Ashtanga Yoga - India Experience

International Yoga Festival

2009-07-16T21:00:00.000+05:30

Saturday (28) - Arriving at Parmarth Niketan Ashram

bought blanket

International Yoga Festival - Sunday 1
Today was the start of the International Yoga Festival in Rishikesh. This is the festival I just missed two years ago when I arrived from Paharganj, where I had attended the Dalai Lama's teachings for a few days. However, it was a divine plan that helped me walk into this ashram, of all the ashrams that are here in Rishikesh, and that is why I am here today. This year is the 8th year the festival is being held and there are almost 400 participants here. There were about 500 participants here last year, and the decline is probably due to the Mumbai bombings last year and the recession.

This morning I did not attend the Kundalini Sadhana (spiritual practice) which starts at 4am every day. My body was still adjusting to the cold temperature and recovering from the long journey, so I had decided to skip that session. I started at 6:30 doing Sukshma Yoga with Swami Yogananda who was born in 1909, i.e.: he is 99 years old. He was quite something, shouting orders very fiercely in another language while a translator gave us direction, although the Swami knows English and would occasionally speak some English. He started doing some simple warm-up exercises and then moved on to some asanas, but finished with some very advanced asanas, including Matsyendrasana with one leg in half lotus and Yoga Nidra (both legs behind the head), which of course nobody could do, especially since we in a large tent and was very cold.

We had some light snacks like a banana and a bit of porridge and tea and next I attended Deep Yoga with Bhava Ram and Sundari Ram. Bhava Ram has an interesting experience of Yoga, since he used Yoga and Ayurveda to heal his broken back and recover from stage 4 cancer. He started the class playing the guitar and chanting a mantra to Shiva, the father of yoga. The class was not very vigorous as I expect most classes will be, but I need to relinquish my attachment of the hard ashtanga asana practice for a while. What I am feeling though, is that because I am experiencing so many different yoga styles so quickly, I am feeling ungrounded, and this is another reasone I am missing my ashtanga practice... a regular practice and a practice that I know, and a grounding practice.

At 10:15 there was brunch, which is one of two big meals we have in the day. The food is extremely sweet, which I am not enjoying. The porridge is already prepared with so much sugar, you cannot taste the porridge, only the texture. I am missing the fruit salads and dosas I had in Mysore.

At 11:30 there was lecture in the big tent, which was not very interesting. The big tent that they have put up for the festival has been decorated nicely with white and gold linen sheets creating a false ceiling on which the monkeys like to climb and look at us through the gaps. One of them decided to pee right above me. Luckily it just missed me and went onto my yoga mat... I guess I was blessed by the Indian monkey god called Hanuman :-)

At 13:15 was the first Reiki session, which was a simple introduction. She will do this every day during the festival at the same time and if we attend all of the sessions we will gain the level 1 Reiki certification.
At 15:00 I attended the Shinto Yoga class. This was very interesting and it had a very big Japanese influence. We did sun salutations the shinto way, both standing and kneeling and then we did some things on our backs, which he said was like a fish writhing. We had to do it for thirty seconds or more, which became quite difficult. Towards the end I felt like I was back in a martial arts class when we were facing a partner holding there hand and trying to throw each other off balance, but it was a very playfull atmosphere which was enjoyable. At then end we each got a piece of paper and a pebble from the ganges, which he said will help us clear our minds while we practice Dharana (concentration).

At 17:00 was the welcoming ceremony, during which some of the boys at the school in the ashram showed us some yoga poses. They were incredible, but what struck me was that the poses were sloppy, just like Krishnamacharya in his 1938 video, which Nancy had mentioned during her retreat. According to the book "The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace", it was only BKS Iyengar who introdruced precision into the asanas, and the west has taken this even further applying anatomical science. Afterwards was the evening aarti (devotional singing), which happens on the banks of the ganges every evening. At 19:00 was finally dinner. I am finding that I am extremely hungry here, even though I am eating a lot, which I think is due to the colder temperatures. After dinner there were Indian cultural dances, which went on until just before 22:00.

IYF - Monday 2
I was late for the 6:30 class, so instead I decided to practice Ashtanga in the room, which by the way I am sharing with Prana, a guy who runs the ZenDen Mountain Retreat near Cape Town. The space was cramped but it felt good and I got up to Janu Shirshasana and then did finishing sequence so that I would be in time for the next class, which was Kundalini Yoga with Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa. She seems to be a big favourite with everybody and she seems to have been teaching at the festival for years already. She does not teach in the tent or in one of the large rooms in the three story building, but she teaches on the ghat (steps next to the ganges river). Yesterday I did not want to do this because I was very cold, but it had actually warmed up a bit since I arrived on Saturday and when I got onto the ghat I was happy I came, because it was so very beautiful.

I had attended very few Kundalini classes before and hated all of them until I did Gurmukh's workshop in South Africa last year in May. I did enjoy it, but I was still not convinced this was my cup of tea, so I had a little worry in the back of my mind. I did not need to worry though, because the Kundalini Yoga class was fantastic. Gurmukh's theme was one of Yogi Bhajan's (founder of this lineage of Kundalini yoga) sayings, "Understand through compassion, otherwise you will missunderstand the times", and she talked about the fact that we all pick our parents, our bodies etc through our karma and that we make a living by what we get, but that we live by what we give. Then she made us shake our bodies while sitting with our arms raised above our heads for about ten minutes and then another eight minutes standing up. I think my shoulders felt like my arms were lead after the first minute, but then the pain subsided and I could hold my arms up throughout and I felt elated. The session was quite similar to what Gurmukh had taught in South Africa. We finished by clapping hands while sitting in a circle in groups of four, chanting "Sat Nam", "Har" and "I god, you god".

Then we had breakfast at around eleven and I did not attend the lecture afterwards. The Reiki was very nice and we learnt more about the seven energy centres or chakras in our bodies. I then did the Vyayam Yoga session, which I found very interesting. The only problem I had with the session, like so many Indian teachers, they do not introduce themselves or their session. He started by singing and playing the harmonium with two assistants. He then did pranayama with us, but while we were doing the pranayama (seated) there was a lot of arm movement and mudras that we had to do.
He then handed over to one of his assistants, a young teenager I think with a shaved head, except for some long hair flowing down from the top portion of the back of her head. This seems to be something a lot of kids do here... need to find out more about this. Anyway, she then took us through some movements and explained that the movement follows the breath, so this was very similar to ashtanga, and the breath was also ujjayi. The movements were very circular and flowing continuously, there were no postures and the whole system is based on a system used by ancient Indian warriors, so one movement for instance was supposed to look like drawing a sword from the sheath. The hands and arms move with strength in the muscles, however, we should not be thinking of the muscles moving the body, but the breath, which is exactly what Gurmukh was teaching in the Kundalini class this morning.

I then went and had a "swim", more like a quick three dips in the cold waters of mother ganga with my room mate Prana. We bought a ready made small basket of flowers with a candle, lit the candle and sent it down the river before we entered the water.

Brunch at 10:30 and Dinner at 19:00 are almost always the same with two types of rice, dhal, kitcheree, chapati and naan, some vegetables such as carrots and green beans and sometimes some ochre. So it is very monotonous, but the desert is always different. Today was gulab jamoon and I had a total of nine of them... they were sooooo good! After dinner was satsang (divine association) with Pujya Swamiji, who is the head of the ashram where the festival is at. Pujya Swamiji seems to be a very well known spiritual leader, as I have seen pictures of him with the Dalai Lama, with Bill Clinton and with the Israely Prime Minister. Swamiji's right hand person, an american lady, who renounced the material life to lead a spiritual life of service to others unser Swamiji's guidance, who lives at the ashram talked about the first two yamas from the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga, namely Ahimsa (non-violence) and Satya (Truth). Ahimsa included mentioning that we should not eat meat as this could save our lives, our families lives and the earths life. Apparently there is no food shortage in the world, only a distribution problem, as we feed the grain to cows, chicken and pigs, that could feed the poor instead. Regarding truth, she said that we should always ensure that our words serve a purpose and are kind. She used the metaphor of the monks cleaning a clay Buddha and finding gold in a crack and then discovering that there is a clay Buddha hidden behind the clay, which was put on the statue to protect it from warriors who were marauding the country. The truth does not always need to be the cold heartless facts that are required in a court of law.
Pujya Swamiji was then asked a question about how we can make a difference considering all the poverty around us and he answered that we should live a simple life and give to those in need.

IYF - Tuesday 3
In the morning I attended a Kriya Yoga or Nada Yoga session with Sadhvi Abha Saraswati, who gives month long training to lead chants. We started off with some pranayama exercises and then went onto singing the Vaidika Shanti Mantra and she was really good because she actually was very clear on which syllables are high notes and low notes. There are only three notes, the middle one being the same as OM. There is a fourth note, which is a double note, which she explained in the Gaayatri Mahaa Mantra, which I have already mentioned in my blog about Kirtan with James. Then we moved onto the Mrtyujaya Mantra, which I love and we finished with the Asatoma chant. I can only tell you what the names of the mantras are because she actually handed out books with the words, so that is quiet nice!!!

After a quick snack I headed off for another session of Kundalini Yoga with Gurmukh. My calves are stiff from jumping around yesterday. She actually arrived on time today and was quite funny when she welcomed the newcomers, saying that those of us who attended the first few sessions will have stopped wondering, "Where are the downdogs?" as there are none. Kundalini is very different to normal Hatha yoga, and I can only remember doing one asana with her so far, namely Ushtrasana (Camel pose). Today she actually made us hold camel pose for a full three minutes while chanting "I will not take the bait" (of complaining and having a normal negative mindset). She gave us another hard class with the theme being another of Yogi Bhajans sayings "See others as yourself." My shoulders were really saw from her class because we were holding up our arms almost the entire class starting at 8:15 and she ended late again at 10:40. The partner work I did with Indra whom I had met in Mysore. She is from Malaysia and actually taught a workshop on kids yoga in Mysore, which I had missed. The end of the class was very enjoyable. Gurmukh asked an american lady who had studied Bangra dancing in India for six years to lead us in dancing bangra to two songs after which we got into a huge circle holding hands and singing and then repeating something the Dalai Lama had said.

After the big brunch, was a lecture with Pujya Swamiji during which he talked about what it means to be a yogi. It mainly means that a yogi is always content - santosha (one of the niyamas in Patanjalis Yoga Sutras). We should always be content. The reason people are unhappy is because they constantly want more and he said when he came to Rishikesh there were no shops between the ashram and Laksman Jhula (pedestrian bridge) and Ram Jhula did not exist, so people had to walk (this side of the ganges river is a pedestrian only zone) all the way up to Lakshman Jhula to go buy something and people were happy with that. He talked about a poor beggar within whom he saw a yogi, because the beggar was not complaining. He said god wanted him there, and his journey was over.
He also said that everybody we worship today is someone who had special powers, and that those people went through tests without complaining and always used their powers or gifts to help others and never to help themselves. We should accept the divine plan.
He made two other points, namely that we need to be consistent and that we should practice moderation and he finished by saying that the yamas and niyamas are the foundation of yoga - union with the divine. We can miss our asana and pranayama practice, but we should always keep the connection with the people around us and see the divine in everyone.
After some questions he concluded saying that the most important of the yamas and niyamas is surrender!

Afterwards was another Reiki session and then I wanted to attend the Om Meditation session, but I went to my room as I was in a bit of pain and have trouble sitting. Don't know exactly when I got hurt, but hopefully my left QL muscle will recover soon. In the evening after dinner was a cultural musical performance in the tent organised by the Uttarakhand (state) Tourism Department. It was absolutely fantastic. I was very unhappy because my camera battery packed up! What was also sad was that hardly any of the yogi's attending the IYF actually attended. I was there with Almendra from Mexico and Jetal from the USA. There were probably less than 10 others. However, lots of Indian people from outside had come including lots of kids, as well as all the Rishikumars (orphans and other poor kids going to school in the ashram) of course.

IYF - Wednesday 4
The program for today was slightly different in that there were no classes at 6:30, instead there was a walk up behind the ashram into the Himalayas with Pujya Swamiji. He seems quite fit because the pace was quite good. The walk was only an hour, so I was disappointed when we had to turn back. Afterwards I decided not to do Kundalini again as my back was still not happy. There were quite a number of other people who had sore legs or other complaints from the Kundalini yoga. I attended the Deep Yoga (San Diego) class again, which was very new agey again, but it is very grounding and nurturing.

At Brunch they served masala dosas today, which everybody enjoyed. The lecture today was with Dr David Frawley and his wife on Lord Shiva and Shakti energies. I had bought one of Dr Frawley's books during the trip on Ayurveda and yoga, and everybody else also seemed quite excited about the lecture, as he is I think the only westerner ever to have officially been recognised as a master of Vedanta. Kerry had heard him speak before the last time she came to the conference and said he was too intellectual and she went to bed as she had had no sleep. The lecture was very intellectual and Iola from Cape Town just immediately lay down and dozed because it was straight over the top of her head. I started taking notes furiously, but there was so much new information I could not keep up. I was also lying down on my chest so that I could take notes and not feel any pain, but lying down was not conducive to staying alert. At one stage I realised that his wife was speaking and I did not remember when she took over from him.

Straight afterwards was another Reiki session, and then into another session, so three sessions back to back, one and a half hours long each. The third session I chose to go to a Kundalini yoga class taught by Siddhi, an elderly german lady, who teaches hand mudras. Other people had loved her class and I also really enjoyed it, but again not something that I see myself practicing daily in the near future. We basically sat for the entire one and a half hours, learnt several mudras and then she put on some music and we would do the mudras in a sequence chanting to the music at the same time, so it was quite enjoyable.

IYF - Thursday 5
Sat-chit-anand

IYF - Friday 6

Final week in Mysore

2009-07-16T17:59:00.000+05:30

Monday (23) - Shivavratri
Today is Shivavratri, so it is public holiday and there is no practice. Guruji is devotee of Shiva, and traditionally Shiva is regarded as the lord of the yogis. The first thing I did in the morning is drive into town and have breakfast at the Hotel Original Mylari. I mentioned this last week Friday in my blog when I went searching for it. They only serve dosas and idlis, so they are their specialty. I had eater here two years ago with Myra and Jay. A plate of 3 idli's or a dosa is Rs 13 and I had five in total :-). Feeling satisfied I hopped onto my scooter and drove up Chamundi hill to the temple. Two years ago I had been up two or three times, and had walked up the 1000 or more steps. This trip I had not been up once, so it was time I went and it was also a good occasion to do it because it was Shivavratri and people are all going to the temple's to do Puja. Chamundi Hill is apparently one of the eight sacred hills in South India. I had never driven up by myself, so it was a fun new experience. At the top I also visited the "Godly Museum", which is run by the Brahma Kumaris. It was a room containing murals explaining Raja Yoga, the science for attaining purity, peace and bliss, as taught by Shiva, the lord of the yogis.

When I got home at about 10:30 I joined five other yogis at Ganesh's place to do yoga nidra. Before we started Ganesh told us a little of what Shiva represents in the Vedic and Tantric traditions which was very interesting. I don't know if this is all right, because Ganesh is very difficult to understand. He cannot pronounce F. Sanskrit does not use F and he uses P instead, and he cannot say sh, which sounds like s, so when he was trying to talk about a fish, we all took some time to figure out what he was trying to say... Anyway, the E represents energy in Sheva and without E, it becomes Shva, which is death in sanskrit I think. The lingam of Shiva represents the universe and the womb (female). He told us of a story that Sheva asked Brahma and Vishnu to find the ends of the universe. Vishnu became and eagle and flew down to find the end but could not find it. He came back and was honest and said he could not find the bounds of the universe. Brahma became the swan and flew up to find it. He also could not find it, but bribed a flower to be his witness that he had found the edge. When he returned with the flower, Shiva knew he was lying and cursed the flower. The flower is apparently very very beautiful, but it is now never used in worship, and it has no scent. Sheva also cursed Brahma, and Ganesh said that you will find many temples worshipping Vishnu and Shiva in India, but none worshipping Brahma.
He also talked about the consciousness of both Parvati and Shiva being united and this represents brahmacharya, being married to one woman and this gives man the ability to stay focused. This relates to the what Sharath was talking about at conference yesterday.
The Yoga Nidra was an hour long today and again was really deep. The hour absolutely flew by, so really fantastic... and cannot pinpoint how he does it, but when I do lie down after my practice to meditate it is never this deep or feels this quick even though is is only ten to fifteen minutes.
Afterwards Amy and I went and had some fuit salad and she told me a little about Richard Freeman's Teacher Training. By then it was already 2pm and I went home to "take rest".

Sometime after four I went to the Ice Cream corner and had four scoops of ice cream after which I drove into town. Sauhardy bookstore was closed but I went into Rashinkar and spend over two hours looking at books. When I came out it was already 19:30 and the palace was all lit up, which normally only happens on Sundays between 7 and 8pm. On this trip I have not had a chance to do this, so this was my last opportunity. It was so beautiful seeing the palace and the huge walls surrounding the palace all lit up but I did not have my camera with me... I drove around the palace and then went home to get my camera hoping that the palace will still be lit when I got back, because it was Shivavratri, but that was not going to happen. By the time I got back it was back to normal lighting, but I spent time in the palace grounds watching the people lining up to do puja in the temple, kids and families playing in the gardens. Everybody loves having their picture taken, and people are all in a very good mood.

Tuesday (24) - Day trip
This morning I woke up at 8 and went to the maha idli man and had 5 dosas and 2 idli for 26 Rs. I knew that this was going to be the last time I would see him in a very long time, if ever, which was a sad thing. Mysore is a very beautiful city with lots of parks and green spaces, some really good restaurants and shops, a wonderful community of yogis, a yoga tradition second to none and a lot of history it can be proud of and it has become like a home for me. I have spent 2 months already here in total and have gotten to know the city very well and am often telling new people where to go and what to do.
After breakfast I wondered around the area and took some photographs of daily Indian life and then I drove to guruji's old shala and took photo's of it. I then went back home and spent 3 hours on the net. I was worried about getting a sunburn and decided to browse on the net even though I had planned to go on a day trip to the Bird Sanctuary and Srirangapatna.

By one o'clock, I really had enough of the internet though. I went home, shaved my head again and then by two I was on the KRS road towards Bangalore, with the sun beating down on my left. I found some boys swimming in the river and took some photographs. The bird sanctuary was nothing spectacular, however, the tranquility was wonderful and rejuvenating. I then went in search of the town of Srirangapatna, which contains the ruins of Hyder Ali and Sultan Tipu's capital, from which they ruled much of southern India during the 18th century. In 1799, the British defeated them and this marked the start of British expansion into southern India. At first I was very disappointed when I found it, because all I saw were some broken walls with lots of litter, but as I drove further into town, I found more of the ruins with actual signs indicating what they were. Seeing the ruins would definitely require a lot of walking if you did not have your own mode of transport, as they were very dispersed. I spent quite a bit of time there and by the time I was ready to head back home it was already after 5pm.

On my way back I drove to Sapna Book store to buy copies of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. There are many english translations of these Indian epics and I had been researching and asking people which one would be the best to get. James, the sanskrit student leading the Kirtans on Wednesdays, asked his Indian teachers and they suggested a particular auther, C. Rajagopalachari, who also happended to be a statesman and politician in India and a close associate of Mahatma Ghandi, who had written the books in Tamil and then rewrote them in English. During the morning I had looked at reviews on Amazon and decided that I was happy with this version.

I then went to meet Beth and Stuart, whom I met in Kovalam four weeks ago, at the Cafe Amarena across from the Mysore Palace. Stuart has just arrived and Beth has been staying at the Mysore Mandala Yogashala and she had written me an email some time ago wanting to buy me a drink as I had apparently helped her achieve the jump throughs. We chatted and had dinner until 9, when I finally left.

Wednesday (25) -
hit in the kahunas

lunch at stand up

speak to Sharath

shopping in town, bought the abridged Ramayana and a book on meditation as well as a lungi

Bombay Tiffany's

Thursday (26) - Final Massage
3 new poses

Final massage

Sandhya

washing

sanskrit

Chocolate

yoga bag, kurta, T-shirt

Robyn

Bombay Tiffany's Kaju Laddu, Jalebi, Mysore Pak, Kheer Khadam Basundi made with semolina

Friday (27) - Travelling to Rishikesh
lead class

Third Week in Mysore

2009-02-24T18:47:00.002+05:30

Monday (16) - More books
When I got to the shala in the morning at around 6:25 (6:40 shala time), almost an hour before my alloted time the week before, the foyer was full of people already waiting. It seemed that a lot of people were doing what I was doing. I waited for all the people in front of me to get a space and by the time I got a space it was five to seven. Today's practice was good. I am now doing Pashasana and going straight into back-bends without waiting for Sharath to give me another pose, but I am doing Pashasana twice each side. Saraswati came to help me with backbending today and I am feeling my backbends being really deep, but I don't feel any pain and my SI pain from last week is also gone.

At the massage course we finished the front of the legs and afterwards I went to the Sapna bookstore and then back to Ashok bookstores in town where I found the book "The Yoga tradition of the Mysore Palace", which I skimmed through. It mentioned that Krishnamacharya opened his yoga school in 1901 and that the numbers of yoga students in those days already were declining (today there are very few Indians doing yoga) and that he had to close his school in 1950. I drew parallels to Joseph Pilates who dreamed of his exercise method to be popularized around the world. Now look at Pilates and Yoga around the world. Both Krishnamacharya and Pilates never saw in their lifetime how popular their contribution to humanity would become. The book also revealed that vinyasa (breath and movement) seemed to be the traditional style of yoga and Iyengar changed this to hold poses for ten to fifteen minutes and seperate pranayama, as he believed the movement distracted from the concentration of the mind during the pose and he brought more precision into each pose.

On the way home I visited the Ramakrishna bookstore, which is incredibly cheap. It has material on all religions including Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam etc and little books explaining things like Vedanta Philosophy, meditation etc. India really is the most spiritual country in the world I think, except maybe Tibet. In 5000 years of its history India has also never waged war against any other nation, but has been invaded many times. I bought something on Vedanta Philosophy.

In the Contact Improvisation course we worked on giving weight to each other, i.e.: finding the spots on the body where we could place weight when dancing with each other and we ended with a dance which felt fantastic. My gripe about the course is that we usually start 15 mins late and then the beginning of the session is terribly slow and Yanael tends to demonstrate something for so long it becomes boring. So we ended late.

Tuesday (17) - Food tastes and ayurveda
Saraswati helped me in backbends again today and I am feeling neglected by Sharath :-(

During the massage course we went around telling each other which dosha we thought they were. I know I am a strong pitta person, but I thought my second dominant dosha was kapha as I am usually quiet and observe people rather than speaking and a few other indicators, but everybody including Kumar said that my second dominant dosha was vata. Very interesting as I definitely have never considered myself to be a giving person, but I am obviously going to observe myself more closely now. I know that while I am on holiday and more relaxed, I am a little bit more extroverted and talkative than usual.
We then went through the six different tastes in ayurveda and how they affect each dosha. I was very happy that sweet food, which includes milk, rice and other carbohydrates, are cooling and therefore good for pitta people like me. I think it explains why I love sweet food so much :-) !!!
We then learnt how to massage the arms.

In the afternoon I went back to Janiki's for lunch. I was the only one there until Ganesh, Iiling and Dimitris arrived. Kumar had told us that in South India they eat the sweet food first to seal the stomach a little, so that they do not overeat. That is why when you order Tali, the sweets are served with the rice and dal and everything else. I tried this method, but it did not help, I still made a pig of myself and ate till I almost popped!

I then had a lazy afternoon. My intention was to look for some clothes for myself... I have already spent half my stay in India and have still not bought myself anything to wear, whereas everybody else buys themselves things in the first week and they mostly wear these Indian clothes.

In the Contact Improvisation course we worked on working from the centre, extending creating long diagonal lines and contracting again. I found it terribly slow again and at the end we did a round robin where we sat in a circle and two people danced toghether in the middle and people sitting could at any time cut in and one of the dancers would sit back down. I unfortunately let Eva drop... ouch.

I had been very disciplined the last four weeks only eating chocolate twice I think but tonight I went to Cubs twice to buy chocolate. This was emotional eating because I was a little down after the Contact Improvisation. I also tasted their Masala biscuits, which were very spicy, like chillie!!! They also have salt biscuits, which are not like salt crackers but look sweet like normal biscuits. In India they also serve salt lassies. I had learnt today that one of the ayurveda tastes is salty and in India they eat a lot of salt because it retains water, good for the south Indian climate, but very unpopular in the west.

Wednesday (18) - Contact Improvisation
I had a really bad night... I stayed up writing the blog until 1 am and I was woken up somewhere after 4 by mosquitos, which happened to be a nightly occurence. I couldn't figure out why, because I had bought a new mosquito repellent that you plug into the wall when I moved in. It was obviously a problem when there was a power outage but this was not the fact this early in the morning. Eventually I figured out that the room was probably just too big, so I moved the repellent to a plug closer to my bed and this seemed to work, but I only had about 3 hours sleep. My practice went alright although my back was a little tight from something that I did in the dancing the night before. I figure that I must forget about Sharath giving me another posture on this trip :-)

My stomach was not that great after all the biscuits and chocolate the night before so this morning I had a small bowl of fruit as opposed to the big one and a spirulina & mint drink. I shaved my head again this morning and it feels so good... am thinking that I want to keep it shaved when I get home.

At the massage course we discussed the animosity between the Muslims and Indians and I found out that Diana (mexican girl doing the course) had been engaged to an Indian brahman, but it did not work out because his family did not accept him. We then revised the arms and learnt part one of massaging the stomach and chest. A new girl from Japan, Hiromi, joined us, as she will not be in Mysore to complete the next course, so she is doing the end of the course with us. She was my partner today. Of course, everything was very new to her, but we enjoyed working together I think.

I then went to the maha idli man in Laksmi Purim to find out until when he serves idli because I still had not been able to take Mel and Kerry there. He was extremely busy serving lunch... no idlis or dosas, so I had a big plate of rice with sambar, veggies and a paratha for lunch for Rs 15. Of course the plate and the spoon were wet so again I was a bit worried that I would get sick. Afterwards I went to Kirtan with James. I was very tired, and singing with my eyes closed did not help matters :-)

At 17:00 was the last Contact Improvisation session. We had decided to invite some friends to come watch or join if they felt like it, but these visitors would only arrive an hour into our session so that we could work a little before going into the dance. The girls bought some snacks and bought loads of flowers that they put on plates around the roof, demarcated a little walkway with flowers and had bags of little flowers for the visitors to throw at us. They remarked how cheap it was and that it would have cost like two hundred pounds in the UK for all the flowers. It was a really nice evening and afterwards the visitors started playing drums and even an accordion.

Thursday (19) - Hotel Mylari (Dosas)
I practiced next to Vera, a portuguese girl, today. It just so happened that we both ended doing Paschaasana at exactly the same time. Vera cannot bind and Saraswati came over to help her and when she bent down, her rear end came towards me so I fell out of the posture. Sharath saw this and just asked "Why?". I could just smile... I do not know if he saw what actually happened.

During the massage course we discussed how we help the individual who comes to us for a massage as they are coming for a specific reason, finding out what that reason is and realising that we cannot help that person unless they take responsibility for their own injuries. Then we continued with the second part of stomach and chest.

For lunch I went back to Janiki's and I met some people who gave me the directions to Hotel Mylari, which is the place that specialises in dosas, where I had gone with Myra and Jay after climbing Chamundi Hill two years ago. In the afternoon was sanskrit level 2 and chanting again.

I met Kerry and Mel for dinner at Tina's and then had some cake at Cubs with them. The cake was very synthetic, but I bought some more chocolate.

Friday (20) - Kerry and Mel leaving
This morning was lead class with Saraswati and after my usual big bowl of fruit salad for breakfast at Tina's. At the massage course we talked about how our experiences in childhood affect us and the emotions we store in our bodies and the energies that we emit from our bodies. He said we can heal our bodies by expressing stored emotions - this comes from his Past Life Healing experience I think. We then continued learning about massaging the face, which was quite difficult actually and quite strange having oil smeared all over your face by a stranger!

I then drove to town and did some shopping for gifts, bought some more books... I have realised that I have an addiction in India... buying books... I have no idea how I will carry everything home :-). Afterwards I found the Hotel Original Mylari, which I had got the directions for on Tuesday. It is not the same Hotel Mylari I went to two years ago, but I do not know which one is the "original" one.

In the afternoon I met Indra, who is leaving Mysore, at Alia's. Then I quickly made a stop over at Iman's place as she is having a birthday party. Iman had gone to a lot of effort to set up a markee on the roof of her apartment, lots of flowers etc. I could not stay long because I had to be in Lakshmi Purim at 18:30 for dinner at Nagarathna's for Kerry and Mel's final dinner in Mysore. They are leaving tomorrow, but I will see them again at the International Yoga Festival in a week. The food was absolutely fantastic again. I think we were about 10 people and the food just kept coming. I was so stuffed afterwards and we had a good time. Afterwards I went back to Iman's party, but did not really connect with anyone so I went home.

