I really like the practice, especially now that I get a grip of it with help of a few wonderful teachers that I was lucky to practice with, which unfortunately are hard to come by. Bikram Yoga helps me stay very fit, energized, my body is now very supple, but the most important of all it opens my heart, which allows the love to flow in.

So here are the lessons I wanted to share with you:

Ignore Your Teacher and Listen to Your Body

This is probably the most important lesson.

It’s important to realize that Bikram’s system has no beginner, intermediary and advanced levels - everybody does the same class together. Bikram’s classes are known to somewhat resemble military training. Go, go, go. Push, push, push. Die, die, die. And it’s true. The only difference is that you’re not in the military, you have a choice here.

I find that many Bikram Yoga teachers, especially new ones, have one big problem in common. They don’t explain to beginners that they need to listen to their body, rather the teacher. It’s so easy to get injured if you push yourself beyond what your body can handle. And most beginners simply don’t know what their body can handle. I injured my lower back several times at the beginning of Bikram’s practice because I pushed too much and my posture wasn’t correct. The latter is another problem. You don’t learn the asanas (postures) before you jump in to do those. You’re supposed to figure those out as you go. Which is find, but only if you really take it easy. First you need to figure out how to do the posture right, which depending on your luck with the teachers you get might take you 6 months, a year or even longer. Even 18 months into the practice every so often I find a good teacher who tells me that my posture isn’t right. Only when your posture is correct you can start slowly pushing the edge, while listening to your body. Notice that you might not feel the problem right away, but when you go home or the next day.  So please take it really really easy at the beginning.

And if you hear the teacher screaming at you “go, go, go”, simply tune them out and smile to your own experience. It’s perfectly OK to do so.

Moreover, remember that this is your practice. If you need to come out of posture earlier, do so. If you need a delay before you get into the posture — take your time. Yes your teacher is likely to be unhappy about you not doing the posture with the same timing as everybody else, it’s their problem. You do what’s the best for you. Once you get more advanced you will also want to stay in postures longer than the group does, and again it’s perfectly OK to do so (you will just get a shorter break before the next posture).

Finally, if you need to take a break and skip a posture or a few, do so. If you really need to leave the room, do so. You do yoga to improve your life, not to please other people. Eventually you will learn how to stay in the room through exhaustion and dizziness, and still there will be some days that you will have to get out. It’s all good.

Listen to Your Teacher and Listen to Your Body

Now once you mastered a posture and you are unlikely to injure yourself, it’s only now the time when an eager teacher becomes useful for you. This is the time when pushing comes in handy, because you’re now ready to challenge yourself. Again, you only want to take as much pushing as you need to. You still need to listen to your body. You will never stop doing that.

Also remember that each posture is different, so you might want to push yourself in one posture, but to continue working on the correct execution in other postures.

It might take you a long time to get there. Or a short one - every person is different. If you find a good teacher, ask lots of questions after the practice and ask them to pay extra attention to you during your practice - most teachers I met love helping on an individual basis. Of course it’s crucial that you identify experienced teachers. You probably don’t want to receive advice from new teachers, they are trying to figure it all out themselves. If you aren’t sure — ask around.

Another things to remember is that your body is different every day. One day you will feel particularly strong. Yet the next day, you will feel totally out of it and will have a very difficult practice and feel like you’re a total beginner. It happens to everybody, and it’s all good.

Keep the Sweat On

Don’t use your towel to wipe the sweat off. I frantically did that at the very beginning, especially on my face, because I couldn’t stand all that sweat, and I perspire copiously. At some point I surrendered and stopped wiping the sweat off, because I wasn’t getting enough of a break between the postures because of that. But to my surprise after some time I realized that I feel less hot, which makes total sense, since our body perspires exactly to cool itself off. So keeping the sweat on, made me feel cooler and less energy was exerted on extra perspiration.

I’m still trying to figure out the issue with sweat pouring into my eyes though. While I no longer mind it happening, I have a hard time the rest of the day, following the practice, since my eyes have all that sweat in them. I couldn’t figure out how to wash it out - I’m still quite uncomfortable about it.

Drink Less Water

It’s difficult not to drink water in the Bikram’s Yoga class, especially when the temperature is too hot. But I’ve noticed that I get a better practice and I have a better body-mind connection when I drink little or not water. Drinking a lot of water before the class seems to help quite a lot.

Don’t Leave Right Away

I’m not sure why people blast out of the classroom, immediately after the practice. I find that this is the best part of the practice. I feel fully connected to my body. I feel present and the stretching feels so good. I sometimes stay in the classroom for 20 minutes after the class

Wait with Taking a Shower

Most people don’t know but apparently you lose essential energy (ojas) that’s non-replenishable if you run to take a shower immediately after the practice. The suggested approach is to dry off naturally, and then rub the body with a dry towell. Only then a shower should be taken.

Have a great practice!

