Third Week in Mysore

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.