Saturday (21) - Ice Cream!
I had a very big and expensive breakfast at Alia's Om Cafe: toast with humus, pancakes, and afterwards french toast. We had massage course today so that we could take Monday and Tuesday off. We discussed dealing with emotions, our own and that of the client, during the massage and then we learnt how to do a shoulder massage. Afterwards I went to the pool at the Southern Star for the first time on this trip to Mysore. I had a nice chat to a german guy and an american girl who had met in Australia and she was now moving to germany and they were planning to get married after he graduated in one and half years. They invited me to their party tomorrow night.

I then joined some guys for some gelato at Just Gelato. Of course I had to go back for seconds. The Coconut flavour is awesome. I then finally bought myself some clothes from Sudha. She has a shop in a garage in the street I live in, but she is not always there and everytime I have gone passed she was closed. She had some nice stuff. Lots of yogis buy from her. I also went past Vastra and picked up some pants there.

For dinner I met Garth and some others at 6th on Main. It was Garth's final dinner, as he was leaving tomorrow night after the party. The food was delicious and afterwards they introduced me to the "Ice Cream Corner". So of course I was ecstatic! I will definitely go back there soon.

Sunday (24) - Conference
After lead class I watched second series again and then went to get breakfast as I did not feel like going to the green market today.. Santosha had sign up, closed until Wednesday, Tina is closed on Sundays and by the time I had found all of this out, there was not much time left, so I rushed to get my scooter and drove to the new location of the stand up cafe, that David told me about at the pool yesterday. The food was good and I actually went back for lunch.

At Kumar's, we continued the discussions about dealing with emotions and then learnt how to massage the head. In the afternoon I had sanskrit. I had missed Tuesday and today was a test. I was lost and did not enjoy it very much.

After chanting was the conference with Sharath, which was very good today. He started off talking about the breath in our practice. This is what he started talking about last week when he was told the news about Guruji being ill. Guruji is much better by the way. They found something in his oesophagus, which they are treating and he is now eating properly and is now walking around again with help.
Sharath told us that he had seen demo's in Mysore where the yogi's took a huge gulp of air with open mouths before dropping back into back bends, which we all laughed at. His point was that we have to breathe through the nose and he explained that from his experience he gets more energy this way. I love it when he talks about his personal experiences. He told us that when he was seven, around the time Nancy, who was in the audience, first came to practice with guruji, he started playing around with asanas, but it was only in 1990, when he was 19, that he started doing Ashtanga seriously. He also said that he had also tried body building when he was a student, when he talked about the fact that some yogi's have a very bendy body, but cannot do a headstand because they don't have the bandhas. His point was that yoga needs to give you internal strength and stamina too. He said some yogis do 6 advanced postures in their practice, but when you ask them to do 35 postures in a flowing sequence they die. The breath is what allows you to have energy and stamina. He said that we can only begin pranayama practice once we have mastered the bandhas and have developed a good asana practice with ujjayi breath. Pranayama must include lots of kumbaka (holding the breath) for a long time.
He said that it took him 2 years to realize the benefits of a disciplined regular practice and he said that everybody will feel that within 2 years, which I relate to. It has been two years since my last visit here, which is when I started becoming serious about my yoga practice. He talked about having to drive from his home in the rain at two o'clock in the morning to guruji's shala to practice while guruji was watching him and then helping guruji teach. He said that until two years ago, after he had been practicing Ashtanga for 19 years already, guruji still watched him practice, making sure that he performed the asanas correctly.
He told us that guruji made him do Advanced A and then Advanced C series after another to show him that using the breath, he could sustain the energy in his body. He also told us that once he went deep into Eka Pada Rajakapotasana (One Foot King Pigeon Pose) last posture in Advanced A, and he heard a huge crack in his upper back. When he got home he could hardly move and guruji phoned him that day saying that he had to do a demo in Mysore. (He explained that he could not tell guruji that he couldn't do it). He does not know how he did it, but him and another student, a relative, did the demo, but afterwards he could not move for 15 days. His point I think was that using the breath, he was able to do this.

Somebody then asked him if he had any trouble balancing his home life with his dedication to his practice. Sharath was quite funny in his response. He immediately said that he had absolutely no problems. He explained that in India, they only marry one person, not like in the west, where you have so many choices. He gave the example of guruji and his wife being together for 65 years. He said that being married to his wife and having a family meant that he was not distracted and can concentrate on his practice. He recommends that all yogi's get married!

He finished by saying that tomorrow (a public holiday) we should go to the Shiva temple and we are not allowed to ask for money or anything else, we must all ask for discipline in our yoga practice.

Garth and I then went to the Pizza Hut to buy some Pizza and garlic bread for the potluck party we had been invited to. The party was great fun and the house Teresa and Shauna are staying it is awesome. It is painted bright pink, so it was not difficult to find. The owner and his brother are architect and engineers and they had quite an interesting design and had even built a meditation room on top of a reading room.

Second week in Mysore

2009-02-15T12:09:00.000+05:30

Monday (9) - Visit to the Tibetan Settlement
Today was moon-day, so the plan was to visit the Tibetan settlement called Bailakuppe, which is about 70 km away from Mysore (about 2 hours drive in India). I never had the chance to visit this the last time I came to Mysore, so I made a point of not leaving this till the last minute. Sylvia organised a minibus through Ganesh, which cost us Rs 1 900 and we could split that between six of us because two swedish ladies joined our group. I met Sylvia, Miranda and Mia as well as Kerry and Mel at the Om Cafe for breakfast at 8:30 and around 9 we left.

We started at the Golden Temple housing an 18m tall Buddha, with two slightly smaller ones next to him. I then took a leisurely walk around the Namdroling Monastery complex and found some schoolboys throwing stones into a lake with slingshots and others playing cricket in their monk outfits. Sylvia and the rest had gone to lunch. At 1pm we had the priviledge of sitting in on a meditation session and to my surprise it was not a quiet affair at all. The schoolroom was filled with boys of different ages, the smallest one seemed to be in charge of beating the drum, the eldest were in charge of blowing the horns and trumpets, while all of them were reading and chanting. They also served biscuits and tea during the session and even offered some to us visitors. That was the highlight for me.
Afterwards we drove 2 km to Sera village and the Sera Jhe Monastery. The village was absolutely spotless with absolutely no hint of any litter. There were of course many signs requesting people, I guess mainly visitors, not to litter. There was also a sign indicating that visitors needed special permission to visit certain areas, but Sylvia and I took a chance and walked around the village a little. The rest seemed to be quite tired and waited at the minibus. On the way back we stopped at a traditional Tibetan Thangka maker, however, these were not anything I had seen before. They were made using different colours of silk cut into shapes instead of painted.

The trip home was a little quicker and we arrived just before 5pm in time for supper at Anu's Internet Cafe (Ganesh's wife). Afterwards I met Mel and Adan, a mexican who was practicing with Mel with Saraswati in the mornings, and when I said I needed to go to Yogic Supplies in Laksmi Purim to pick up my new cotton yoga mat, he offered to take me, which was extremely nice of him.

Tuesday (10) - Exhausting day
Today was the first day of the Ayurvedic Massage course. I had been looking for a massage course since my arrival and there are about 3 Thai Yoga Massage courses, ranging from 5 to 15 days, and are offered by westerners here in Mysore. It turned out that the universe did not want me to do one of these because the start and end of the courses just did not coincide with my time in Mysore. I then found the ayurvedic massage course and I thought that I would rather do the Thai Yoga massage course in Thailand and the ayurvedic massage here in India. The ayurvedic massage course was offered by Kumar, a local Indian. The course is quite expensive at Rs 15000, so I asked around if people had heard good or bad things and I got some good feedback, so I finally decided to go ahead with the course, but I was still very sceptical. A few days into the course I was very happy that I had decided to go ahead with it because I really enjoyed all the knowledge Kumar imparted on ayurveda and his massages were well liked by many people around. He also gives a past life healing course and seems to have a gift of understanding people quickly.

I knew that Sharath has new people registering every week and people leaving every week and since this was the first Mysore style class this week he would give people new times for the week. I made a point of being at the shala early so that I would be given a nice early time and so that I could have enough time to shower and eat breakfast before the massage course at 10am. When I got to the shala, the foyer was empty and Sharath called me in immediately and gave me a 7:30 timeslot (1 hour earlier). That meant I finished by 9:15, had a shower at home, rushed to have a very quick breakfast at Santosha's and then to Kumar's home, which is in the same road as the shala and where I live.

Kumar introduced himself and he is quite open about himself. He also gave us some insight into Indian life during the course. Today I learnt that Indians have to fill out what class they are on government forms and school enrollment forms etc. This surprised me, but the explanation was that the government is doing a similar thing South Africa is doing with Black Empowerment. So the lowest class will get their text books for free and will be given 20% added to their final mark for instance to help them get through. Kumar is a brahman (highest class) and had to buy all his books and got no percentage added to his marks. He said it infuriated some students when they saw the students who had been given the text books sell their books for half price two weeks into the semester.
The first one and half hours of each day is spent learning about ayurveda (starting with the dosha's) and then Kumar domonstrates the days section on massage after which we pair up and massage that part of the body on each other. Today was the back of the legs.

The course is 3 hours long until 13:00. I felt absolutely exhausted after the course, but I still had my sanskrit reading and writing course as well as the chanting course in the afternoon and afterwards I went to the Kirtan at Annie Paise (from Colorado) house. We sat in her lounge in front of an altar and got given sheets with the words of the different songs and mantras. I did not enjoy the Kirtan so much today because the musical instruments were too loud in the very confined space and the fact that there was a statue of one of the deities all lit up in yellow and read lights put me off a little. I am still struggling to reconcile my christian faith, which prohibits idolatry, with that of hinduism. In my opinion, when we chant in sanskrit or do kirtan, even though we are invoking the names of hindu deities, these names represent the positive attributes that we try to cultivate within ourselves, the godliness in each of us and the objective is to awaken the devine energy in ourselves through the vibrations we generate within our bodies. I do not treat it as a form of worship.

Wednesday (11) - Kirtan
Today was the first day I was allowed to do Pashasana (Noose Pose) - the first posture of the second series. I was tempted to do it yesterday while Sharath was not looking, but I decided to follow his instructions and wait until today. I was able to bind, which is only because I had been practicing the posture at home for about two months, but I struggled with my balance. I have been struggling with balance ever since getting to India. I cannot seem to do the balancing postures in the standing sequence without falling over a few times, but I am not focusing on this negative and just ascribing it to all the travelling I have been doing. After Pashasana I sat down and waited to see if he would give me another posture, but that was wishful dreaming :-).

After practice was rushing to breakfast and the course again. Second day doing the back of the legs. I was happy that I was not so exhausted after today's course though. After the course I had a bite to eat at home from the stash of bread and almond butter I had bought from the man selling it outside the shala every day. Very expensive but the bread is better than bread you can buy in local Indian shops.

I then met people at the coconut stand to take 3 rickshaws to Laksmi Purim for some Kirtan with James. This was the highlight of my day today. James is from england and teaches at a university in Thailand. While there, he started learning sanskrit at the department downstairs (4 years ago). He wants to do his Phd in sanskrit next year. He now comes to India to learn sanskrit during the holidays, so he has been here since Novermber already, but will be leaving soon again, so we have asked him to do another session on Sunday. We basically sat on the floor in a circle in his lounge with a garland of flowers placed in the middle of the circle. There were no instruments and no sheets of paper with the words of any songs. When we sat down James asked if Kirtan as new to anybody and explained a little about what Kirtan is. I then asked him what the difference is between Kirtan and Bhajan. He explained the sanskrit meaning of each, which were very similar - both devotional, and that the root of Bhajan means to approach with reverence. Bhajan has more complex songs, whereas Kirtan has simpler mantras. James has a very good voice and lead us through the songs very well. It takes quite a bit of concentration to repeat and sing words you have never heard or read in another language you do not understand. After about an hour he aske for requests and one girl asked for the Gayantri Mantra. He then explained why he did not feel qualified enough to lead that song. Traditionally a brahman child starts singing this from early age and later is taught how to lead it and once taught, he has to do it with his teacher 30 000 times before he can start doing it by himself. James did sing it for us once though and then he started explaining the mythology behind it. This is what I found so fascinating. He is a good story teller and kept us all captivated for at least half an hour talking about Visvamitra and Vasista and then related this to the first two asana's of the third sequence in Ashtanga Yoga, why the one pose comes after the other. Absolutely fascinating!!!
Kerry and Mel were also at the Kirtan and upon my question to James, Kerry asked Mel and I to join her at the Atma Vikasa Shala where she trains with Venkatesh every day for Bhajan at 18:30. Venkatesh is a very serious teacher apparently and the men, of which there was only myself and another guy, had to sit on the right side of the room and the ladies on the left in rows like at school, but on the floor. It was a nice experience going to a different shala and getting a little insight into what Kerry is experiencing, but Venkatesh does not sing with you when you are repeating what he sang, so I found it extremely difficult, especially with songs that have hardly any repetition and no sheets with the words. The ambience was nice and spiritual though, with the single candle lighting the room as the sun was setting and I found the devout atmosphere in stark contrast to the noise of the busy streets and goings on outside that could be heard from within the room on the first floor.

Afterwards Kerry, Mel and I and another girl practicing with Kerry went to eat at Nalpak in the area, which was fun.

Thursday (12) - The Dosha's
My left Sacro-Illiac (SI) joint had been painful for months already but during the last two weeks here in India, the pain seems to have completely disappeared, even though I am going into very deep back bends every day, however, today the pain was back strongly and it was because of the massage I had received yesterday. My sacrum was not supported properly during the leg stretches. Today when I waited for Sharath to give me another pose, he told me that I must finish and that he will tell me when he will give me another pose.

At the massage course we went through the third and final dosha, kapha. Ayurveda has the view that everything including humans are made from 5 elements, earth, water, fire, air and space. There are three types of people called vata, pitta and kapha. A vata person has more air and space, so they think very fast, they are very creative people, they give out their energy easily and also loose energy very fast. They are giving people and spend their money easily etc. They don’t sleep long and have difficulty falling asleep. They have a long and light bone structure and their skin and nails are drier.
A pitta person has more fire and water, they have a very good digestive system and have good energy for long periods of time, very intelligent, they love to learn and they love to eat. They don’t like wasting time, sleep is normal, but can go without sleep for long periods of time.
Kapha people have more water and earth element and are lazier. Their bone structure is heavier and their joints are more stable. I have realized that I am a pitta person, with a little bit of vata and kapha. I find it so interesting and feel that something like this should be taught in schools as it would promote acceptance of peoples differences and understand how to handle different people. So pitta people like me, when we get angry, just give them some food and they will be happy :-).
We then did part one of the back massage. I am realising that it will be very difficult to remember everything and it will take us a very long time to the massage on the whole body, which we will have to do on the 14th day of the course, which will be the day before I leave Mysore.

After lunch I searched for Janiki's house where I had had a lunch two years ago. She cooks a Thali lunch for yogi's every Tuesday and Thursday and charges Rs 90. Everybody loves her food, but Anu's is more popular because she cooks every day except for Thursday and has the a bamboo hut on the roof with wireless internet. I eventually found it and there was Dimitris and Iiling having lunch. I had met Iiling at the party at Santosha last Friday night, where she performed the Odissi dance. The meal was fantastic and very filling with more chapati's coming continuously. We finished the meal with a chapati that was smeared with ghee and then drizzled with jagaree and some chai. Very sweet but nice. I told them that I was going to the Idli man on Saturday for breakfast and they immediately jumped at the chance to try somewhere new.

In the afternoon I had sanskrit lessons again.

Friday (13) - Charity Concert
As usual it was lead class at 6am in the morning. I found it difficult getting out of bed because I usually get up much later. Sharath lead the class, and I got muscle spasm between both my shoulder blades... middle fibres of the Trapezius muscle, the same place I got it 2 weeks ago in lead class with Lino Miele when I was sick, but that was only on the left side. I don't know why this is happening. I was in absolute pain when I got to the massage class and when it was time to massage I asked to be massaged first. I was very lucky that it was revision of the previous day, back part one, plus today's work, back part two. Kumar said something interesting, that the muscle spasm happens in reaction to a fear, so when he massages, he does not go deep into the muscle, but holds it and gives it a trusting and reassuring energy to let it relax. Kumar did very little work on me, Sherry was my partner and she did a good job because by the next day I was alright.

In the afternoon I finally hired a scooter from Rajesh at the Chakra house for the next thirteen days that I am spending in Mysore, as I was going to start doing many trips. I wanted to go the maha idli man tomorrow, the railway station to organise my ticket to Bangalore, do some shopping in town and I wanted to do a Contact Improvisation course in Laksmi Purim, which would be every day from 17:00 for two hours while the sun was setting on the roof of an old building across the road from the Mandala Shala (see previous blog two years ago about Sheshadri).

Friday evening was the charity concert at the Sri Krishna temple hall. It seemed to be organised by the yogi's and it was a famous flutist from Bangalore as well as a Tabla player who had lightning fast fingers. Tickets were Rs 200 and the proceeds went to the mental health centre. At the door we were given english books on the Bhagavad Gita, which was a nice touch.. Santosha provided some free ice tea with Tulsi as well as chocolate milk, which of course I had lots of! :-)

Saturday (14) - Shopping
On Saturday morning at 8am I met Iiling and Dimitris, who also invited Hamilton, at her apartment, because she had a motorcycle accident the day before and could not ride here scooter to the maha idli man. There have been so many scooter accidents in the recent week. But I was not surprised. I do not really like rules very much... coming from Africa, I really thought countries like Switzerland for instance are over the top with bureaucracy and rules. In South Africa, people do not abide to the letter of the law all the time but there is order. In contrast, in India traffic lights only exist at the main intersections in the very centre of the city. Even there, special traffic police is deployed to keep people in line, including pedestrians, who just cross the street whenever they feel like it. So at a large traffic circle in the centre of town that means a seperate policeman at every road entering the circle, so four or more. In the rest of the city there is a traffic cop standing in a little stand in the centre of a traffic circle, trying to direct traffic, but I cannot see them being very effective. The intersections and roads in the rest of the city and country are just left without any stop signs, road markings or any other rule to abide by. At first I thought, this is great... everybody just uses common sense and everything works... traffic flows much better and you do not have to waste 60 seconds of your life at every intersection.
However, judging by the many accidents (students come to the shala in the mornings with scratches and bruises) I am not convinced. Many rickshaws drive without any lights on at night. Pedestrians walk across the road or along the road without paying attention to traffic and I mean without regard for traffic. At night they are difficult to see especially since there are no street lights and the light provided by the surrounding shops in busy areas are not enough when there is a power cut. You also have many many speed bumps and potholes to deal with, which are also incredibly difficult to see, and you have the occasional cow standing in the middle of the road or a bunch of goats walking in the road, the street hawkers push their wooden carts, which are the size of small cars on the road, holding up traffic. People are very impatient and instead of stopping at an intersection they will continue driving, hooting to make sure others know they are coming. In India you drive on the left hand side of the road; however, motorbike riders when turning right and there is lots of traffic on the lane they have to cross, they don't stop either, they then turn right close to the edge of the road into oncoming traffic, and when a gap opens they will cross the road into the left lane, so you have to watch for motorbikes and bicycles driving in the wrong direction. The roads other than main roads are also extremely narrow, so with the sides of the road used by pedestrians, and building material, parked motorbikes etc it is often the width of one car. There is no line drawn in the centre of the road and cars and motorcycles constantly overtaking each other, whether there is a save opportunity to or not, leaves very little space for oncoming traffic. Even big buses move onto the other side of the road to overtake when you are on a scooter in that lane. Everybody drives like a madman hooting every ten seconds to let people know they are coming and it seems to be everybody elses responsibility to move out of the way and they have to, otherwise there would be accidents left, right and centre. Nobody has a concept of using "lanes": scooters, bicycles and motorbikes squeeze into every little space between cars, trucks and buses at intersections, trying to get ahead of everyone else, so it looks like a big jumble of vehicles as opposed to an ordered line. At places where there are traffic lights, there is a big digital clock showing the amount of seconds until the lights will change. Engines are turned off until this shows about 10 seconds to go and at 5 seconds to go everybody starts anticipating the light and starts moving and at two seconds to go the first people start going across between the stragglers of the crossing traffic -- unless of course there is a traffic cop on hand. I should also mention that the the exhaust fumes are also usually quite visible!!!
I asked Kumar the following week after I had almost hit a pedestrian who walked into the road without a glance at traffic, why there is absolutely no sign of road rage in India, yet he said that Indians are very fiery people. He said that they cannot afford to get into a fight because of all the repressed anger that they have, if a fight did break out, everybody would just join in and start clobbering people and even the beggars on the side of the road would start throwing rocks into the brawl!
Another interesting thing is that in India only the driver of the motorcycle has to wear a helmet. You should not have more than two people on a scooter or motorbike, but there are regularly three, a man and two women, or a family of three, but I have also seen families of four, including two small children on a motorbike. It seems that only the driver of the motorcycle needs to be protected.

Anyway, enough ranting! Iiling had to have 3 stitches in her knee the day before and the driver of the motorbike had deep wounds on his leg and left palm. So both of them will not be able to practice for a while... that would be my biggest frustration!!! The three of them decided to get a rickshaw and I led them to the maha idli man in Laksmi Purim. They absolutely loved the idli's and Iiling also had some Bissebelle Baht. I had five idlis as well as some vada. We all some chai and the bill for all 3 of us came to Rs 100. I pay up to Rs 180 for myself at Alia's Om Cafe in Gokulam and I do not feel half as full afterwards!

I then went into town to look at my options for train tickets and went to Ashok bookstore which was still closed. I had to wait thirty minutes until 10am and went into my favourite market of all my travels, the Devaraja market, and just took in the sights and sounds taking photographs and responding to the greeting from all the vendors and answering the questions as to where I am from. I started in my favourite section, the fruits. One vendor insisted I come see how he makes incense and made me smell all of the essential oils he had for sale. Another invited me into his stall and showed me all the surfaces that I could paint on with the different coloured powders made from plants and rocks, which just needed to be mixed with some water.

At the bookstore I was looking for books like the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and learning sanskrit in 30 days, both of which I needed for my course, as well as the Ramayana and Marhabarata for insight into the stories of the deities like the one James told. These were sold out of course, but I found so many books I would love to buy, such as a book on the best speeches ever, Sun Tzu's "The Art of War", a book on the interface between yoga and ayurveda, the Yoga Tiravali, a book on Hindu Mythology, a collection of essays and reflections on Ghandi etc.
I found out later that the special that the post office had two years ago on shipping 5 kg worth of books no longer existed, which means I will have to pay twice the amount for the books to get them home, or I will have to carry them. I know I have 4 kg to play with, although space is an issue!

At three I met Iiling and Dimitris and we drove to Ganesh's house where three other people joined us to do some Yoga Nidra (yogic sleep). Ganesh, who was the driver of the motorbike that Iiling had the accident on, took us through the meditation. It was only about half an hour, but quite deep. We all enjoyed it and asked him to do another one next weekend and he promised to do a longer one when he felt less pain.

In the afternoon I had the first session of Contact Improvisation with Yanael. Contact Improvisation is like a dance without any choreography. Multiple people just dance together and the movements you make are completely organic coming from "listening" to what others around you are doing, while you make your own movements, constantly trying to stay in contact with the people around you, so you do not dance by yourself. There is probably a better explanation on the net, but I have no internet connection as I write this. The first session was spent exploring the sense of touch and then exploring the support that the ground gives us and we finished with a little "dance", which I enjoyed very much. I found that I was still very sceptical of Yanael the teacher, but I must say I enjoyed the dance.

Afterwards I rushed to Yogic Supplies, where I had bought my cotton yoga mat. Nagaratna had cooked dinner for six other yogi's including Garth, Mel and Kerry. They had gone there at six and I had booked seperately and let them know I was coming after seven. Everybody else had finished eating by the time I arrived, but they warmed up a Tali for me and the food was fantastic. She charges Rs 100 for the meal. Nagaratna (Yogic Supplies) is around the corner from the Mandala Shala and guruji's old shala in Laksmi Purim. Guruji moved to his new home in Gokulam four years ago only, so Nagaratna was the person who used to look after the yogi's for a long long time, cooking breakfast, lunch and supper. She told us that Richard Freeman met his wife at the table we were eating at and that Brian Kest used to sit in front of her kitchen and used to take her kids to the swimming pool to teach them to swim. She is such a sweet lady and extremely shy when we tried to take pictures with her. She seems to miss yogi's coming to her and we offered to help her create a poster that we would put up in the yogi hangouts in Gokulam.

Sunday (15) - Hectic day
Sunday morning was lead class again. As usual, all of us doing the second lead class had to wait outside the shala in the dark, until the first class finished and then we had to rush inside and try to find and emptly spot, otherwise we would be practicing in the change rooms, or the foyer. I got a spot right next to the door, which was good as I planned to watch the second series after the practice. Saraswati lead us again this Sunday. It seems that the Sunday routine is Sharath leads the first class at 4:30, Saraswati leads the second, and then Sharath leads the second series. (There is no lead second series on Fridays.)
I was a bit scared of practice this morning due to my muscle spasm on Friday, but the practice turned out to be good. Afterwards I immediately put my mat at the edge of the door in the foyer, so I had full view of the shala during the second series.

I left as they went into the finishing sequence at around 9:15 so that I could still visit the organic market before my massage course at 10. Mel joined me. The market officially only starts at 10, so we were half an hour early, and vendors are apparently not allowed to sell before the opening time because if they do, a lot of the good stuff will be sold out before they even open. But they are actually happy to help and I explained that I had to be somewhere at 10, so I bought Ginger and Lemon concentrate, which I mix with my drinking water and I bought some balls made with nuts and herbs that I like to eat as a snack. We then had to rush back for me to make my class.

In the massage course we considered how we would identify the dosha of a new client and what we should be aware of when massaging each dosha. We then revised part two of the back massage and worked on the front of the legs. After the course I had a quick bite to eat at home and then rushed to Laksmi Purim for Kirtan with James. I arrived late and I was the reason the Kirtan was at 13:30, because I had sanskrit at 15:15 (shala time). So I left early to get to my sanskrit & chanting class and then at 16:30 was supposed to be the conference with Sharath. A few seconds into the conference though, after Sharath started talking about the breath, he got a message that guruji felt ill and they needed to take him to hospital so the conference was cancelled. This meant I could make the Contact Improvisation course at 17:00 on time. at 19:00 my day was finally complete and I could go eat some supper and go to the internet cafe.

First week in Mysore

2009-02-06T17:27:00.004+05:30

Monday (2) - first practice in the shala
I arrived at 8:15 (8:30 shala time) and the foyer was already quite full with people waiting for a spot in the shala. Sharath would regularly come to the foyer and see students that have been here for a while and give them new earlier time slots for the next day and they would be allowed in first when somebody finished their practice. I had to wait about twenty minutes before I could get in. I got a spot right in front of the podium, so I had to watch that I did not bang my head on the step each time I jumped back during the sun salutations. My practice felt good and went by in no time at all. I knew I was not allowed to move into second for at least the first week and then only when Sharath actually gives me the first posture of the second series. My back bending was a little tight because I had not done the practice in two days but when I came up by myself, Sharath came to me and said, "You take it easy... first day!" meaning that I should not do drop backs today. The energy in the shala was high as usual, which I found a little distracting to my "moving meditation" and of course you have Sharath and Saraswati constantly shouting "Next" when a new space opens up!
There was a woman practicing next to me and Sharath saw her doing something wrong and she did not correct it immediately when he shouted the correction to her, so he told her that she must come to the beginner's class tomorrow with Saraswati. Sylvia told me afterwards, that her practice was extremely fast also and when she heard Sharath tell the woman to come to beginners class, she was shi***ng herself :-).

I met Sylvia for lunch and we went to the Green Leaf for a South Indian Thali. In the afternoon I went to the shala to register for the second level Sanskrit course and then I spoke to Lara and Matthias who both offer Thai Yoga Massage courses. The universe did not seem to want me to do these because the dates or times of both courses weren't possible for me. I had also read about an Ayurvedic Massage course with Dr Kumar and I thought that I would rather do the Thai Yoga Massage course in Thailand and do an Ayurvedic Massage course here in India. I eventually got hold of Dr Kumar on the phone and registered for the course, which starts next Tuesday.
By the evening I still had no appetite which is strange for me and at 7 I suddenly felt quite ill. Something at Green Leaf had not been so kosher and two hours later, my body purged itself of everything in it, after which I thankfully fell asleep and had almost 8 hours sleep, which was good.

Tuesday (3) -
I woke up just before 5am and spent the morning relaxing until my practice time. My practice was quite hard due to a lack of energy. Afterwards I found where Tina had moved to, but it was not as nice as it used to be. The garden in her new home which she used as the seating area was more open, so less cosy, there were fewer people and I just did not have the same vibe. I then met Mel and Kerry at Santosha, a place that had not been around 2 years ago. It was much like Tina's old place, seating on cushions in and around the house with low tables, but it was run by a western couple. The food was fantastic, there were more people around still (even though it was 11:30 by now) and it had a friendly atmosphere. They are planning a party for Friday night with Rs 400 entrance, which will go to an orphanage. 95 people had already registered.