Introduction:

Swami Vivekananda Saraswati gave a free talk on Tantra Yoga on Oct 22 2008 in Vancouver, Canada. I really enjoyed the 2.5 hours of Swami’s monologue, followed by Q&A. I found it to be very enlightening. His presence was very engaging and very down to earth. At the end he was very humble and refused applause. I’m looking forward to two weeks of workshops with him.

The following are my notes from his presentation, written through my perception filters, but otherwise uncensored.

The World of Duality

First Swami presented the duality of the world, which all religions and philosophies agree upon. One side of the world is a non-manifested reality (what mystics talk about) and the other is manifested (what we see and live) . Depending on the language, religion and teaching this pair is known as: nirvana/samsara, transcendental reality/eminent reality, spirit/nature, emptiness/fullness, Brahman/Maya, Shiva/Shakti. Most of us live in samsara, the lower, manifested world, and everybody earns to reach nirvana, the higher, non-manifested world.

Next comes the part that different religions/philosophies disagree upon. And that is the way to reach nirvana. The majority of teachings side with Vedantic way of reality (also known as classical spirituality, or ascetic view). In Vedantic language the two sides of the coin are Brahman (high) and Maya (low). The main postulates of Vedantic view on these two “worlds” are:

• There is no interaction or connection between the two worlds
• In order to reach nirvana one must leave Maya behind

It’s said that we are like a moth which is attracted to the light (which represents our desire). We are born into this world, which is like a prison, which we can’t escape. You could make the prison cell nicer by having all kinds of decorations but you are still in the prison cell. And then if you believe into reincarnations, you repeat the same cycle again and again, going from birth to death, choosing to be in the prison. It’s like a ground hog day.

Everything is an illusion, like in the Matrix movie. All stimulations that affect our senses are simple electrical charges…

Since we are 99% material and 1% spiritual, the solution therefore must be to stop doing material things completely and start doing spiritual things. That means our body is now an enemy, and therefore you must kill your body, through fasting, not sleeping, not having sex, and just eating a bear minimum to allow body to survive so that you could carry on the spiritual quest.

Examples of such practices include Zen meditation, Buddhist and Vedanta meditations. There are all masculine way of looking at the world.

Hatha Yoga on the other hand is forbidden for Vedantic practitioners because it works on improving and nourishing our bodies. Hatha Yoga is feminine, because feminine energy is about nourishing.

The Hills Are Hills And The Valleys Are Valleys

Next Swami talked about those enlightened coming back to earth as teachers. He mentioned the three stages of enlightenment using a Chinese proverb:

Before you have the experience, the hills are hills and the valleys are valleys; and during the experience, they are no longer hills and valleys; but once you return, again once more the hills are hills and the valleys are valleys.

So those enlightened come back to the world of illusion, only this time they don’t get entangled in it, because they have transcended it. Back to the prison example mentioned earlier, is that they come back to the prison, but this time as a visitor, rather than an inmate.

The point Swami was making is that even though everybody tries to leave this world, once they get across the line, they want to come back and play. (Probably alluding that one doesn’t really need to leave in first place)

What is Tantra

And now it’s time to transition to Tantra.

Quantum physics proved in relativity theory that observer affects the object that’s being observed, and therefore spirit and matter are interconnected and are not separate. They simply transition into each other.

Side note: Tibetan Buddhism is actually tantric, and therefore heretical to classical Buddhism.

In Tantra one can reach spirit (Nirvana) through matter (Maya).

Examples of Tantric Yogas: Hatha, Kundalini and Laya Yogas.

Tantra means “warp”, “web”, “holographic world” and it deals with all things manifested.

Hatha Yoga is about healing, but utmost it’s about enlightenment.

Body healing is just the first stage and one must not stop there, and go beyond that.

Emotions can be destructive, but if used correctly can be a huge source of energy and life. One needs wind to sail and without the wind (emotions) you won’t get far.

Finally, while the mind can be an obstacle to a spiritual development, it doesn’t have to be the case. As long as our minds don’t rule us, minds are actually very useful tools when used correctly.

Unlike Vedanta, which is about escaping and running away from this world, Tantra is about using the manifested as stepping stones, one just needs to know where to look.

Swami uses hot chocolate to demonstrate his point. Yes, hot chocolate creates desire. But it’s all about how you use that desire. If you gobble up those hot chocolates without moderation it’ll be harmful. However if you really slow down and be present and enjoy the experience of slowly savouring the drink, you will experience an ecstasy close to an orgasm (see my article: Chocolasm 101 - The Chocolate Orgasm for Men).

It’s all about awareness and mindfulness, which allows to feel the spirit behind the matter. The same experience can be achieved via a sexual orgasm, watching a sunset or eating an apple. It’s all about “how” and not “what”.

It’s like dancing - if it’s done mindfully, one can find the spirit through dancing. For example Sufi dancers after spinning for 3 hours can get to the supreme ecstasy state.

In Tantra you worships the nature and the nature connects you to the spirit. Tantra therefore is very close to shamanic practices, which is all about nature.

Tantra and Sexuality

While sexuality is just a part of Tantra, it’s a very important part.

