Bangalore Day 1 - Arunji's class

No sleep we are a mess. Went to Arunji's 6:15am class then his 7:45am class, they were both wonderful, he has very nice students, he doesn't use mats which was a first for me to not use mats at all, the floor was like the institute. His studio is on the 3rd floor of his home, it was so much fun being in that space. 

Then we went to his home for a visit. He has a swing for extra seating in his living room. We thought we would help him out by pushing

 Above: Aunji, Srimatha, and the newlyweds Swathi and Arush, sitting: me and Tatyana

We went shopping on Commercial road to keep us awake so we wont sleep until tonight

  Its sorta working...exhaustion in the kurta department

  Dinner then a massage then it must occur....sleep

 

Bangalore Arrival

We are here! Exhausted... i have to get reacquainted with the driving since the minute the driver started backing up at the airport as a car was behind us and i felt my stomach flip i knew it was gonna be a long ride to the hotel. Someone hit the drivers car, a very light hit but unmistakable, which caused both to park which increased the honking by about 10 fold because this was crimping the style of the chaos, this meant a long time of them arguing while walking to look at our car then walking to look at the other car.

   The pic below shows the incident occurred as 20 cars decided they could squeeze onto the right side of that curb at the exact minute they got within 2" of the curb where they would just easily meld into stopped traffic ...and just after this pic was taken, a bus stopped at the right of us and let people out just in the middle of the street...trust me you had to be there!! funny enough the insurance adjuster did not ever show up, eventually the man who hit our car reached in his pocket and handed our driver cash and we left.

 But then, the arrival at the oasis of another beautiful hotel in India

 

  John Schumacher

  Tatyana sent me this great pic they took after the class sunday - mary, tatyana, john, susanne



 A few thoughts on the workshop.

 On Friday we did standing forward bends. In urdhva prasaritta ekapadasana once the leg was up, he said now throw the leg and said like the release of the grip of the ball when you throw. Throw not in a haphazard wild pitch way but to release the grip on the leg with movement...how's that for a nugget.

 On Sunday, he continued the same leg work through the entire workshop, and i found turn the ankle in, press from the outer knee to the mid outer skirt of the foot and move the top shin in and back in urdhva dhanurasana to bring great firmness and grounding to the legs and feet. As we were resting in between urdhva dhanurasanas, he said people ask him how long they should wait between them and he tells them the minute the mind thinks of anything else it's time for another one. To me this is not a nugget, this is a gem boulder he placed in my hands, to use the fluctuations of the mind as a tool for your practice, an asset, not to continue with this wandering mind and in my case, most of the time, wander right off my mat but have that be a direct trigger to 1 more.

it was great

  Pune Air

 

 I have registered for the Yoganusasanum event in 2015 and it is coming up.

There are several reasons I would choose this event as a way for me to study in Pune rather than a month at the institute

1 is that telling an employer ‘you know that month of August yeah well I don’t see me working ‘work’ into that month’ seems a bit much, where 2.5 weeks is long but still a little more doable.

 2, which is the main reason, is that where I stay, how I am transported to the event and where the event is held all have 1 thing in common, the amazing invention - the air filter. In 2014 I would sit on break and visualize what the air filter on the building looked like, I know wasn’t everyone, in my mind it ran the color gamut from black to dark black.

 The longer I was there the less I was willing to ignore the signals my body was sending me about the air quality…visually Pune air is not an invisible element, there is no ‘what is making the leaves move’ it’s what is the brown haze by my head making my throat burn, just stepping from the hotel lobby to the driveway my throat would start to burn. So the longer I was there the more I did not vary from moving from 1 air filter to the next.

 I recently met Rose who is going this year and was telling her about Pune and I said ‘the air is bad’ then to emphasize this I said ‘the air is very bad’. When I got home I thought ‘just how bad is it?’ and searched 3 words ‘Pune air pollution’…oh how I long for the time I just thought the air was bad…the air is dangerous, toxic, poison…. bad doesn’t cover it. I had thought the mask Prakash had recommended was over-the-top and now I realize he was trying to protect my health…the air is lethal. The Internet is making the ‘I didn’t know’ excuse harder and harder to pull off.

His mask recommendation:

http://www.amazon.com/3M-6391-P100-Reusable-Respirator/dp/B001NDN29O/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1409062130&sr=8-13&keywords=gas+mask

I just saw this article published in the Indian Express on Dec 11,2014 - the day after Yoganusasanum 2014 ended - which has an explanation of the air quality

 http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/pune/city-breathes-hard-air-pollution-swings-upward-as-mercury-dips/

Some interesting info which took me around 5 minutes to find out, I should have stared into space for that 5 minutes, I would be sleeping a lot better:

The WHO puts 13 Indian cities in the world’s 20 most polluted, with Delhi deemed the filthiest. The Indians would not be outdone by China in the filthiest air contest…you people!!