The rest of the afternoon was spent chilling until my Sanskrit course at 16:45 and then the chanting course. Afterwards I met Mel and Kerry at Tina's restaurant for supper. We had a very good discussion about yoga not being a sport, but a lifestyle and how it can change your belief system.

Wednesday (4)
My practice was uneventful until Sharath came to me during my back-bending. I was pretty stupid because I was waiting for Sharath to push me, verbally telling me to walk my hands in more, but he did not. He pulled me back up quite quickly and said to me "You work harder"! I guess that was a reprimand :-).

Afterwards, I had a big bowl of fruit at Tina's home where she serves breakfast. Still the best place for a big fruit salad! I was watching some of the westerners eat, mentally noting that Indian people would laugh at us because we use our left hand to put food in our mouths. Very few Indians use toilet paper and they wash themselves with their left hand, so the right hand is used to put food in their mouths.

In the afternoon I met Noah Williams, who is supposed to be a great teacher who is also based in Hawaii like Nancy. He was telling some yogi's how he had this bulge coming out of his abdomen on his right side, which was excruciatingly painful and constantly feels like he had been kicked in the balls. He was quite funny when he described how he was thinking that he might be sitting on his balls while riding his scooter. I knew exactly what it was, because of my recent experiences regarding the long time it took to diagnose the start of an inguinal hernia on my right side. When he explained that before the hernia happened in Dwi Pada Sirshasana (both legs behind the head), he had dropped his bike and felt a tearing in his left obliques, I remembered that before I got the hernia, I had pain in my left oblique muscles for a long time doing Marichyasana D (deep twist).
The we all shared the stories of how we got involved in Ashtanga and I realized that the girl sitting next to me was the receptionist at the Miami Life Center (Kino McGregor's studio) when I was on my business trip to the USA in December 2007 and visited the studio for a few days. She remembered "the South African", who bought all the books. It is quite interesting how the universe brings people together.

The rest of the day I spent chilling at home and actually slept a little. I think I should make better use of my time before I start the massage course. In the evening I met Sylvia and Miranda at Tina's restaurant and I arranged with Sylvia to go shopping at Fab India tomorrow and I am trying to arrange a trip to the Tibetan community on Monday, which is moon-day (no practice). I did not eat anything as I was not hungry. I was craving something cold. In India they make something called a lassie, which is made with curd and is quite refreshing. I don't normally like curd, but the lassies are quite nice, similar to a milkshake. Keeping ice cream frozen in India is difficult because of the constant power outages. In Kovalam, there was a power outage for half an hour every night at a specific time, which they change every week, but that was manageable. Here in Mysore, the power went out this morning, this afternoon, three times tonight already. I remember how South Africa was bitterly complaining about the load-shedding last year. Well here in India, people seem to have just accepted it as the norm. In Kovalam there were a lot of generators, whereas here people use backup batteries that store power when the power is on for computers etc, but often the power is off for so long that the battery also dies. So then there is no internet available, lassies and fruit juices (they are made from the fruit and vegetables on site) are all not available. So, in other words, due to yet another power outage, I could not get a lassie (Anu's internet cafe makes awesome lassies) and I went searching for something sweet. Cubs is a bakery and small restaurant, which is quite posh. It has a few TV screens up and seems to have proper power backup and I found some awesome chocolate and ice cream that is safe to eat because there is constantly power.

Thursday (5)
Today was a very special day, although I did not really feel elation or anything of the sort when it happened. I had completed my compulsory first week of doing primary series and when Sharath came to help me with my back-bends he asked if I had done Paschasana the last time I came to Mysore, to which I had not. But the good news was that he did say that I could do Paschasana from next Wednesday. I felt that it was a validation of the fact that I had started moving into second series by myself. Sharath allowing me to move on meant a lot, because it is here in Mysore that they don't allow you to move on until you have "mastered" the primary.

I met Kerry & Mel at Shakti House where I had breakfast and joined Sylvia and Miranda to go shopping at Fab India and three jewelry stores. Fab India is a very well known chain store around India that has silk and cotton clothing and home goods such as bed spreads, table cloths etc. Jewelry in Mysore is known to be cheap, but I think not by South African standards. Miranda and Sylvia bought a lot at Fab India and Miranda did end up buying some bangles.

In the afternoon I went to my sanskrit classes and then met Kerry for supper at Chakra house. I have been asking at Chakra house to organise me a scooter, but secretly I am glad that they have not done so yet. I am enjoying walking around, taking life slowly, and not being drawn into the stresses of the traffic. I suppose that soon I do want start exploring further out of Gokulam and I want to see if I can remember where all the secret little gems are, like the 'Maha Idli man'.

Friday (6)
Time flies by so quickly. I have already been away from home for 3 weeks now. Fridays is lead class of which there are two, 4:30 and 6:15. I have to go to the later one because I am a student who has just arrived recently, so I awoke at 5 and got up finally at 5:30. We waited in the dark on the steps outside the shala while the first class was finishing and then rushed in to find a space in the shala and place our mats side by side. It was my first lead class with Sharath since 2 years ago and I was excited and attentively listened to his chanting when he began. In the last two years, I had learnt the chanting off by heart and since I began teaching I wanted to get all the pronunciation and intonations right. I had done the Sanskrit reading & writing and the chanting courses and had bought a lot of chanting CD's of Manju, Richard Freeman, Sharath and Guruji. I had decided that I liked Manju's chanting the most and did not like Sharath's at all, but I listened to Sharath with a fresh ear and I realised that he was the intonations, just more subtly. He then took us through primary and to my surprise he made us do five Sun Salutes for A and three Sun Salutes for B. On his DVD, he does only 3 each and he counts really fast, which was also my experience two years ago. People called him the steam train, but this time he took it really slow and the entire practice lasted for longer than an hour and a half. Headstand, which he counted 15 for, I actually counted sixty of my own breaths, and he even let us lie down and rest after completion of the series for a few minutes. He still has his trademark humour. He does not allow anybody to rush him, i.e.: you cannot move into upward dog before he has said pancha (five), so when somebody does, we would all be holding chatvari (four) while he would reprimand the person saying something like, "Why you in a hurry, are you hungry?" or "have you got a?".

I then went home and had a quick shower. It was 8 o'clock and I felt fantastic, with the prospect of a full day ahead, a party at Santosha tonight and a rest day tomorrow. However, I soon found that I was actually battling to adjust to the fact that I nothing to do. Not something I remember having felt in years!!! Kerry made the comment that it will be good for me to do nothing, and Garth commented that at home we often do things that we think are important, but in actual fact are not and that it is important for us to sometimes not do anything. I just feel I want to be productive, learn something, experience something, etc. I don't even feel like reading a novel, because I could be reading something about yoga and learning something new!
Just the other day, Kerry said she was grumpy because her teacher Venkatesh said that the actual pose does not matter, as it will not help you achieve self-realization, but that we should experience every moment of the journey into the pose and this reminded me of a quote of David Williams, that Nancy told us, "It does not matter if you can touch your toes or not, it will not bring you any closer to God anyway!".

On Friday evening I went to a party at Santosha. They had over 130 people buy tickets for Rs 400 each. The money would go to Operation Shanti, which looks after 23 street kids from Mysore. When we walked into the party, they had about 6 children sitting on the floor and eating. They were so incredibly cute!
There were buckets of food and we all sat on the roof and chatted while the sun went down. Then there was an Indian magician doing tricks for us, then there was a guy who goes around catching snakes from peoples houses for a living. I had seen him on another day dropping off school kids. He says he lives on what people donate to him to catch the snakes, as the government does not support him and he feels that humans are encroaching on the snakes territory and we should not kill the snakes. He looked a bit like a pirate, with a bandana round his thick long head of hair, a pair of big sunglasses on top of that, armbangles on his arms and a big ring on every finger. He brought a few snakes to show us, which was quite exciting. One incident, which was quite funny, was when a big fast moving snake that he held up was twisting and knotting itself around his arm and someone shouted, "look the snake is doing Marichyasana D", which is one of the deepest twists everybody struggles with in their practice.
Afterwards, there was an auctin of items that had been donated, like ear-rings, a painting by a renowned Mysore artist, shirts signed "Guru" by the coconut stand man, a massage, a trip in a car for a whole day etc. The mood was very good and we had lots of fun, and people really spent a lot of money on these items, as all the money was being raised for Operation Shanti. They said that last year they had raised over 100 000 dollars. Afterwards there was a raffle (we had all also bought tickets for that) and then two yogi's demonstrated some Odissi dancing they had learnt while staying here in Mysore. The night ended with some Kirtan.

Saturday (7)
This morning I woke around 7, but snoozed until about 10 and headed to Alia's Om Cafe for some home-made muesli for breakfast (oats roasted with huney and butter, peanuts roasted and crushed and mixed). I was glad to have a day off, and it felt good to just sit and chat until 12:30. Garth, who had been on the Anatomy course this week, said that the Chiropractor giving the course siad that a chiropractor should be clicking the bones that are not normally clicking and leaving those bones that normally click alone. We should not click bones very often. It is a bad habit. Big joint, such as the hip or shoulder, clicking is not bad, but the small joints should not click.
Afterwards I went to a book shop and then finally got a scooter.

The scooter's odometer, speedometer and petrol gauges do not work so I guess I will be running out of petrol some time soon! At least the scooter did come with a helmet. On my last trip I had been fined Rs 100 and Kerry has already been fined and then went to buy a helmet, which cost exactly the same amount as the fine. I spent two hours just riding around town reacquainting myself with the lay of the town. I found the Maha Idli Man again, and I got a sunburn.

At 4 I met Garth, Shelly and Mel to go to movies. Garth had looked on the net for a movie, because the local Kannata (that is the language spoken in Karnataka state) movies are apparently terrible. He found a Hindi Bollywood movie, called Raaz - they msytery continues, which was a horror movie. I was seriously considering not going because I am not into horrors and we had had some other recommendations (like Slumdog Millionaire, Luck by Chance and Chandy Chowk goes to China), but decided to just go for the experience. It happened to be in the same cinima house I went to 2 years ago. I only know of 2 cinema complexes here in Mysore. Mel bought us all some popcorn, which comes in little packets and is masala (spicy). The movie was actually very very good and I have not jumped like that in a long long time, but it was strange having singing and dancing during the romantic scenes in a horror movie. The movie review did mention that Bollywood has not quite grasped the genre yet. Another interesting thing about the movie is that there was actual tongue action in the movie and the actress was showing a lot of skin, which has made headlines.

Sunday (8)
My practice this morning was really hard and then I realized that it was moon-day tomorrow. I am trying to make sure that this moon-day thing is not just something in my head, but Sharath does also say that our bodies are stiffer on moon-day, and my practice was not good even after a day of rest. After practice I quickly found a spot in the foyer, close ot the door, to watch the 3rd lead class, which is second series. Kino McGregor was in the class and watching those people, it seemed like they definitely did not experience any bad effects from the moon! It looks so beautiful and graceful. Inspirational!!!

Then I rushed off to the organic market, which still happens every Sunday at 9, but had moved away from the Green Hotel. The market was disappointing today, so I went and chatted a while over breakfast. I organised with Kerry for her to show me RashinKar's Book store and Yogic Supplies where I bought myself some books and a yoga mat. The yoga mat still needs to be embroidered, so I will hopefully be able to pick it up tomorrow evening, so that I have it before Tuesday morning's practice.
Then it was Sanskrit course and afterwards there was an exhibition called Taxi at Alia's. I photographer who is based in London had taken some photos of taxis and rickshaws in India. I went to socialise and met Indra, who is also going to the yoga festival in Rishikesh, and who actually ran course on yoga for kids this weekend. I was sad I had forgotten about it, as I would have liked to do it.

Arriving in Mysore

2009-02-01T17:25:00.003+05:30

Saturday (31) - travelling to Mysore
I got up at 5:30 to finish packing. It was still dark when I walked along the beach to meet Ayapam, the rickshaw driver I had arranged to meet at 6:30, but there were already people on the beach, some meditating, some appeared to be fishermen.
Ayapam was actually waiting for me, so I was quite pleased. The morning was fresh and the trip to the airport in the open rickshaw was quite windy and I was sick. I checked in at the airport to find out the flight was delayed by half an hour, so I sat down and watched the Indian version of CNN. There was nothing about a hijacking, just something about a student having been arrested on a flight to Mumbai for harassment of the cabin crew and endangering the lives of others.

I landed in Bangalore after the one and a half hour flight and was very surprised by the airport and terminal, which I later found out was only about 11 months old. It is a far cry from the airport I used two years ago. The new terminal is big, spacious, clean and organised. They even had Baskin and Robbins ice cream and Subway, so I got myself a subway sandwich for lunch and then went to the Airport Shuttle bus (something I have not seen anywhere in India before). I had earlier gone to the prepaid Taxi counter and asked them how much it would cost to the city bus station and they said around Rs 600. They did not bother to tell me that there was a shuttle terminating at the city bus station for only Rs 125. Anyway, it took an hour to drive into the city, so the new airport is obviously quite far out of the city, whereas the old airport was in the city.
I then searched for the bus to Mysore and passed an old rickety bus that I was told would take three hours for Rs 89. I found the 'deluxe' air conditioned "Volvo", as they refer to them here, for Rs 225, which was supposed to take two and a half hours but took about three and a half hours. I remember taking a 4*4 taxi at night two years ago with Michael Gannon and two others, which I described in my blog. The traffic is still the same with ox drawn carts being part of the traffic using the highway.

In Mysore I took the rickshaw to Gokulam, to the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, guruji's shala. Unfortunately I could not register as it was closed on Saturday, which meant I would not be able to practice the next morning. I then went to look for the room I had arranged with Jyothi, which was luckily only six houses up the street from the shala, but it is quite small. I then went to The Coconut Stand (capitalized because it is a landmark that everybody knows :-)). Guess who I saw, Iman from Egypt, who had been with me on the Purple Valley retreat in Goa two years ago. She has been in Mysore for 4 months already and she told me that Leena, who had been with me on my last trip to Mysore, had been here for 6 months and was then told to leave as that is the maximum time you can spend in Mysore. I also saw Kino McGregor, whose studio I practiced at in Miami in December 2007.
Then I went to Anu's Internet Cafe, a favourite hang out, had some supper and by coincidence got an email from Mel, one of the yogis I practice with at home, and I realised she was online with me, so I found out which internet cafe she was at. I knew her and Kerry were going to get to Mysore a week before I did. We walked to Nalpak restaurant and caught up.

Sunday (1 Feb) - getting settled in Mysore
Today was lead class in the shala. The first class is at 4:30 am and the next is at 6:15. The students that have been around for longer and are more advanced go to the first class. I was considering going to the shala at 6 and asking Sharath if I could practice, but decided to take the day off to recover from my cold. You are also not allowed to watch.
For breakfast I tried Tina's, who's cooking courses I had attended 2 years ago, but she had moved, so I had breakfast at Shakti house, which has changed ownership and is now called Alia Om Cafe, where I found out they were charging Rs 1 500 for one night. I met Miranda who was at Purple Valley with me a week ago and she said that Jason, Nancy's assistant, and Sylvia had also just arrived. Later I also went to Chakra House to look at the courses that were available. I am interested in a massage course, a Yoga Sutra course so that I am productive over this month.

The first thing I organised was to get a SIM card for my phone so I could make calls to the yogi's around here. I had not organised one in Goa or Kovalam (Kerala State), because making calls with a SIM card bought in one state will incur more costs when making calls in another state. Local is only considered local if it is within the same state. Getting a cell number from an Indian Telecommunications company was quite interesting to me because I work for MTN at home in South Africa, which is a telecommunications company that had been in talks last year with both Bharti and Reliance Communications for a merger or acquisition. The talks however failed with both operators.
I had the choice of four operators, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea (changed their name from Spice) and Reliance Communications, however, Reliance does not use the GSM technology and would have required the purchase of another phone. Idea is the cheapest of the 3 left and also has a yellow corporate branding like MTN, but its network is apparently not so good and because Vodafone is a direct competitor of MTN via Vodacom in SA, I decided to go with Bharti, which is also supposed to have a very good network. The cost of the SIM card was Rs 300, which included Rs 100 prepaid talk time. Calling cost will be Rs 1/min and Rs 5 per SMS (about ZAR 1) to South Africa. Apparently calling to SA will also be a lot cheaper if I make the call from India, than if calls are made from SA to me.

The next thing I did was to look for new accommodation, because the room I had was terribly small and not the cleanest, but I was thankful that I had it in case I did not find anything. I asked Shiva who organises self catering apartments and he showed me something with share kitchen and bathroom, which was also not that nice. Two years ago, Misa Finland showed me her room where she stayed and I was absolutely blown away with how nice the place was. This was actually right next door to where I had the room now, so I asked and yes, there was a room available... just as beautiful as I remember it. The house has marble floors throughout, beautiful wooden windows and doors, with gorgeous door handles that even have shutters for the keyholes so nobody can peep into the rooms. My room is on the first floor and is very very large about ten times as big as the one I stayed in the last night, it has an attached bathroom with bath, and the room has built in cupboards and a huge double bed. There is no kitchen but there is a fridge outside my room. It cost me Rs 9 000, which is more than double than what the room at Jyothi's would have cost me, but it is worth it!! I showed the room to Kerry and Mel, who were very envious and said to me that I am not living in India... so I said to them, "I am, I am just the Maharaj (king)" :-)

Then I had to organise some money to pay for registration at the shala. The cost of registration in the main shala with Sharath is Rs 27 530 for the first month, thereafter it becomes cheaper, but I unfortunately only have 1 month. If you go to the beginners classes, which start at nine with Saraswati, then you only pay around twenty thousand rupees. Since the maximum daily transaction limit at the ATM is twenty thousand rupees, I had to use two separate debit cards to get enough cash for registration.
Registration was at 15:30 and luckily I went early because the clock in the shala is 15 mins ahead... mental note to use this time from now on. By the time I had registered, there was a huge queue outside. Sharath actually remembered me, which I was pleased with. First thing of course he asked for was the money! He has a banknote counting machine in his office to speed the process of counting all the money. At registration he allocates you your practice time, newcomers get late times and people who reregister get earlier times starting at 4:30 until 8:45 at 15 minute intervals. 9am is when Saraswathi takes over. I got an 8:30 timeslot.

At 16:30 was conference. This happens every Sunday (two years ago, it happened once in the four weeks I was here). All the students registered at the shala can come into the shala and listen to Sharath talk about yoga and ask him questions. Sharath started saying that yoga cannot be learned from books and DVD's, but that one needs a guru who passes down the knowledge, then he talked about the Ashtanga Yoga (eight limbs) of Patanjali, describing the first four limbs as the external practice and the last four limbs being the internal practice. He then described pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), the fifth limb, by telling the story of a yogi walking into the palace of a maharaj who was in the pool with his harem and the maharaj was upset that this guy had just gone through all the security etc, so he called the yogi to stop, which he did not do, so he took out his sword and as the yogi carried on walking, the maharaj cut off his arm, but the yogi just kept on walking... he did not feel it. That is when the Maharaj realized that this was not a normal person, so he went up to him with the arm and asked him to forgive him.
Then people started asking questions such as when one cannot do a posture, how many times should one try to do the posture (here in India, you are stopped when you cannot do a posture and you are not allowed to carry on with the series, you do finishing sequence and end) to which Sharath said just once or twice. Then there were questions about which Upanishads we should start off reading, as there are about 110. I could not hear the answer, but Sharath continued that we should start by reading the Bhagavad Gita, which contains something from all the upanishads. Sharath will often quote the Sanskrit from memory from one of the sacred books and then explain it. I asked the last question, which was whether we should jump through with crossed legs or parallel legs. His answer was that it does not matter which way, it is something we can choose, however, the traditional way is with crossed legs. I like this answer!
I spoke to some yogi's later during my stay and they said that asking questions during the conference is not as good as aking him one on one, as he will spend more time explaining during one on one sessions.

After the conference I met Mel and Kerry for supper at Nalpak again and ended the evening by going to Anu's Internet Cafe.

Practicing with Lino Miele in Kovalam

2009-01-30T17:23:00.001+05:30

Day 1: Sunday (25) - first practice with Lino and workshop on jump through
This morning I was woken up the sound of "Vande Gurunam" being chanted by the class on the rooftop. Lino had asked me to come at 7am or earlier. It was obviously around 6am, as this is when he starts with the first bunch of students, the ones who have been here for some time. It is interesting that both Lino and Nancy did not do lead class like in Mysore. I snoozed some more and then got ready and went upstairs to do my first practice with Lino. Lino and Desiree, his partner, who is from Denmark I found out, and another assistant, were busy adjusting students, of which there were probably just fewer than 20. Apparently they have up to 150 students practicing with them in December and January. But I was also told that Lino then has 5 assistants helping him. I have asked myself why students would come to India to practice with Lino for long periods of time rather than at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute (AYRI) in Mysore, especially since you can only be authorized as a teacher if you go to Mysore yearly for at least a month. Maybe it is because there is a little more personal attention with Lino, maybe because Mysore is very daunting and maybe because Lino is just such a respected teacher.

The shala is quite nice with a bluish greenish tiled floor and open sides, like a balcony. There are roll down bamboo blinds surrounding the sides and as you get up the stair case, about 4 floors, there is a little area where has his DVD's and posters for sale and they have a water filtration system where students can fill up their water bottles with filtered water. Kovalam has huge litter problem and the Indian people are just burying all the rubbish, in particular the plastic bottles, which is causing lots of pollution.

After I was practicing, there were more people that walked in and placed their mats in the back of the room and started practicing. This was a Mysore style class and people are asked to come in at staggered time intervals of 15 mins, with the beginners or new people coming in at the end. I was a little early, but Lino is very easy going and does not mind I am sure. My practice felt fine. Lino gave me one adjustment in Parsvakonasana, and then he came to me just before finishing series and said that I have just arrived and that I should take it easy, indicating that I was forcing my breath too much. I took that as a sign that I should definitely not start doing any second series poses. I had been feeling a little pain in my sacro illiac joint, so I took my back bends quite easy but completed on drop back. After a long rest (I do not say Savasana on purpose - see later) trying to still the mind, I spoke to Lino, who I think was getting ready to do his own practice. He mentioned that in Mysore the etiquette is to practice primary series for whole month before doing another series. I thought it was only a week. Anyway, tomorrow is full moon day, so in Mysore there will be no practice, but Lino does keep his shala open and we can come practice, but he said it should only be primary. He said on Wednesday I could start with some second series, being very aware that I am only spending one week with him.

Lino has his book that I already bought on my last trip to Mysore, but he also has 3 DVD's, one of which is him doing second and third with a woman who started Ashtanga when she was 60 and the video was done when she was 70, and a poster of third series, all of which I would like to buy. Desiree told me that the prices have been reduced because we are in India, but they are actually still quite expensive. The only bonus is that I would not have to pay shipping charges if I bought them here.

I had breakfast at Hotel California, which is a heavily advertising its Ayurvedic facilities, but the restaurant is a straw hut underneath palm trees behind the hotel. I then went back to my room, which I realised was a dingy dark place, so I was glad I had searched for room elsewhere. I took a walk to see if the people in the room I wanted had checked out, then I packed and moved my stuff. I am now on the second floor of the Hotel Sky Palace, just behind the beach, close to some good Indian vegetarian restaurants, which Bindu, an Indian woman from the UK showed me to in the evening. I could have gotten a room downstairs at Rs 350, but upstairs is a little more private. It took some bargaining to get the room at Rs 450, down from 500. The downstairs room was also offered to me at 500 to start with. The room has 2 beds, warm water, but there is no real shower. There is a western toilet and there is a showering handle, but this only has cold water... hot water comes from a separate tap and the pipe attached to the showering handle is not very long, so I basically have to practice chair pose while I am holding the shower handle over my head.

I then went in search of an ATM as I had run out of cash and this took me on an excursion of the area. I ended up at the Leela Hotel on the top of the hill, which is absolutely beautiful, but room rates go all the way to Rs 110 000 for the presidential suite during high season. I then had a swim in the ocean which was really nice. The bay does create some nice waves you can body surf on and the water is really warm. As I was swimming a wooden boat with 6 rowers in the back came past me with a long rope attached to the back. At the beach it just turned around and left. Soon I saw a group of men hauling on the rope, which went on for at least an hour. They were pulling in a net. I had to leave before the whole spectacle was over, to get ready for the workshop with Lino at five.

Before the workshop I paid for the week, € 160, but as I did not have Euro, he allowed me to pay in US. Waiting for the workshop to start, I finally met some of the other students. I found it interesting that there were 2 girls who were from Russia. There were people from Brazil, obviously Scandinavia, Scotland, the US of course and some Italians of course.
Lino is very charismatic and funny. He came in, leant against a pole and began by saying that he is a teacher but he feels that his brain is empty and that we should help him come up with his own questions so that we can answer these questions together. Nobody quite knew what to do with that, but eventually someone asked him how to deal with injuries. He said there are 2 types of injuries, one which we feel only during our practice and then we are fine and another, which we feel all the time... "Mamma Mia!" He told us that he had knee problems for 3 years when he started yoga and he showed us how he used to limp. He acts and role plays all the time. He acted as his friends asking him if he does yoga and he says yes, and then the friend asks, "aren't yogis supposed to be flexible?" and he limps on like a geriatric and says "Yes"... quite funny when you see him to it. His friends used to tell him to stop yoga. He says doctors just tell you to go have an operation, but he says if you go have an operation then you are a dead man. He says, all it takes is time!!! showing us how his knee's move now. When his leg is broken, then he'll go to a surgeon.

He then discussed becoming a teacher. He says who cares how many certificates you have, rather than go spend thousands going on teacher training, give the money to him and he will say, "ok, now you are a teacher". He said, you must know the system and when somebody comes to you and says show me, you say "No" and then eventually you will begin to teach. The students make you a teacher. He says you must become the system, you must swallow the pill and then you are the system. It is a scientific system. He asks "scientific, what is scientific about yoga?" He said he asked guruji, who said the breath, working with the energy in your body through your breath. Every movement is a breath, there are no poses in the vinyasa... you never hold your posture. He says there is not warrior pose in Surya Namaskar B. It is 7 and 11. He imitated a student taking forever to get into Trikonasana, making sure every bone is aligned and says "No!" You move in exhale, hold for 5 breaths and move out on the inhale. He then asked us questions like how many vinyasas (counts) for Paschimottanasana (15), and we all did it together and he then showed us that when moving from A to B, you exhale come out of A on count 10, then 11 would be to lift up and then kick back, but if you count 8 now, everybody knows you are going to B, inhale engage bandhas and 9 move into B. So he asked us to do Surya Namaskar with Desiree counting in Danish. He said we all understand because we know the system. He then went on to say that some students stay in led class for 3 years. Then he uses his leg imitating a pushing action and says, "No, you go Mysore style". He says we need to take responsibility in life and so it is with Yoga, we need to learn the system and then practice by ourselves. That is the beauty of Ashtanga and he imitated students just doing what a teacher says blindly following. He then went on to say that we need to experience the yoga for ourselves.

Since last week already, I have been thinking a lot about my classes, and am becoming more and more decided that I should use Mysore style from now on when I teach. It just means the beginners get so much more personal attention, which they need, and since there are too few classes currently so that they can be separated into beginner or intermediate lead class, beginners come out of lead, completely exhausted, saying it is far too hard for them. Mysore will work much better and advancing students will begin to feel the wonder of having their own practice.

He then told us that he went to a bookstore the other day and picked up an Ashtanga book and got really angry when he saw that they were teaching jump through by lifting the hips up and then going down and through. He demonstrated how it should be done. I was amazed how high he lifted his body of the floor and the ease with which he did it... he is about fifty I think. He kept his legs parallel. There was some confusion after the class as to whether he meant straight legs and after I asked him he explained that he did not mean straight legs, but he did not want us to cross the legs. I have been doing it with crossed legs from the very time I started Ashtanga and Nancy last week had said that Sharath does not allow straight legs anymore because people jump through with momentum, rather we should jump through with crossed legs and get control with the bandhas. I will need to ask Sharath exactly what he wants. Anyway, I tried to go through with parallel legs and Lino explained that I must not lift the hips, but go straight through. These are actually two different methods that I had researched when doing my jump through workshop at home - I think Matthew Sweeney says we must lift and lower, whereas ??? says we should go straight through. Nancy had not commented to me about my jump through and I don't know if Lino would have said anything to me if it was not for the workshop. I guess that it is fine if you can do it, but someone did say to me that lifting up caused her some shoulder pain and when she stopped jumping through by lifting up the hips, the shoulder pain went away. So Lino's stance is not to lift, but jump straight through. I practiced this a few times and for the first time in my life I actually got my legs through, although I was practicing without my mat so that my feet could slide through easily.