All Vedantic traditions shun sexuality, since again, it has to do with nature. And in nature polarity is everywhere, everyone and everything has sex, including atoms, which have plus and minus charges.

The main issue with sex is that it’s very very very powerful. It’s like if surfing a normal wave is a great experience, imagine being able to surf a tsunami wave.

This has a political implication - it’s hard to rule people who have a lot of energy. Modern sexual culture is about making people obedient, since depleted man are easy to tame.

Sexual energy is a source of all creative things. Most people are most creative through their youth, especially childhood, because their sexual energy is not depleted yet.

According to all yogic teachings, sexual energy is finite and once used completely we die.

Normal “animal” sex is depleting — vitality is lost during ejaculation. Tantric sex is the opposite — it’s about creating vitality without any depletion, and loss of sexual energy.

There are two ways of dealing with this:

1. Celibate (or at least practice moderation)
2. Have non ejaculatory sex, with multiple orgasms as taught through Tantric teaching.

Most women don’t ejaculate anyway, but they lose their sexual energy through long menstrual cycles, and here Tantra helps to shorten those cycles and lose less sexual energy.

Moving from “animal sex” which is either about relief or procreation has deeper repercussions for intimate relationships. Once we leave behind the sex-for-a-relief practice, one can only stay in a relationship if a deeper connection is created. In such relationship one finds true unconditional love - you will want to be with your partner no matter what, spending time gazing into each other eyes, finding deeper intimacy, playing and exploring together.

Tantra love is a way of developing an ultimate relationship, whose purpose is to reach an enlightenment as a couple…

It’s useless reading about how Tantric sex works - the only way to get it is to experience it.

The other advantage for women is that no unhealthy contraceptions are necessary anymore.

And then a foray into statistics of an average person:

• An average man ejaculates in 5-6 minutes after the penetration
• It takes 30 minutes for an average women to reach a full body (non-clitoral) orgasm

So the “animal sex” can’t satisfy a women, and various workarounds are used in the best case, in the worst case she is left unsatisfied.

Swami talks about an average man like an airplane that’s taking off the ground to just have its fuel tank explode half way up to the sky…

Latin proverb says: “Omne animal post coitum triste.”, which means “all animals are sad after sex“.

Sex is a huge force that can be very destructive or very creative, depending on how it’s used.

What is Tantra Yoga

Tantra Yoga is about using asanas (postures) to elevate our consciousness, rather than just doing body stretching exercises.

Since we are all born already perfect, Tantra Yoga sets no transformation goals, though as one practices it major transformations happen from within. For example if one can feel that trees are alive, one will relate to trees in a very different way, and therefore the transformation is subtle but obvious.

Swami finished his enlightening talk by saying that:

Tantra Yoga is like Yoga with Hot Chocolate

With time I also learned that it works amazingly well as a remedy for a Sore Throat, Congestion and Cough. Ginger also helps a lot with food digestion — which is why it gives body energy — the less energy body uses for digestion, the more of it is left for other uses.

Here’s the recipe for making an amazing Ginger Tea.

Ingredients:

• Ginger root
• Honey
• Lemon
• Boiling Hot Water

Instructions:

1. Cut an inch-size piece of Ginger Root and peel the skin.
2. With a sharp knife slice it in thin chunks. But don’t make those too little as you don’t want the little pieces end up in your mug.
3. Throw the ginger pieces in a pot and add hot water.
4. Add honey to taste. You will probably want to use light honey, like blackberry honey. If you use strong honey, like buckwheat honey, it’ll overpower the taste of ginger.
5. Finally, squeeze quite a lot of lemon into the pot.
6. Close the lid and let it steep for 5-10 minutes.
7. Taste the tea and add extra honey or lemon if you didn’t add enough in first place.

The tea is now ready to be served.

When you prepare Ginger Tea for the first few times, you might want to have less ginger as it can be quite strong if you’re not used to it. As you get used to it you can add more ginger.

As you drink the tea, you can add more water to the pot, but it’ll take much longer to steep another go of tea using the same ginger (more than an hour), so if you want more tea you might want to consider adding fresh ginger.

It might take you a few attempts to prepare that perfect Ginger Tea, but once you perfect the art, you will have an amazing drink to comfort yourself and your guests.

Enjoy your Ginger Tea!

Tonight was the first part of the “Alchemy of Sensuality” workshop by Little Woo.

There were 9 women, 3 men and lots of chocolate… but wait, it gets even better.

The first half of this 3 hour evening was dedicated to a discussion about Sensuality, what it is and what it is not - as we found out, for different people that concept meant different things. Little Woo introduced various concepts around Sensuality, such as Anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure), S&M (pleasure through pain), Hedonism (living for the sake of pleasure), Epicureanism (a simpler version of Hedonism) and Debauchery (extreme indulgence in sensuality without inhibitions).