An estimated 3.2 million people died prematurely in 2010 because of the poisonous effects of outdoor air pollution. Two-thirds of those killed by air pollution lived in Asia, where air quality continues to worsen.
Outdoor air pollution has become India’s fifth highest killer. Only tobacco, high blood pressure, indoor air pollution (typically caused by poorly ventilated stoves), and diets that are poor in fruit and vegetables kill more people here.

The smaller the particle the more lethal, PM2.5 is more dangerous than PM10, the WHO recommends the monitor reading number be < 10.  The PM2.5 toxin cannot be filtered by the lungs and is inhaled and goes straight into the bloodstream. Air pollution is a direct poison pipeline.

I did search ‘do building air filters filter PM2.5’ and the answer seemed to be some, the better ones do. I was going to search a list of all diseases caused by air pollution but decided getting on an airplane audibly moaning might be irritating to my fellow passengers.

For perspective, since I have been looking, Dallas has spent most time in 30-40 range which is color green good but has been yellow 50-100 moderate, Dallas is a large urban area with too many people and too many cars, it is certainly not a beacon of clean air, it is polluted.

Pune has spent the entire time red Unhealthy 151-200 on at least 1 monitor, 1 of the monitors that is consistently red is 7mi from where I am staying. I did see it drop to Orange once which is Unhealthy for sensitive groups, which I believe means those who breathe but they could mean something else.

What would Patanjali say about flying to a location that is unhealthy, toxic, to attend yoga class? Would he say this is the practice of yoga? I am going to have to say no.

And what about an association that requires its teachers to study in Pune, At the more advanced levels, trips to Pune are mandatory, what would Patanjali say about that? Requires is an interesting word isn’t it … requires…’oh you will harm your lungs, we insist’. I imagine people inform them they will not be meeting this requirement for many reasons, I would think the main ones would be family, $ and loss of work, but I wonder if they have ever been informed that someone will not meet that requirement because they practice yoga.

After seeing this I searched ‘Iyengar air quality’ to see what information was out there, nada, I then searched ‘Iyengar air’ which returned info on landing at the airport, one of the first Iyengar sites returned suggested I take a rickshaw from the airport to the hotel, remember these are people who will give you a dissertation on food quality unasked suggesting I walk out of the airport find an open air vehicle lower to the ground so my face is closer to car exhaust level and have a fun ride to my hotel – here’s one of the Pune  air quality monitor readings as I read this suggestion: 

What if the World Health Organization had instead of calling Pune a city had called it a restaurant?  The vegetarian restaurant Pune with 2 pages of vegan options where all the Iyengar students go, the food is fantastic. What if the WHO discovered the Indian people were all adding poison to the food at the restaurant Pune, so the WHO told people the food is poison and posted signs saying the Pune restaurant is Unhealthy. Would Iyengar associations require my friends to eat there? Would Iyengar sites suggest when I land at the airport I find a bigger spoon so I could take big bites? Calm down, it’s not food…it’s the air we inhale with each breath…prana.

If you would like to follow along on my adventure as I poison myself on my yoga trip, click the below link, the monitors are up to the minute and clicking at different times of day will give different results, you can’t say I don’t know fun.

Pune air rating:

http://aqicn.org/city/pune/hadapsar/

Dallas air rating

http://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=airnow.local_city&zipcode=75077&submit=Go

Happy World Yoga Day!

Incredible weekend of yoga with this lovely couple at Yogasource in Santa fe

Dean taught saturday and I really liked his instruction in Parsvakonasana, i feel like i am locked in a miserable vise in that pose and i think i wasn't the only one struggling,  we did it again he had us let go of the back leg letting it come slightly forward then move the buttocks/groin forward and i could get a little movement then maintaining re-straighten the back leg, at least something happened instead of nothing, he also had us press the back leg foot and see how we came out of the front leg knee bend and then go down with the sit bone of the front leg and notice how we lost the back foot so he had us rock from 1 to the other a couple times then said now do both and with that extra awareness it seemed better. He also taught Towelasana with thumbs touching in that class... and a lot more.