In the evening Bindu showed me the Indian vegetarian restaurants which were a little way behind the beach, but were more authentic and cheaper to all the restaurants on the beach.

Day 2: Monday (26) - sweaty stuff
It is Republic Day in India. I remember that this is the day I arrived in Mumbai 2 years ago. Today is also full moon day and there was going to be an annular eclipse of the sun. I woke up feeling like a train had hit me, even though I had had six hours sleep. I dozed until 6:50 and then quickly got ready and walked to the Hotel Peacock. I did not feel like practicing at all. It was extremely warm and humid and I perspired like a pig. By the end of my practice there were literally puddles on the floor around my mat so I felt quite bad for the adjusters. When I stood up to do drop backs I was amazed to see about 2 to 3 drops falling off me almost every second. Lino had actually talked about people drinking water during practice at the workshop the day before and mentioned Stefano sweating a lot. He made a joke that Stefano will bless the rest of us with his sweat when he wipes the sweat off his forehead and then shakes his hand. He did not mean that there was anything wrong with sweating, it is good to cleanse the body and we are all different, some people don't sweat at all, but we should not drink water just before or during practice, just to sweat more.
Today, Lino asked me to change my hands to the other position in Prasarita Padotanasana C, which I found extremely difficult, especially with sweaty fingers. I need to be adjusted in this position in future. He also showed me that I am doing too many movements moving from one side to the other in Parsvotanasana. I am probably doing the same in the other standing poses too.

The weather was not fantastic and I spent the day working on my laptop in a restaurant overlooking the beach and the ocean.

Day 3: Tuesday (27) - visiting Trivandrum
My practice today was absolutely fantastic, and I went into the second series. Lino adjusted me into Paschasana and it was the first time I had ever been able to get to my wrist on the left side. Right side I could not get as deep, but I am aware that that side is not as good. I carried on by myself and was helped in Kapotasana by Roxanna. My shin slipped on the wet mat, so I was not happy with it but carried on. I was wondering when Lino would stop me. Roxanna, the assistant, assisted me again in Supta Laguvajrasana (sitting in lotus and crossing the arms behind your back grabbing hold of your toes and then leaning back and placing your head on the floor) and then I made a mistake and started with the twists instead of going into Bakasana A (Crow Pose). Roxanna corrected me, and then Lino came over and asked if I had bound my hands in Supta Laguvajrasana. I cannot keep the bind when dropping my head back onto the floor, so in other words that meant I had to stop there... pity :-)

I did not carry my cotton mat to India and am intending to purchase another one here, but have not found one yet, so my mat is extremely slippery as it is so wet and Lino remarked that it is quite dangerous doing drop backs on the wet mat, which is totally true.

During breakfast Lea from Denmark mentioned she wanted to go to Trivandrum to see the town before she leaves on Wednesday night to go back home. I decided that I'd go with her, partly because I wanted to see the town and partly because she did not seem too comfortable going by herself and nobody else was keen to go. I found out later that it was her first time to India, the hotel had arranged transport from the airport to Kovalam for her, so she had never even been in a Rickshaw before and she was very conscious about walking around in town and being looked, because of not following the Indian customs. We took the bus from Kovalam to Trivandrum (half an hour), which was dirt cheap at Rs 9 each (less than 2 Rand, for the international reader, 1 USD = 49 INR). In the buses, it is custom for the women to sit in front and the men to sit in the back, so we sat near the middle with her in front of me.

During the trip, Lea told me that she had done the trip to the tip of India, which I was interested in, but it is a whole day trip and would be quite expensive for me to do by myself. I also found out that Lino allows her to carry on past Supta Laguvajrasana, but she get stuck in Eka Pada Sirsasana (One foot behind the head), which is something I can do, so it seems Lino is pushing me a little to concentrate more on this pose :-). Some schoolboys got onto the bus and the one sitting next to me was quite helpful, telling me about the Attakul temple and showing us where to get off. In one of the restaurants I had heard some nice music and found out it was a CD of music from the Attakul temple in Trivandrum, which is supposed to be very famous. The mantra is not in Sanskrit, but in the local Malayalam language, but I thought the music would be really nice to do yoga to.

In Trivandrum we went to the Chalai Market, the Big Bazaar store and then took a taxi to see the oldest Zoo in India, established in 1857. The state we are in is called Kerala and has a socialist government style, which is very successful. The state has almost 99% literacy and a very good health care system according to the Lonely Planet guidebook. I found the Zoo very sad though. The enclosures were not as big as the Lonely Planet made them out to be. Lots of the enclosures did not have signboards explaining what animals were inside and the signboard that were there looked like they had not been maintained since the British left. However, many enclosures did have a big marble stone put into the wall of the enclosure inscribed with which town official had opened the enclosure and these were all dated between 2001 and 2003.
We saw two Indian elephants chained to posts, not being able to move more than a meter away from the post, and in one of the bear enclosures, a bear had fallen into the 5 meter deep trench behind the wall of the enclosure meant to safeguard the visitors from the bears. I don't know how long he had been stuck there, but he definitely did not seem that healthy anymore.

We then had to head back so we could make the 5:30 Pranayama session in the afternoon. The rickshaw driver took us to the wrong bus station, so it took us ages to walk to the KSRTC bus station and my feet were quite sore. We finally got onto the bus which was quite crowded and the bus driver was driving like a bat out of hell. Quite an experience when you're not sitting down!

Day 4: Wednesday (28) - where is my hair?
I guess my body is starting to get tired or I am not sleeping enough. I had been working again last night and I woke up with a slight headache. I had tried to wake up early so that I could watch the first half hour of the practice. Diego from Brazil is practicing third series and the thought had crossed my mind that I should just skip second series and just do third... just kidding... but it looks so beautiful, and like a lot of fun... I know I will enjoy if I ever get there :-).
I started off slowly, but by the time I had finished my third Surya Namaskar B (Sun Salutation), I realised my headache was gone. The beauty of doing yoga! My back felt great, I had no Sacro Illiac joint pain, not even a hint, for the first time in many months. My upward dogs, arching and extending the upper back, were feeling very good. My twists were really deep, holding on to my shins almost in Marichyasana D and being able to straighten my spine and sit up tall.
My shoulders had been getting tired yesterday and today from doing the jump through's with legs parallel. When I jump through with my legs crossed, I have a lot more control using my bandhas (core strength) and so I jump slower and so in my opinion, jumping through with legs parallel is a little harder on the shoulders. However, maybe I will develop even more core strength in time and be able to jump through slowly with parallel legs...

I had no adjustments today until I got to Bekasana (Frog pose). Roxanna helped me again in Kapotasana and I got really deep, being able to touch just beyond the balls of my big toes. In Supta Laguvajrasana, I was able to keep hold with my right big toe with my right hand. Not good enough for Lino :-). He assisted me with my drop backs again. He said again, "Ai ai ai, Andreas, why no mat?" He suggested I wait to buy a mat in Mysore as they are cheaper there and there will be more variety. This is what I had been planning.

After practice I asked Lino what would be the easiest way to get to Mysore (Colonial name - new name is Mysuru), as he had obviously done the trip many times and I have not been able to find a direct train. He suggested that there is a train via Bangalore (new name Bangaluru) that takes 18 hours, but the easiest is to fly to Bangalore.

After breakfast with everybody at the Hotel California, I went and got my head shaved... yes, I did it again :-) The guy did not use a machine, did not cut my hair first and did not use any shaving cream.... he just wet my hair, and used a wet shaving blade. Afterwards I went to the beach to get a tan on my white scalp... I met Stuart and Leena at the beach and they were very concerned about me burning and offered hats and suntan lotion :-)

My thoracic spine and back did feel a little tight all day, I think it is just the muscles being stiff from all the deep upward dog back extension and back extensions and back bending in second series, which it is not used to yet, but no lower back issues anymore.

For dinner I went to the Fusion restaurant, a very expensive place at the beachfront, because it was Lea's last evening. The menu looked great, with Indian food on the left hand side, western food on the right and fusion dishes in the middle, but the food was not that great and I was still hungry after my meal, so afterwards, I went back to one of the cheap Indian vegetarian restaurants behind the beach and got some more food. Then I went onto the net and finally I purchased my plane ticket to Bangalore for Saturday. I had heard that the trains from Trivandrum to Bangalore were booked out until the middle of February. I have found out that there are many buses travelling to Mysore daily from Bangalore, which I will do rather than going by train, which was my original plan. I also sent out some mails requesting help with accommodation in Mysore, and the response was that there is nothing available.

Day 5: Thursday (29) - Mysore or Lino?
This morning I got up early to watch the beginning of class at 6. When I got there, students had already begun practicing and Lino and Desiree were not there yet. These are all students who know what they are doing and you don't want to be adjusted in your first few sun salutations anyway. Lino did not remark about my haircut when he arrived, but greeted me with a smile and asked if I wanted to take photos. After another 15 mins or so, he stopped the class and did the opening chant. This is the same procedure that was done at the Miami Life Centre, Kino McGregor's studio, when I was there in December 2007.
I then started my practice. In the two weeks I have been in India so far, my practice has already changed immensely and I have learnt a great deal. I enjoyed my primary series and even began working on jumping directly into Titibasana (Firefly pose) without touching the feet onto the floor from down dog, which I had never had the courage to try before.
Lino came to me during Paschasana (noose pose - first pose in second) and said I should use a towel rolled up under my heels when I practice at home, to give me more balance. When I got to Kapotasana, I think Lino and Desiree were busy (Roxanna had left yesterday) so I did Kapotasana twice by myself and then Lino came and assisted me. Today I touched the arches of my feet, and then he said to me... "Come Andreas, you have to make a plan" referring to Supta Laguvajrasana. He really wanted me to succeed in this posture today. I had brought an extra towel for him to sit on while he adjusted me, because the floor is always so sweaty around me... and I used a towel around my toes so I would not slip off. He took hold of my arms really strongly and I went into the full posture without slipping off... I had imagined this taking me another year to achieve so I was pleasantly surprised, happy and thankful for Lino's help. I then asked Lino if I could do Bakasana, which he was happy with. I knew that I could do these quite well and then I think I should have waited for him, but since I knew the postures I carried on doing the two twists and then did Eka Pada Sirschasana and then Yoga Nidrasana (both legs behind the head). I did not know if I should be sitting upright or lying down getting into the pose, so I don't know if I did it incorrectly, but he came to me and said, "You have no teacher, you learn from book, from video. Basta, Basta!". I need to mention here that the reason I was pushing so hard was because it was my last Mysore style class with Lino, Friday is lead class, in which I cannot practice second series and I am not expecting to get to practice much of second series if any at all with Sharath in Mysore, as he has so many students that he cannot give much individual attention. I do not know how long it will be before I can learn from a certified Ashtanga teacher again.
I am barely just beginning to practice second series, yet I was surprised to see some of the other students who had finished, some also practicing second, were watching me practice. I was actually a bit self conscious and wondering about all the things I might be doing wrong. Anyway, I enjoy doing yoga and that is what yoga is about, not which postures you are doing or which series you are doing... I am actually considering doing primary series with full vinyasa (coming back to Samasthithih (standing) after every pose) for a while, so I get a better understanding of the vinyasa count, but I am also quite keen to continue practicing second series.

Anyway, Lino came back to me after I had done my 3 Urdhva Dhanurasana (upward facing wheel - backbends) and my 3 drop backs and said I should do "boom - boom". We had all been laughing about his expressions the day before... by boom - boom, he meant going into handstand, dropping the legs over into urdhva dhanurasana and then standing up. After he understood that I had never done them before, he told me how he wanted me to start and helped me through 3 repetitions and then we did one more drop back, leaning back 5 times and going all the way back on the 5th rep. He said in future I should do 5 urdhva dhanurasana, 3 drop backs, 3 boom-booms and then the 5 rep drop back. The boom - boom is actually a preparation to the tic-tac's, which is going from standing with hands on the floor to hand stand to urdhva dhanurasana, back up to handstand, back to standing with hands on the floor and repeating this.
Nancy had told me that she would get people to start practicing the "boom - boom" (not her expression) after second series and then tic-tac's when doing third series. I think I will be happy practicing just boom - boom for a long time to come. Coming back to hand stand from Urdhva Dhanurasana is extremely difficult.

I spent the day walking around in the sun and for lunch I had a thali (Indian traditional meal consisting of rice and some vegetables served on a rectangular plate that has got separate sections for the sauces and vegetables and the main are for the rice), which one of the very poor women prepares from her home for a mere Rs 50. Some of the yogi's decided to eat there to support her. Bindu and Rebecca were asking me why I was going to Mysore and that I should rather stay and practice with Lino, because I will learn so much more from Lino. Mysore is also much more expensive than Lino. Lino has just begun to know me, and there are such few students in the shala, that it definitely a very good question that I needed to address for myself. Am I going to Mysore just to be authorised or certified to teach? That is not what yoga is about for me... I am passionate about the practice and the experience of yoga. I could learn so much more from Lino during my time here in India. Am I after the certificate or the knowledge? This is exactly what Lino talked about on Monday... who cares if you have the certificates... have you got the knowledge... have you experienced it yourself?
It is sad that Mysore is not what it used to be. The Ashtanga sequence of postures is even being reduced in order to make the practice shorter, so that Sharath can handle the number of people coming to Mysore. Later in the evening, after the pranayama session, I talked to Desiree about it and for the following reasons, I have decided to carry on with my original plan to go to Mysore, I have the plane ticket, Lino's workshop is finished in two weeks time (although I could then travel to Mysore and practice with Sheshadri or BNS Iyengar), it will be interesting for me to see the changes since I my last visit, I am hoping that Sharath will give returning students more attention (I will try to have more interaction with him), I will be able to ask Sharath questions about some of the conflicting things I have learnt, and I will go with no expectations and an open heart, and the energy of the shala will be a great experience again I am sure. In future, I might decide to rather practice for a few weeks with Lino Miele or Paul Dallaghan in Thailand, Nancy Gilgoff in Berlin or Maui, Richard Freeman in Colorado, Matthew Sweeney in Byron Bay, Tim Miller in California, Danny Paradise, Eddie Stern or many others.

In the afternoon I lay on the beach with Ilona, a tall beautiful girl who I thought was Russian. I found out that she is from the Ukraine, had emigrated to Canada and now teaches yoga in Moscow. There are about four other Russian yogis here and all of my neighbours at my hotel are Russian or east European, which I found quite interesting because in all my travels I don't think I have ever met any Russian travellers. Ilona is the only one of them who can really speak English with ease, although not absolutely perfect. She told me a little about the Ukraine and the people and also talked about Andre Lappa , a very well known Yoga Instructor from Kiev, who did not like Ashtanga. Apparently he went to Mysore and was not allowed to go past primary series and did not like it and has now created his own style of yoga called universal freestyle yoga.

We then rushed to the pranayama session at 5:30. Lino spent the first half an hour again answering our questions. The first discussion was whether we should feel guilty when we cannot do our daily practice. Lino says, yoga must not become a religion to us and we should not feel guilty if we did not practice for a day or two, but we should not go past 3 days without a practice because firstly your practice goes downhill and secondly your mind will get affected and then he related it to his experience in 1991 when he was working so hard (theatre director) he did not sleep for 1 and a half months, so no practice. Eventually they went out in Germany after everything was finished and he asked for a beer and a cigarette, both of which he does not normally do.
Being sick is also not an excuse not to do practice. Of course if you have Delhi Belly, you won't practice for two or3 days, but flu for 2 or 3 weeks is not an excuse... then you have to research your own body... something is wrong... you are not supposed to get sick :-) and he referred to the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute with emphasis on the word "research".
He said the only excuses for not practicing though are 1. travelling, 2. travelling and 3... travelling. He told us that a student had once told him that he was doing headstand on the toilets in the aeroplane. If we do this, then we are sick! (in the head).
He went on to explain that even if we are pregnant, have a slipped disk etc, we can do the yoga, with modification of the poses and he gave examples and explained that we must practice with patience and never push, because that is when injuries re-occur and then people say Ashtanga is not for them. And he said all we need is primary series talking about the fact that primary is called yoga chikitsa, yoga therapy. He asked guruji how this healing sequence came about and guruji said his guru told him, but Lino did not believe him and eventually Lino realised that guruji was referring to the guru being his own insight and understanding that comes with many years of practicing and as one becomes wiser. He said guruji is extremely intelligent. Lino also made the point that in the west we want to always progress to the next series, but this is not what Ashtanga is about.

Then Dimitri from Russia brought the discussion back to jump through's, asking if beginners do not find jumping through with crossed legs easier rather than parallel. Lino said that he thinks it will create a habit that will be difficult to break and in his opinion, parallel legs is easier. Use the breath, not muscle strength. Diego from Brazil, who practices third series, made the point that you are more likely to injure hands and knees with crossed legs.

Day 6: Friday (30) - Auroville
I woke up to an overcast sky. The air was very humid, so much so that when I placed my mat down in the shala, there were water droplets on the floor, which I could not explain, but as I was practicing, water droplets were dropping from the roof onto me. It was lead class today and Lino did it the pure traditional way, just counting in Sanskrit and articulating the breath. His count was very even, so the class was not that hard, but I struggled through the practice because I was getting sick. I thought it was just a reaction from the smoking of my new neighbours who had moved in yesterday, but by Saturday I realised that it was a cold, probably because I had left the fan on the night before to try and keep the mosquitoes away. I ended up also straining a muscle inside of my left shoulder blade.

Afterwards I said goodbye to Lino and asked him about learning from books and video's because I was about to buy some of his DVD's of his. He said I should move away from South Africa... haha... or that I should go to an instructor at least twice a year for a week or two. When we took a picture together, he was quite funny because he said only if he can stand on his toes and I bend my knees. Hi is quite a small chap :-)

I spent the day on the beach and again, thoughts of postponing my trip to Mysore came up. Could I change my plane ticket and spend an extra week with Lino? A number of people were leaving this week, but I found out that at least four other people decided to stay another unplanned week. In the evening though, I received an email from one of the people I had contacted in Mysore stating that they had a room available for me, so I did feel better (accommodation was a huge worry) and I took it as a sign that I should go.
Rebecca mentioned that there had been a hijacking in Mumbai, but nobody had heard anything about it.

At dinner I met Anneke, a French girl who told me she had been living in Auroville, close to Pondicherry on the east coast of India. Auroville is an international community, a project in 'human unity' apparently started in the 60's by some hippies and now encompasses more than 80 rural settlements spread over 20 km with about 1700 residents, two thirds of which are foreigners from about 35 different countries. She said that you can stay there for a minimum of a week and you can help out with the work there, but she ended up spending six months there because it was so nice, referring to the atmosphere and attitude of the people.
I also met Kristine from Norway, and we spent the rest of the evening chatting, as I was putting off having to pack!

Travelling to Kovalam

2009-01-24T17:14:00.002+05:30

Saturday (24) - guruji's family tree
On Saturday morning some students actually did get up early to practice by themselves because they felt that because Monday was a moon-day (no practice), that they wanted to get another practice in. I took it easy and after breakfast Ellen showed me her new electrical Shruti box, which Dena Kinsberg, who was here before Nancy, uses in her Ashtanga classes apparently. Then I packed and waited for the taxi, which had been ordered by Linda who was also going to the airport today. Linda is from Sweden, but lives in Bangalore now and we had an interesting chat.
First we chatted about the Jois family tree. Sri K Pattabhi Jois had two sons and a daughter, namely Manju, who now lives and teaches in the USA, Saraswathi, who had two children, Sharath and Sharmilla who now lives and teaches in Bangalore, and another son who killed himself. I found out later from Lino that guruji actually stopped practicing the physical asanas after his son committed suicide. This is an interesting fact to know, because people tend to compare BKS Iyengar, who still practices asanas, with guruji, as they are only about a year apart in age and both were taught by Krishnamacharya, but they have followed two very different styles of doing asana practice.
Apparently suicide is quite common in India, because people are not scared of death. They will be reincarnated anyway, so it is an easy way of escaping debt or a bad marriage, which are often still arranged marriages.

At the airport, we split up, as I was flying to Trivandrum via Chennai (Madras is the old name) on Paramount airways, and she was flying back to Bangalore. Chennai is on the east coast of India and Goa and Trivandrum are both on the west coast of India, so I was flying across the country twice in order to get to my destination, however, the trip would have taken days by train, and I could not find a direct flight to Trivandrum. Paramount Airways is a relatively new airline in India, (there are many airlines here, Jet Airways, Kingfisher Red, Deccan, IndiGo, SpiceJet to name a few) that currently only operates in the south of India, and it is based in Chennai. I had an hour flight to Chennai, 45 minute stopover, and another hour to Trivandrum. As we were coming in to land in Trivandrum, I saw the Lighthouse and surrounding beaches of Kovalam. This is where I would spend the next week.

Once I got my luggage, I did not get a prepaid taxi for about Rs 330; instead I walked all the way out of the parking lot and asked the first Rickshaw driver for a price, who quoted me Rs 200. I got him down to Rs 150 for the half hour trip back to Kovalam. The taxi driver did not speak much English and he wanted the business, but as I suspected, he took me to the wrong beach and did not know where the Peacock Hotel was. He then asked me for more money, which I flatly refused. To the Indian people, it seems to be a game to try and get the most money they can out of you. Somebody actually told me to look at it as a game, which helps not to get upset with it. So I try to smile from now on, when they begin with their tactics. Eventually he dropped me off near a sign pointing to the hotel and I had to walk down a steep hill to the hotel as the sun was setting and people were starting to light fires for cooking dinner.

Lino runs his yoga retreat from the roof of the hotel, which is why I asked to come here. I intended to find a hotel close by, but as it happened, the hotel did have a very cheap room available. It was dark, and there was no electricity, which was a daily half hour occurrence around this time, so I did not feel like searching for a better deal. I dumped my stuff and explored the waterfront, which is a very loud, busy area, with lots of inflated prices at restaurants and hotels serving western food. The fish is apparently supposed to be very good here, but I was going to stick to my vegetarian diet while in India.

Who is Lino Miele?
Let me start this post by explaining why I chose to practice with Lino Miele. As you can read in my posts about my previous trip to India for yoga, I became really passionate about Ashtanga Yoga after doing Michael Gannon's workshops in SA and then coming to India to practice with him and join him to Mysore. Michael Gannon is a student of Lino Miele. Lino Miele has been practicing since 1984 or 1988? and started teaching in 1994. He is Italian and has opened up schools in Rome, Finland and Denmark. He is opening a new school in Italy in March this year.

Lino also wrote the book "Ashtanga Yoga", which Lino himself jokingly refers to as The Bible. In the book he explains how guruji became his teacher, and the book seems to have been a close collaboration with guruji and Sharath. There are many many good Ashtanga instructors, but I think none have the kind of relationship with guruji that Lino has. Lino is in his 50's I think, but is still like a naughty child and has the ability to make you like him straight away and apparently he and guruji are quite close. Lino still visits guruji every year and will again this year after his workshop finishes on the 13th of February. Lino has this workshop in Kovalam, India, every year for 12 weeks, from November. (Guruji has been in and out of hospital regularly over the past year.)

Practicing with Nancy Gilgoff at Purple Valley in Goa

2009-01-24T15:03:00.005+05:30

Sunday (18) - "Yoga is self discovery"
Sunday morning on the 18th was our first practice, which was Mysore style (for explanation refer to my blog on my previous trip). Normally, in Mysore though, Sunday practice would be led. We start the practice at 8am every day, which I was unhappy about because I am used to 6am and it means half the day is over when I finish practicing and have breakfast, but I was actually woken up by my alarm clock, which is unusual for me... I normally wake up before my alarm goes off at 5 to get ready for my six o'clock practice. I had decided the night before that I needed to rest and did not do any work, so I did get a good night sleep (approx. 7 hours).

The first thing that Nancy made us do in the shala, was for the right side of the room to face the left side of the room and vice versa. She said this is how guruji made them do it in the early days, and a psychologist had mentioned to her that it creates more of a sense of being a group and when the teacher walks through the class, the teacher becomes part of the group as opposed to being seperate. I think this is a very interesting way of setting up the class and I liked it.
My practice was alright. I just did primary series and left out the drop backs. Nancy actually said that guruji would tell them not to practice the first day after flying, to allow the body to settle, so we should take it easy. I did get some comments from other students that my practice looked beautiful. That is just because I can do jump backs and jump throughs. If I had to compare my practice with that of Jason (he started practicing third series as I was finishing) or Jeff (who practiced with us) I had a long way to go.
Nancy adjusted me in one of the twisting postures and then waited for me to do a "vinyasa" (jump back and jump through) before going into the other side. She later in the discourse told us that the etiquette when a teacher is adjusting you in Mysore style, is to not do the vinyasa, so that the teacher can adjust you in both sides without having to wait and then move on to another student.

I learnt later that primary series is supposed to be nurturing (hard to believe for a beginner :-)) and we are not supposed to be doing fancy stuff in primary. Lots of people have added fancy moves because they have been held back from doing second series for so long. When we jump into a posture and out of a posture we are supposed to have straight legs, except for Triang Mukha Eka Pada Paschimottanasana (one leg folded back forward bend). Nancy is very traditional and does not like people adding any poses to the series.

After breakfast Dr. Vahed gave us an introduction into Ayurveda, a system of traditional medicine native to India. In Sanskrit, the word Ayurveda comprises the words ayus, meaning 'life' and veda, meaning 'science'. He talked about moksha (liberation) from the cycle of death and rebirth, but I have forgotten since I am writing this 2 weeks after the event. Traditional beliefs hold that humans possess a unique constellation of Doshas (biological humors), namely vata (wind/spirit/air), pitta (bile) and kapha (phlegm). In ordre to determine what kind of person you are, i.e.: what qualities you have more of (vata, pitta, kapha) you fill out a questionaire and an ayurveda practitionist will perform some tests. Basically, vata people are dry and slow, whereas the pitta people are more fiery and energetic (I guess this is where I fit in :-)) and kapha people are more grounded moist people. Ayurveda stresses a balance of these three doshas, and imbalances are cured using oil, ghee and honey.
Nancy told us that a vata person should practice after between 9 and 12 in the morning or between 6 and 8 in the evening (now it makes sense that we are practicing so late with Nancy, since she is vata), a pitta person should practice first thing in the morning to get rid of the energy, and a kapha person can practice anytime. According to guruji, the ashtanga vinyasa yoga practice is more suited to the pitta person??? ( I need to check this fact.)

After lunch I went to the german bakery with Sylvia and two girls from the UK. At the bakery we met the four people from Turkey. I saw flyers of the brahmani yoga studio, where they offer "Superhero Acro Yoga Flow" on Thursday evenings, which was interesting to me because I am trying to organise an Acro Yoga teacher to come to South Africa to do a workshop with us. As fate would have it, the couple (girl from germany and guy from Spain) who teach the class actually came to our table because Can was organising for them to go to Turkey. I of course found out when their schedule would be open to come to SA.

At 17:00 we had our first discourse session with Nancy. We began with some breathing exercises to determine if our breath was longer on the inhale or the exhale. Most people's breath is longer on the exhale. Ideally they should be equal. She then talked about the placement of the tongue in the mouth, which was quite interesting because if you place the tongue correctly, (don't place the tip of the tongue, but just behind that, on to the ridge of the palate behind the top teeth) the throat seems to open up more and it becomes easier to make your breath audible, especially the inhale. However, she said the guruji never ever used the word ujjayi when teaching the breath to them and she thinks that that was brought in by westerners. The breath should be audible to ourselves but not like darth vader!

Then she began speaking about energy flows and she told us the story of when her dog died, that she could see the soul leaving through the eyes. Apparently in human beings the soul leaves via the armpits if we have not reached an enlightened state and we are reborn. When we have reached moksha, our soul leaves the body via the crown chakra. She then asked us to down dog and asked us if we were pushing from the shoulder into the ground. We should be pushing down from the elbows into the palms, but the feeling in the armpits should be that of pulling inwards. In other words, when we do our yoga practice, our energy should not be escaping our bodies. (Sharath mentioned two weeks later at the first conference I attended in Mysore, that we should not do yoga outside, because the air will take our energy. I guess this will be difficult for a non-yogi to understand, but I have tried to practice yoga outside and the energy is very different.)
She then compared this to Iyengar practice of extending out of the arm when going into trikonasana. She said in Ashtanga, we don't extend forward, but move straight into the posture and we grab hold of the big toe, in order to create a mudra - an energy circle.
When we do Virabhadrasana II (warrior pose 2), we should have the feeling of drawing our arms inwards even though we are extending the arms out. To me this makes sense, since what you are actually doing is tightening the muscles around the shoulder joint, using a subtle energetic feeling.
She also made us aware that we should not come to Namaste (bent arms) between sun salutations. We should keep the arms strong and straight to keep the energy flowing strong.
She said that the bhandas help us seal the energy inside our bodies. When we practice we want to slow the breath down and keep drawing our energy inwards, otherwise we age faster.
Later during the course, it became even more evident to me how important this energy circle was in Ashtanga. She said that the extension of the spine going into Paschimottanasana (forward bend) for instance, comes from other styles of yoga. Guruji said first put the forehead onto the knee to create the mudra, and then start extending forward. The other effect this has is to enable the student to engage uddiyana bandha more. (See later).

