Today I will write to you about a person whom I know and whom I don’t know at the same time. How come? Well, I have met Ashvini Kumar Saxena online, on Facebook to be exact. We became friends there and soon I got to know that he runs a website, a blog about entrepreneurship.

In the friendship that developed further through conversations online as well as on phone we found out that we have in many ways similar ideas and approaches – even though our fields are very different from each other. I can however recommend Ashvini’s blog without any hesitation to any blogger and business owner – be that an online business or even a physical shop.

With clarity and humour he provides valuable advice and many bigger and smaller tips for bloggers who would like to establish online writing as their business, for internet business owners and other entrepreneurs who are looking for help online. Whether it is ideas for better team work or a better relationship with your customers, advice on how to use Facebook right or how to deal with people who are constantly negative about your success, Ashvini gives his message in understandable words and clearly expressing not only facts but also his personal opinion.

In this way you get some personal insights and get to know that he is not only a good writer but also a supportive and positive person. Always ready to help you out with a link, a post or a comment on your blog, Ashvini is a friend whose blog posts I always enjoy to read.

I am not very fond of watching movies. I just don’t like the unreal fantasy world of stars and actors. I like real life and I know that the world has much more for us to discover than we know until now. This is how you can only get me to watch TV with two things: either news or a good documentary.

I am lucky and happy that I can call a very good documentary maker my friend. Antje Christ, living and working in Cologne, Germany, is script-writer, director and producer in one. She visits different countries of the world, wherever there is an interesting story, be that an individual’s fate or an exotic country’s specialty that is mostly unknown. With her team she films from inside a culture, showing what a tourist can hardly ever expect to see or understand. Her movies show what you did not expect to see, they show another angle and they give you some new information. With Christ Media you can explore the world from within your living room.

While her documentaries are usually made for and broadcasted on German TV channels, there is always an English version for international audiences, too. This has made it possible for her to show me some of her movies which express another love of hers apart of making good documentaries – the love for India. Among her many documentaries there are already several about India:

Dabbawala The Lunchbox Miracle – a prize-winning documentary about those men of Mumbai who bring lunchboxes to every office of the metropolis

Always Food! India´s Mobile Kitchens – a documentary that takes you to the streets of Hyderabad and the contrasts of street vendors and fast food restaurants

Gulabi Gang The pink revolution – a report about a group of women, dressed in pink saris, fighting for the rights of women in India’s rural areas

I enjoyed all three of these productions because they were long enough to inform the viewer about something he has never heard of and at the same time short and compact, so that you don’t have a chance to get bored!

I am already looking forward to see the result of her current project for which she came again to India to shoot, this time in Delhi: a documentary about weddings and marriages in India. Christ Media has a repertoire of documentaries of several different countries and I am sure you will find something that is interesting for you, too!

We all know about the power of music. Everybody has felt some time in life that music can change your mood completely. Music makes you happy, music makes you dance, soft music makes you calm and helps you relax. Different scientists have experimented with this value of music and how it works with your brains and nerves. I am glad to know someone who is effectively using all those benefits that music gives the body, mind and with that the soul: my friend, the sound therapist Thomas Meisenheimer.

I got to know Thomas several years ago as a musician and have in the following years visited many of his concerts of Sitar and Rudra Veena. He told me about the sound therapy work that he does at his school for handicapped children. These children suffer from various mental and physical problems and often have no possibility to express their emotions which is why they get stored up and show in aggressive behavior. When they come to Thomas however, they have the chance to relax. One sound massage session and they get visibly calm and peaceful.

Of course a sound massage has this effect not only on children! I had the pleasure of experiencing a sound massage myself in his “Klang Tempel”, the “sound temple”. Thomas welcomes you and invites you to lie down on the sound massage table, a tabe with strings underneath. Lying comfortably you don’t only hear him play the strings under your body but feel the vibration of each note streaming through your body from head to toe.

It is an incredibly relaxing experience. Feeling the sound running through your body like waves, deeper tones filling the space around you like a protective shield and higher tones reaching every pore of your body, makes you experience your body in a very different way. Your mind follows the gentle moves of the tones instead of jumping from one thought to another and you thus reach a state of deep meditation – simply by lying there.

I am really not a person who is affected much by stress or tension but I can very well imagine the big benefits people can reap from this therapy! Tension, stress and pressure will simply fall off your shoulders! I have witnessed it myself and many others have had great results, even in difficult situations as burnout and depression.

Sound therapy by Thomas Meisenheimer is something I can always recommend if you want to relax from a busy day, week, month or year! His website is currently in German and he usually offers his sound therapy at the Klang Tempel in Wiesbaden, Germany. But he regularly visits India and you can even enjoy his sound relaxation at our Ashram in India.