While talking about Sensuality, Little Woo was blending in the concepts of manifestation, which is a very complex and at the same time very simple topic, depending on where you’re coming from. But for me the part that resonated the most was about conflicts we have with others. The Little Goddess suggested that most conflicts and/or misunderstandings happen for two reasons that have nothing to do with the others. The first reason being us not trusting ourselves to be good enough. The second reason is us believing that others will misunderstand us. In other words we manifest misunderstanding from one or both sides. This is a very empowering suggestion, and I need to have it sink into my system and start to live it more.

But all the talk is useless if it doesn’t get applied in practice, and that’s why the second half of the evening was so much more powerful. It was the experiential part, where we explored our senses, one at a time, which wasn’t unusual, other than two new elements: we needed to be very present and we were observed by others as we were having our sensory experience.

The first sense we flirted with was taste. We split into groups of 3 people and we each brought a few food samples that we love. As I mentioned earlier almost everybody brought chocolate, but I guess most participants were women. The reason I make this pun, lies in the fact that for years I’ve been hearing women talk about the experience of eating chocolate as something close to a sexual orgasm (we also learned that night that there are other orgasms that aren’t sexual). Most women said that chocolate makes them go tingly and sends goosebumps all over their body. Now all these years I felt left out and I thought that it was only women who were privileged to have that experience. And while I love chocolate, I was forever to be deprived of that extra pleasure. I’m happy to share that since this evening, eating chocolate will never be the same and here’s why.

The exercise was set up in a way that one person eats their favorite food, while two others watch and then the first person shares their experience and then all three eat the same food together. For those watching the suggestion was to tune into the experience of the person eating the food and to try to sense what they sense. I brought Green and Black’s Organic with Ginger with me. I had a tiny little bite of it, and while trying to be fully present on the sense of the chocolate melting in my mouth, which was amplified by seeing the two women watching me indulging myself with that tiny bite of chocolate, sent me to the tingly mode. It then got even stronger and I got suddenly really hot. I was eating my chocolate at 100 times slower than I’m used to and I was having my body going into the waves of pleasure. Wow, what an experience. What a chocolate!

I couldn’t even finish that tiny piece of chocolate, I felt that it was too much (when I usually could eat half a bar in two bites). It was the same chocolate, but I wasn’t the same. And I did nothing special. I was just in the moment.

That whole experience was a great set up for the rest of the evening and I continued being present, with no mind chatter whatsoever. Once were were done with food, we moved to explore the olfactory sense and I enjoyed a whole range of amazing smells (mostly essential oils brought by people, but also some objects). Some were so good, I couldn’t let go, others were too strong that I couldn’t bear.

Next we moved to the tactile sense - that one was quite interesting, since there was a huge variety of objects, some soft and others hard, but most had some uniqueness to them, and again I found some objects that I had a hard time letting go of, while others didn’t quite do it for me.

After we had to cut short our indulgence of senses because we were long past the closing time, we had a short discussion about the whole experience. And the now “usual” observation was that we all live different “lives”. For some people connecting with food was nothing unusual, while tactile or olfactory sense experiences were new to them. For me for example it was the opposite - I feel very present and connected with touch and smell in a daily life, whereas when I take my food in I’m not quite present with it, as I typically do it while multitasking. And that’s why this evening was so powerful for me. I’ve got reminded that it’s so simple to find pleasure and joy and things that we don’t notice and take for granted when they become a routine. Of course having food as a routine is just one of those examples.

We finished the evening with a little tea ceremony, and the tea had all three senses at that time, the smell, the taste and the touch.

I felt alive and present through the second half of the workshop and full of love for the rest of the evening, which in my book grants a solid 10 out of 10 to the workshop facilitator (Little Woo) and of course myself, since it’s still a bit of struggle to get out of my head and to just be…

I’m looking forward to part 2 of this workshop.

Imagine yourself on your deathbed. No, really, do that. You can’t do that? But did you know that you could die or get killed any moment. Today could be your last day of life. It’s very real.

So you are on your deathbed. Now think about the regrets that you have. What things you really wanted to accomplish in your life and haven’t accomplished or most likely haven’t even started working on yet.

Take a notepad and spend 10-15 minutes writing those things down. Be honest with yourself. You can burn the list as soon as you are done.

Most likely you’d be surprised that the list will be quite long and through the rest of the day you are most likely going to think about other things to add to the list. It’ll just happen, without you wanting it. This is because you’ve now opened that box, that was so tightly closed and guarded. The box’s name is “Tomorrow“, or “Later” or “When I … I will do this” — all describing the eternal future…

And that thought of the future is the guard of that box, containing your wishes. However, realizing that death could pay you a visit any moment will scare those warm thoughts of the future away, leaving you with “Now“. There might be no “Tomorrow”, the only sure thing is “Now”.

Obviously there is no need to get scared, because in reality chances that you will die in the next moment aren’t very high, but they are far from zero. And you have little control over it.

Just recently I was in a frontal crash car accident, with two cars and four people involved. Both cars got totalled and it was a miracle that all four walked out with minor injuries. We were very close to death, yet it wasn’t our time yet.