Practicing with Nancy Gilgoff at Purple Valley in Goa

Nancy mentioned that the asanas wring our body out, and the final resting posture is a healing or receiving posture. She also seems to have learnt a lot from a spiritual teacher called Baba Hari Das, who when asked if one should learn from one teacher or many, he replied, "Bee's do not make honey from only one flower!". This was relevant for me, as I had chosen not spend two weeks with either Nancy or Lino, but 1 week with each. I have been questioning this decision often, because each teacher needs some time to get to know you, so you can progress much more if you stay with one teacher for two weeks rather than just one. When I had to prepare to leave Kovalam, see Thursday the 29th, I was even considering giving up one week in Mysore, to be able to study an extra week with Lino.

Day 2: Monday (19) - moving into second series - Nadi Sodhana
Today I was still a little stiff from travelling. I completed primary series and then went into second series as far as Kapotasana (Dove pose - on your knees bend backwards, put your head between your feet and grab your heels - well that is what you're supposed to do!) as this is how far I practice when I practice by myself at home. I also knew the next posture, but Nadia at home had told me that I was not ready for it, so I waited for Nancy, and she gave me the next posture, Supta Vajrasana (Sleeping Thunderbolt pose - sitting in lotus and crossing the arms behind your back grabbing hold of your toes and then leaning back and placing your head on the floor). I did not know it, but this pose was going to be my gateway pose with Lino Miele (see post for the 27th Jan). Nancy told me later that I should always do all the way up to Supta Laguvajrasana (not leave it out) as this really opens up the back and releases the back after the three previous back bends.
When guruji taught her and David, the first time in India, guruji did not give them back bends until the end of second series, whereas these days in Mysore, you are not allowed to move into second series until you are able to come back up from dropping back by yourself. Nancy and David were with guruji for four months the first time and they used to do yoga twice a day and by the end of the four months, they were doing both primary and second series, so they moved through primary and into second very quickly. Manju Jois, David Williams and Nancy still do not teach back bending until the end of second series.

I spent most of Monday morning frantically finishing up the document I had been doing for work, which I had also spent most of the last night on.

In the afternoons discourse session, Nancy talked more about the breath and how it speeds up when we are in difficult postures, or on days we don't feel like practicing. She then moved on to diet and mentioned that when we practice in the mornings, we are not burning off the calories from the dinner the night before, but the lunch from the day before. She told us that she was a vegetarian when she started yoga with guruji and he force-fed her according to ayurveda, which by the way does not decree vegetarianism. Apparently papaya (paw-paw) is the most heating food on the planet and should not be eaten by women who menstruating or are pregnant. A cooling diet is not for vata people, but more for pitta people. Kapha people can eat anything they want. Cooling food includes, coconut and curd, whereas yoghurt (west) is heating. Fasting is not only not recommended, but is considered dangerous, especially if practicing yoga. Garlic is bad for the joints, is not good to eat every day and should be used for medicinal purposes.
Chinese medicine and ayurveda do not promote eating too much raw food. Nancy said it takes twice as much energy to digest raw food than cooked food and it is a fad in the west right now.

She then told us of a three year old boy who wanted to show the adults that he was going to do yoga. He stood on his mat, then adjusted the mat, stood upright again, looked around and adjusted the mat again etc and he never actually did a vinyasa. The adult yogi's laughed, but realised that the child was actually imitating them... She told us that we should not allow ourselves these moments during our practice to wipe the sweat etc, because what we are actually doing is coming out of our practice. Just do the posture without thinking so much. That is actually good advice because so often we struggle to get into a posture because we fear it!

Nancy then asked us to do uddiyana kriya, which is supposed to be very good for digestion. This is just exhaling completely and then pulling the abdominal wall in and upwards as much as possible, holding for ten counts and then releasing and doing it three times. She told us that guruji was always very secretive about something and would never teach her, but would teach other women. Only when she was past menopause, did she find out that it was nauli kriya, which guruji does not recommend for women who wanted to become pregnant as it apparently has a shredding effect on the uterus.

She finished by asking us if we had seen the 1938 video on YouTube of Krishnamacharya doing yoga asanas. She said that they looked sloppy, which we agreed with. The point was that in Ashtanga, there is less importance placed on the posture, but what is important is what is happening on the inside of your body, the breath, the dristi (focus) and the bandhas. At the end of the video, Krishnamacharya does some pretty amazing uddiyana kriya.

Day 3: Tuesday (20) - women and ashtanga
In today's practice Nancy progressed me through Bakasana (Crow pose) A & B, Bharadvajasana, Ardha Matsyendrasana (two twists) and Eka Pada Sirsasana (One Foot behind the head pose). Normally a teacher would never give more than two poses per day, but Nancy knew that I did not have a teacher at home, and that I was only staying for one week, so she advanced me quickly. She was also very impressed that I was able to do the postures straight away, such as Bakasana B which you jump into from down dog. I was shaky because of all the sweat running down my arms, but I held it. When I do my practice, it is hard to see what anybody else is doing as I try to be very focused, but I have noticed that there are a number of other students doing part of second series as well.

In the discourse in the afternoon, Nancy began by telling us that each series of postures in Ashtanga Yoga has a different energy:
- Primary becomes nurturing (hard to believe for a beginner :-)). It is not meant to be an advanced series, and we are not supposed to be doing fancy stuff in primary.
- Intermediate becomes emotional. The liver, which holds anger, is cleansed, so you might get angry during or after your practice.
- Advanced A works more on the channels, so it becomes electrifying.
We should keep the series pure and should not add postures or jump directly into a posture and out of a posture in primary (always straighten both legs first, except for Triang Mukha Eka Pada Paschimottanasana (one leg folded back forward bend)). Lots of people have added fancy moves because they have been held back from doing second series for so long. Nancy is very traditional and does not like people adding any poses to the series. She also said that Sharath does not allow people to jump through with parallel legs, but wants them to be crossed because this requires more bandha control and uses less momentum.

In one of my practices, Nancy adjusted my hips in Parivrita Trikonasana (revolved triangle) by pulling them back and upwards. I struggled with the concept for a few days, but basically she was saying that when moving into the pose or into another pose like Paschimottanasana (forward bend), we should be protecting the hamstrings and sacrum and keep the hips rotated back, put the forehead onto the legs and then extend forward. It also allows us to engage uddiyana bandha more. (The dristi is an eye exercise and helps focus the mind. We don't actually need to see the toes.)
I relate the uddiyana bandha to the transverse abdominus muscle, which we use heavily in Pilates too. Nancy touches people four fingers below the belly button as a tactile queue to help them understand from where to engage it. It should not just be a sucking back, but also an internal lifting or pulling up feeling. She said that this point is exactly where women are cut when a scecaerian section is performed.

She then told us that she used to have 10 day periods and guruji would not allow her to practice for the entire ten days, nor would he even talk to her. (Nowadays, the rule in India is not to practice for three days and in the west, woman are just told not to do any inversions, however, since Ashtanga is such a vigorous practice using a lot of upward lifting of the bandhas, opposing the natural flow of menstruation, and remembering that even down dog is an inversion, I believe it is quite dangerous to practice during menstruation). Nancy complained to guruji's wife who quickly responded with, "shhhh, shhhh". She found out that it was actually a matriarchal society, in that the women started the whole thing. The women stayed in a separate room in which the male children were not even allowed. They did not do any cooking, so the men cooked for the women and the men could not talk to the women. So this gave the women a break from the men. Nancy was 24 at the time and she said she was quite sick and weak, but after spending four months with guruji, her period was down to 7 days and a couple of years later of following guruji advice, she was down to three days. Nancy concluded by saying that men and women really are different and that we should acknowledge and honour this and women should not practice during menstruation. She also noted that her daughter's periods improved after she started practicing Ashtanga yoga.

In the evening, there was a lot of excitement, especially within the American crowd, because Barack Obama was going to be inaugurated as the new president. People were trying to find a place with a TV, and two or three eventually did go to a nearby hotel late in the evening to watch the inauguration.

Day 4: Wednesday (21)
Nancy asked us all to dedicate our practice today to Barack Obama. I went through my practice concentrating on not procrastinating by wiping away sweat etc, and Nancy and her assistants gave me no adjustments in the postures even the really difficult new postures in second series such as Kapotasana (Dove Pose). I did touch my toes in Kapotasana though, which seemed to impress Jason. I was very tired afterwards and Nancy said I should stop and I don't even think I did drop backs.

In Goa, there is a Saturday night market, which I did go to two years ago, which was really enjoyable, however, it has not been running for a few weeks now. On Wednesdays, there is a market in Anjuna. A whole bunch of us went. Vibeke came with me on the back of my scooter. The market was absolutely huge, spreading out from the entrance where we parked the bike on a dusty field, all the way back to the beach. We looked around for a bit, but then decided to escape the hustle and the bustle, by going to the Shore Restaurant on the beach and had something cool to drink.

There was no evening discourse.

Day 5: Thursday (22) - loving kindness meditation
Today was the last day that I could practice the second series, because Friday would be a lead class. Nancy said I should go directly into second series today (no primary series) and I went as far as she had taken me before and then she gave me new postures. At one point she hesitated to give me another posture wondering how tired I was, but I said to her, that I would take whatever posture she gives me and ended up doing the entire second series. Nancy still adds the scorpion pose after Karandayasana (Himalaya Goose Pose). This appears to have been in the series before.

On Thursday evening, Nancy did not do a discourse, but we had a meditation session after dinner. Katie is a friend of Nancy's, who has a very interesting lifestory of when she went to Burma to learn vipassana (meditation) in a monastery. She told us how slowly they would move so that they were aware of every moment, which was quite funny. It was in the late 1980's and she decided to stay longer and longer at the monastery and eventually they got word that the country was in a civil revolution and she eventually got to speak to the ambassodor from england who said, "It is quite alright, everything is under control, but the embassy staff are leaving the country today." She eventually did get out, but it was a very interesting story.

She compared yoga, which uses dristi (focus), breath and concentration during the physical practice of asana to the Tibetan tradition of meditation, which includes a lot of prostrations, which I had seen in my last trip in India, when I visited Dharamsala to see the annual teachings of the Dalai Lama. She said that Yoga is intrinsically linked to meditation. In meditation, we sit on our mats and our minds do not stop. We want to know how to ride our thoughts a little better, was the phrase she used. We want to be present and be completely aware, which is also the aim of yoga. After yoga we tend to be much more grounded and calmer, which is also an outcome of meditation.

She said that our minds set us up, it makes us believe things, which are not true or have not happened yet. The practice of meditation in Buddhism is used to relieve ourselves of this suffering.
Nancy introduced Katie to us by telling us how she was worried one night about her daughter who had gone out and was late. She said that Katie had given her the Loving Kindness meditation, which is an antidote to fear, and she practiced it that night and has used it ever since. I have quoted the meditation below, however, you can make up your own four lines that are more personal. First you would meditate, by repeating the phrases in your mind for yourself, "May I..." and then if you want to, you would send the meditation out to somebody else, starting off with a person you do not have a complicated relationship with.

May you be filled with loving kindness
May you be well
May you be peaceful
and at ease
May you be happy

Day 6: Friday (23)
Friday morning was lead class. Nancy was strict and told us that we are not allowed to move past a position, if she has not counted us into the next move. In lead class, people sometimes move on by their own, because their breath is dictating how fast they move, and the breath varies in all of us. So, to ensure that everyone moves as a group, teachers use position four (chatvari in sanskrit) when everybody is in Chaturanga Dandasana (four limbed staff pose, which is the same as the bottom part of a tricep pushup). This means if you are fast, you have to hold that position until she counts the next breath, number five (pancha). When you are doing a posture and she is busy assisting someone, you have to hold the posture for as long as she is busy adjusting that person no matter if you have done five breaths or not, and it does not matter if one side is much longer than the other.
I hardly ever practice a lead primary class at home, so it was quite difficult relinquishing control over the speed of my practice to someone else, and I found myself playing with the mind in postures that we had to hold for a long time, instead of just accepting it.

At one of the mealtimes, Nancy told me that I should practice primary and second series on alternate days when I get back home.

Going back to India

2009-01-17T22:13:00.001+05:30

Well, I am finally going back to India (my third, but second time for yoga). I have been thinking about coming back since at least May last year and had hoped to be able to make it a 6 month adventure fulfilling a lot of my dreams all in one go, such as completing a Yoga Teacher Trainer course, studying with Iyengar in Pune, doing some volunteer work in a foreign country, doing a vipassana (sitting and meditating for 10 days), learning to do Thai Yoga massage and more. I knew that my priorities were to practice with Lino Miele, to go back to study in Mysore and to attend the International Yoga Festival in Rishikesh. Negotiating with my boss, he did allow me to take 2 months off and I am very thankful for this. I guess having a clear goal in my consciousness helped me manifest it.

My company did ask that I take a laptop with, check my mail regularly and that I be available to assist. As it turned out I was getting a brand new light and small laptop, whjich I am looking forward to travelling with. I have been working very hard for the last few weeks designing the IT architecture roadmap for MTN for the next 3 to 5 years, and I needed to complete the first draft of the document before I left the country. So as usual I had neglected a lot of my personal things I needed to do. I only started packing the night before I left at about 10pm and I have forgotten to pack a number of things. I also never had time to organise an International drivers license, which ended up costing me on my very first day in India... see later.

My laptop was delayed, but it was finally delivered around 10 am on Thursday morning (15th Jan). I had planned on leaving the office at 1pm to go get a massage and then go home to finish packing and get to the airport before rush hour traffic as my flight was at 19:30. Setting up the laptop and copying all my files across was not complete, so I left work, got a half hour quick massage and had to drive back to work. Then home to finish packing and rush off to the airport. I was so stressed about missing my flight I even phoned Emirates Airlines to see if they could put me on the 22:30 flight. They were extremely helpful, but I made it on time for my scheduled flight.

I arrived in Dubai at 5:15 after a very good flight on Emirates Airlines... The crew even seemed to give up one of their vegetarian meals for me as I had not known that I needed to order vegetarian more than 24 hours before check-in. I did not have very much sleep on the flight as the flight is only 8 hours long. There is a two hour time difference between SA and the UAE. The airport terminal is absolutely huge and extravagant. I considered finding a secluded seating area to get some shuteye, but could not find anything, so I sat down, I opened my new laptop and enjoyed the wi-fi access. After about 2 hours I started reading my Lonely Planet on Dubai. At 10am I decided to phone Kavita, my friend, whom I met in Singapore in 2005. I woke her up... nothing unusual :-) She is a hostess on Emirates. She was very sweet and invited me to get a few hours sleep at her place, which I jumped at. The bus system is really difficult to figure out, which I tried for about half an hour and eventually I just took the taxi, which cost me 45 Dirhams. The exchange rate is about 2.74 ZAR to 1 AED.

It was really good to see Kavita again as we had not seen in each other in at least a year, the last time she came to SA on one of her flights. I had 2 hours nap and a shower and by then I was starving, so we walked to the Dubai Mall, which I learnt had just been completed a month or so ago and is the largest mall in the world with 12 million square feet of retail space and is in the shadow of the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai. My Lonely Planet mentions though that the Mall of Arabia, which will open this year, will be even bigger than the Dubai Mall.
Even with all of this, I could not find a store that was able to open my Guess watch to replace the battery. Anyway, after having some food , we went back home to her place and had some tea before I headed back to the airport to catch my 22:00 flight on Jet Airways. Terminal 3 that I had arrived at in the morning was exclusively for Emirates Airlines, so I had to go to the much smaller and older Terminal 2 this time.

Jet Airlines is an Emirates partner and is a very good Indian Airline. I was already impressed by them the last time I had travelled in India. We landed on time at about half past two in the morning. Now the time difference between me and SA was three and a half hours, i.e.: it was a three hour flight to Mumbai. In Mumbai I immediately went to the ticketing counter and enquired about flights to Goa, another thing I had lacked the time to accomplish in SA. I was also not certain if I was going to be able to change terminals and make the 5 am flight to Goa, so I did not purchase it on the net in SA.
The 5 am flight on Kingfisher Airlines was the cheapest and the guy at the counter said I could make it in time and if the terminal shuttle bus was not there that I should not wait for it but take a taxi. I paid for the ticket and started running. Fortunately the bus was just being loaded with baggage and was almost full with passengers so it was going to depart soon, as I did not want to start haggling with rickshaw drivers, nor had I exchanged any currency yet.

I landed at the Dabolim airport in Goa around 6am completely exhausted and sat down and started planning how I would get to the Purple Valley Yoga retreat centre. Check-in was only at 15:00 but I knew they would try to assist if I arrived earlier. To my surprise there were absolutely no rickshaws at the airport, only taxi's which cost a lot more. A taxi would cost 780 Rupees to Assagao where the retreat is, about an hours drive. The exchange rate currently is about 4.8 INR to 1 ZAR. Eventually I got a motor cyclist to take me for 350 Rs. My backpack placed over his handle bar we set off and we also found a store on the way that sold me an adapter for my laptop plug on the way. Riding on a motor cycle is more pleasant than a taxi, but a lot more dangerous!!! For the first 15 or 20 mins I was holding on to the baggage rack for dear life, but eventually I let go and used bandha's :-) so I got a good core workout at the same time hehehe.

At the retreat, I checked-in, while the people who had attended the previous course were still having breakfast and getting ready to leave. My room was not ready, but I ended up sleeping in the shade outside until my room was ready. The price I paid for the retreat, 450 pounds, includes the yoga, the food and shared accommodation. I was lucky that there are only 3 guys on course, the 2 others came together from Turkey, so I got a room with two beds to myself.
Harmony and Jeff are Ashtanga Yoga teachers who have done the last 3 courses here, and Zephyr is the manager currently. Zephyr used to be called Sarah and was Michael Gannon's assistant when I came to the retreat two years ago. Unfortunately I won't see her, as she had to leave the country on a visa run. So Harmony and Jeff are doing the management for the next couple of weeks.

In the afternoon I organized a scooter. Rent is Rs 200 per day, but at least then I am not relying on taxi's. I found out where the internet cafe's are and took a ride out. Guess what! 5 mins into my journey I get stopped by 2 traffic cops because my number plate has white writing reserved for locals, whereas all foreigners are supposed to be riding on vehicles registered with yellow writing... and I did not have an international driver's license. So I told him it was my first day in India etc etc and he asked me for a bribe, so I gave him R 20. I actually turned around after I left to go find him and try and demand my money back, but they were gone. I am very angry with myself for having given him the money, I guess at the time I was not thinking objectively.
Then I got to the internet cafe and found out it was closed for the day, every Saturday. Pretty unsuccessful.

Back at the retreat at 6 was a briefing on what the schedule was for the next two weeks (I am only staying 1 week). I am not allowed to work on my laptop outside... Harmony introduced us to Nancy and her assistants, Jayson and Shayla, as well as the cooks, Sayumi from Japan is doing the lunches, usually raw food, and in the evenings there is an indian cook who makes traditional Indian food.
The evening was spent getting to know the rest of the people on the retreat. There are 35 people on the retreat and I am still meeting new people 3 days into the retreat. Aoibheana (Irish and it is pronounced like Yvan) was at the retreat with me back in Jan 2007. She was also here last year when she was pregnant. Oni, her little 6 month old is with her and she has brought a friend to mind the child while she is doing yoga. There is Hiromi from Tokyo, Seyda and her boyfriend Can (pronounced Jan) and two others from Istanbul, Turkey. Can owns 3 yoga studios in Istanbul and Ankara. There are a number of ladies from the UK, Vibeke and Aletta are from Oslo, Norway. I found out later that Vibeke is actually a TV presenter in Norway and is quite famous. She is busy going through a divorce which is being publicized in all the media back home at the moment. Sylvia from New York is an art consultant, so she travels a lot and knows so much about all the Ashtanga Yoga teachers etc. I am definitely going to pick her brain a bit and I get on very well with her. She charges 10% on sales and right now with the Credit Crunch is taking a holiday. She is married to a french man who does not do any yoga. They have been together for about 10 years and lived in different cities for 9 of those years. Now she is in India for about 3 months without him.

I actually asked Nancy one evening, what she thinks about relationships where one partner does not do yoga and she said, "They don't work, unless the partner is extremely understanding!" She also said that when she was still together with David Williams (Nancy is the first western woman to have studied Ashtanga Yoga with guruji, and she came to India with her boyfriend David Williams when she was 24 (she is 60 now)), and a new person would come to David to be taught Yoga, he would make them watch once and then say, "Next time you bring your partner". He would tell the partner that if they did not start yoga with their spouse, that they would not be together anymore in 2 years, because with yoga you grow in a new direction. David did this because he did not want to have the karma of splitting up relationships.

Nancy now lives on Maui in Hawaii and has recently made a movie of Ashtangi's over 50 doing the practice... She said it was a led class and she was very worried that they would not listen to (follow) her as most of them were the generation of yogi's who brought Ashtanga to the west, the pioneers who studied with guruji right at the beginning. It would be so interesting to see that.

Final Post and Introduction

2007-03-12T08:45:00.000+05:30

This is my final post to this blog and in it I aim to present a small summary of the concept of yoga as I understand it after my experience in India, because I believe a lot of people are confused by all the different styles of yoga and do not clearly understand that yoga is not just a form of exercise. This little summary might not be completely correct and it might give rise to some discussion or constructive criticism, which I appreciate. This summary can be used as an introduction into my blog and after you have read it, I suggest you read the posts from oldest to latest, unless you are looking for something specific, in which case you can use the specific labels, which you will find on the right hand side.

What is yoga?

Literally yoga means "union" or "to yoke". Yoga is the union of breath with the body, of the mind with the muscles, and the self (or soul) with the divine. Yoga is not a religion and does not require you to believe in a certain God or chant certain mantras. It is an ancient Indian discipline which leads to health in the body, peace in the mind, joy in the heart and liberation of the soul. Liberation of the soul? In this context, I believe liberation of the soul does not mean union with the divine after death, but liberation from anger, greed, worry, desires, despair and depression.

Often the reason for our unhappiness on a personal level is the fact that we are constantly at odds between our mind and our heart, our desires and our fears. We feel alone, anxious and scared.
In our families and communities we criticize each other and compete with each other, "My style of yoga is better than yours." And we devide ourselves by nations, religions and colour. Yoga in its most complete meaning is the panacea for all that which ails us and devides us.

Here's a dictionary definition of yoga:
Yoga: n 1: Hindu discipline aimed at training the consciousness for a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility that is achieved through the three paths of actions and knowledge and devotion
2: a system of exercises practiced as part of the Hindu discipline to promote control of the body and mind [Hindi, from Sanskrit yoga, union, joining.

Note the paths of action, knowledge and devotion. There are many types of yoga that don't even include doing poses like down dog or tree. This is because yoga is not just physical exercise. There is yoga that only focus on obtaining knowledge of sacred texts. There is yoga that is all about devotion and service.

Types of Yoga

Hatha Yoga

Most people if you ask them what kind of yoga they do, will say "Hatha Yoga". A lot of people get confused as to what all the different kinds of yoga are.
Hatha literally means "sun meets moon" and this type of yoga emphasizes specific physical postures or asanas. The ultimate goal of practicing difficult postures, however, is not a toned bum or flexible hamstrings, though these are sometimes the by-product of a yoga practice. The ultimate goal, if we are to really do yoga, is to force the mind to withdraw from the outside world to create perfect spiritual insight and tranquility. Hatha yoga provides us with a healthy body, which is a stepping stone towards achieving a still mind.

There are many different styles of yoga:
Anusara, Ashtanga, Bikram, ISHTA, Iyengar, Jivamukti, Kripalu (derived from Kundalini), Kriya, Power, Restorative, Shinto, Sivananda, Vinyasa (Flow).
These are all forms of Hatha yoga and I suggest people try out different styles to find one that suits them. There is a good comparison of the most popular styles / kinds of yoga in the February edition of the Yoga Journal.

Ashtanga yoga was and is taught by Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, India. A few decades ago westerners started going to Mysore to practice with Jois, or Guruji, as he is called. They brought the practice to the U.S., Europe, well now pretty much all developed countries have ashtanga yoga. Guruji, now at 91 years of age, is not the only ashtanga teacher in India, but he is by far the most popular.
Iyengar yoga is called Iyengar after the instructor who popularized this type of yoga. BKS Iyengar, who is also in his 90's, teaches in Pune, India.

BKS Iyengar and BNS Iyengar, along with Pattabhi Jois, learnt yoga from their guru Sri T. Krishnamacharya. While Jois and BNS today teach the vinyasa based form of yoga known as ashtanga, BKS focused on breaking down postures and working on the alignment. Iyengar yoga is sometimes referred to as "prop yoga", because of the use of props such as blocks, straps and blankets. If you are a detail oriented person, who doesn't mind a lot of verbal instruction by the teacher, Iyengar yoga may be the thing for you and it is a great base for understanding alignment. It can also be a good choice if you are practicing with injuries.

Japa / Mantra Yoga

This form of yoga involves the use of words or phrases that are repeated either mentally or verbally.

Karma Yoga

This is the first of the vedic methods recommended for self-realization. It is the path of selfless action, in which the practitioner serves others without expecting anything in return.

Jnana Yoga

This is the path of knowledge in which the practitioner seeks the answers to questions such as "Who am I", through science and philosophy. Ghandi never did any asana's, yet he was a model yogi on this path.

Bhakti Yoga

This is the path of devotion and is considered the superior method for achieving self-realization, when compared to Karma and Jnana yoga. Priests, monks, nuns and other holy people all follow this path.

Raja Yoga

Raja Yoga means the king of yogas and is based on the yoga sutras written in sanskrit by Patanjali some 2800 years ago. Yoga is believed to be a lot older, and there are many other sanskrit texts on the subject which have been lost, such as the yoga korunta.
The yoga sutras explain yoga as an eight-limbed tree. Ashtanga means "eight limbs", but when we refer to Ashtanga Yoga, we all mean the practice of the asanas, which is only one limb. When Pattabhi Jois named the style of yoga he developed, from what he learned from his guru, he meant it as a reminder to practice all eight limbs and not just the asanas. Yoga is a way of life and its teachings should penetrate every aspect of our being from your actions to your speech to your thoughts.

There is a style of Yoga called Integral yoga, which integrates the various branches / forms / types of yoga mentioned above.

The eight limbs of Raja Yoga

There are many many translations of the yoga sutras and I have tried to identify, through discussion with people who have read some of them and by reading reviews on them, the most easily readable translations. I have put links to two of the ones I have identified as easily readable on the blog on the right hand side.

As mentioned earlier, yoga is not a religion and none of the eight limbs depends on one's spiritual belief system and it does not matter what name or form of the divine you worship.

The first four limbs are considered the external limbs, and the last four limbs the internal limbs.???? The order of the limbs is important and the first two limbs are the foundation of the "tree", the moral and ethical code of conduct.

1. Yamas (actions)

a) Ahimsa: non-violence
b) Satyam: truthfulness
c) Asteya: not stealing
d) Brahmacharya: restraint and moderation
This is frequently translated as celibacy or abstinance, but after more research, I found the following description: one whose actions are pure and holy, to create loyal, honest and loving relationships bringing us closer and closer to God.
e) Aparigraha: non-accumulation/non-hoarding
"There is more than enough for everyone's need, but not enough for any man's greed." Mahatma Ghandi. We need to realise that nothing belongs to us, we are merely lending it for certain period of time, and the more we try to accumulate, the more we acquire, the more we are bogged down and the more difficulties we face.

2. Niyamas (observances)

a) Suacha: refraining from putting anything impure into our being (drugs, cigarettes, negative gossip, pornography etc)
b) Santosha: contentment
We should strive for an attitude of gratitude instead of hungering for more (possessions and achievements).
c) Tapas: practice of tolerance
taking control over our volatile mind, emotions and insatiable senses
d) Swadhaya: study of the scriptures
We should read something spiritual and inspiring every day, but we should also use introspection as a tool to examine our lives, just like a businessman examines his balance sheet.
e) Ishwra pranidhana: devotion to God

3. Asana (Seat on which to sit to practice yoga - control of the body)
Asana (or the physical posture) is not the yoga, it is the preparation for the practice of yoga. We must not stop with asana, the asana readies us for the higher limbs of yoga.

4. Pranayama (prolonging our life force and energy - control of the breath)
As the breath becomes still, slow, deep and steady we find that our lives also become calm, collected and centred.

5. Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses - control of the senses)
Turning the object of our senses from the external to the internal.

6. Dharana (singleminded concentration - control of the mind)
To channel all thought-power in one direction and stop the incessant wanderings of the mind.

7. Dhyana (meditation)
Not to be confused with concentration, where there is a subject (you) and an object (what you are concentrating on). In meditation all borders, boundaries and seperation between the universe and us begin to disappear and we begin to realise the inherent oneness of all beings and all creation. At first we will need a technique to get us there, but once we are in a meditative state, we do not need a technique any more.

