Yoga Salad

Welcome Travelers! Here are some vague yogic tidbits for you to munch on:

Our third Sunday afternoon conference with Guruji and Sharath was wonderful. At the first one Guruji was too tired and told us to go away. The second was nice, we were reminded not to eat eggs, "liquid flesh", that make you stiff and sore. Oh well, what is one more thing crossed off the menu? And he advised a lady to get married to cure her nightmares. But yesterday was truly wonderful. Guruji was all bright-eyed and playful. He spent a long time looking at everyone very carefully. And then he started scolding us all for having such bad drishti and limp bodies. "Looking all around!" and he imitated a very limp limbed yogi with a bobble-head. "Tight Bodies! Good Drishti!" and then a wonderful discourse on giving yourself over to God and doing your yoga. Surrendering yourself to your god (doing puja) and then turning off your thinking mind and giving yourself over to the yoga. And again, reminding us to do our yoga everyday…not just days, weeks or months, but for years, and all is coming. He answered lots of questions and had a lot of long laughs. It was so nice just to be with him and have the chance to talk to him and to each other. I realized we are all together for hours everyday, but we are not talking, and especially not talking with Guruji or Sharath. Groaning perhaps, but not talking, and it is kind of calming to connect with them on a more casual level.

Rebecca continues to improve on her free drop-backs and is working on building the muscle memory to bring herself up without assistance. Her sacrum pain is changing, and I think that is a good sign. To me it looks like she is starting to use her legs more to pull herself back up, and I think that is will take some of the pressure off her lower back.

I was so happy to start being able to bind myself in both Ardha Badha Padmottanasana and Ardha Badha Padma Paschimattanasana! Simple pleasures for most I know, but big progress for me. But then Sharath and I popped my right knee pretty good going after the still elusive bind in Marichasana D, and I have had to back off on the knee pressure for awhile. So one step forward and two steps back. My knee is fine and feeing better. I am eating more ghee and rubbing my knees and hips (the real source of my knee pain) with coconut oil. I am a bit more resigned to my station here, and that I may never bind in D. And that has given me the opportunity to focus on the poses I have been given.

I must admit that I am amazed at the effort and focus and depth that are available in just the standing sequence. I realize that I have not been giving each pose the respect that it deserves. And so, grudgingly, I’m forced to admit that I have found a whole new world of poses to sink into. I have been acquainted with many of these asanas for years but never really got to know them. They are poses that I learned on my way somewhere else. Like towns on the road to some destination. You can drive through them for years, and know their name and their landmarks, and perhaps even a good place to eat, but you have never stopped and lived there, and as such you have never really known the place or what it is like to wake up there. And so it is for me. I’m busy making friends with old acquaintances.

We have both lost a bit of weight, toned up, and are getting stronger. After almost two months, that is obvious. But I wonder, am I working harder here in my practice than I do at home? I am sweating harder and earlier in the sequence than I do at home, but that is a function of heat and humidity. I am practicing around amazing yogis and yoginis, but that is the same as the studio at home as well. I am trying my all for Sharath, but I try my all for David and Catherine as well.


No, there is something else here. Perhaps it is the luxury of going "big" everyday, without the unconscious holding back that we must automatically do to save enough energy to get us through the regular work day. Perhaps it is Mysore, or India, or a combination of everything. Whatever it is, it is wonderful! And it leaves you so spent you can just barely hold your first coconut up to your lips after practice. I had a little epiphany the other day. I was picking up fruit for a salad at our little fruit stand (amazing eat-it-today ripe fruit) and I had a really nice transaction, and the shopkeep had just told me that I was "Always Welcome" and I turned around the big billowy clouds were flying overhead, and the palm trees were waving and the cows were lowing and the pigs were pigging and I felt, for perhaps the first time, kind of comfortable. It is so crazy here. So in your face intense, and hard and foreign, that I think I spent a good part of the first two months with my teeth kind of clenched. But I looked around the other day and I was in India.

And it is wonderful. fwgh2o