Finishing Sequence

This is a video of the puja or pooja center in the apartment, a small shrine in a cabinet. The landlord makes sure there are fresh flowers in it. I believe that is traditional for Hindu families to have similar facilities in their homes, for daily, personal devotions.

In ashtanga yoga, all practicioners, beginner or advanced, do the same series of four finishing poses. Here I will make a few closing comments as I pack my bags and conclude my India blog.

First, a global comment. India is dramatically more different than any country in which I have spent time. I took a somewhat shorter trip with my wife to Kenya recently. However, we were touring with a group of Americans and Australians with a guide, and while the country was very different from the U.S., having the guide was reassuring but also effectively insulated us from daily Kenyan life, to a great degree. Living in India for three weeks in an apartment, interacting directly with many Indian citizens, eating in Indian restaurants, and traveling to places without a guide provides a different experience, one more of immersion than of incidental contact.

Second, concerning the yoga. One doesn't have to be in Mysore long to hear comments about whether the practice at the KPJAYI yoga school is changing, or the same, different, better, or not as good, as it was before Mr. Jois died earlier this year. I can offer no comparison, as this is my first time here. The instruction has been excellent. Everyone acknowledges, though, that some transition is taking place, as the senior teacher who founded the school has passed on. I leave it to others to assess this. The tradition is alive and vibrant here, though.

Finally a few words cribbed from J.R.R. Tolkien:

The Road goes ever and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way.

Cheers.

Suggestions on Traveling to Mysore for Yoga Students

Mysore, India
October, 2009

Introduction

This is some practical information for ashtanga yoga students who are considering traveling to Mysore, India to study at KPJAYI. There are other yoga studios in Mysore, and teachers in other yoga traditions, but I haven't tried to mention them. Everything in Mysore is changing following the death earlier this year of K. Pattabhi Jois, the prinicpal ashtanga teacher for decades. This information can become dated quickly, so make your own inquiries, and talk to your teacher if you are considering coming.

Who Can or Should Go

I had a definite misapprehension about whether it was appropriate for me to go to Mysore, from a practice and skill standpoint. My concern was that I wasn't nearly skilled enough to go, and that I would be outclassed by experienced teachers and super-yogis on loan from Cirque de Soleil. At least at the time when I attended, in October, I fit in easily. There is a group of people here who are teachers or trying to be authorized, and there is also a group of people who are doing some second series, but it has not been intimidating at all. There are plenty of people who have less experience than I do (I have five years of practice under my belt, but I'm an older, working person).

Right now, Saraswati is teaching. She is great, with excellent skill, a direct but cheerful demeanor, and the ability to watch everyone in the room all at once. It may be that when Sharath is teaching (he's supposed to start in January), the level of practice will be noticeably higher, but that's speculation on my part.

There are plenty of people -- maybe 40% or so -- who are not yet doing the full primary series. They attend led class, then typically wait on their mats at their stopping point until we get to finishing poses. There are some people who have probably been practicing for less than six months, but not too many.

The demographics of the students here now were a bit of a surprise. Americans are the distinct minority. There are many students from continental Europe, a lot from former British empire countries (Australia, New Zealand, and Canada), and a few people from Asian countries -- Korea and Japan. The students are generally much younger than typical Yoga East students. I'm not sure who the oldest student in the shala is, but it could be me (I'm almost 60). Many students seem to be in their mid-20's to early 30's.

Duration of Stay

Technically, you are required to register for at least a month. You have to pay for a full month, minimum, and there are no refunds for leaving early. Most people are here for longer periods, often two months or more. I planned my trip so that I could have three weeks of actual practice, which meant taking off four weeks from work. (You have to allow lots of time for the long air travel, and some time on both ends for adjustment to the 9.5 hour time change).

I think I guessed about right for the minimum stay. I could have made it 2 1/2 weeks, but three feels like the practical minimum. If you can do more, you should. Two weeks would not be enough, and something under two weeks would (in my personal opinion) be seriously inadequate.

It takes a good deal of time to adjust to the intensity of six days a week of full primary series, taught in the AYRI school with the world's best teachers and a highly motivated set of students. The second reason for the long minimum stay is that the adjustment to living in India is probably a bigger challenge than the adjustment to the physical and psychological demands of the practice. I'm just starting to feel a little bit comfortable with the many cultural differences, and I'm already starting to think about packing up.

Registration

I dutifully registered two months in advance, sending in the documents and the required two photographs. When I went to register in Gokulam with Saraswati, they had no file on me. I filled out a new form (easy enough), but then she wanted two more photographs. Since I had already sent them, I had no new photographs to give. She told me to bring them the next day, then never mentioned it again. Recommendation: bring two extra photos with you. The office at AYRI is a home-grown, relaxed affair.

Also, you have to pay your registration fee in cash. As I recall, it was 27,500 Rs. However, the ATM would only give me 15,000 Rs in a day. I explained this, and she allowed me to bring the remaining cash the next day. Also, you're not allowed to bring rupees into the country from abroad. One possible solution would be to go to the currency exchange in the airport on arrival, and exchange dollars there for rupees, before you get to Mysore. This will require you to bring a hefty number of dollars in cash. (By the way, don't expect to be able to spend dollars in India, the way you might in London or other European capitals. No one will know what they are.)

Cultural Adjustment

The biggest surprise, and most significant challenge for me, was adjusting to living solo in a south Asian culture. Everything is different here, and simple things seem complicated. The first few days I've described as a "tsunami of cultural change," and I don't think that's too far off. I have traveled overseas a moderate amount, but I've never been away this long, solo, in a dramatically different culture. I probably could adapt to three weeks in "old Europe" easily. Here, I took a really long time to get my bearings.