Until the moment of the accident I thought of the deathbed exercise as a powerful tool and it required a lot of imagination to make it such. After the accident there was no more need for imagination, I won’t forget the moment of the crash. I’ll write some other day about other repercussions of that day, but for now let’s stick to the topic.

A year ago I lead a “life’s purpose” workshop at a men’s retreat and the group I worked with went through that exercise, with everybody writing down long lists of things they really wanted to do. One person told at the beginning that he already know all the things that he really wanted to do before his life expires, and yet he discovered that there were other things that he wished to accomplish or experience in his life, ending up with probably the longest list in the group.

We discussed the results and most people pointed out that they procrastinated at doing the real things they wanted, either thinking that they will always be able to do those in the future, or because of self-sabotage and anxiety, because some of those things were quite challenging and scary to even think about. At the end most were very enthusiastic about pursuing those postponed projects and ideas.

I don’t know whether the participants remembered the workshop and started working on those life experiences that they wanted to have, as I know it’s too easy to fall back to the old patterns without constant reminders.

Now let’s go back to the exercise:

After probably having a shock experience of being very honest with yourself, it’s time to take action, moving the immediate death verdict in to the future. Take the “life experiences to have” list and prioritise it using the following technique.

First imagine that you were told that you have only a week to live. And therefore select the experiences that you could have in that single week. The two criteria are importance and feasibility. (Obviously if your goal is to have an experience that requires a much longer period of time it’s not going to work)

Next imagine that your death verdict is one month away, and select experiences that could be done in a single month.

Continue scaling in time, postponing the verdict to 3 months, 6 months, a year, five years, etc. and that way prioritizing your list.

To me the main point of this exercise was the understanding the importance of “Now” and shocking realization of the fact that I was living is some kind of dream through most of my life. Now when I make choices in my life I try hard to remember that new discovery and prioritize things accordingly. My life is much easier now, because I let go of a lot of things, because they aren’t important anymore, because they don’t pass the deathbed test.

All my life I’ve been struggling. First childhood, then school and professional sports, then university and finally work. Rolling from one goal to the next, through ongoing hard work and struggle, I’ve been really good at it. When I had hard challenges in my life I worked the hardest, I was the most efficient at what I did and life seemed to be full… of struggle.

Now I’m at the point of my life where I’ve arrived - I have succeeded. I don’t have any more exams, I don’t have a boss to worry about, etc. — I have total freedom to do whatever I want. And it’s so damn hard. It was so much easier when I had the comfort of having the life set challenge after challenge for me.

Now I realize that this time life presented the hardest challenge of all - having no challenge. It comes in a form of a huge discomfort and anxiety. A different kind of anxiety. I do everything in order to stop myself from succeeding and to go back to the comfortable work-through-the-challenge state. I realize that I can be a way more successful than I’m now, but my body also realizes that it’ll be even more challenging for me to be there.

I observe my brain spinning like crazy trying to come up with new ideas, new challenges, new quests… trying to save me from feeling uncomfortable. That reminds me of Wayne Dyer’s “human being vs. human doer” talk, I just can’t “be”, I have to “do” something all the time to feel good - I’m a true “human doer“.

I’m off to feel uncomfortable and not run away from it. I know that once I go through it, the next stage would be peace. Just peace.

Back in 2002 I traveled extensively in Tibet and China. I did a few extreme and amazing hikes in the Tibet area. On one of them, to the Everest foot, I was lucky to return from it alive. Here is the account of that vicious “hike”.

Sunday, Oct 13 2002

I’ve planned to walk to the Everest Base Camp (2h each way from the Rongpu Monastery), wander around for a while and come back. I took 2 litters of water, 2 small mooncakes and camera. I was told the day before that those who want to walk past the Base Camp have to pay a huge amount of money something like US$500 or even more.

As I was taking shortcuts to avoid the road switchbacks, I have happened to come to the Base Camp’s location at the ridge above it. I saw it from the top of the mountain and was very disappointed. The E.B.C. was far, far away from the Everest itself. At this point something happened to me and I decided to get to the real mountain base, at least as close as possible.

Since I bypassed the EBC from a side, nobody asked me for any fee, so I’ve descended from the ridge, fording on the way a beautiful semi-frozen mountain river and started walking parallel to the Rongpu Glacier, on its left side, close to the ridge, where I’ve found a prominent foot path. After about an hour of walking the path went up to the mountain, and then turning left, I suppose that it was heading to the Advanced Base Camp. But I didn’t have any notes with me since I wasn’t planning past the EBC. After following the path to the top of the mountain I broke off the path, crossed another icy downstream and continued in parallel with the Rongpu Glacier valley. From now on I had to walk in the snow and navigate huge boulders. There was no trek but sometimes I saw footprints in the snow. Needless to say I wasn’t prepared to walk in the (wet) snow and my shoes got wet after a while.

