I tried yoga years ago but never really dedicated any time to it, as with any other exercise I had tried like running, aerobics videos and bike riding.

Dr B B Sahi looks at simple but effective postures we can all implement to beat the backache blues

Aids is on the increase world wide.

Light and colour have been used as a healing tool since the early civilisations of Egypt, China and South America.

The onset of chilly, damp weather is usually heralded by a cold.

Did you hear the one about . . . The nation’s laughter clubs celebrate World Laughter Day in style in London. Elena Lipsos hears the one about finds out how yoga can be a laughing matter.... "Always laugh when you can," Lord Byron wrote. "It is cheap medicine." Little did the great poet suspect that his words of advice would one day be taken so earnestly.

The eyes are the mirror of the soul, or so we are told. But this may actually have more truth in it that people think. Iridology is the latest diagnosis system to hit the alternative circuit. It is not a new therapy and was discovered in the 1800s by a young boy called Igantz Von Peczely who caught an owl in his garden. The boy noticed that a black line rose in the owl’s eye after it broke it’s leg during the struggle. Von Peczely kept the bird until it had regained it’s health and then observed that cracked white lines were noticeable across the black area of the owl’s eye.

Deep in the Amazon rainforest shamans and wisdom seekers undertake plant ‘diets’ to expand their conciousness and as a form of healing. Howard G. Charing facilitates retreats to the Amazon, and here introduces the amazing powers of the plants of the Amazon. ‘Whether the plant is to heal the body or the spirit or whether it is part of an apprenticeship, what makes it work is your good intention towards the plant. They are beings, which have their own forms or they can be like human beings with faces and bodies.

Most modern relaxation techniques advocate that by totally contracting and then relaxing the muscles of the body, one can gain complete physical and mental relaxation. The rationale behind such a theory is that in order to remove any physical and mental tension, it is more effective to first learn to exaggerate the tension that may already be there by selectively contracting all of the muscles before relaxing them.

We are all familiar with the expression "you are what you eat". We all know that if we put junk food into our bodies, we will probably get ill. Very few people would disagree with this statement. But while we are trying to be healthy, we could be forgetting about a very important part of our bodies – our feet. When was the last time we actually sat down and thought about the health of our feet? Can the same expression ‘you are what you eat’ be applied to your feet or what you wear. Are we really the shoes we wear?

An old Navajo Indian is telling his grandson about the fight that is going on inside him. He said it was between two wolves: one was evil (anger, greed, arrogance, regret, guilt, superiority and bitterness) and the other was good (joy, peace, serenity, humility, kindness, ease and empathy).The grandson asked: "Grandpa, which wolf wins?" The simple reply: "The one I feed".

Feeling consistently sluggish? Or simply want to have look deeper into your general state of health then the Optimum Health Clinic can help with a simple, painless look at one’s blood. Health from the inside out, quite literally.