Going internal, it had to happen at some point!

This week has been a bit different than the last two.  It's been more of a process of internal exploration which in reality is why I am here.  It is also a lot bumpier, more chaotic and scarier than the local terrain!  Let me talked about my adaptation to the program so far, it's not been easy.  We've been getting up at 5:00am every day, meditation at 5:30am, yoga class at 6:00am.  It's cold in the morning (about 10c with no heat in our room, daytime is great, about 25c) and my body is not tolerating it very well at all.  Because of the rheumatoid arthritis mornings before the sun comes up (which is about 7:30ish am) make it extremely difficult for me to move.  I can't do much of the yoga and it's especially bad because there are no other yoga classes offered during the day.  Except for about 90 mins of free time after lunch our time is jam packed until the evening most days.  We have homework and studying we have to fit in.  The weekends are a little more free but we still have to be up at 5am.  This had been causing me a lot of problems because I need to do a lot of yoga to manage my condition.  Mid-week this week I almost cracked, I was about ready to pack my bags and leave.  All I could see is a sure failure to manage myself through to the end.  I've been blessed to have a caring and smart roommate, Isabelle.  She is a full time yoga teacher/manager of a yoga center in Edmonton and does a lot of work with a process of self-exploration conveniently called "The Work" by a woman called Byron Kati.  It's a process of questions and answers to help the person determine if a detrimental belief is factually true.  Without giving you all the details of my own process I came to the conclusion that there is no way that I could possibility know for sure that I would fail the training at this point because I can't manage, that I have been managing already for 2 weeks and, truth be known, I haven't failed anything I've ever tried in my life so far.  There is no reason to think it this time.

I felt much better about my challenges by the end of the day and by the next day I realized that I came here with damaging expectations, I thought that I was going to be slimming down and doing all kinds of crazy poses, doing like 5 hours of heavy duty yoga, I would quickly feel like a million bucks etc.  What we actually have is a lot of theory, philosophy, anatomy, teaching techniques training and learning to clean our bodies in ways that I will let you look up... search 'neti' and the 6 methods of 'kriya' cleansing.  I'll never see the human body orifices the same way again...  India is a place where you can get very comfortable with many things that in the West we don't really talk about that much unless we need to :P  I love what we are doing but in the end I concluded that I have to pull up my boot straps and take on the responsibility to do what I need to do on my own to make the next 3 weeks work for me and my poor inflamed body.  Luckily I'm getting a lot of support and some great ideas to try.  VishvaJi told me that he knew of an Ayurvedic doctor (a powerfully and traditional Indian way of health and healing that, again, you can look up for yourself) who suffered horrific pain from R.A. for 20 years.  He cured himself with 1 hour a day of breathing techniques that I am already very familiar with.  Something called Kapalabathi breathing and fire breath.  Knowing what I know about these and believing in the power of yoga I think this could work for me.  It's super easy, I got nothing to loose and everything to gain so I working my way up: 10 min on Friday, 15 yesterday, hopefully fit in 20 min today.  I'll keep my blog updated how it goes and if anyone wants to be trained in these for their own health management I'm 100% there for you as needed :)

Other then my 'almost' breakdown I did attend a once in a lifetime event.  On Wednesday night we were invited to a very small concert for charity at an orphanage down the road from our ashram.  The women singer featured were the 2 world famous recording artists Deva Primal and Snatam Kaur, which if you are in the yoga world at all are THE singers of singers of yoga mantras.  You may not know theirs names but if you've been to more then one yoga class in your life you likely heard one or both of their amazing voices.  There were about 100 people in a small little room chanting mantras with these amazing singers... I'm so grateful and blessed to be here, I can't begin to express the extent of that feeling... well at least when I'm not cursing the damn morning bell :P

I've decided that the following week after my graduation I will be taking it a lot more easy.  I actually have an additional week of training on yogic counselling that is separate from my 500 hour teacher certification.  After that I've decided to head to the Goa region on the west coast to a small village with a classmate for some rest on the beach.  I don't even know if I'll be touring the country as I first thought, I think doing nothing for 4 weeks on the beach in the hot sun sounds pretty sweet right now!  I don't know how I will feel but I'll see how it goes.