Far ahead I saw the Everest and beautiful glacier hills. I decided to walk forward as long as I’ll have enough time to come back before the darkness will fall down (8pm). That meant 5.5 hours one way from the monastery. So I had to turn back at 3pm. But at 3pm I was still far away from the Everest, so I decided to “walk” some more, fighting the stones and going up and down all the time. The final goal was seemingly so close, but I just couldn’t reach it.

At around 4pm I’ve reached the next ridge at which I’ve forced myself to turn around. Which I almost did, but then I saw that if I get off the ridge and walk back through the glacier valley, I will walk much faster as it looked flat, so I thought that I can still go forward for a while. How wrong I was. I got down and walked forward for one more hour. Only at 5pm I’ve turned back, after I’ve reached the glacier hills. That was after 7.5 hours of non-stop walking, meaning that if I walk back at the same speed I’d reach my bed after the midnight. Now I faced the risk of getting stranded in the glacier for the night, without any equipment and food. I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast other than two small mooncakes. But thoughts of how to cover 7.5 hours distance in 3 hours were taking over the hunger. Especially it was really hard to leave from the point I’ve reached. Since I was surrounded by magnificent glacier hills, and very close to the foot of the Everest.

I had no choice but to leave the place, taking quick snapshots on the way. At the beginning I was indeed moving very quickly and I thought that everything will be just great. But half an hour later I’ve started to face hills that I had to cross, and the problem was that it was a hard task to do, as everything under my feet was on the move. I was constantly fighting the rock-slides. This has slowed my pace to a crawl. An hour later things got worse, I was getting constantly trapped by glacier walls. I’d climb the hill trying to cross it and would find vertical ice walls on the other side. So I had to back trace (again facing the rock slides) and try the nearby hill, but many times I’d face the same problem. This almost halted my movement forward. I thought of getting back to the ridge but it was too high and steep from the point I was, so I kept on fighting the rocks and ice. At some point I’ve got desperate. It was after 8pm the sun set down and it was getting dark and I was still stranded in a glacier with no solid path out but wild guessing and constant back tracing. Being desperate the next time I faced the vertical wall I’ve decided to slide down it (about 5-10 m) and got my body down holding on the rock. The wisdom took over and at the last moment I decided to stop this insane attempt and I brought myself back to top and went for a long back trekking. I’d surely break my legs if I’d let go of my hand.

After struggling for another half an hour in the moonlight, which luckily gave enough light to see the silhouettes of stones I’ve finally heard the river I’ve forded in the morning, after some struggle I’ve found the path and guessing the path in the darkness speeding up as fast as I could (I was on my feet for more than 10 hours already, mostly struggling the rocks) but still tried to semi-run. To my relief at 8:30pm I’ve reached the open valley that lead to the E.B.C. At 9:30pm I’ve reached it and walked into one of the Tibetan tents to get some tea, I didn’t drink any water for a long time, as the water that I’ve got left has turned ice. After a few cups of tea I’ve rushed to the monastery, which I’ve reached at 11pm. I was on my feet for 13 hours that day and hardly any breaks. The moon was my best friend that day (night?) as it safely took me out of the mountains. My friends know that I’m insane, so no surprise here. Just the usual me.

When I came back to the Rongpu Monastery everybody were asleep so I’ve engulfed a box of instant noodles with a great appetite and was off to sleep too. The next day I could hardly walk in the morning.

A professional swimmer in my youth, I continued swimming as my main workout, but recently I happened to suffer more and more from scapula issues, which swimming aggravated (since I swim for about 1 hour, about 3K). And my partner suggested that I try Bikram’s yoga for a month.

I was quite skeptical, but decided to try it anyway. To make the long story short after 1 month of doing the yoga for 3 times a week I was sold, and I’ve been doing it on a regular basis for more than 5 months now.

First of all it is a good substitute for swimming as my body is kept in a good shape, and even better, since swimming didn’t exercise all of the muscles and joints, whereas Bikram’s does.

However the main reason why I became a convert is because of the incredible kick I get out of the practice. I love challenge and Bikram’s supplies tons of it on a daily basis and the best part it doesn’t go away, since you can’t get good at it and get comfortable. I mean you can get comfy if you choose not to challenge yourself, but it provides all the things one needs to easily push oneself to the edge in a relatively safe environment. (I’ll talk about safety later).

Getting Jiggy With Bikram’s Yoga

“So what’s it all about”, you ask? Imagine yourself in a studio with mirrors, wearing as little as possible, because the temperature in the room is usually between 100F (38C) and 100F (43C). And the humidity can be anywhere between 30% to 60% and more, depending on how many people are practicing (which can be up to 20-30 people).

The class is 90min long. There are 26 exercises that follow one after another with very short savasana “breaks” in between, during which you are supposed to pretend to be dead and just breath without moving and fidgeting (which is not easy in itself). About half the exercises are standing on one or two feet and another half are in various poses on the floor.

Each time you come to a practice it’s different - if last time something was very easy for you, it could be completely different this time and the other way around. You can never predict how you’d feel doing a specific pose, which helps the “staying uncomfortable” motto.

