Thursday, January 24, 2013

Lean StartUps are powered by Design Thinking

Lean Entrepreneurship is all about "searching for a repeatable and scalable business model", according to Steve Blank and Eric Reyes.

The focus of this search is Customer Development: Customer Discovery and Customer Validation.

Guess what? This is what Design Thinking is all about: an iteration process to find out what the customer wants: the ultimate emotional experience.

And all buying decisions are emotional. Don't let anyone tell you differently (read Pitch Tips - Unlocking your customer's Brain).

So Design Thinking powers the process of aligning our Value Proposition (and the Minimal Viable Product - MVP) with Customer Needs.

A CEO needs to be a Design Thinker.

EMPATHY IS THE HEART OF MARKET/PRODUCT FIT

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Be mindful and healthy - a 12 mins daily practice from Tibetan Tantric Yoga

The essence of TibetanTantric teaching is that the body is the vehicle for the transformation of the mind. In other words, Mindfulness starts with the body (see previous post).

I advise everyone to take a tutorial from Fast2Yoga  (Tibetan Tantric Yoga) - a 12 minutes practice of Lu Jong: the 5 elements (space, earth, wind, fire, water). These 5 exercises (meditation in movement), though very simple, are the cornerstone of Tibetan Tantric Yoga: the fastest path towards lasting happiness.

These exercises also give us vitality and rejuvenation: the 5 elements exercises focus especially on the spine thus allowing us to develop a healthy central nervous system.

There are three very essential prerequisites for vitality and rejuvenation: a healthy central nervous system (brain and spine), healthy glands and healthy internal organs.

Lu Jong, the Tibetan healing yoga improves the health of the body, mind and spirit. This series of movements cultivates our self-healing capacity by releasing physical and mental blockages and harmonizing our flow of energy. Rooted in Tibetan Medicine, the Lu Jong exercises restore the balance of the elements and humors – vital substances – of the body and increase the flexibility of the spine. Through a rhythmic combination of position, movement and breath, this practice cultivates conducive conditions for meditation by calming and focusing the mind.
If you finish this practice with the 5 elements massage from the Kum Nye practice, then the benefits will rise exponentially.

The Kum Nye Massage can regenerate and balance the whole energy system by opening chakras, or blocked points, on the gross, physical level. Various massage techniques are used to release blocks and cramping in order to relax the muscles. This massage has a special benefit for those that do hard physical labor, those who train the body through sports or other body movement practices, as well as for those with a sedentary way of life that suffer from tension. Kum Nye makes us feel more balanced and increases strength and vitality.
The combination of this two practices is the balance of all elements and through that, the balance of body and mind.


the spine is more critical to our well-being than the brain
Nerves from the brain and spine go to every tissue in the body and therefore the health of every tissue in the body depends upon the health of the brain and spine.

Since the nerves from the spine go to all the organs and glands of the body, a healthy spine obviously plays an important role in vitality and rejuvenation. In fact, the spine is more critical to our well-being than the brain, since the brain is well protected by the cranium or skull bone. Whereas the spinal nerves have no protection.

The ancient Tibetan yogis fully understood the vulnerability of the spine and the importance of keeping it healthy and flexible.

If you do nothing to improve your spine's flexibility as you get older, your spine will deteriorate further and the spinal nerves will be increasingly impinged upon. This will lead to further deterioration of your organs and glands, until eventually their actual structure becomes diseased. We call this organic disease. At this stage, not only is their function impaired, but their cells are actually dying. If the condition is too advanced, it is irreversible. It's at this stage that many people go to doctors and are told that they have, for example, cancer of some particular organ. The cancer has not appeared overnight; in reality it has been developing for many years. source


Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Mindfulness starts with the body

Practices of Tibetan Tantric Yoga, like Lu Jong and Tog Chöd taught by Fast Yoga, allows us to develop a blissful body in a mindful mind.


Check how neurocientists are researching the use of Mindfulness therapies in reducing chronic pain and depression relapse (link - Frontiers in Human NeuroScience).

In this study, the researchers conclude that " the proposed framework aligns with Buddhist teachings that mindfulness starts with “mindfulness of the body.” 

Translating this theory into neurophysiology, we hypothesize that mindfulness practitioners better detect and regulate when their mind wanders. This enhanced regulation of somatic mind-wandering may be an early stage of mindfulness training, leading to cognitive regulation and metacognition."