8. Samadhi (to merge)
This is the ultimate goal of enlightenment.

Rishikesh

2007-03-10T10:00:00.000+05:30

Namaste, this is your cross legged guru coming from the yoga capital of the world... Well that is what Rishikesh calls itself, and this is with some justification, because there are a multitude of ashrams, not just shala's where you practice yoga, but ashrams where you live and do yoga, lining the ganges river banks and hugging the slopes of the foothills of the Himalayas. Even the hotels have got daily yoga sessions taking place at the hotel, which outsiders can also join for a fee of about Rs 100.

So let me start from the beginning. On Wednesday, the 7th of March, I left McLeod Ganj and got on the bus in Dharamsala for Dehra Dun, which was supposed to be a 12 hour trip. We left at 17:30, but only arrived in Dehra Dun around 13:00 on Thursday, due to the fact that the bus got a punctured tire sometime after midnight. I was snoozing and only got out of the bus to see what was going on around four or five am. By that time they were busy putting a spare tyre on but I do not know what took them so long. When we finally got going we went to get the tyre that was just put on, replaced... I have a suspicion that the tyre was borrowed. Well we finally got going again after seven.

When we arrived in Dehra Dun, people started getting off at different places until only three tourists (including myself) were left and the bus driver decided to drop us off in the middle of some busy intersection (I guess he wanted to get rid of us so he could get some shut eye), so the three of us had to catch bus number 5 to the ISBT (Inter State Bus Terminal), which we found out by asking the shop keepers around us. The "bus" was more like the rickshaws used in Malaysia and Thailand, slightly bigger than the black and yellow kerosene burning rickshaws used in India, and it has 2 bunks on which you can seat 3 people each. It was not fun in the midday heat with all my baggage and the fact that I had felt nauseaus since I got onto the bus (I think it was the fried BakLek I had at the restaurant before leaving - I won't be looking at any more fried food in a while!) and had not eaten since did not help. I eventually stopped a "bus" that was not completely packed and got on with all my gear. It ended up being almost half an hours drive to the ISBT, which I did not expect and the "bus" filled up very quickly until we were squashed in with 4 on each bunk and all my gear on other peoples laps...

At the ISBT I caught a local bus to Rishikesh, which was another one and a half hours away, and was another terribly squashing experience. I was alone now even though the other 2 tourists were also going to Rishikesh because we could not all fit on "bus" number 5.

So I eventually got to Rishikesh just before 16:00. I had intended getting there early in the morning and hoped to do some yoga during the day, but it was not to be. I had gone through the lonely planet and found the conglomeration of ashrams I found most interesting. Getting off the bus I had the usual trouble with rickshaw touts and walked two or three hundred metres away from the bus station where I was still charged 4 times the price locals pay (Rs 5), but it was still only two thirds of what I would have paid at the bus station.

It took me a while to finally decide on an ashram. Along the way I met people staying at the Shivananda ashram who told me that the yoga there was not so nice and they were actually looking for an afternoon yoga session at another ashram. We crossed the pedestrian bridge over the holy river "mother" ganges, and looked at 2 ashrams on the other side. The girls ended up joining the yoga class at one of them, even though they were half an hour late. I decided to go to the previous ashram we had looked at, the Parmarth Niketan Ashram.

In India, so many things happen by coincidence... I found out later that this was the largest ashram in Rishikesh with over 1000 rooms, and on arriving I found out that the International Yoga festival had just taken place here from the 1st to the 7th of March. If I had known, I would have come to Rishikesh instead of gone to McLeod Ganj... anyway, will have to do this another time.

I had to wait quite some time to be helped, but I eventually got a room for Rs 400 a night, which includes all meals and all the yoga sessions at the ashram... Excellent!
At 18:00 until 19:00 every evening there is aarti at the banks of the ganges, run by this ashram. Aarti is prayer ceremonies and is basically lots of singing and clapping hands sitting at the ghats (steps down to the river). According to the literature here it is world famous and it was quite a pleasant experience.
After that we had supper, which was thali. I was actually looking forward to rice and dal, as I had not had any since I left the south of India.
The gates to the ashram close at 22:00, and the town is actually dead by that time because all the shops close between 19:00 and 21:30.

Friday
I got up in time for the seven o'clock Iyengar class with Karin O'Bannon, which was quite good, but typical of the Iyengar style, she took one single pose, the warrior pose, and we worked on that for the entire one and a half hours, just perfecting alignment. This is a great complement to Ashtanga yoga in my opinion, but of course you never ever break into a sweat. Straight afterwards I went to the Kundalini Yoga session until ten o'clock. This was a more energetic class and includes lots of chanting and the movements are timed, but I did not enjoy Kundalini very much.
At the end of class someone called my name and guess who happened to be at the same ashram in India... it was Kerry, the owner of the Haum of Yoga in Johannesburg. As breakfast time at the ashram was over, we went to a nice little restaurant outside and caught up with each other. Kerry had come to India specifically for the International Yoga Festival and told me more about it. She wants to get a group of South Africans to go together next year. She also said that the Kundalini Yoga during the festival was much much better and was led by Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, a sentiment I had heard before too.

Kerry also made an insightful comment that I thought I would share. There are seven chakras along the body's axis. We were discussing how difficult it is to travel in India and she explained that while travelling in India you are operating from your root chakra, because you are always on the defensive, and therefore it is very difficult to operate from your heart chakra and be open and loving to others.

Lunch at the ashram was another simple thali with rice, dal, a vegetable, chapati and some pickled mixed vegetables (achar) which I enjoyed. At three o'clock I said good-bye to Kerry, as she was leaving for Delhi and I gave her the biltong I had been carrying since the beginning of my trip (I have been living on a pure vegetarian diet since arriving at Purple Valley) as she wanted to give it to a South African friend in Delhi.

At 15:30 I did another yoga class which focused on backbending. It was the first time I had ever gone into the full back-bend without having generated all the internal heat through the ashtanga yoga sequence.

Supper was another Thali with different vegetables and was very good again... I really enjoyed the food at the ashram even though it was very very simple.

Saturday
My last day at the ashram. A very unexpected rain shower woke me up in the early hours of the morning. I then joined the satsang at 6 o'clock, which basically consisted of meditating for an hour while the sun was coming up, listening to chanting music in the background and a candle lit in front of us. There were only three of us at the session.

The next available class was the Kundalini at 8:30, but I decided to go look at the yoga at another ashram. I watched as they started and decided not to join as it was just too calm and easy for my taste. I ended up spending four hours on the Internet working on the blog and then had lunch at the ashram... guess what it was... Thali... but I enjoyed it again.

After lunch I decided to explore the town more and strolled up to Lakshman Jhula (pedestrian bridge) and further up along the ganges and then turned back and crossed the ganges on the bridge, walked back down the other side and crossed back over on the Swarg Ashram Jhula. This was about a three or four hour walk, during which I saw many signs for a 7 day Ashtanga Yoga retreat.
On the way I bought some gooseberries. I did not expect to see gooseberries in India and when asked what it is, the locals call them raspberries and cherries and who knows what else, because they don't know the English name. I then realised that there were monkeys around and quickly had to make an escape, only to realise that where I was now standing on the street there were two more monkeys watching me from the roof of the building. So I ate them very quickly.

A quick comment on the holy cows... They are everywhere, even crossing the pedestrian bridges, and of course they shit everywhere, so you have to watch where you step ALL the time. In the mornings some hay gets put out by the ghats next to the river, but after that the cows forage in dustbins etc around town. I have heard that they sometimes die from eating plastic packets and I have personally seen a cow literally eat the posters off the walls using its tongue to tear pieces of paper away.

After the walk I bought another four books at a great little store that gave twenty percent discount on top of the very cheap prices. I then joined the evening aarti at the ashram again and then headed off to my room where I showered and got ready for my forty hour trip back home. During that time, the heavens opened up again and I was looking at a very wet trip to the bus station. I went and had another Thali for supper.... mmmm... I love this ashram... another full belly and I am ready to leave.
I asked the guys if there was anyway to have a taxi come pick me up at the ashram because of the rain, but this was not possible, because there are NO bridges for cars!!! Luckily the rain had died down and I did not get too wet hiking to the other side. I was wearing my shorts and long pants as well as a t-shirt, long-sleeved top, and wind breaker, even though it was not very cold. This was only to ensure that I could fit all my stuff into my bags. I had also donated my towel and some other t-shirts to the ashram.

On the other side I had to bargain for a taxi to the bus station because with the rain, the taxi driver was not going to be able to pick up any other passengers. The bus was supposed to leave at 21:30, but I got there at around 20:50, just in case it left early. I could not afford to miss any of my modes of transport from now on. My bus was scheduled to arrive in Delhi after four in the morning and there was no other bus that evening. The bus the next day would have been too late to catch my flight to Mumbai, which left at 14:00.
I was however quite undisturbed if any of my modes of transport were delayed, because I did not relish the thought of arriving at four am in Delhi and I had plenty of time to spare in between. As it turned out, the bus we were all waiting for at the travel agent never arrived, so the travel agent quickly packed the seven or eight of us into two taxi's and took us to the bus station where there was pandemonium because people had paid for sleepers and were not getting sleeper seats etc. I was refunded the Rs 250 I had paid and paid Rs 200 to the conductor on this bus. I was relieved that I did get a seat though, because the bus was full!!!

Sunday
We arrived in Delhi around five in the morning and I read my Lonely Planet to figure out what I would do until it was time to go to the airport. I decided to go look for a yoga or meditation class in the city and afterwards have breakfast and then do some final shopping.
I left my big backpack at the cloak room at the bus station and then took the Metro for Rs 9 to Connaught Place.
I had chosen to visit the Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga, and guess what I found when I got there. They are holding a National Yoga Week from the 12th to the 16th of March. It would have cost a mere Rs 1200 for the entire week, including accommodation and meals... That is incredibly cheap. But the fact that there is so much happening around yoga wherever I look, makes me think that yoga is well and alive in India!!!
There was unfortunately no classes that I could attend because everybody was apparently preparing for the yoga week.

So I headed back to Connaught Place to find a restaurant serving up some good south indian breakfast... my last chance :-). I found a restaurant that was open at 8am on a Sunday morning and was recommended by the Lonely Planet. However, the idli's were tiny, the dosa was too thin and Delhi was extremely expensive. I remember having breakfast with Ayu at a restaurant in Mysore and we had four plates of idli, and three plates of dosa and four cups of chai and it all came to about Rs 58. One plate of tiny idli's here cost Rs 45.

After enquiring what the best option would be to get to the airport, I headed back to the bus station to collect my bag. I got back to Connaught place around 10:30 when some stores started opening up, but most remained closed because it was Sunday. I started searching for masala chai... spices for the tea in India. As Connaught place was not a residential area and had no general stores, only brand stores, I was very unsuccessful in finding tea spices.

At around noon I looked for a public bus to the airport but was unsuccessful as well and eventually resigned myself to having to pay about Rs 250 for a rickshaw. Luckily I found a very helpful gentleman who told me to wait in the building, while he got me a rickshaw for the true price of Rs 60 or 70. Eventually I got a rickshaw for Rs 90, plus Rs 10 for the bags, which I was very happy with. On the way to the airport I struck a deal with the rickshaw driver to make a detour to some shops to buy Masala Chai.

My flight was slightly delayed and we arrived in Mumbai just before five in the afternoon, but I was very impressed again with the service on Jet Airways and the food. We were served Baskin and Robbins ice cream after lunch, so I had three helpings :-)
After I got my bags, I took the shuttle transfer to the international terminal where I had to spend seven hours waiting. This is the same terminal where I had spent the first few hours of my trip (when I arrived in India) waiting until morning. The food in the terminal was extremely expensive at four times the price on the street, and so was the internet cafe.

At midnight I joined the long queue to have my bags security checked and they actually asked me to open my backpack to get my alarm clock. They took out the battery, so that the clock would not tick. The aeroplane was new and big and more spacious than any of the domestic flights I had been on, but the service on SAA was not very good. I did not have anyone sitting next to me, which was lucky as the flight was 95% full. We landed at 7:15 and I was happy to be home.

McLeod Ganj

2007-03-08T09:59:00.000+05:30

In the morning, Saturday the 3rd, I woke up to find the weather very gloomy and overcast, but seeing the first glimpse of the Himalaya's was still nice. The roads were extremely narrow and the bus climbed up the windy path with deep gorges falling off to the sides. At one stage the road made such a serious curve, there was a sign that said "Dead Slow" and the bus really did take that turn inch by inch. But overall, I did not find it as scary as people made it out to be.
In Dharamsala, we had to change bus for the last 10 km stretch (4km by foot, but the road is longer because of the steep incline). When I got to the bus stand, which is basically the town square and is no bigger than the floorspace of a small restaurant, I started phoning all the hotels mentioned in the lonely planet looking for a room, but as expected everything was full.

Because checkout was only around noon, I started walking through town and the first thing I did was register for the teachings. I am glad I did, because as the day progressed the queue only got longer and longer. When I registered I asked how much it was and the guy said five, so I pulled out Rs 500. No, it was Rs 5. They could make so much more money, but they are a very honest people!!!
The teachings started on Saturday, but the official start was only on Sunday, so I had not really missed anything.
I then found a place for learning Tibetan cooking. On the menu for that evening's course was Momo's. I had never had them but had heard lots about them, so I registered for the course. I also found lots and lots of nice things I could buy... hmmm, pity about that weight limit... I am trying to make plans how I can increase the size of the single luggage item I can carry on with me :-)

After having some breakfast just before noon, I started searching for available rooms and eventually found a room for Rs 600, but I wanted to see other options. I walked to the next town, Bhagsu, 2 km away, and found rooms available there for Rs 400 with TV, but I did not like the place very much, so I went back to McLeod Ganj. By the time I got back that room for Rs 600 was taken. Damn, I could have kicked myself!!! Eventually I got a room at the Hotel Tibet for Rs 810, but it is a deluxe room normally going for Rs 990. They gave me a 20% discount. It had been a long search and I needed a rest and watched some TV.

In the late afternoon, I headed out into the freezing cold. People are walking around with blankets draped around them and warm jackets etc and so far all I have is my windbraker... At least I have a nice room and warm water... the cheaper rooms do not have hot water and I am willing to pay the extra money for that commodity :-).

At 5pm I went to Lhamo's kitchen for the cooking course. We made 3 kinds of tibetan momo's: veg, spinach & cheese and sweet momo's. We used three different designs in the dough to identify which were which, and teaching us how to create these designs took most of the time, but it was good because it was much more hands on training than Tina's courses were.
They were my first taste of momo's and they were devine. I was later to find out that they were much better than the ones one could buy at the street side stalls.
What was also nice was that Lhamo gave us a glimpse into his life... he was born in Tibet and escaped over the Himalaya's when he was 9 or 13 (I forgot). He is now 29 and has not seen his mother since except that he got a note from her last year that she is fine. A cousin of his escaped last year and Lhamo is looking after him now. In India, they cannot get citizenship and they remain refugee's and therefore cannot open their own businesses in India, and because they never get a passport, can not return to Tibet.

Unfortunately the quantity of food that we prepared did not fill my tummy... and later that evening I was overcome with cravings again and I gave into them and I ended up buying 5 different chocolates and ate them while watching TV.

Sunday
The next morning I got up around ten past seven. It was a beautiful day with the sun shining... no more overcast skies!!! It was going to be like this for the rest of my stay and it really warmed up, so I was glad.
I was told to be at the teachings at eight because it is so packed. The teachings are from 9:30 to 11:30 and again from 13:00 to 15:30. I bought some banana's for breakfast on the way down to the Tsuglagkhang complex where the teachings are being held, and I found a transistor radio with earphones and batteries for Rs 170. Could have got it cheaper, but as unprepared as I was, I had to pay the extra Rs 50. On the way in, there are seperate cues for the public, the monks and nuns and foreigners. The foreigner queue was split into male and female because we were all searched very thoroughly. We are not allowed to take in any cell phones or cameras. The guy actually turned on my radio to ensure that it was really a radio. Impressive!!!
I remember that at the railway stations, before getting on the platforms you have to walk through a metal detector (with your bags), but because there are so many people, the guards just let everybody walk through and the metal detector is constantly beeping...

I was lucky I got a very good place in the courtyard, because I only got in around 8:50. At first I was right at the back but right on the walkway where the Dalai Lama walked from his residence to the central chapel where he would sit and teach. The first time I saw him I was struck by how joyous and happy he seemed to be. After he had walked through, the security removed the security tape and some of us could move onto the walkway, which meant I moved right into the centre and sat on the red carpet... Yes, I was also unprepared in that respect because I had no cushion to sit on. The things people are allowed to bring to the teachins are a mug (they serve tea during the teachings), a blanket and cushion, food, hat, umbrella and a radio with earphones. The monks then came in with huge baskets full of rolls and started distributing these and then started walking around serving tea.

The teachings always start and end with Tibetan chants / prayers. Then the Dalai Lama started teaching. He said that even though he had covered the introduction to buddhism the day before, there were many people who had not been there, so he covered it again.
His teachings cover two texts, namely, "A guide to the Boddhisattva way of life" by Shantideva and translated by Steven Bachelor, and "The essence of superfine gold" written by the 3rd Dalai Lama. It is quite complicated material for the uninitiated like myself :-).
He spoke about how important education is and then he went on saying that our minds fool us into thinking that we have an independant existence, and he tried to inspire us to develop the wisdom to understand this incorrect view and that there is no absolute independant existence. We are all connected and there are infinite number of contributing factors to each and every event.

It was also nice that he used personal experiences which were quite humerous while teaching, for example telling us about his travels to the west and an air-hostess swatted a mosquito in front of him as a pure reaction and then felt very guilty and told him that she would never kill another mosquito.

I went to the afternoon teaching session as well and in the evening after having a rest I walked up to Dharamkot, the next village up a very steep incline. I eventually found the Tushita meditation centre where an australian woman who was a buddhist gave a review of the days teachings.

Monday
On Monday my mood was not very good. I suspected it was because I had no plan for the rest of the week and because my body was missing the daily yoga practice. I did not attend the teachings, but did some window shopping. There is so much on offer here in terms of souvenirs: books, shawls made from yak wool, jackets and blankets made from wool, shirts, skirts, traditional jewellery, wall hangings with quotations from the Dalai Lama, music CD's of tibetan chants and DVD's of the Tibetan struggle and other stories or documentaries, embroidered bags that the buddhist monks use, tangka's (see glossary on right), note books made from re-cycled pater and the list carries on.

My cravings continued and today it was baked cake and pastries. There are many places selling sweet tibetan bread, all different kinds of cake and pastries and as I have not even seen any of this in five weeks it was too much to resist. I must have had about five pieces of cake during the day.
I also went in search of a place I could practice my yoga, but the yoga instructors all seem to be out of town during the teachings (I found out where they were later... see next post). I also looked at doing some karma yoga, ie: volunteering, while I was here, but I was told that the computer classes and english conversation classes were not running during the teachings. (There are different types of yoga, jana yoga, karma yoga, hatha yoga, raj yoga etc, which I will explain more in my final post).

I ended up doing half an hour of yoga, to the beginning of the seated poses in my hotel room... (I realised how dirty the floor is :-)) and this helped both my mood and my spine, which felt a lot better after the exercise.
I also came up with a plan for the rest of the week, which is to go to Rishikesh, which calls itself the yoga capital of the world. So now I had done some exercise and I had a plan and I felt a lot better.

As mentioned earlier, we were not allowed to take in any cameras during the teachings, so I waited until after the teachings were finished in the afternoon and then walked in and took a photograph, which is why there is a photograph of the teachings available on my web album.

At five pm I went to the cooking class with Lamo again and we made Mokthup and Tenthuk soup. I was disappointed because I was going to come on Tuesday to make tibetan bread, but Lhamo was not able to do that class.
The soup was good and easy to make. This time Lhamo told us a little more about the culture and customs of the Tibetan people. Usually a family will live together and each has got a duty so sometimes one brother will leave for 3 months to look after the animals in the mountains, but they remain a family unit and when one brother takes a wife, the other brothers usually share that wife. It is uncommon for a brother to then choose another wife for himself as this would mean he would not live together with his brothers... anyway, that is how Lhamo explained it to us.

In the evening I met Ori, an Israeli tourist who told me that he had attended the review of the day's teachings, which were now not held at the Tushita meditation centre anymore, but were being done by the monk who was doing the english translation of the teachings and it was held at the temple itself. So I made sure that I would attend that the next day.

Tuesday
In the morning I attended the teachings again, and in the afternoon I made an excursion to the waterfall in Bhagsu. Afterwards I went to the Himalayan Yoga centre where I had organised the day before that I could practice by myself. It was nice because the view from the window was onto the mountains. But my practice was slow and I took lots of breaks. I do not know if this was because of the altitude (approximately 1800 m above sea level) or because I was practicing alone.

Later I went to the review of the day's teachings, which was interesting.
He spoke about favourable rebirths (precious humban birth) in samsara (the cycle of reincarnation or rebirth) and performing the 10 virtuous actions and abandoning the 10 non-virtuous actions to gain liberation from samsara.
He also discussed that the goal of enlightenment should not be for oneself, but for the benefit of all other sentient beings, and how to cultivate the boddhicitta (the wish to become buddha to benefit all other sentient beings).
He also defined love as being the wish to give happiness to others and compassion as the wish to remove suffering from all other beings.

Afterwards I would have liked to see a tibetan movie, but unfortunately the one cinema (part of a tiny little restaurant) was not showing anything and the other one was showing something I had no interest in.
I ended up eating at the Japanese restaurant Lung Ta, where I met a french canadian yoga teacher and I had an interesting discussion with him.

Wednesday
I woke up early on Wednesday and bought some tibetean bread from the street side vendors. Previous mornings I was not up early enough to see them.
I then went for a walk towards Dal Lake through the forest. I have blisters on my feet from all the walking I have been doing around town, but it is good to get the exercise and this walk was beautiful.

I then had some breakfast and purchased my bus ticket to Rishikesh (Rs 470) for 17:30 from Dharamsala.
Then I got down to some real shopping. I did not worry about the consequences to the weight of my bags and had decided to throw away some of my clothes to make sure I can fit everything. :-) I then went to the hotel to pack and check out.
In the afternoon I walked back towards Dal Lake because the lighting in the morning was not that good and I wanted to take some better photographs.

I then had a quick bite to eat before getting a jeep ride down to Dharamsala. The driver threw my backpack onto the roof as there was no space in the jeep... we were packed in there like sardines. On the way down I was constantly checking if my backpack was not thrown off the roof with inertia as it was not tied down and the driver was screaming through the sharp corners.

New adventures

2007-03-02T09:55:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, Thursday, I went to practice early. The shala was getting emptier every day. I did not expect anything from my practice, but it ended up being really good again... I bound Marichyasana D on my right side and I bound Supta Kurmasana again... so all in all I have had a great week of practice.
I think I have pushing Supta Kurmasana a little too hard because my lower back is being stretched forward to its limits and is a little tender.
The weather has been warming up the last few days and I have been perspiring more than my first week in Mysore, even though I was practicing earlier, around 6 am. In guruji's shala, the mornings are for westerners and the indians (there are very few) train in the afternoon, and they must be suffering...

After practice I had coconut jelly outside the shala where we normally all meet and chat for a little after practice. I thought I would just tell you a little about the coconuts here...
When you order a coconut, you have to tell the "coconut man" whether you want juice only or jelly. He then determines by the slight difference in sound the coconut makes when he taps it which one is only juice or if it is a little older and has started solidifying. He then chops off the end of the coconut and hands it to you with a straw to drink the juice out. If you ordered jelly, you hand him back the coconut and he chops off a sliver of the green outer layer, which you will use as a spoon and he chops the coconut in half, so you can scoop out the jelly and eat it.
Indians use the entire coconut tree... the leaves are used as plates and to make roofs, the trunk is building material and fire wood, and the young coconut fruit is juice and the shell is dried and used as fuel for fires. If the coconut is not used while still young it turns to jelly or the hard coconut, which is used in food and as garnishing food. Once the coconut is really old and completely hard, the inside is cold pressed and coconut oil is made from it. Also the hard brown shell is used to make spoons and lately arts and crafts too.

I then went to Tina's to say goodbye to everyone and Tina was packed some fenugreek roti's with tomato chutney for me to eat on the train... Leena was there as well and she had finished her panchakarma ayurvedic detoxification treatment. She has been quite down the last few days and yesterday she fainted twice and she think her nose is broken. Tina was saying that panchakarma should only be used as a last resort, but this doctor is prescribing it to every single Yogi who is coming to him...

I then had to return my mattress and scooter to Randy and pick up my yoga rug which I had embroidered... It was late because there was a power cut the day before... something you have to expect in India... I have even read in the newspaper that they want to shorten the business hours (go on until 21:30 or 22:00 and are closed around 12 to 4:30) in some cities to take the pressure off the electricity grids.

On the way to the railway station (if you ask for the train station they don't know what you mean) I picked up the pants I had tailored. I got to the train station half an hour early. I had bought a second class ticket on the Tippy express to Bangalore for Rs 70. At the airport I met Michael who was on the same flight (unbeknown to both of us until then) and he had come by taxi for Rs 1,500.
The train took about 3 hours to do the 135 km journey and the last few kilometres were excruciatingly slow considering I still had to go to the airport for my flight at 4pm. The train arrived at 14:15. As soon as I got off the platforms, I was harassed by taxi touts and offered rides to the airport for Rs 280 to 450. I really don't like tourists that pay without finding out what the locals pay because it is cheap in their currency and it is convenient. That is the cause of the harassment for others and the cause that tourists get ripped off. I went to the info booth and found out where I can get pre-paid taxi's and paid Rs 85. My rickshaw driver, Harish, was very nice and friendly and apologized on the way for having to get petrol as he knew I was in a rush. I got to the airport at 15:15 only to find out that the flight was delayed by 2 hours. Well that mean that I was not going to be able to get onto the bus to McLeod Ganj and I had to spend last night in Delhi.
Btw, my backpack was packed to the brim and weighed just under 20 kg and my daypack (hand luggage weighed another 10 kg. It contains the books I did not ship (package limit of 5 kg). When I left SA it all weighed around 12 kg.

While driving through Bangalore, I saw many signs advertising the coming of Amma to Bangalore on the 4th and 5th of March, just as I had seen in Mysore for the 1st and 2nd of March.

The flight with Jet Airways was very good again and the food delicious. I had the non-veg option again, chickpeas in gravy with potato patties. There was also a little packet named "After Eight", which I assumed would be chocolate, but this turned out to be a mixture of some seeds, but mainly aniseed, to freshen the mouth. It was good though.
Even though I had been sitting for most of the day, I was extremely exhausted and did not have the energy to get up to get my Lonely Planet guide and read up on Delhi, knowing that I would have to spend the night there. I was even thinking of spoiling myself and going to an expensive hotel in Delhi.

After the three hour flight, I found some energy and started informing myself of options. I phoned a few budget hotels in the Tibetan colony and was told that they were fully booked, or the telephone informed me that the number (from the lonely planet guide) did not exist. The number of the hotel that I finally got in the Paharganj area (described as a seedy area "due to its reputation for drugs and shady characters" in the lonely planet) worked on one phone, but when I phoned back on another phone it said the number did not exist, so I had to use the phone I originally got through on and it worked... very strange!!!

As I said in one of my first posts, on my first trip to India ten years ago, I had the worst culture shock I have ever experienced in all my travels and I got very stressed and aggressive. On that trip I only traveled through the north of India. On this trip I have been to the south so far and I have loved it so far. Now I was back in the north and people have been telling me that the north is far harder to travel in than the south, so I am expecting the worst.
I got a bus to the New Delhi train station for Rs 50 and then after having more attempts made at ripping me off by rickshaw drivers (like telling me that the hotel is already closed, so they can take me somewhere else and get commission) I decided to use my map and walk the last few hundred metres to the hotel using my map. A taxi would have been more convenient but a lot more expensive.

I finally got into my room around midnight. The room had a TV and cost Rs 250. I have not had a TV in 5 weeks... It is amazing how quickly we fall into old habits... I fell asleep with the TV on :-)
Delhi is a lot colder than the south of India was. The night was cold and required blankets. I also realized that I have strained my lower back, which was already saw from overstretching it, when I picked up my backpack to get onto the bus. I was considering finding a yoga shala for today but have decided to rest.

In the morning I went in search of food and walked around Paharganj... Vendors were starting to open their stores and I was in danger of buying more stuff!!! Delhi is extremely cheap. You can pick up a pair of shorts with pockets and beltloops etc for about five Rand or less if you bargain.
On the breakfast menu I could not find any idli's or dosas anymore... The south of India is the rice bowl of India and the north of India is the bread basket. Tina said that that is why the north has got all the big brawny indians and the south has got the intelligent indians :-)

I then went to the internet cafe and started writing this post, because I was not yet ready to tackle the nasty world out there. I had to rewrite this post 3 times because of the internet connection dropping, or computer rebooting unexpectedly... Other than this particular experience, my experience of the Indian broadband services has been excellent.