The food had been great and healthy as I mentioned at some point earlier but I'm getting tired of it.  Today being Sunday I went off and got me some pizza, chocolate and a bag of ketchup chips (they don't call them ketchup but I know a ketchup chip when I taste one) :)  It may not help my body but it helped my mind :P  It went well with our group activity for Saturday, we went to a beach next to the Ganga (Ganges) and played duck duck goose and then ate some very greasy (and damn good) samosas with yummy lassies.

Before I sign off here is the Indian quirk of the week: for some reason every single day we loose electricity and water for short periods of time.  We never know when it will happen or for how long but every time it does someone somewhere can be heard saying "this is India, hari-om" which I think it their way to say "suck it up and big wide smile while you're doing it!".  I think it's a good response for any complaints really... most of all my own :)

Namaste :)
Annie

Ok... it doesn't smell that bad!

It's been over a week... it feels like I've been here for a very short time and a very long time at the same time.  It's not that difficult to understand why: everything is such a sensory overload so it feel like there is a million things going on at once but then every small experience is so rich that it passes like Christmas morning when you're 8!

I have to admit something, I think I've been too hard on India for it's bad smells... it's the neatest thing, I've been washing all my clothes by hand and letting it dry outside and interestingly enough the comfort smell of outdoor air dried clothes is exactly the same as in Canada :)  The other thing is that I've notices is that once you get use to the sensory overload as I called it earlier you start decifering the various smells and you start identifying the rich smell of inscence everywhere in the air around the markets and the sweet ripe fruit everything you go.  I'm starting to get what people say about the richness of this country.

Another example of this is the way people drive here, it seems compeletly random.  They have their hand on the horn and are constantly looking for a small crack in the crowd of people, vehicles, cows, dogs etc to slide right in whether it is a bike, a car, a truck, a tracker, a motorbike, a tuktuk, a rickshaw, a bus, a horse drawn cart, a ... you get the picture.  There are no hard and fast rules on the road. It's easy to look at that is say that the Indian are nuts but it's not the case.  They live on faith and function with a intuitive sense of flow... and very loud horns.  Everyone gets where they need to be in one piece and it's extraordinary to watch.  They apply this way of functioning in a lot of areas of their world and it works. We Westerners live according to order and set rules, which also works but we much seem very anal to them :)

The training has started and we have been exposed to a cast of oddly wonderful caracters!  This week we had a class thaught by a man who is 103 years old, has perfect eye sight and weighs 86 lbs.  It's funny to note that most of his sequence was designed to deal with constipation :P  And he could do things that impressed the crap out of us, literally I guess!!!  We spent a lot of the time trying to keep ourselves from collasping onto the floor from laughing so hard from his jokes and taking pictures... and he was LOVING it!  We had another guest teacher, an uncle of VishvaJi (our master teacher), who was at one time the strongest man in India 20ish years ago.  He taught us a power yoga class and it was so awesome, he's like biggest buddha ever.  As opposed to Mr. 103 years/old, this second man must weight like 280lbs with a huge jelly belly.  Jelly belly or not we struggled to follow his lead, never saw a man so rolly polly and so healthy and spry!  The common element in these 2 as well as all people here is their insane sense of humor: you want a good laugh?  Come to India!  We also had an priceless opportunity to joint up with a massive international Kundulini According to Yogi Bhajan festival for the day.  If you know anything about this tradition you might be of the opinion that it is... a bit cultish (or maybe not) but it is rather too organized for my liking.  Regardless it was fun and we got to listen to many of the leaders speak.  It's good to be exposed to what you don't buy into once in a while, it keeps you on track ;)

The yoga philosophy portion of the course has been fascinating.  There are many words but in the end it's really just summed up in one sentence: be kind to yourself and others and live in the now.  Seems easy doesn't it?  It's not!  We have 4 more weeks to get that through our thick sculls.  I'll keep you posted on how I'm doing with that :P  We've also talked about how to deal with people that think yoga is a challenge to their religious belief.  Yoga is not a religion, it's just a way to be happy :)  I haven't come across that myself but I'm going to suggest to any hard core Christians to chant Amen instead of Om... problem solved :)

Tomorrow we have a day off.  I'm going to be searching in Rishikesh for the remains of an ashram that was once run by the father of transcendental meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.  I want to find this place because it is where the Beatles wrote most of the White Album... how terrifically cool is that!  The more I find out about Rishikesh the more I am stuned that I somehow ended up here.  Many (if not most) of the great yogi teachers that have inspired yoga in the modern era were born and raised here and it has brought influencial artists to this place to find themsleves and their inner creative spirit.  This source of spritual awakening is why so many Indians come here as pilgrimmage as I mentioned in my first post.  I just thought that it would be kinda cool to be in India where I would fit in with all the other weird people and their weird eating habits :P  Turns out to be the most magical places on earth... Disney World can eat it's dust :P

Namaste :)

Got to India...