Some people sweat more than others, in my case I perspire a lot, so when I’m done with the class and I wring my towel, I get probably half a bucket of sweat out of it - imagine that! And during the postures it feels like I’m under shower, because I get trickles of liquid all over my body.

Getting A Kick

So why did I fell in love with this practice? It’s because most of the time, towards the end of the practice, my body gets into a state where I get shivers and tingling sensation all over me, as the energy freely roams through me. It’s like sex, but even better, since it lasts much longer. And I love the sensation. In those moments I can’t help but to be present in my body 100% (as typically my mind always wanders elsewhere).

There is a price to it of course. I only get it when I work really hard. And higher temperature makes it much easier to get to the edge. Once I cross the edge and start feeling the energy tickle my body, it just continues doing so all the way till the end of the class and often even after when I leave the studio.

Now quite often I get challenged very hard at the very beginning, and sometimes I feel being close to fainting (usually in postures where my head is upside down and then going up, getting a huge blood rush out of my head). First, not being sure about how to deal with that and going down to skip a couple of postures, I now started playing with it. I get an insane kick out of it, as my whole body will go into a kind of trembling shock, which since I’m totally present and in control, gives me a tremendous feeling of “high”.

There were a few instances where I crossed some line and my body started going completely numb and shaking. I first had this experience at a “CURA workshop” where my release process involved incessant deep breathing, which triggered the shaking state. And the two times I had this happen to me at Bikram’s Yoga is when it was very hot and I did the opening breathing exercise really hard and long.

The first time I had to leave the practice studio and “recover” outside in a cooler environment, drinking a lot of liquids. It took probably 10 minutes for my body to return to normal. A second time I lied down before I was totally taken over by this state, so I didn’t get into a deep one.

Those are very interesting states my body gets into it, since my hands get really hard and they seem to levitate. I’m still not sure what I’m playing with here, but I had no negative side effects so far. Some people said that I get a huge sub-conscious release through these physical processes, which I can’t comprehend on the normal conscious level.

The Perfect Bikram’s Yoga Teacher

Now there are many different teachers out there. Some like the room to be luke-warm (which I don’t like, since I get no kick at all), others like it hot (perfect for me), and yet others like it too hot, which can be too challenging at times. I’d still go with too challenging, rather than less challenging.

However the most interesting part I found is that I get the best practice when the teacher is annoying. Typically those will talk all the time about soul, universe and their personal life philosophies, rather than just leading a class. Just this morning I had a class and I really really hated the teacher, I just wanted to scream “shut up!” through the first half of the practice, however I really started filling “it” and getting all tingly early quite early. When I get into that state I no longer care what the teacher says, I find myself so much being present in the experience, that I couldn’t care less what’s happening outside.

I usually start laughing, as I’m struggling to do the postures, when in this state. Because it doesn’t matter anymore.

As Wayne Dyer tends to say: “your mother in law is your best friend”. How true. How empowering.

Safety Issues

The not so happy side of Bikram’s practice is that some Bikram’s teachers aren’t really concerned with the students’ safety (at least where I’m practicing). It’s very easy to injure yourself if you listen to the teachers who tell you that you must kill yourself and not worry about anything. I’ve developed some sharp lower back pain after pushing myself too much in a few back-bending postures. Luckily, I realized that I have to take care of myself and I simply do certain postures only to a degree that doesn’t affect my back. Once my back gets stronger I’ll be able to push harder in those areas.

Some teachers think that they are safety-aware, but in my experience they often don’t understand where the student is coming from, so they would say something like “don’t collapse into your back”, without realizing that the student doesn’t get what it means (I was that student, and it took me a while to figure it out).

So please be very careful about pushing your limits while practicing Bikram’s and listen very carefully to your body. If unsure, don’t do it. Even if the teacher encourages you to not worry. At the end of the day, it’s you who could get in a big pain, not the teacher. If in doubt don’t do it and ask after the practice (since you can’t really ask questions during the practice), and you’d know better the next time.

That is not to say that all teachers are like that. Some teachers are actually very good at helping the students to be safe, but as the practice goes you can never predict who will be your teacher for the next session, so you can’t just stick with the person you think is safe to work with.

Indeed it was quite a transformational experience for me.

A quick description of the workshop setup: 3 days, a dozen participants, one facilitator and two assistants. A safe TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) is masterfully created to allow participants to open up and have the courage to step forward and transform themselves. The main purpose of the workshop is to go through a transformational process - there is very little talking. The workshop has no agenda - each participant decides when to step in and request a process. Sometimes a single participants goes through their process while others are observing and helping when needed. At other times several people may go into different processes at once, in which case the assistants support those people. That’s the gist of it.

