Ancient vs. Contemporary

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.