Today Rebecca followed Geetaji's sequence merging it with some extra asanas, baddha konasana, cross feet (this is in Geetaji's int course) before the invocation and bhujangasana before urdhva mukha svanasana. She taught many gems, several from Geetaji's 60th Birthday celebration. In bhujangasana she taught to start with the hands straight forward, lift the chest allowing the hands to come where they naturally come from the lift then don't move them and go back down then in several stages bring the arms back 2" lift the chest go back down until the hands were in the classic position, this felt much better to me. The use of the hands in Ustrasana was great also with different positions on the back as we went into the pose, one was sorta bankers pose but the thumbs in the upper back instead of armpit. The Marichyasana III instruction to take the outer sit bones straight down and drill (an actual turning action) the inner sit bones into the blanket oh and on 1 of the attempts we placed a strap with a large loop on the straight leg calf then when we twisted we took the bent arm that was on the knee, straightened the arm and place the strap loop on the wrist allowing us to extend the fingers/arm and use the strap to turn...and a lot more.

Just a note, This workshop Rebecca has been reading from a book YAUGIKA MANAS by BKS Iyengar -a book on the yaugika manas (Yogic mind).
 

The Lerners

 I am in Santa Fe at a workshop with Dean and Rebecca Lerner, I really love their teaching so much  that i considered selling my wordly possesions and following them around the country but i am trying to control myself. I had taken from Dean before in Dallas but never from Rebecca and it's fun seeing them together.

 I went to 10000 waves wednesday when i arrived after i told a hotel employee i had been there but thought it was a little over the top expensive but she told me I had to ask for Sundown, a native american masseuse who has been doing this for 15 yrs, I did and oh yes, ask for Sundown.

 I have been on a Vinaigrette thing since i have been here, loving the patio and their awesome salads.

and then there is yoga...

 I am sore from head to toe, such incredible work. Rebecca said the side of the abdomen of the raised leg like in krounchasana will drop which i thought was so odd but i immediately could feel, it's so funny when something is only obvious when a teacher points it out to you well not funny sorta ridiculous but anyway i started thinking of the abdomen thinking that you were offering it something to rest on and then it was easy to remind myself to resist that, it was easy to remind myself not easy to resist it. She said in urdhva mukha paschimottanasana prep which was 1 leg bent foot on floor then classic both legs, to move to the middle back which i really liked, to think not so much from the legs. She has also been teaching baddha konasana then cross feet before swastikasana, really nice although the first time i did the cross feet it was pretty intense i noticed it came better yesterday. Oh she also drew the connection between supta padangusthasana III where the knee is bent and shin across torso and siddhasana.

 Dean is teaching Towelasana which is another do this everyday for the shoulders, he uses a blanket calling it a towel so people dont have the but i dont have a yoga belt or blanket thought. In Janu Sirsasana when we were still upright he said some are already folding forward because nobody likes being upright because it is hard, which made me smile since if you have taken from Arunji you know this is truth. He was teaching to separate the shoulder blades in from the floating ribs wrapping around and spreading and every time i would spread the floating ribs i would lose my shoulder blades they would go with the ribs and i found myself starting to get irritated with myself which is all part of the practice watching not only the actions but your reaction to that effort. He showed in a students demo how the extending the hamstring in uttanasana without the opposing lifting of the quadriceps was not stretching it takes those opposing actions to get the true extension through the legs, another demo was the pressing through the toe mound while pulling back to set the femur, in both of these demos watching what these actions did to the students legs, not just straightening but the tone the energy of the legs.. everything.

Beautiful weather, incredible teachers in a lovely location.

Towelasana - hold the towel edge arms in front, hands distance appropriate to your shoulder whatever is going on there, now swing it up to 1 side and over your head arms straight, bend knuckles toward ceiling palms down then rotate palms toward each other while trying to pull the hands apart but the triceps roll in while pulling not out, swing arms down, other side, may be different on 1 side

Class

I went to a class a few days ago and there were only 2 students so on the way out of the studio i turned to the other student and said i was so glad she came since i didn't like being the only student, she said really i love when that happens, we both then looked at each other with the same you are so weird look on our faces.

This did make me think about why i don't like to be the only student, i guess if you just think about a private class it would sound nice, I think a large part is i like the journey of the class, the sequence that moves in a direction to cooling, warming, calming, energized or just a particular opening, i enjoy this trip. So spending that time talking about me although a fascinating subject, what could be more interesting, but after 10 minutes or so it's even boring me to death. So the teacher either asks me what i would like to work on which is whatever sequence they had planned is what i want to work on or they just decide to teach the sequence they had planned which to me is the best, but somehow it still feels more outward in this situation, more of an exhibition. I obviously need to figure out some way where this situation is just good instead of my initial reaction of maybe they won't notice if i just leave.

speaking of class journeys, lori and i practiced john schumachers 5/22/2008 audio from ihanuaman today, when he said adho mukha vrksasana we practiced it the way Arunji taught it in Austin holding the rope between the feet.