perfected, regulators know limiting how long the nets stay underwater is no cure-all as they devise rules, which they hope to propose for public comment by 2010, to meet a new federal requirement to protect sea turtles from trawler fishing nets.

Some environmentalists say turtles shouldn't be kept underwater at all because even relatively short times of being trapped underwater without oxygen hurt them.

Griffin says there's also not enough data on how trapped turtles fare in colder waters, so no one really knows how long they can be kept under and survive.

The data logger at least makes briefer tow times a feasible way to protect turtles, if researchers can sort out what's safe, she said.

Fishermen are skeptical. They say short tows aren't practical in most fisheries, such as those in deeper waters, where a worthwhile catch is impossible if the nets must constantly be pulled up.

"It's a bad idea," said James Fletcher, a veteran fisherman and now head of the North Carolina-based United National Fisherman's Association.

"Nobody's going to love the idea," acknowledged Henry Milliken, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is part of NOAA. But he added fishermen might prefer limits on how long the net can be underwater to harsher alternatives, such as closing fishing areas.

"The idea is that we're looking at providing options to the managers in the future," Milliken said.

As the NMFS tries to determine which steps will or won't work, it's held public meetings this spring from New York to Georgia.

The turtle most frequently caught in trawl nets in the Atlantic is the loggerhead, the threatened 250-pound giants named for their relatively large heads. In U.S. waters, every sea turtle is listed as either endangered or threatened, so any turtle deaths in fishing nets hit the populations hard.

The most common way to protect turtles right now is the Turtle Excluder Device, often a circular, barred frame attached near the front of fishing nets. The bars are big enough for fish and other sea life to slip through, but too narrow for turtles, which bounce out of the net before they get caught.

The excluder devices have had success in some fisheries, including the Southeast's shrimp trawl fishery, but bigger species, such as horseshoe crab, monkfish and flounder, can bounce out along with the turtles and make the nets far too inefficient.

Greg DiDomenico of the Garden State Seafood Association, a New Jersey trade group, said since the new rules will apply to fisheries from Cape Cod to Florida — where the turtles swim — whatever shakes out is bound to be felt industry-wide. That includes "huge negative impacts on some fisheries," he said.

But with regulations coming, DiDomenico said his best hope is that regulators don't broadly force a turtle-protecting solution, including the time logger being developed, on a diverse fleet.

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