Toolkit for foot care and anger management. Glimpses of The Communions first growth retreat

Hi all

This is the first issue of Good Vibes using this platform. Revue is unfortunately shutting down soon and I had to find some alternate platform for Good Vibes.

If you follow me on Twitter, you must have seen tons of tweets from Rishikesh last week about Communion. With 20 speakers on varied subjects the participants had some of the best learning from real life experiences.I will shortly be uploading all the presentations and deliberations on YouTube in the coming weeks. I plan to hold this annually. I plan to host small side events time to time on various subjects with main focus on personal growth. The first such event will be organised at Kanha, Madhya Pradesh some time Feb/March 2023 on Goal setting and habit formations. If you are interested to join please keep a watch on my website or my Twitter handle

The most interesting part of all participants at Communion is that I connected with them all on Twitter and met most of them first time here at Rishikesh during the event. Ten years back this would have been impossible to even think of. A great example of using your limited time the right way and positively. We will shortly upload all sessions on Youtube for the benefit of all readers.


The feet are often overlooked when it comes to health and fitness. But once they start to hurt, they will quickly remind you of your neglect. Foot fitness can help you avoid disability. It’s never too late to start taking care of your feet. These five strategies will get you off on the right foot.

1. Stretching your feet and ankles regularly may help reduce the incidence of injury as you age. Your footwear should provide appropriate support in the form of comfortable shoes that fit well but aren’t too constrictive.

2. You may want to add over-the-counter cushioning shoe inserts to your shoes if you plan to increase your activity level. As you get older think about incorporating a range of exercise activities into your routine. For example, swimming or bicycling put less pressure on the joints of the foot.

3. Toenail and foot skin health are important, too. The skin grows thinner and drier with age; the nails may become thicker or more brittle. If nails are thick and yellow, it may indicate a health problem. To keep your feet healthy, exercise or massage them to increase circulation. Pay attention to nutrition, too—maintaining overall good health, including eating well, helps your feet stay healthy along with the rest of you.

4. Another good idea is to moisturize your feet regularly so you don’t develop cracks (fissures) in the skin. These can be painful, and leave you open to infection. Pay special attention to the heels, as these can get very dry. However, do not apply lotion or cream between your toes, as this area tends to be moist, and you may end up encouraging some type of fungal or bacterial growth.

5. If you wear nail polish regularly, you may notice that your toenails seem yellow when you remove the polish, likely due to the chemicals and dyes in the polish. To reduce yellowing, remove the nail polish once a week and let your nails “breathe” for a day or two before you polish them again.

We go through many situations in life which cause emotions of anger inside us. This anger comes out in the form of outburst on trivial things. It negatively effects relationships. Many times with some of our family members or friends or even in some other unimportant interactions, we are tested by our anger. Many researches in the world show how anger is harmful for our health. Illnesses like blood pressure, heart attacks, insomnia, back aches and other problems like digestive disorders, are caused by angry outbursts. Anger is a weakness and you lose respect with it. You lose cooperation and love from people.

Like many of us, I used anger as a weapon in, what we sometimes call, controlling people, forgetting that it is not possible to control people, but it is easy to influence them. Influencing people is always easier and that can take place with peace and love and keeping good wishes. Anger ultimately blocks us from whatever goal we are trying to achieve. Anger can never make you content and happy. Anger is counterproductive. Many a times, anger comes from the overblown sense of self-importance. Often, we also get angry to get attention.

You may be exercising regularly. As a health-freak, you may be routinely consuming protein and vegetables and getting good 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night. Despite all the care, your body develops bouts of illnesses. The question that would come to your mind – What more should I do to lead a healthy lifestyle? Always know our feelings and thoughts create a subtle energy body. While diet, sleep and exercise influence physical health, a clean energy body is needed to sustain a perfect physical body. Emotional stress and anger manifest as an illness in our physical body. Release past hurt. Forgive people to heal yourself. Remain calm and stable to cleanse the body. We have the power to create a healthy mind, which then creates a healthy body and a happy life.

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.

1 ) Write a journal or log whenever you get angry. You will be surprised what it reveals. Monitor every episode of anger, from fleeting moments of frustration or impatience, to extreme rage. For each one, note down the facts, the intensity of your anger (in a scale of 0-10, 10 being maximum rage). This habit of systematically describing your angry outbursts is often all that one needs in order to gain a little perspective.

2) Watch yourself angry. Roger Federer used to throw his racquet in anger during his earlier days and says watching himself throwing tantrums put him off it for life. The angry are often proud of their anger. Even if they leave a scene having achieved nothing (such as shouting at another car driver from behind the closed windows of their car). Re imagine in your head the scene again. You will feel embarrassed of yourself.

3) Take care of yourself. Most of the time you will find you are angry because of alcohol, hunger, stress, fatigue, unmet needs, PMS. Get some sleep; take some time off; streamline your week; delegate; relax; improve your diet. In short, look after yourself.

4) Become less judgemental – Most of the things in life are matter of opinion and not fact. Some religion propagates worshiping of cow and some eats beef. You may object to lovers kissing on public benches; there will almost always be someone who agrees with you, and others who staunchly oppose you. If you think its “Just the way I was brought up” or “my way of doing things”—then it is silly to judge others for not following them. It helps to remind yourself of the many different ways in which humans around the world operate.

5) Understand that anger is a problem. Anger is an in effective way of working in this world. It will mostly backfire and ruin relationships. Studies say 80% of the time people direct their anger on their family and friends. These are not the people you wish to intimidate. Understand that having a warm relationship is the key to emotional health and well-being. And if you cannot sort it out yourself, seek professional help like I did. There is no shame in going to a Doctor to sort it out. It is like any other disease.

Anger is counterproductive. Anger hurts not just ourselves but many others as well. Always look at the bigger picture. Replace anger with love, gratitude and purpose. You will be a winner. You will build a solid foundation to ‘Reboot your life’.

It’s been a week since the first Retreat of Communion concluded and I am still struggling with words to describe what it was like, for me. The experience was way beyond what I had ever envisioned and wished for. In just 60 hours of being together, we went from #WeMetOnTwitter to ‘it feels like a family’. Together, we laughed, we cried, we questioned, we debated, we sang, we danced, we prayed, we indulged (in sinful food), we walked (15,000+ steps/day). We made memories. We shared experiences. life stories, struggles, opinions, learnings and ideas through 20 interactive sessions spanning over 900+ minutes and endless cups of chai. None of us had ever experienced anything like this ever – a communion that’s unique in so many ways.

Enjoy this short video montage to get a feel of what the Retreat was like. This short video (compiled by Sangeet Kothari) is made with candid video clips and images from various different phones and in low light conditions, hence please ignore the quality.

We are working on different ways to share our learnings from sessions at the Retreat. Stay tuned for more.

Due to some malfunctioning in Two level authentication, I am unable to log in to my twitter account for last three days. The first day I faced a lot of anxiety and was not focused much on any other activity but now have accepted that it is what it is and when ever my mail reaches the support team, they will solve it. But the new learning has been how much control the social media companies have on our life, mood and stress. Will do an issue of newsletter on this in coming weeks. At this time, if you have any contact at Twitter, please mail me back to help on this. Thanks

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We have also archived all the old issues and you can access them at www.sandeepmall.com. They contain some very good tool kits to take charge of your well being.

See you next week .