Registration and Practice

I successfully registered at the shala with Sharath on Monday afternoon and started practice yesterday morning.

Registration was intimidating!  I filled out yet another form and handed over photocopy of passport and visa page, plus another passport photo to the woman who was directing registration.  She asked each person whether they were a beginner or whether they were practicing.  If we answered that we were practicing, then we were asked who our teacher is.  When I answered her questions, she gave me a nod and sent me in to Sharath's office to register with him.
Again, I went through the same questions with Sharath:
"Are you a beginner or are you practicing."
"I'm practicing."
"With whom?"
"David Keil"
This answer was received with a nod of acceptance and I was entered into the computer, paid, and was given a shala card.
Whew!

Practice was lovely.  I woke up yesterday with an awful cold.  It wasn't entirely a surprise.  I was half expecting a cold as that's what usually happens if I lose some sleep and my immune system is a little off.  Practice was a great help in clearing the congestion and giving me some energy back.  I took it easy in the afternoon and got some rest.

I had another really lovely practice this morning.  It's fun to return to primary and work some of the bits that I tend to gloss over when I only do it once a week.

A beginning Yoga Sutra study class begins tonight at the shala, so looking forward to getting a greater depth of understanding of the sutra.

Orienting

I wasn't able to register at the shala yesterday as it was a moon day and they weren't registering new folks until the next day. In all the crossing of time zones, I had completely forgotten the moon day!  I'm hoping to register at the shala this afternoon and begin practice tomorrow morning.

I had breakfast at the rooftop cafe on top of the hotel where I'm staying this morning.  There's a great view of the neighborhood from there.  I will take the camera up at some point and get some pictures.

I met a nice Ashtangi from Italy at breakfast who gave me a walking tour of a bit more of the area, so am starting to feel more oriented. We stopped by the coconut stand, among other places, and I drank my first coconut...yum!

I watched someone's dog chase a cow up the street; the cow tried to swish him away with her tail.

My first chanting session at the shala was this afternoon...apparently I can come to chanting without having registered at the shala for practice yet...the rules are very fluid and somewhat mysterious....
In addition to learning specific chants, we practice chanting each of the names in the primary series and the numbers from 1 to 30.  This is fantastic!  I enjoy learning new chants, but I'd really like to tidy up my pronunciation of the poses and numbers that I say everyday.  Good stuff!

Landed

Whew!  I'm here, albeit a bit discombobulated.  The first flight left Gainesville on Friday Feb. 8 at 1:30 and I arrived at my hotel/apartment at about 9:30 am Sunday morning Mysore time.

Wifi is down today at the place I'm staying, so I wandered around the area until I found someone who looked like an Ashtangi and asked to be pointed in the direction of an internet cafe...using a very slooow computer now, but feeling connected to the world again!

A few random first impressions:  the toll just on the road to Mysore just outside the airport says "Happy Traveling" (or something similar...should have written it down) instead of the boring "Paid"

Once the sun started to come up on the drive from the Bangalore airport to Mysore I realized that what looked like an orange plastic lobster dangling from the driver's rearview mirror was actually an orange plastic Hanuman (the monkey god)...that made so much more sense than the lobster.

Later this afternoon, I go to register at the shala.  First practice should be tomorrow morning assuming I've done everything I'm supposed as far as registration goes.

More to come...hoping for a good night's sleep...it's 10 and a half hours ahead of Gainesville time here...

Building Heat

You know how you can order your food medium-hot, take a few bites, and think, "this isn't that hot".  Maybe it's Indian food, or Thai food, or Jamaican food.  And then it starts to creep up a bit.  With a few more bites, the heat builds on itself.  And you think, "actually, this is pretty spicy, but it's good".  And you finish your meal and then think, "that was really good.  It was spicy!...and I think I'll just have a glass of milk to cool things down a little.

That's spending a week practicing with my teacher doing most of second. 

Doing primary on my own on day 6 of that week is the glass of milk.

Curiouser and Curiouser...

Curiouser and curiouser...didn't sleep...gave up the effort at 4:30.  I couldn't face second series; did primary.  I couldn't face the opening up and wanted a security blanket.  When nothing else can quiet the mental hamster wheel and sooth the body, primary can.  Its gentle stretches down the hips, free anger and self-pity to dissolve.  Where does jealousy live in the body?