Well there's been plenty to talk about already and the course hasn't even started!  So I get a cab to get to the airport and the fellow driving me is from Northern India... he was so sweet, gave me his phone number, cell number and email and told me "if ever you are in any kind of trouble you call me and I will send help to get you out"... I could tell that he was completely sincere and all well intended :)  For those thinking he was trying to marry me off let me assure you that I'm wearing my trusty spoon ring on my ring finger, I wasn't going to leave home without it :).  For those of you that do not know what is a spoon ring it is a ring made from a silverware: in England1800s the servants would steal the silverware to make wedding rings for there young love birds.  They say that wearing such a ring now is a reminder of all the invisible folks that make our own personal world the pleasant place it is... we're lucky ducks you know!

So back to my trip.  I get to the airport and I'm tired and I'm cranky and I almost drop my boarding pass in the toilet... oh that is a good sign.  I'm just about to get into the gate to board and who is standing right in front of me... Gayle Poapst (aka Gayatri) and she is going to Rishikesh on the same flight path and staying at the same hotel in New Delhi!  Gail Poast owns and runs the Bodhi Tree Yoga studio in Kempville.  I know her because we were in a Somayog teacher training class together in Feb at her studio.  Not only do I know her but she was the one who told me about the ashram and gave me the pamphlet that lead me to register AND she is teaching the anatomy part of the course :D  Did I mention that there were 5 other yoga teachers on the plane also heading this way at another ashram???!!!  I was no longer cranky :)

We got to New Delhi, now that I have a group backing me up... easiest travel to a crazy place I've ever done.  We got to New Delhi and met up with a whole slue of eager excited yogis.  Several, I might add, from Ottawa!

India has been interesting to say the least.  The smog is quite bad although much less bad in Rishikesh.  I had heard that India sticks, I assumed that I would get a whiff of hot garbage juice every once in a while like in Bangkok but no.  As we were landing the smell started in the plane while still in the air, it smells like a pulp and paper mill... everywhere in New Delhi!  That is the standard smell when not in the presence of other interesting open pits (think hot garbage juice).  There is a lot of poverty as expected though I think I deal with these things just fine. 

Rishikesh is cleaner (comparably speaking) and way awesome!  It turns out that it is a very special, historic and spiritual place for Indians as well as Westerners, there are many pilgrimages in this area.  It's interesting and heart warming to see wide amazes eyes on the Indians :)  We are at the foot of the Himalayas and it is breath taking!  I'm hoping that I can add some pictures although the internet here is quite limited so we'll see.  Here I thought I had to watch out for tigers but it turns out it's the little brown monkeys with red butts that are up to no good.  They try to steal you bags to see if you have any goodies.  The white monkeys with black butts are much nicer.  You also have to watch out for cow poo (among all other form of poo... like ALL forms of poo), it's everywhere!  I guess some people would find that bothersome, I just feel like I'm walking around a big open farm.  How can you not smile while the cutest baby cows are wandering a few feet from your door :)

On a completely different note we haven't started the training yet however we are up to our eyeballs in yoga, we have 2 classes a day of 2 hours each... I'm already hurting!  Today I actually tossed my cookies... like power tossed.  The good news is that I don't believe that I've "gotten sick".  Yoga can do funny things to a person and well it was, considering my head space, the first of my letting go of my old ways of being.  I was pushing something down because I thought it was the right thing (silly me) and as soon as a loosened my grip it came rushing up with my breakfast :P  I feel great now :) 

The ashram is incredible!  I didn't expect it to be so beautiful and clean.  The food is amazing, the people are loving and the atmosphere is serene and peaceful!  I feel right being here...

So I talked about bad odors, stealing monkeys, poo, vomit, unparalleled beauty and spiritual connection... this my friends is India...

Namaste :)