Hi, all! I just returned from successfully donating blood with the Red Cross. (I’ve been rejected for low iron before.)
I’m wondering – does yoga wisdom offer any thoughts on giving blood specifically? Or is that a western/battlefield medicine type thing to do, and folks like Patanjali never really thought about it?
I ask out of curiosity.
Hi Techne,
Patanjali wrote his yoga sutras somewhere between 250BC and 250AD, at that stage there was no knowledge or any associated practices refering to blood transfusions. You can read here a concise history of blood transfusions. So I think Patanjali is mum on it because it is basically a very modern medical invention and practice.
From a yoga pov, I am very pro blood transfusion, I think if you have the opportunity to save a life and when one has that opportunity it should be used.
Personally I would not take any blood, for that reason I have selected people with the same blood type as my own (B+) whose blood I will take in case of an emergency. These friends are all yogis, living very clean lives physically and spiritually and with whom I am confortable.
On another level, I think that blood transfusion is so symbolic of the Kali Yug whose element is iron and our blood is also iron, yours was rejected because it contained too little iron. So perhaps in the Kali Yug, this practice of blood transfusion has a deeper symbolic meaning which yet have to contemplated.
It never occured to people because our knowledge of anatomy and it’s science is relatively knew.
Yes, they know blood, but from another, more spiritual perpective.
For example, Arjuna’s struggle were an inner one exactly because he had to fight his very blood. Now we use this a a figure of speech, but back than, it was really true. Only strenghtened by the teaching of Krishna did he manage to overcome the laws of the blood written and acting in his own body with more compelling strenght than we are able imagine today.
There comes a time for most when the path bifurcates: one side, the laws of blood, nature, and another one, that of the Spirit.
An interesting question would be, if the blood donated-given carries any particular astrality or not. There is an interesting law gave by Moses, what says: do not eat the flesh togheter with the blood what makes it alive …
and Pandara’s post seems to hint towards this direction, too.
KNEW
my english is getting worse
too much community service these weeks - gotta spend some quality time with myself
[QUOTE=Techne;21492]Hi, all! I just returned from successfully donating blood with the Red Cross. (I’ve been rejected for low iron before.)
.[/QUOTE]
This answer has nothing to do with yoga.
Eat foods rich in iron like spinach. Do you remember the movies with Popeye the Sailor ? Whenever he needed force (basically for brawling) he ate spinach…and beat his opponents.
Bananas are great for their contents of vitamins and minerals.
Cheers.