My Process

Friday eve, I went through a strange process, where for about an hour my body violently shook. I checked in and mentioned that I can’t cry, and told my childhood story of being bullied… One of the participants (S.) offered to facilitate a process with me, by sitting in front of me. He suggested that I breathe very deeply, which I did. Mahmud (the facilitator) joined him (after asking my permission), they both had their hands on my body. At some point my body started going numb, and then it was almost paralysed, I almost couldn’t speak, my cheek muscles frozen. My hands felt like sticks and they were almost hanging in the air, as levitating, I felt like my whole body wanted to take off the ground. Mahmud and S. were bringing me into a trance, by each speaking to a different ear of mine and talking about different things (which I knew is a technique to bring one into a trance). I’m not sure whether it worked or not, I was aware of them doing it.

Meanwhile a big part of the group joined in and had their hands on my body, I started shaking and then lied down and started shaking even harder. After a while, my body wasn’t numb anymore. I spinned a bit, choked a bit, but mainly I have been shaking and breathing hard. Some suggested to make sounds, but nothing came out.

I didn’t quite manage to cry, even though I came close to it, when I started hysterically laughing. I think I stood in my own way to allowing that. I did manage to squeeze out a couple of tears while laughing.

My process concluded with a hug from each participant, which was very rewarding for me.

I don’t know what happened during that hour, but afterwards many told me that I looked different. Even my partner on my return home said I looked different, less tense, more open, more gentle. I couldn’t see any difference by looking at myself in the mirror.

Apparently my process helped some people in the group to go through their processes, which was an unexpected bonus.

The Best Part

Almost everybody went through a process during that weekend. It was beautiful. First irritated by people’s problems, I then started seeing the beauty of it all. I felt like I was sitted in the first row of the theatre where the actors played their real lives impromptu. Some actors would push buttons of other actors, and the play would unfold… It was like a gracious dance, even when someone had to scream and stomp their feet - it was an improv dance.

Mahmud was unreally real. When I met Marshall Rosenberg (of the Nonviolent Communication fame) I thought that he was an amazing person, who was so authentic, real and alive. But that was before I got to know Mahmud. Watching Mahmud facilitating processes of others and allowing himself to fully participate at the same level as the rest of the people in the circle was the most empowering experience I’ve ever had. What a teacher!

Needless to say that I was totally present through 99% of the workshop, which is quite an achievement for me.

The next day after the workshop I badly needed a fix of David Whyte. The first day I found him totally irritating, but on the following day, my body was resonating with waves created by his peculiar voice.

—

My physical process on Fri eve wasn’t transformational (at least to my awareness, but it was according to other people), but watching and playing with others was totally transformational for me.

What I Took From This Workshop

1. I realised that we have to be a part of a dysfunctional environment in order to learn and grow. Comfort doesn’t help a person to learn. Once realized that dysfunctional parents, society, etc. are actually a gift, the only remaining part is healing the wounds inflicted by the dysfunctional environment. The healing is done through various technique, such as:- forgiveness: sending unconditional love to those we hated so much- physical processing: reliving the experiences in a safe and supporting environment, and letting those experiences go into the ether through crying, screaming, shaking, dancing, wrestling and other physical activities.It seems that talking is not quite as helpful, but can instigate some of the above processes.
2. I discussed briefly my issue with bringing children into the world. I’ve received a very insightful feedback, which stripped me of the last ideological excuses for not having kids.The powerful suggestion is connected to (1) - it’s OK for a child to be born into a dysfunctional family, since that’s a gift for her. Therefore I don’t need to be perfect before I can allow this to happen, and if after birth should there any problem occur (e.g. such as divorce), the child has probably known about that in first place, since she chose her parents.
3. Also derived from (1), the counselor in me realized that I don’t have to try fixing everybody, it’s OK for them to have their problems, issues, be dysfunctional. Since by being all that, they provide gifts to others.
4. I’ve noticed that when I get to know people, I no longer see their bodies, but only the souls (well, unless I’m making love :). For quite a few people in the group, I’ve perceived them as totally different beings than what they looked outside. It was like if I wasn’t using my normal sight, but more inner knowing.
5. An issue of vulnerability came up during the workshop’s closing discussion. The group’s conclusion was that if everybody in the group allows themselves to be vulnerable, miracles are possible. The challenge is taking this idea into a world, which is not so vulnerability-friendly. One needs to be well grounded and have a huge faith in themselves in order to bring this virtue from the safe environment of TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) to the ACHZ (Anything Can Happen Zone).I’m not sure I was vulnerable during the workshop. I was open and real, yes, which is how I am in the Real World ™, vulnerable - probably not. Which I think shows that openness doesn’t necessarily mean the presence of vulnerability.This is probably something I need to work on. I can see that this fort will be not an easy one to convert into a museum. Perhaps this could be a process I need to go through.

The topics are going to be fear, anxiety, love, aliveness, procrastination, thrills, energy work, advaita, unity, being present and a lot more. And the main goal is to figure out how to feel alive and present for as many moments of my life as possible.

I don’t have any schedule planned for this blog, so sometimes there will be several essays coming out at once, at other times it’ll be quiet for a while.

I’m excited about this project, and looking forward to the thinking and writing process.

I feel alive and present as I write this!