I then finally headed to the Inter State Bus Terminal (ISBT) near the old Delhi railway station. I wanted to experience the life and vibe on the streets so I decided to walk instead of take a rickshaw. On the way I found the Metro , which I had read about. It only became operational a little over 2 years ago. It has 3 operational lines now and it uses a disk system. You can buy a card for Rs 170 of which Rs 100 is refunded for a day pass. Otherwise you have to pay for every trip. I paid Rs 8 to go 3 or 4 stations on the same line. It goes up to about Rs 30 I think. After you bought the disk, you enter by swiping the disk, then when you arrive at the destination, you have to swipe the disk again to get out and drop the disk into the system. The metro train was absolutely packed every time I used it and I never had to waid for longer than a minute for the next train... and the station was quite clean considering the amount of people going through it and compared to the streets!!!

At the Kashmere station, which is also the old Delhi railway station and the ISBT, there was a McDonalds serving Chicken Maharaja Mac, Paneer (cheese) Salsa Wrap, McAloo (Potato) Tikki Burger, and Veg Surprise Burgers. The meals were about Rs 62. I held back the urge to taste the veg surprise.

I bought myself a ticket on the Deluxe Air Conditioned Bus (there is also another deluxe bus without AC) for Rs 800 to McLeod Ganj, because I wanted the safest and best bus, which left at 8pm that evening.
I then walked back to the hotel through Old Delhi, past the red fort and Jama Masjid, places I had visited on my first trip to India. Here is a snippet of Chandni Chowk, one of the main streets through Old Delhi. In the background is the old fort. There are 3 churches on the right hand side of the road, a Jain temple, a Hindu temple and a Sikh temple. The streets are extremely noisy because the culture is hooting to let people know you are coming instead of relying on them to watch out for you.

Here is another link to the main bazaar road in the Paharganj area where my hotel is, and here is one of street side vendors making jalebi, which is very unhealthy too, but I liked it.

At 6pm I got my bags from the hotel and headed back to the ISBT, which was absolute chaos. I had to wait because I arrived early and there are lots and lots of food stalls around and I finally gave into my cravings and bought 4 packets of biscuits and chips. The chips were "Lays" and the flavour was "Magic Masala". Everything you buy in India is marked with either a green dot or a red dot, signifying vegetarian or not.
I then had to search for the bus, which was not near any platform, because there were so many buses. We finally left just after 8pm. I had moved seats because the women sitting next to me was sick and I did not want to catch her cold. Luckily there were extra seats in the bus. Most people in the bus were on the way to the McLeod Ganj for the teachings and there were quite a few monks on the bus. People were coming from all over the world. The lady who I mentioned just now came from Darjeeling.

I thought I would never get any sleep because of all the hooting by the bus driver, but luckily this died down to a more acceptable level as we got out of town and onto the highway. At around ten o'clock, we made a pit stop. It was a themed place called Haveli, meaning fortress in Punjab. I was feeling ill from all the biscuits I had eaten but decided to try to eat something. The food was not that great, but after the meal I got served, what we would consider mints. See the picture on the right. It is jaggery (raw sugar), misry (which looks like sugar, tastes sweet but is not sugar) and then aniseed.
I was lucky because the man who sat next to me got off sometime during the night and I had both seats to myself, and I got some sleep.

Leaving Mysuru after 4 weeks

2007-02-27T08:34:00.000+05:30

Yesterday morning, Tuesday, I could not bind Supta Kurmasana, (see previous post...), but my practice was still good.

For breakfast I went to the Green Leaf restaurant and had Bisibali Bhat, which they only serve on Tuesday and Saturday mornings. Leena had been craving it when we arrived in Mysore, but could not find anywhere that served it. It is like a soup with vegetables and rice in it. Tina said she would give me the recipe.

In the afternoon I had my third and last cooking class with Tina. The cooking class was supposed to be on Wednesday, but was moved ahead. This was going to create a little problem for me... see later. We made idli's and the sambhar and coconut chutney that goes with it. We also made masala dosa's. Idli and Dosa are made from the same batter, which is lentils and rice soaked in water and then liquidized in a blender. Normally masala would refer to spices, when used like masala chai, masala aloo etc, but when referring to masala dosa, the word masala means the dosa has been stuffed and this could be potatoe (aloo) or cauliflower (gobi) etc. Both idli and dosa's are breakfast dishes. You can also get plain dosa, set dosa, which is thicker and contains some bicarbonate of soda, and you get rava dosa, which are made from semolina instead.

After the cooking course I got ready for my yoga class at the Mysore Mandala Shala with Sheshadri. (I have commented on Sheshadri in the previous post already: In trouble with the law) Before going to the shala, I searched one last time for the idli man, the place that Michael had taken us to for breakfast one day and which served the big dosa's.... I finally found it... so guess what tomorrow morning is idli for breakfast :-).

The yoga drop-in class cost Rs 400 and we were 15 students in the room. Sheshadri is quite small, but he shouts at people too, just like guruji and Sharath :-). He started counting us through Surya Namaskara A and the first repetition of B. We then continued Mysore style (on our own) and he would walk around adjusting and assisting people. The students were all of very different levels, some were doing the second series, whereas others were using a printed page to try and remember the sequence of asanas in the primary series. Sheshadri was very good... I would get into a difficult pose and saw him walking toward me and I would feel apprehensive because I was worried he would push me too far, but I was never in any pain and he pushed me further than I have ever been in many postures, especially Marichyasana D and Supta Kurmasana. Yes, this time, with his help I bound the posture completely with my head under my crossed ankles...
The fact that I had eaten idli's and masala dosa's 2 hours before the practice was not very good though.

Today's practice was ok... I was not too tired, but because we ran out of water at home I was quite dehydrated... (There are no shops open at 6 am to go and buy a bottle of water.)

After practice, Jay, Myra, Lori and I drove to the idli man for breakfast... It was as good as we had expected again. This time we took lots of photo's to capture the good memories :-).

Today I have collected my tailored clothes, then I packed, but I have not weighed my bag yet. I cannot be overweight, as I still have 2 domestic flights and an international flight, all with different airlines. I have made a package of most of my books as could post 5 kg for Rs 350, but this is a special rate for books only, so I have to take the books to a tailor, who will wrap the books in a see through plastic bag first, then stitch cloth around it, leaving a small window free to prove that it is only books at the post office.
I also considered buying some chai (tea) spices today before I leave (I have made enquiries as to which is the best one), but because I am not sure how much my bag is weighing, I thought I better refrain.

I also had my final sanskrit class today... we had a test... did not study and it went well. We can now write words in sanskrit if I know the spelling of the word with our alphabet, but the word means nothing to me... The next course would teach us how to create sentences, but we would still not know the meaning of the words unless we used a dictionary.
The language spoken here, Kanada, uses a different alphabet to sanskrit, but Hindi, does use the sanskrit alphabet, but the words are different to sanskrit.

In the evening I phoned a bus company in Delhi (travel agents were not able to book buses) to find out what time the buses to McLeod Ganj (13 hours) were leaving Delhi and if there were seats available. Most tourists take a train or hire a car, because buses are dangerous, but since I am travelling alone hiring a car is too expensive and the train tickets are still waitlisted. I had bought 2 train tickets one for the first of March and one for the second of March just to see when I could get on the train. The bus is turning out to be cheaper and it is more convenient than the train, because after the 12 hour trip to Pathankot, I would still have to take another bus to McLeod Ganj for 4 hours. Since the railway company charges 25% of the ticket fare if cancelling a train ticket less than 24 hours before scheduled departure, I had to go cancel my tickets tonight and take the risk of trying to get on the bus in Delhi tomorrow.
On the way home I got stopped by traffic cops, for not wearing a helmet and charged Rs 100 fine... I am glad it was only that because I also did not have my driver's license, which they asked for...

Tomorrow I will be doing my practice, shower, eat, return the gas cooker, mattress and Scooter to Randy and then go to the train station where I will catch the eleven o'clock tipu express to Bangalore, arriving at around 14:00 and then at 16:00 my plane to Delhi leaves arriving at 18:40. It is all very tight, but if all goes well I will have just enough time to make the bus station and buy a ticket and get on the bus before 20:15.

I am feeling a little sad about leaving Mysore, as it has been home for a month and it is a very beautiful place, but I am also starting to look forward to going home now. I have been away for 5 weeks now and I have achieved what I set out to do for this trip. The next week is a little bonus of travelling, but I did receive an email today from a woman who is in Daramsala / McLeod Ganj and she reported that it is very cold and has been raining constantly. When I left SA, I had not planned my week off, and expecting India to be hot I did not pack any warm clothes...

Last led yoga class in Mysore and movie night

2007-02-25T09:26:00.000+05:30

Saturday the 24th, was the day off and I really did not do anything, no stretching and no exercises... I really needed the break. (I usually do stretch and do some additional exercises before going to bed.)
Yesterday morning, Sunday, was my last led class in Mysore, as I am leaving a day early and missing Friday's led class. I also noticed this morning that the shala was getting a lot emptier, and the tailors around town, who do a lot of work for the Yoga tourists, are saying that this will be there last really busy week. Guruji is also closing his shala on the 14th of March to go on another world tour. I don't know exactly where he is going except that he will be in the USA to open a new shala there.

Saturday, I had a lazy day and basically just shopped around town... Stores close around lunch time and open again either 15:00 or 16:30 and then stay open again until 21:30. At 13:00 there was another demonstration at the KR circle yesterday. Seems to be a very regular occurence. Streets just get blocked and demonstrators walk onto the road for 5 or 10 minutes and then it is over...
My shopping was not very successful yesterday, but I did scout out some shops and I tasted some of the local speciality sweet called Mysore Pak, which is incredibly oily. All of the shop attendants always handled the sweets with their bare fingers, which I did not like, but I haven't gotten sick.
I also phoned one of the local cinema's to find out about what time the movie Guru is showing. It has been on circuit for about 3 months and I am told is very good. The newspapers don't show the times, just what movie is showing. The movie house is called Skyline, right next to Sterling... in SA this would have been Cine 1 and 2 :-)

Instead of watching the movie on Saturday at 17:00, I ended up at Jaganmohan Palace at 18:00, the same place the talent show was last week Saturday, to watch some traditional Indian dancing by a famous Indian dancer. This time it was not free, but there was a seating plan and tickets cost anywhere from Rs 100 to Rs 1,000.
When "Amma", a women with the status of a saint, arrived, everything stopped and she was escorted into the auditorium with a choir of song from women following her. The dancing was very very good. Am trying to load a video snippet on the blog ...

Sunday, the shopping was successful. Bought some indian style outfits for my nieces who have just had a birthday, bought a Kurta (men's traditional garment) for myself and I bought some other bits and pieces. I found out that there are basically 4 different outfits, other than a saree, that women wear traditionally. All come in different fabrics from cotton, cotton/silk mix, crepe silk, pure silk, synthetic material etc, which affects the price as well as how much embroidery etc is on the garment.

Sharara: short top, with bell-bottom pants and a scarf
Gaghra: long/short top with long skirt and scarf
Salwar (Ladies Punjabi): long/short top with tight fitting pants or ali-baba type baggy pants and scarf
Choridar: long/short top with push-back pants (wrinkled) and scarf

After we were told that there would be no conference again this Sunday, I raced to the cinema to watch the movie Guru in Hindi without subtitles. The movie cost Rs 25 and started at 17:00 on the dot, no advertisements and finished about two hours and 40 minutes later with 5 min. intermission (yes, very short).
The movie was about a businessman who started with nothing and built a huge company but was then sued etc, as well as a love story. It was fast paced and only about 4 musical dance sections in the movie, but I also enjoyed that... and Aishwarya Rai, the bollywood actress, is very beautiful :-). The audience was quiet throughout the movie, which I did not expect, and the movie house was old and had outdated equipment, but not bad or extremely dirty... all in all, I had a good experience and I hope to see the movie with english subtitles again in future :-)
The story was shot in Bombay / Mumbai, and I recognised Chowpatty beach that I had walked to on my arrival in India at the beginning of my trip... What I also found interesting was that in the movie, the main actor always touched the feet of people he respected. I have not seen this being done other than by westerners doing it to guruji as a sign of respect. I always thought it was a little strange, but now that I have seen it being part of the Indian culture, I am more comfortable doing this myself to guruji. In fact today, a child begging for money touched my feet.

This morning, Monday, I had a brilliant practice... I got my chin onto my shin during quite a few forward stretches, my jump back and jump throughs went well and for the very very first time I bound Supta Kurmasana (sitting on the floor with legs in front, bend forward and put your arms under your knees and wrap the arms around your back, cross your ankles, place head under legs and then grab hold of your hands). Don't know if I will be able to do it again tomorrow, but that is ok :-)

At ten o'clock, I was met by someone to take me to Madhu for a massage. The last massage I had was by a women who had been working for 12 years at the Ayurvedic Centre in Mysore and she cost Rs 500. A massage by a westerner will cost in the range of Rs 1,500 to 3,000. I only get massages by someone who has been recommended to me. The nice thing about that lady was that she came to your place to give you a massage.
Ayurveda is the ancient science of indian herbal medicine and holistic healing. Lots of tourists try there fasts during which they have to drink medicated ghee (clarified butter) and eat only brown rice cooked with specific spices etc. I had considered visiting the centre, as they have consultations where they then explain to you what type of body you have according to the 3 doshas. The centre is a full spa with a 25 metre swimming pool, tennis courts etc., but their prices are in US dollars, so a deep tissue massage will cost over Rs 1,500.

Madhu was recommended to me last week and what impressed me was that Katie said she never screamed in pain before where others had, when being massaged by the "three sisters" as they are known, but Madhu made here scream :-). The cost was Rs 750, which is still less than a simple back massage back in South Africa.
So when we got there, Madhu was just finishing off doing his morning prayers. He did not have a nice house, like the houses in Gokulam, so no seperate puja room, so he just had pictures of the deities like Shiva on the floor and candles and incense in front of that. He then ushered me into a bare room that just had a wooden massage table only about five (5) cm high along the floor. I later found out that he comes from a long line of Ayurvedic massage therapists... ie: his father and his grandfather etc all did this, and the table was apparently over 800 years old. It was made of wood with absolutely no cushioning on it and its surface was not flat but convex, tapering down along the sides and then a little ledge... I guess so that would collect any excess oil running down. The oil he used (he said it was medicated oil... don't know exactly what) smelled very very good. The massage like the previous one started in a seated position, with the head, then down the neck and back. Then I had to lie on my back and he massaged the down the front of the body and down the legs. I always thought you are supposed to massage up the body towards the heart, but this is not the way it is done here. While massaging my legs, he stretched my legs in the split etc and he made me scream too :-) He asked me how many years I had been doing yoga and after hearing that it had been multiple years he said... "Well, I don't think it was regular (practice)!" No, I have never practiced yoga daily until now and that is why I am still so stiff!!!
Then he put a blanket on me and told me to relax and he left the room. When he came back I thought it was all over, but he said turn around onto my stomach and the massage (and the screams) continued... Then he got out a gas burner with a similar top like a skottle braai and he heated a little bag containing some medicinal leaves and he rubbed me down with the hot bag. At the end he asked me to push my upper body up and he stretched my spine backwards. Finally, he asked me to stand up and standing behind me with his back to mine, he grabbed my arms and lent forward picking me up on his back and stretching me. Maybe not the most hygenic of massage parlours but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

In the afternoon, I finalised the embroidery design for the pants I am having made and then I had my second last sanskrit class... The final class on Wednesday will be a test, so I need to revise a little. I basically have two days left in Mysore.
I have decided not to visit the Tibetan village as it is 2 to 3 hours drive one way and I am going to visit the Tibetan community in McLeod Ganj anyway. Other than that I did not have any other unaccomplished activities / sights while in Mysore.

In trouble with the law

2007-02-24T04:26:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, Thursday the 22nd of Feb, I had another good practice in the morning Mysore style. I took my time again and just tried to deepen the postures. I am starting to realise how soon my time here in Mysore and my daily practice will end.

Lori has been asking if we could all go to the Idli man that Michael had taken us to for breakfast again. I have not been able to find him. After my breakfast yesterday, I asked Dev, the rickshaw driver, if he could take me there. Ayuko (girl from Niigata, Japan), who I see everyday at practice came along. Dev took us to a very very popular restaurant which was packed, but this was not the street side stall we were looking for. After driving around some more unsuccessfully, Ayuko and I went back to the restaurant and had idli's and dosa's for breakfast there. It was very very good, but the idli's were not like the big idli's the idli man made :-).
So now the last option is to find Raj the rickshaw driver who took us there when Michael led the way...

Afterwards Ayuko and I went to the Sandalwood oil factory, which was established in 1917. Everything was very old and we did not see anybody doing any work while we were there, so we spent a very short time there. Outside was a small store where you could by 5 grams of Sandalwood oil for Rs 650... very expensive. Sandalwood oil has also been called "Liquid Gold" and is used in ayurvedic medicine as well as in perfumes. I bought some incense sticks and some soap.

On the way home I bought 2 metres of silk and linen mix material at Rs 600 per metre for pants I want to have tailored. That was quite expensive, but I thought it would be worth it. Myra reminded me that I need to pre-shrink the material before I give it to the lady doing the embroidery and I need to ensure the colour does not run, so I quickly went and washed the material in hot water.

We are not supposed to be doing yoga with any other teachers in Mysore, while registered with guruji. Jay had been to another class and invited us. As I have no time to do it afterwards, I took the chance. At 16:30 Katie (from Chicago), Joyce, Myra, Jay and I drove to Laksmi Puram Post office where we were met by someone to take us to a Ajay's Yoga Shala where we had a Vinyasa class for Rs 350. That means we did the sun salutation series (Surya Namaskara) A & B and then Ajay took us through some exercises that would help us improve our jump back and jump throughs. It was quite good, although I found Michael's workshop in Goa on this subject more informative, however, Ajay did give us specific exercises to do, which would ultimately strengthen us in the right areas. Technique is very important, but it definitely requires strength in the arms, shoulders and core to do it "beautifully" as Sally put it.

In the evening I washed the material again and I tried soaking it in salt water, but that also did not help... the colour kept on bleeding out. In the morning I washed it again twice, but to no avail...
The Yoga practice was led this morning and my body felt quite tired, obviously the two yoga sessions yesterday... Had a big breakfast at Tina's again today... always start with a big fruit salad of banana, papaya and pommegranate and then I had Fenugreek roti's and badam milk, which is hot milk with almonds, saffron, cinnamon and sugar.
After that I went into town to buy my train ticket from Mysore to Bangalore on the 1st of March. When I came out I found my scooter surrounded by 3 railway cops who promptly told me to pay a fine of Rs 250 for parking in a no parking area... There was a sign that bikes are not allowed to be parked there, on the floor where another car had parked (and there was building rubble lying around everywhere), therefore the sign was not visible . So I said they must take me to court. They walked me all the way around the railway station over sand mounds and railway tracks and more building rubble to a railway magistrates court. On the way I was told that it would be easier to just pay the fine of Rs 125 as it is just a petty crime. At the court, which was packed with people, I met some other commander or whatever with a few stars on his shoulder who insisted that rules must be followed and I need to pay a fine of Rs 150. Notice the change in amount again. I continued arguing that I was unaware of the rule because it was not clearly visible, but I kept calm and smiled.
Eventually I was asked where I was from and what I was doing here and then they told me politely to please leave :-).

I then went into town and looked at buying a Kurta for myself. A Kurta is the traditional garment Indian men wear. I think white can be worn any time as well as different colours, but for funerals, it has to be white.
I then went and returned the material I had bought yesterday and got my money back and went to another store (of the same chain) where I was given good advice and bought material at half the price and guaranteed that the material would not bleed any colour after 2 washes. I then had to race back home to back in time for my sanskrit class.

After sanskrit I ate supper at Anu's where the internet cafe is. I had asked Anu to please make Ragi Dosa's (also a normally a breakfast dish, not made from lentils and rice as the normal dosa is, but from a grain) as I have heard that they are very good and I have not had them yet. She promised to make them on Friday night... today.
At the Internet Cafe, Lori told me that Jay was in hospital at that moment in time... He had broken four toes in an accident on his bike... don't know exactly what happened, but I have had quite a few close shaves on my bike in the last few days... And people don't wear helmets here either.... People just drive out into the road without looking and nobody ever stops at an intersection without traffic lights, unless the traffic is really heavy or there is a police officer directing traffic.

Leena had organised a Salsa dance night at our place tonight. She arranged a teacher to come teach the salsa and planned to have everything on the roof, but realised that there was no electricity so ended up doing it in our flat. Leena and Lica prepared some food and invited a whole lot of people around.
I met a guy from Poland who said it was too expensive for him to register with Pattabhi/guruji (we paid Rs 26,900 for 1 month - 28 days in February minus Saturdays and 2 moon days) and he registered with Sheshadri at the Mandala Shala (for Rs 7,500 for a month).

Jay, Myra and I are actually planning to go to on Tuesday afternoon. In guruji's Shala there are about 60 students practicing in the shala at any one time and there are really only 3 postures in the primary series where you will get assisted or adjusted, namely Uthitha Hasta Padangustasana (standing balances), binding of Marichyasana D, and Urdhva Dhanurasana (bending back from standing position and placing your hands on the floor and then coming back up). Apparently Sheshadri has maximum 26 students and pushes you in every posture to your absolute limit... see pictures on his website. The guy from Poland said that the pushing deeper into the posture is nice the first day, but after that it is very very saw.
So there are many many yoga teachers in Mysore although there are only 3 well known ones. I have put some extra links under the Yoga websites section on the Yoga studio's in Mysore.

Wednesday the 21st

2007-02-21T04:08:00.000+05:30

Monday, (19th Feb 2007), Tuesday and today were all Mysore style classes and have been great practices for me, but I am going very slowly through the series taking up to one hour and fourty minutes. Jay had a very interesting analogy, in which he described good days of yoga as having the eye of the tiger and moving deeper into the postures with determination and those days where you are stiff and sore as days where you just go "Miaauuuu"... :-)

It was Lori's birthday on Monday and she was very happy because Sharath said she can start coming to practice at 6:30 instead of 7:30. As things are getting a little quieter and as your length of stay becomes longer and your practice improves, you get told to come earlier. Those that have been here for a while arrive for practice at the shala at 5 am. But the best thing for Lori, was that she was told that she can start doing the first posture in the second series, which is really great!!!

We all met around 11:30, soon after breakfast, and went to Lalitha Mahal Palace, which is a palace build by the Mahara of Mysuru, just to host foreign guests (allegedly because they ate meat). The Palace is really beautiful and the first thing that Jay and I did was buy Lori and Myra a ride on the horse-drawn carriage standing in front of the entrance as a birthday gift for Lori. It was a silly thing to ride 3 times around the parking lot, but we all had a laugh. We had a look at one of the rooms for which the going rate is somewhere from $75 to $750 for the Viceroy Suite. We then spent an hour and a half at the pool, for which we had to pay Rs 175, timing it so that we would still get lunch as it closed at 14:30. We had the Royal Silver Thali for Rs 200 excluding any taxes, which is about ten times the normal price of a South Indian Thali. The Thali was served with the normal banana leaf, but on a silver plate. :-) Food was not that impressive though... The restaurant was very elegant though, with live music entertainment.

After that, I had to rush back to Gokulam (the suburb within Mysuru) for my sanskrit class, and then I walked to the main road and shopped for some fruit. From Thursday to Monday, I had driven almost 200 kilometres, which is a lot considering that Gokulum is only about 6km from the centre of town. In the evening I felt I needed to walk around again instead of using the scooter all the time.

Tuesday I took it very easy, and I actually did not mind not having anything on the agenda. I spent a few hours on the internet, adding links to this blog to interesting books I have found, and adding statistics, so now I can see how many people are accessing my blog. I'm a geek I know :-)
I also spent a few hours reading in my yoga books I have purchased.

In the evening I went shopping again... I am running out of cash so I am using my credit card now!!! I had found a Jockey store in town. Because my bill came to over Rs 1,000, I got a free bag as well, so now I do not need to worry about being able to fit all the things I am buying into my backpack... Cool!!!

I then also visited the bookstore again, where I had bought the books by the president of India, as I had seen some computer CD's. I eventually bought ten CD's, one of which is on Indian recipes, the others being for my five year old son to learn vocabulary, maths etc. Two of the CD's are animated stories from the Panchatantra and Ramayana (see weblinks for Indian Deities and Mythology).

When I got home, I had some home made chocolate that I had bought a few days earlier. There is a shop here that caters to the yogi's. Yogi's prefer the dark chocolate to milk chocolate because it is healthier as it has less sugar and because there is no milk in it (vegetarian). But you can order your ingredients with white, milk or dark chocolate the way you like it. I had some chocolate with cashew nuts, another with almonds, another with cinnamon and another with cardamon. Today I ordered some more to take home... cinnamon and cardamon were the best, but I also have now ordered dark chocolate with peanut butter, and best of all, chilli! You eat the sweet chocolate and it leaves your mouth burning... WOW!!!!

Today Myra finally told me that she could not go to Daramsala to see the Dalai Lama, so I will be travelling alone (I am happy with that too) during my last week on holiday... I am looking forward to it, but I am also sad that I will be leaving Mysuru within 8 days and I will miss practicing in the Shala with all that energy around me.

I had already bought a non-refundable ticket from Mysuru to Mumbai for the 11th of March, which I am not going to use anymore because my plans changed, so I lost that money. I had to buy a new ticket from Bangalore to Delhi on the 1st of March, and another from Delhi to Mumbai for the 11th of March. I also bought a night train ticket from Delhi to Pathankot which is a 12 hour train ride, but I am on the waiting list with 2 people ahead of me... So I guess I will have to let the universe take its course and see what happens... maybe I will have to spend a few nights in Delhi as there are a lot of people wanting to go to Daramsala for the Dalai Lama's teachings.

After I organised that I rushed back to Gokulam for another of Tina's cooking courses. Today there were 15 people as opposed to six of us the last time, but all six us were there again. Today we made Kerala stew (vegetables in coconut milk) which was excellent, lemon rice with peanuts which I enjoyed and tomato bhaat (bhaat is cooked rice), which I did not enjoy that much.

After that I went to a tailor, who will make me a pair of pants according to a pair of pants I left with her. She will also do some embroidery for the pockets. After my sanskrit class I went to town to buy the fabric for the pants, which I will give to her tomorrow.

Halfway

2007-02-18T09:37:00.000+05:30

Thursday morning we had a led class at 6:15, because Friday was a holiday "Shivarathri". This time it was not Sharath, but guruji who led us through the primary series. It seemed a lot easier than when Sharath led us through, but there was one occasion, in Bujapidasana, where guruji nodded off sitting in his chair while counting. Some of the yogi's started clearing their throats to get guruji to snap out of his little nap. Luckily Saraswati was also on the stage and she gave him a nudge... I was actually practicing right next to him on the stage, but I like all the others was stuck in the pose waiting for him to finish counting the five breaths, which became like 15 breaths :-).

Michael had left the day before, and I had arranged with him to take over his scooter once he left and paid half the rental, Rs 1,200. It is a really new scooter that runs very well and has warning bells when you leave the stand up and switch the engine on WOW... Lots of people are jealous of "Pep+", the name given to the bike (the model).

So Thursday I set myself the task of finally getting to town and finding my way around and I wanted to visit the Ashok bookstore. During breakfast at Tina's I chatted to Misa and she decided to come along for the ride. Town was easy to find but traffic is so hair-raising... I almost hit a cow at one stage, so we parked the bike and walked.

We eventually found the Ashok bookstore after walking through the most amazing market, the Devaraja Fruit & Veg market... more pictures in my album!!!

I found a lot of books on Yoga and India. I have added some books to the books section on the right. Most books are a lot cheaper here in India. I also found bible story comic books for my son. There are also comic books for children of the Panchatantra and the Mahabharata to teach Indian children all about their gods.

Yesterday, Saturday, I found another bookstore, I think it was called Saudhary, that has a lot of computer books at like a quarter of the price of the books you can order on Amazon. These prices are actually printed on the back cover... so they are sold at these prices all over India!
I also found some computer CD's for kids to improve their vocabulary, spelling and other skills. I also bought two books written by the current President of India, Abul Karam. "Wings of fire" is his autobiography and "Mission India - A vision for Indian Youth" that is inspiring the youth of India to become a developed country by 2050.

Misa and I then visited the bookstore at the Rama Krishna Ashram, but this was closed until 4pm, so we went and had lunch and then came back. The book store was interesting and it did have books on other religions. Lica had bought a book here "Jesus lived in India", which I unfortunately did not find.
Then it was sanskrit class because there would be no class on Friday. Afterwards I went to the Internet Cafe to compare the prices of the books I had found with prices on Amazon.com.