It still astonishes me when I look in from the outside, that something that used to waste me fully, the primary series, now soothes.  The pose within that series that took the most time to settle in my body and brain, supta kurmasana, now feels like pouring cold water on an over-heated nervous system.  Steam still results, but nerves cool down.

When I head to Mysore in February, it will be the first time in more than 7 years, that I will experience practicing only primary, with no second as my daily practice.  This is my first trip and I have no expectations of practicing anything else.  I am curious what that will feel like.  The intermediate sequence has asked that I open, and then open, and then open again.  Finally, it's starting to feel like that opening might be tethered to some kind of central core.  More stability would still be most welcome.  Who wouldn't want it to be just a little bit harder to get knocked off their center.  I'm wondering if 4 weeks of primary series practice will provide some needed grounding, or if India itself and the experience of Mysore will provide the nerve-cleansing aspect despite moving through a daily sequence of primary poses.

Ebbs and Flows

Amid the ebbs and flows of a year, it's sometimes nice to step back and assess.  This has been a year of deep change for me; both practice and life have shifted.  Practice works to peel back the layers of story one by one.  I've had the feeling lately, that practice has really gotten it's hooks in this year and took a couple layers off all in one go.  The result is more vulnerability, honesty, and curiosity.  How many more layers?  How deep do the stories go?

 

There is maybe a natural feeling of ending and beginning as the days get shorter.  Culturally, we're surrounded by reminders that our calender year is ending soon.  It fascinates me to see the variety of expressions of how we meet this season.

 

I remember a few years back when the stand-up comic and writer, Julia Sweeney wrote a fake Christmas letter.  And yet, while I cried with laughter at the absurdity of the fake family story unfolding, as Julia read the “letter” aloud, I was struck somewhere deep by how much more real it sounded than most of the annual Christmas letters I receive or the annual Christmas letter that I write.

So, although, I will still write a tally of my family's here and there of the year and send it out to the usual list, I have also written a second letter, with perhaps a bit more baring of softness, a bit more soul, and a little less story....though I could still pull out those photos of our family vacation... 

Dear Friends and Family,

I could say that I hope you’re all well and I do, but what does that mean.  We all define wellness so differently.  As for me, I’m still catching my breath.  It’s been a year.  I’ve been up and down so many times I’ve lost track now of which is which.
 

Amidst moments of fury, I found a current of strength that I never knew existed.  I am myself and enough, just as I am.  What a thing to know fully and viscerally!  So where is the good or bad?   

Amidst moments of angst, I found the love of true friends.  The greatest gift is human connection without platitudes or posturing, a quiet understanding of the fallibility of people and a constant running current of support. 

It is in the raw, unguarded moments that bonds are forged.  By acknowledging my own mistakes and unawareness, my heart has been stretched in a way that makes so much more room for compassion.  We each have our own sharp points and rough spots.  In honest recognition of our own pains and strengths, there is no room left to judge where others sit.  We sit where we are.

So, do I wish you a happy new year then?  Perhaps.  It’s hard to say what “happy” is.  Maybe the best thing to say is that, in the coming new year, I wish you strength and the love of good friends, while in the eye of the storm.

India Bound

It's been radio silence on the blog for a bit...  I've been writing quite a lot actually, just not here, and not about yoga.  Although really, it's all about yoga as I can no longer separate "the yoga" from "the anything else".  ...so really it's just that the writing has stayed in the notebook, perhaps percolating for later public consumption.

Amidst the writing and the working has been some future schedule navigation.  I'm in a perpetual process of evolving my time to be spent in increasing bouts on things that I find nourishing and in decreasing blocks on things that I don't.

In that vein, I'm headed to Mysore this spring.  I have confirmation from the shala, plane ticket purchased, visa in hand, and have booked a place to stay.  First practice, barring any flight delays, is Feb. 11.  I'm there through March 10.  If our Mysore travels will overlap at some point, please get in touch.

The trip has been several years in the making and the fact that the planning has finally gotten this far, still seems unreal.  I've been doing this practice for awhile now, nearly 12 years.  Although I feel a certain amount of trepidation, knowing that discomfort is always a part of anything meaningful, I still feel there is nothing more exciting than the thought of spending a month having my practice shaken down to the fundamentals, so that I might find out what I'm really standing on.