The Latest Breaking News from Times Life

The Chakra System Was Never About Healing: What Tantric Texts Actually Taught About Prana and Consciousness

The Text Nobody Cites When They Sell You a CrystalThe most detailed classical account of the chakra system is the Sat-Chakra-Nirupana, written in the 16th century by the Bengali Tantric scholar Purnananda. It describes six primary chakras along the sushumna nadi, the central channel running through the subtle body, plus…

Times Life · Jul 18

Why the Shodashopachara Puja Has Sixteen Steps: The Hindu Logic of a Sacred Number

A number that carries its own theologySixteen appears in Hindu sacred thought with a consistency that stops feeling like coincidence somewhere around the third text you read. The moon has sixteen kalas, the fifteen visible phases of waxing and waning, and a sixteenth that never rises or sets, called the…

Times Life · Jul 18

What Shatavari Actually Does to Female Hormones: 5 Research-Backed Effects on Women

It Works Differently Depending on Where You Are in Your Hormonal CycleShatavari (Asparagus racemosus) does not push estrogen in one fixed direction. It contains steroidal saponins called shatavarins that behave as phytoestrogens, they bind to estrogen receptors but produce a weaker signal than the body's own estradiol. In women with…

Times Life · Jul 18

The Axolotl Can Regrow Its Own Heart, And Scientists Are Studying It to Understand Human Healing

A creature that does not scarCut off an axolotl's leg and it grows back. Not approximately, the bone, muscle, nerves, and skin return in the correct arrangement, fully functional, within weeks. The same happens with its heart muscle after damage, with segments of its spinal cord after injury, and with…

Times Life · Jul 17

Sleeping Less Than 7 Hours a Week Wrecks Your Decision-Making and Judgment More Than You Realise

Your Brain Lies to You About How Impaired You AreThe most dangerous thing about sleeping less than 7 hours is not the tiredness. It is the confidence. A landmark study by Hans Van Dongen at the University of Pennsylvania tracked participants restricted to 6 hours of sleep per night for…

Times Life · Jul 17

3 Bedtime Habits Quietly Wrecking Your Sleep Quality and Melatonin Levels Every Night

The Screen That Tells Your Brain It's Still NoonThe blue light emitted by phone and laptop screens suppresses melatonin production, the hormone your body uses to signal that sleep is due. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that reading on a light-emitting device…

Times Life · Jul 17

The Curly Hair Routine Indian Women Need That Is Not Borrowed From Western Curl Culture

Why the Curly Girl Method keeps failing Indian hairThe Curly Girl Method was developed in the early 2000s by Lorraine Massey for a North American and European market. The products it recommends, the protein-moisture balance it prescribes, and the dew-point rules it insists on were calibrated for hair that grows…

Times Life · Jul 17

Curly and Coily Hair Textures in Indian Women Are Finally Getting the Recognition They Deserve

The mirror told you a lie for a long timeYou were probably seven or eight the first time someone ran a comb through your curls and sighed. Not a cruel sigh. Just the kind that meant: this is going to be work. The aunty at the parlour, the school photograph,…

Times Life · Jul 17

What Chemical Hair Colour Does to Indian Hair Texture and How to Repair the Damage

What chemical colour actually does inside the hair shaftPermanent hair colour works by forcing the cuticle open with an alkaline agent, usually ammonia, so that hydrogen peroxide can bleach existing melanin and let the new pigment molecules settle in. For Indian hair, which tends to carry dense, tightly packed melanin…

Times Life · Jul 17

Falling in Love After 40: Why the Fear Is Real and Why the Healing Runs Deeper Than You Think

The fear has a very precise shapeYou are not afraid of love in the abstract. You are afraid of a specific Tuesday afternoon when someone you have let in goes quiet and you cannot tell if it means something or nothing. You are afraid of rearranging your kitchen for a…

Times Life · Jul 17