Friday was a holiday as mentioned earlier and there was no practice in the morning. Jay, Myra and I had organised a rickshaw driver to come pick us up at 6 am in the morning (still pitch dark) and drive us to the base of Chamunde Hill from where we climbed the 1000 steps to the top. Many Hindu's do this on Sunday's, but today would be a particularly busy day too because of the religious holiday. We started at around 6:30 and got to the top just after 7. On the way we met lots of Indians (I don't recall any women - they seem to prefer driving to the top :-)) We got asked all the time where we were from etc.

The sun was already up when we got to the top. We visited the temple and walked around watching the pilgrims do puja (offering) to their gods, and then we walked the 300 steps back down to the statue of Nandi where the swami had his cave. (This is the swami we had had lunch with the previous week). From there Raju picked us up and we drove to town to a very popular dosa restaurant. Dosa's are made from lentils and rice batter and when done looks like a pancake almost. The restaurant filled up and the Indian people seemed to have idli and then the dosa for breakfast, but we just had the dosa and kept on ordering more :-).

After I got home, I took the scooter to try and find my way to a silk store. On the way I met Misa and Quyen at the coconut store and they decided to come along. I took them both on the scooter, which turned out to be a traffic offense according to policeman on the way. Luckily I did not get fined. I left Misa and Quyen at Fab-India (the silk store) as I had an appointment to have a massage at home. Afterwards I went to find the silk factory. I found it and had a look at the showroom, but the factory was closed because of the holiday.

In the evening we had a Kirtan / Bajan (singing and chanting in Hindi). This time the musicians were playing the Sitar and the Harmonium and drums. Afterwards (8pm), 5 of us decided to visit the temple at the Maharaja's Palace were a lot of the Hindu's were flocking to do Puja. Again we met a lot of people trying to befriend us and children running up to us wanting to have their pictures taken.
At 10pm we then went to the Hotel RRR, which is famous for its Thali's (rice, dhal, curd, raita and a vegetable dish) served on a banana leaf. Dylan entertained us all with his recollections of the naughty adventures he had in Mexico.

On Saturday morning I had breadfast at Tina's where I met Myra. I told Myra my plans for today and she decided to join me on the back of the bike for my excursions for the day. We went to the Silk factory, which was very interesting. Unfortunately however, there was no tourguide or anything and we were not allowed to take our camera's in. When I was in Thailand I visited a silk factory there too and I remember everything was done by hand there. Here they had Japanese machines doing the weaving of the sari's. It was a deafening noise. I noticed that the Indian's were walking around barefeet and no protective gear at all. They were all very proud of what they were doing and as we walked through, somebody would always call us over to show us what exactly they were doing.
Unfortunately they did not show us how they took the silk from the cacoon, as they had in Thailand, we started from the raw silk having been rolled up and washed, from where it was wound onto pins, then the silk strands were doubled and then twisted. They had two colours, one representing left twisted, the other right twisted. Then 438 strands were rolled onto a big roller from where it was used on the sari weaving machines. They also used gold thread in the sari's and the price of the sari's basically just varied on how much gold thread was in the sari. Then the Sari's were dyed, washed and ironed.

Afterwards we went to the Maharaja's Palace as I wanted to have seen it by day before I see the palace lit up on Sunday night. Like most tourist attractions in India, there are no signs explaining the attraction, you basically need to hire a tourguide at a relatively expensive price Rs 450 (we paid 200) and after you have seen everything, then they have books etc on sale.
The palace is beautiful, but needs to be maintained better. The stained glass windows that are breaking are just being replaced by normal glass for instance.

After that we went and had lunch at Sixth Main, as most of the other restaurants were closed around 3pm. I then dropped Myra off and went to Coffee Day as I felt like having some Ice Cream. I was constantly hungry. Coffee Day was interesting because their menu was covered with Logo's from Microsoft Windows and advertisement for the new Windows Vista... "The WOW starts now". There was even a Coffee Day magazine with a Microsoft front and back page and one of the meny items was something like a WOW coffee.

At six in the evening I went to the talent show that Lica had invited us all to. She had bought herself a harmonium and was taking music lessons to learn to play it. The music school was putting on a talent show, which was called "East meets West" and the 'western' (including asian foreigners) were doing two performances.
The started 45 minutes late. The first performance was an indian dance by four young girls. This was very cute and nice. The second performance was the westerners singing amazing grace. This did not seem completely rehearsed. The talent show went on, but was very slow and it was obvious that there had been no dress rehearsal. It was a bit chaotic and eventually I left to go to bed. Lica said she got home around 11:30.

Sunday morning Leena and I got to the led class very late. They were already doing Surya Namaskara B when we arrived after running to the Shala... not very good!!! My practice was quite good and enjoyable today.
Afterwards I sat and watched the intermediate series being performed by the led class after us. Guruji was leading the class and he was wearing a T-shirt that had two words on the front "Bad Man", which we thought was quite funny :-).

I went to the organic market at the Green Hotel again and bought some date & flaxseed and ginger and almond cake and some other things. I met Lori and Myra, who told me about a portuguese family that made lunch on Sundays and Wednesdays and Dinners on Fridays. The food was apparently excellent and they were going today, so I decided to phone and reserve a space for myself too. It is served at their house, which they call India.Song. The food was absolutely delicous. Starters was cold potatoe and leek soup, the main course was a greek salad and desert was vanilla ice cream on chocolate sauce... mmmm. It was very expensive though at Rs 230.

After that I went to the Yoga Shala. There was no conference this Sunday, but I bought the Ashtanga Yoga book written by Lino Miele and had Lino, Sharath and guruji sign the book. Then I went home and started reading until 6:30 when I went to pick up Lori.

Lori had asked me if she could come with me on my scooter to see the palace lit up, which happens on Sundays between 7 pm and 8 pm. The Lonely Planet guide said that there are 97 000 light bulbs all over the facade of the palace and the palace walls. Lori had spent the previous day on Jay's bike, which she said was not very comfortable on the bumps, so now she wanted to be on my bike. Myra went on Jay's bike.
The palace was very beautiful lit up, but the band playing english and american fanfare music just seemed totally out of place.

It is Lori's birthday tomorrow and we have made plans to eat lunch at the Lalitha Mahal Palace, which should be a grand experience.

Cooking

2007-02-14T07:47:00.000+05:30

Today, Wednesday, was Valentines day, but hardly anybody here took any note of it. My practice was a little rushed and afterwards I bought some pumpkin bread and almond butter. The Almond butter is Rs 175 for 200g, whereas peanut butter is Rs 60. There is also cashew nut butter for Rs 160, which I will try out too some time. Unfortunately though, I did not eat any of this, as I had made arrangements with Mayra and Jay to meet at Shakti house for breakfast. Service is very slow but food is good.
Over breakfast Mayra told me about the books Shantaram and The life of Pi, and we discussed all the things that will be happening over the next few days...

After breakfast there was an hour or two until we would meet again for cooking class, during which time I did my sanskrit homework. Licha also moved into the 3rd room, so now the flat is full and I have made some of my initial outlay of Rs 13,500 back, which I am happy about.
Yes, you read right... I attended a cooking class on Indian food :-). It was excellent. Tina explained the masala (spices) to us, why the north indian people are brawny (because that is where all the bread comes from - wheat is good for muscle tone) and south indian people are the brainy :-) That is what she said!!!
She then explained how curd (yhogurt) is made and then she showed us how to make paneer (cheese) with milk and lime. We all thought it would take hours, like curd, but within minutes we tasted warm cheese that had just seperated from the whey in the boiled milk. That was interesting.
She then started the palak paneer (spinach & cheese dish) and made stuffed eggplant, and we finished with roti / chapati. I actually made some chapati and paratha / prathi (same dough as roti, but square). That was fun.
The course was completed by us eating the food that was made and it was yummy :-).

Later it was time for my sanskrit and changing classes. We had a test today in which I fared very well considering I had not really studied... I think the next test will be a lot harder though!

Strike

2007-02-13T07:46:00.000+05:30

Sunday we had another led class as is usual on Sunday's. The shala was a lot emptier I noticed this Sunday compared to the previous week. People are starting to leave now...
My stomach was not happy, after the trip to the ashram in the B.R.Hills, but my practice did not seem to suffer. I think the rest was good as my jumpback and jump throughs were getting better. My thumb went numb again, but today it only lasted for half an hour. After practice I sat and watched the intermediate led class straight after us.

Then I went to the Sunday morning market at the Green Hotel with Leena and afterwards I lay down and looked at options for my week of travelling after Mysuru. I had some bananas and biscuits to eat, which was the first time in two weeks I ate processed food, but my stomach was not up for indian food and then I fell asleep for a while.

Leena woke me up and reminded me that there is a conference with guruji. The conference was interesting, but he's english is very difficult to understand and he often speaks Kanada to his grandson Sharath, the language spoken in Karnataka state, and he quotes a lot of sanskrit passages and then he looses me.

Afterwards I went to see Borat at Ken's place (anatomy teacher). There were 20 or more people there. The movie was interrupted by power cuts, which we thought were likely the lighting of the palace, which occurs on Sunday nights at 7pm. I then walked Quyen home and she made some stirfry noodles for supper because neither of us had eaten.

Monday was a bandh (general strike), which seemed to be enforced by police, because even the rickshaw drivers would not take any passengers... so it was extremely quiet considering I am in India!!! There were no restaurants open, no shops opened until late in the afternoon, even then internet place was closed the entire day...
Practice on Monday morning was Mysore style, so you start practicing at your alloted time, which is still 7:30 am for me. I am actually not keen on getting an earlier time slot which happens as you get better or have been there for some time. The reason is because when I finish my practice at around 9 am the shala is a little less crowded and I do not have to move my mat into the change rooms to do the finishing sequence. Once you finish the back bend, the last pose where you will get assisted, you are expected to move your mat to the back of the shala, the stage or the change rooms to make space for the people that are arriving to practice, and do your finishing sequence there.

After practice I just ate some papaya at home and then lay down for 4 hours (stomach still not happy). I slept a little and researched my plans for the final week of my stay in India after my month in Mysore is finished. I am planning to go to Daramsala to see the Dalai Lama teach at Mcleod Ganj.
I then cleaned up around the flat a little because we had invited a whole bunch of people for dinner again. In the afternoon I went to my sanskrit classes and then back home for dinner. Leena and Quyen had cooked again and there were a total of 11 of us, so we had to do a round robin with plates etc... Misa and Nea from Finland had brought 3 big slabs of chocolate and of course I had too much of that!!!

Today, Tuesday, practice was good again, except that I kicked Michael in the head on a jump back... yes, that is how close you are to the people around you. Often you will be halfway on another person's mat for a particular asana...
Did not go out for breakfast again today, because we went to the Metropole Hotel for lunch today, as Michael is leaving tomorrow. He is flying to Mocambique to be with his girlfriend. He has been a love sick puppy and time has not been passing fast enough for him :-)
The hotel was stunning, a heritage building... sixteen people arrived, and the food was great!!! It was a buffet and cost Rs 220, which is very expensive here, but about ZAR 40 or USD 5, 50.

Afterwards Michael and I went to the Southern Star Hotel next door where he had a shave, and I had my head and beard shaved. Still getting used to the funny feeling when I put my hand on my head :-).

Visiting the ashram of Swami Nirmalananda

2007-02-10T07:12:00.000+05:30

I noted yesterday that I have been on holiday in India for two weeks now, but it feels like I have had so many experiences in that time that it feels like I have been away for many weeks.

I lacked energy in my practice yesterday so I basically went through the motions. Looking around in the shala, I definitely feel like a complete beginner as most of the students here have been practicing for a long time and easily bind Marichyasana D etc, holding their wrists without a problem, while I am still grapling to get hold of my finger tips...
When the backbend (Urdvha Dhanurasana) came I pushed myself to overcome my fear of it and did it all three times. On the last repetition, I felt a twang in my spine, which is not uncommon and normally just means a tendon or ligament has moved over a bone. However, when I finished my practice, I realised that my thumb on my left hand was numb, which was a little worrying.

I then rushed home, to shower and pack some gear. Michael had told me very little of where we were going, only that we were going to sleep over and that there was only space for 3. I now can tell you that we (Michael, Licha and I) went to visit the ashram of Swami Nirmalananda, Viswa Shanti Nikethana. A swami is somebody who renounces all wordly things. This man lived from 1924 to 1997. He travelled outside of India for many years visiting holy men from all different religions. He then came back to India in 1964 where he created the ashram in the B.R.Hills (Biligiri Rada region) and then spent 11 years in silence. He then wrote some books, teaching his insights, which have won a few awards. His teachings are similar to those of the Bahaii faith, the idea that all religions believe in one and the same god. Often after a yoga class, a yoga instructor will read something during meditation that you can ponder on. Michael uses the teaching of this spiritual man.

The ashram is just over 100km from Mysore, but this is a three hour drive because of the state of the roads and the constant traffic of bicycles, scooters, rickshaws and trucks. We arrived around 12:30 and met Swami Pravananda who currently stays there. It was incredibly peaceful at the ashram without the any of the noises from the busy indian cities and there were lots of birds chirping, wind rustling through the trees... wonderful. Around 1:30 we had lunch, which was the usual rice and sambar, but served on a banana tree leaf. Of course I had to eat with my hands the entire weekend and swamiji actually remarked that I am obviously not used to eating with my hands.

After lunch we headed to the back of the ashram, where we sat for an hour and a bit looking over the valley, enjoying the smell and sounds of nature... Slowly I also got my feeling back in my thumb, but the muscles down the left side of my spine had spasmed and this remained.
Then we rested a bit and later that afternoon we visited a temple on a nearby hill.

Dinner was around six and we had upoma, which is similar to couscous. After every meal we also got served chai, which was incredibly sweet and no matter how often we requested that the woman who prepared the food and served us to use less sugar, it always came tasting like syrup. She also seemed unaware that westerners cannot stomach the indian water and would serve us water to drink every time and we would have to insist "Ila" (no) every time, then we would dry the cup and pour our bottled water. She also would wash the banana leaf, the plate, and try to put the food on the wet banana leaf, which we tried to quickly dry...

After supper we headed back to the lookout point and lay on the rocks watching the stars come out, seeing some shooting stars and the most amazing was seeing 3 satellites, two of which at the same time, crossing each others path. Two of them also seemed to reflect the suns rays on their solar panels at a certain point as they moved across the night sky, because they became brighter and brighter and almost sending a bright flash down to earth and then suddenly appearing like a very fast moving star again. I also identified the constellation of Orion and the little dipper, which I do not ever see in the southern hemisphere.

During meal times, we would chat with swamiji, who gave us each a copy of a book written by Swami Nirmalananda. After getting back from stargazing I started reading and was engrossed for the rest of the evening. We all had a bucket shower, seperately :-), using water heated from a coconut shell fire and then went to bed.
I had a rough night because the muscles in my back had cooled down and the cramp on my spine was agonising. I had to lie on my back with my arms over my head to try keep an arch in my spine to relieve the pain.

Saturday being our day off, we did not put on alarm, but we woke around 6:30 and went to the lookout at the back and meditated for about an hour while the sun rose.

Breakfast at eight was bhat (rice mixed with vegetables), and I really had not appetite, but I had to eat to be polite. After breakfast, the three of us discussed the retreat Michael was building in Mexico and Michael asked us for advice on some ideas he had for a new DVD.
Lunch again at one. Again I had no appetite, but this time at least the food was lighter... beaten rice with coconut.

Later we packed, paid our respects to swami and made our donations and then headed back to the city. Even though I have been sitting all day, I am absolutely exhausted. I am also not sure if I will be able to do my practice tomorrow, but the experience was wonderful and I am really happy that I have a copy of the book "A Garland of Forest Flowers".

Ancient vs. Contemporary

2007-02-07T09:44:00.000+05:30

Yesterday and today practice was slow, but I felt I went deeper in some of the postures, even if just a millimeter. But I learnt in the anatomy class that it might even be better not to push the limit all the time. Guruji always says, "Slowly slowly, all shall come!"
Tomorrow, Friday, will be a led class again at 6:15 in the morning, and this usually takes about 1 hour and 15 mins to go through the series. I am looking forward to the led class. It is good because it allows you to reaffirm that your sequence and breath is all correct. This morning I actually left out the headstand Sirsasana, which is my favourite part of the series.

After the anatomy class yesterday, Quin (Vietnamese girl) and I went to the pool at the Southern Star hotel for an hour before my sanskrit course started. It is quite expensive. Rs 30 for the rickshaw, plus Rs 180 for a day visit at the hotel with yogi discount :-).
Today, in anatomy we went through the hand, wrist, arm and shoulder and it made some things clearer to me especially regarding the weight bearing exercises that often cause pain for my pilates students as well. After anatomy, Leena and I took a rickshaw to charamunde hill, where there is a huge black statue of a bull, nandi, representing a daemon, that was conquered by charamunde, which is a reincarnation of one of the gods. Michael had organised a visit with the Sadhu there. We had lunch with the Sadhu, who spoke english very well. One of the guys was asked if he was a good friend of another, and he replied, "No, I just see him every day (at practice) but rarely speak to him." So the Sadhu said, "Just like the relationship most of us have with god."

Leena cooked her first indian meal yesterday evening. She comes from a well off family in Chennai and they have a cook. She made dosa's, which look like pancakes but are made from rice and lentils that are soaked overnight and then made into a batter. So she was very excited.
I also had an invitation from Quin, so after that Leena and I visited Quin and Dyllan and had some nice yummy veggies.
This evening, the two of them (Leena and Quin) decided to cook a meal together at our place and we invited Misa (Finnish girl), Michael and Dylan. So we had 6 people at our place and it felt like a house warming. The food was excellent (indian and vietnamese) and Michael brought music.

The internet cafe that I am using is very popular. There are 6 computers that are always full. It closes at 10pm and yesterday I came at 8:45 and waited until 9:30 for a computer. They also have wi-fi broadband and sometimes there are 10 people here with laptops...

I was thinking today, that I teach Stott Pilates, which is a contemporary approach to the teachings of Joseph Pilates, but when it comes to yoga, I have chosen the very ancient and original practice of Ashtanga as opposed to the more recent offshoots such as power yoga, bikram, anusara etc. But I love the fact that Ashtanga puts sooo much emphasis on the breath when performing any movement... the 'vinyasa' system.
I also learnt recently that the backbend never used to be in the primary series, but in the intermediate series, and maybe this was done to give the western man the ability to progress to something because there is so much emphasis on Padmasana (lotus) position in primary series, which western man is not at all accustomed to because of the daily use of chairs, so the ankles, knees and hips are really stiff.

Interesting community these yogi's

2007-02-06T03:41:00.000+05:30

Backpackers anywhere else in the world will go out late, drink alcohol, eat whatever is cheap etc. But here in Mysore, you will find a community of westerners (I don't know if I can call them backpackers, because most of them stay right here for a few months) that will not drink any alcohol, will strictly not eat any meat, go to bed around 8:30 or 9pm and wake up between 3:30 and 6am for their daily practice. All very very nice people from all over the world.

I have met americans (of course), mexicans, chinese, taiwanese, koreans, austrian, german and finnish people. In my anatomy class there is a lady from the Phillipines and a lady from Vietnam and guy from Iceland. Extremely diverse, which is awesome.

It is nice to see some comments on my blog... good to know it is being read :-)
Under the links section on the right I have added a news link under the yoga websites section, and I have added a section on indian mythology and deities.

Yesterday's practice was not great for me because I started getting a throat infection the night before. After practice I had a fruit salad for breakfast at Tina's (which contained pommegranate seeds) and then I headed for a medical store (synonymous with a pharmacy back home)... I found one that looked clean and a little more modern than the other dingy little cubicles. I knew I was not going to stop my daily practice and rest, and I did not want to take a chance of getting really sick, so I bought some anti-biotics, which is not something I would normally go for straight away. So I got a schedule H drug over the counter without a prescription, which I hear is the norm in India.

In my anatomy class we dealt with the knee, which was really intereting again. We looked at the shape and angles of the bones from different bodies and how it would affect how deep each one could get into specific Yoga postures before getting to the limit of bone on bone. I love Ken's analogy: "Do not take the door off the hinge instead of loosening the hinge." In my Pilates anatomy classes we concentrated on the spine, so a lot of this is new and interesting.

In today's anatomy class we dealt with the hip and a little of the lumbar spine, which was again fantastic and I gained greater insight into the differences between the male and female hips and hip joints and the effect these have on the forward and back bends. One of the things that I thought I would mention was what Ken said the first day when I told him I did Stott Pilates. He said, "valuable improvement" and "nice to honour the curves of the spine", referring to the changes Moira Stott had made to the original exercised designed by Joseph Pilates. Coming from him it was a nice validation of the Pilates method I teach.
In class today we actually worked with a partner like the previous day and felt each other's ASIS, PSIS, sacrum, coccyx and pubic bones. You might thing this a little strange, but it worked. All you have to do is stay on the bone while palpating your partners body, and not move off to soft tissue otherwise your partner will think... what the *** are you doing?

In the afternoon I tried to get my Mosquito repellent that I bought earlier, by buying an adapter. After buying 2 different adapters I was still unsuccessful. They have 3 different sizes of plugs/sockets, but my flat only has the middle size socket, and the mosquito repellent only comes in the very small size. However, there is a very small difference between the 2 prong small size and the 3 prong middle size and eventually I found out that I just have to force it in. That is how it is done in India :-) Then I visited Quin, the girl from Vietnam and she invited me around for some supper later, because she was cooking for herself.

At 16:30 I went to the shala to buy Sharath's poster on the primary and intermediary sequence and juruji's little book on Suriya Namaskara A and B. I also found out about the sanskrit course and immediately registered. There are 2 courses, 1 for reading and writing and 1 for chanting, and each cost Rs 700. The reading and writing will be interesting, but the chanting one will teach me the correct pronunciation of the names of the asanas. The courses are for an entire month on Monday, Wed and Friday evenings at 5 till 6 and 6 till 6:45. I had missed the first class for this course which was last week, but there were a few others, and the teacher Laksmi spent some time with us revising the vowels before going on to consonants.
I was going to put an example of a sanskrit letter in this post but cannot even find the font in MS Word...

In the evening I shopped some more and bought a sheet because my sleeping bag was too hot and then Leena moved into one of the other rooms. By this time it was 21:30 and it was time to go to bed, so I did not get a chance to post a message to the blog yesterday.

This mornings practice I took very easy and slowly. It took me a full hour and 35 minutes to get through the full series. Saraswati helped me with the back bend from standing posture and it was the very first time I dropped back all the way to touch my hands on the floor. Saraswati had to really pull me back up to the standing posture.
My lower back is in a little bit of discomfort, but not really painful and I think this is just from the spine opening up. I am not the only yogi feeling this sensation.
In the change room afterwards Michael said that he forgot to warn us about Saraswati. Apparently she pushes people a little further than they are used to...
Sharath's daughter Raddha comes in to the shala around 8 and even though she is probably 3 or 4 years old, she tries to help stretch people or lies on her dads back while he is lying on the back of a student doing Paschimittanasana. Very cute.

At 10 I met Myra, Lori and Michael at the coconut stand (the main landmark everybody refers to here) and then took a rickshaw for about 10 mins (Rs 50) to have breakfast at a particular street vendor that Michael knows about. So the food probably cost about half the price of the transport, but the journey was well worth it because the idli and vaddha was devine.
Then I had to rush back to Gokulam (the area within Mysore where the shala is) to go the anatomy course, which I talked about earlier in this post.

After the course we went next door to a woman's private home. Every Tuesday and Thursday she cooks for yogi's to come to her home and eat a south indian tali for Rs 75.

At 5pm I went to Shakti house for Kirtan, which is sanskrit chanting. There was a guy with a guitar and another one with a violin and they played and sang and we sang along. It was quite a lot of fun and enjoyable.

At 6 Michael and I picked up Leena and we went for supper at the green leaf. I had masala dosa (savoury dosa, which looks like pancake but is not sweet) and a Paneer Palak (spinach and cheese). Leena had a cucumber raita (cucumber mixed with curd) and Micheal had rava idli and shared the paneer palak.
It is interesting that I have not had any cravings for any sweet things since landing in India. At home I have a serious sweet tooth for chocolate and ice cream. I am surprised at the quality of ice cream and cakes and chocolate that they have now in India. I do not remember this from my trip in 1996.

We talked a little philosophy and later went home...

First class with guruji

2007-02-04T08:11:00.000+05:30

Last night after writing the blog entry I went to Anu's where a wrapper by the name of Nicholas was saying good-bye to everybody after a lengthy stay here. He calls himself MC Yogi and what he does is rap about India, the Baghavat Gita, and Ashtanga etc. I did not expect anything spectacular, but Michael left a message at Randy's for me to come. I am very glad he did, because he was brilliant. Every verse had the audience laughing.

Afterwards I had some supper, which was very oily and gave me heartburn. Still trying to find all the good restaurants. I then had a bucket shower... A lot of homes don't have baths or showers. The toilet has a drain and you basically pour the water over yourself, then wash yourself and then rinse yourself by pouring water over yourself again. Then you use a squeegy to dry the floor. At least Randy's home had a proper western toilet. Most Indian homes have holes in the ground you squat over, just like in South East Asia.

I then stretched for almost an hour before going to bed. Lots of nervous energy before the 6:15 led class with guruji.
I did not feel that well when I woke up, but after doing Nauli Kriya to cleanse the colon I felt better. Nauli Kriya is a technique shown to me by Michael last year in which you use your abdominus rectus muscles to massage the colon and get a bowel movement going. He said you should do it every morning before your practice so that you are empty when doing your practice. I have been doing it for about 3 months now and am getting better at it and it seem particularly useful at times like this.
Ok, you might have felt that that was overshare :-)

I arrived at the shala at 6. The first class that started at 5 was busy finishing. (It is quite impressive that guruji at 91 gets up that early every morning to teach.) Once they were done we all rushed in. It was so crowded, 2 girls had to actually do their practice on the stage next to guruji's chair. We formed 5 rows of about 14 or 15 people in each. I spoke to a Mexican girl today, Licha, who arrived in September last year and said that it was very different when she arrived.
I landed up in the very front, right under the nose of Sharath and Saraswati. Guruji, who led the first class seemed to take a break for this class and just sat in his chair watching us (and dozing off sometimes). Sharath led the class walking around, correcting, adjusting and saying the dreaded word "Stop". One of the things you agreed to when registering is that you have to stop when one of the teachers says you have to stop in your sequence. Basically this means that you are not ready to continue in the series and you have to wait for everyone else to get to the finishing sequence and then you finish with the rest of the class. Leena was just behing me and was told to stop at Bujapeedasana. I luckily got through the whole series, but that does not mean it will not happen in future.
After our led class was the intermediate series led class at 7:30, which Michael was part of. I sat outside the doors to the room and watched. Guruji led this class again and Sharath walked around and told people when to stop. There were about 4 rows of people that started the session which was far less cramped. 40 minutes into the practice the dreaded stop started and by the end of the class there were only 22 people left. In this session, I guess because there was enough space, when people were told to stop, they moved to the back and did the finishing sequence.
Interesting to note is that the ratio of men to women here is almost 50:50. Of the 22 people who did the whole intermediate series, I think 12 were men.

Afterwards I went back to Randy's and had another bucket shower and then had a red banana for breakfast. Very sweet and slightly thicker than the bananas at home. They also have the small yellow bananas here, but the red ones are the best.
Then I registered for the yoga anatomy course that started at 11:30 and I had an Id photo taken, which I did not have when I registered with guruji yesterday.

Then I took a rickshaw to the green hotel where they have an organic market every Sunday morning. Had some more to eat and then back to start the anatomy course. The course is Rs 1500 for 4 days from 11:30 to 13:30. I know my anatomy from my exercise science courses, but I was told this will be different and will relate to yoga. We covered the feet and legs today and it was very good. Ken, the teacher, is referred to here as the rolfer, as there are many Kens here. He has been "rolfing" for about 12 years and when he teaches he also talks about the Gestalt theory, the Alexander technique and the Feldenkrais method. So he is very knowledgeable and had some good material including videos of the feet of cadavres that have all the outer tissue removed and show the muscles and tendons moving the bones in the foot. We finished applying the knowledge by "sensing" our feet on the ground while doing a simple forward bend and back bend, mainly understanding how the muscles even to the back and neck are affected when we are not balanced or "grounded" properly.

After that I had an appointment with Anne to look at her flat, which I took. It is on the 2nd floor, with balconies, has a nice view, is new and modern with shower heads in the toilets and proper toilets. It will cost Rs 13,500 for a month plus electricity. It has 3 bedrooms so now I need to find some house mates.
Michael then took me to the Green Leaf on his scooter where we met Licha and we had a South Indian Thali for lunch... and yes, I did eat with my fingers... that felt strange!!! Could have used a spoon, but I decided to give it a try :-)

Afterwards, I went back to Randy's to figure out the details of renting the flat... have to organise some mattresses and maybe some chairs and get the one bathroom fixed.
Some Sunday afternoons guruji has a conference session which is basically a Q & A session, but when we arrived there today, we were told that there would not be one.

Now I need to go and move my stuff into the new place...