Also, studying in Mysore is not like going to a yoga workshop or even an ashram. 22 hours a day you are on your own, in the Gokulam community, and you are not always living with other yoga students. There is definitely a yoga student community here, but it takes time to meet people who share common interests, to learn where you can eat (and where you shouldn't) and to develop a set of activities for the rest of your time. That doesn't happen immediately, as studying in Mysore is not a turn-key, all-inclusive environment. You are also going to have to figure out what optional activities you want, how to get manage transportation, and the mundane details of daily living. It's a far cry from going to Toronto or New York or Austin, staying in a hotel or motel, and attending a fully scheduled program.

Traveling Solo

Whether to travel on your own is a personal judgment call. Some people wouldn't do it any other way; others won't go without a group of friends or acquaintances. I ended up traveling solo because the time when I was able to go didn't mesh with times when other people from the yoga studio potentially wanted to travel. For me, being solo has been a challenge, as I'm a social creature. However, I talked yesterday with a woman who traveled here with someone from her yoga studio back home. She found at first she needed the team approach of having a colleague with her, but over time she preferred not to have to always include the other person in her plans. Obviously, if you can travel with a spouse or partner, you've solved your problem, but that seems a bit of a rarity.


Lodging and Transportation

I have had a very favorable experience renting space in an apartment rented to yoga students by Mr. Rao. He frequently rents to Yoga East people. He can also arrange for the short term rental of an Indian cell phone, can handle transportation to and from the airport in Bangalore, and is a friendly and helpful person. There's a link to his yoga student support business on the Yoga East web page.

If you want a car and driver for a daytrip, Ganesh at Anu's restaurant also is knowledgeable. Rates are most reasonable, but don't expect your driver to speak much English. Driving on rural roads at night is completely terrifying.

Auto rickshaws were my preferred method of local transportation. Some people here for extended stays rent scooters, but the traffic discouraged me from that option. Be sure to get the driver to quote you a price to your destination before you get in, or insist that he use the meter.

Food

This is a topic which I cannot adequately address. I have avoided the local Pizza Hut and Domino's franchises, but barely. I have frequented two places, Santosha's for breakfast, and Anu's, for lunch and dinner. Both cater to yoga students, are within walking distance, and have wi-fi networks. The advantage is that they're safe in terms of nutrition and cultural friendliness; the downside is that you're not experiencing Indian culture. You're also likely to find another yoga person at these spots to share a table with; an advantage for me as I'm not a big fan of eating alone. Other places I have been to several times are the Green Leaf (about a 15 minute walk, but an Indian place), the Green Hotel (a longer walk or a short rickshaw ride), and the Daspraakash downtown. All these are Indian, although the Green Hotel is used to international travelers. The Hotel Metropol is also very good.

Health and Safety

Gomulka is safe, as best I can tell. I have walked solo at night without problem, although I would advise women travelers to talk to other women about particular safety issues -- I am not expert on this point. However, I haven't heard complaints about local residents hassling Western women, although I have heard comments about being stared at. Modesty in dress is distinctly the rule. I have always worn long pants; shorts are for school children.

I won't dwell on health and sanitation, but do not ever drink the local water from the tap or in a pitcher in a restaurant (except Anu's and Santosha's). Bring some Lomotil or someting similar. Most students get some minor digestive upset at some point. I also brought Cipro in case I got a nasty bacterial bug.

Gadgets and Communications

I have been heavily reliant on a relatively-up-to-date Blackberry, for e-mail and browser. I bought an international package for 30 days for about $65. It has worked very well, and I read the news and e-mail regularly and avidly. I also brought a netbook computer, which I wanted to use to send home pictures and to work on a blog. My apartment has had a rather slow internet. Santosha's and Anu's are better. Anu's has a slight charge, but it is totally reasonable. If you don't choose to bring a notebook machine, you can use the internet cafe setup at Anu's. A lot of people do Skype there. I chose to rent an Indian cell phone (through Mr. Rao) and that has proven reasonable for 5-10 minutes of daily phone conversation at home. I did not choose to use the Blackberry telephone service; it is significantly more expensive.

Finally, I have used my Kindle extensively. I downloaded lots and lots of reading before I came, and have taken advantage of it daily. I don't have the international Kindle (which is very new) and I don't know if the international Kindle wireless network works in Mysore.

Cell service is very widespread in India, and I've used my Blackberry for web browsing and e-mail in many places outside Mysore, with very good results.

Miscellaneous

Be sure to bring a small, reliable flashlight and batteries. There are plenty of rolling power blackouts here. I wish I had brought a compact backpacker's headlamp, which would have been good for reading in bed when the power's out.

Bring a small supply toilet paper in your carryon. You can buy it here, but most Indian toilets do not have it, except in airports and hotels which cater to the western traveler.

If there are maps of Mysore, I never saw them. My Google Maps does work on the Blackberry, amazingly.

There's a serviceable bookstore downtown, Ashok Books, near the downtown, central market. It's not a Barnes and Noble, but it has a decent if sometimes odd selection of recent paperbacks.

A number of people favor using the swimming pool at the Southern Star hotel, has a reasonable day rate for yoga students. I did not investigate this.

Mr. Joseph and His Excellent Enfield

I had an enjoyable breakfast this morning with Joseph, who is a seventeen year resident of Mysore. He came here from Sun Valley for four weeks, studied yoga with Pattabhi Jois, and stayed for the duration. He spent a number of years as Guruji's personal assistant when Guruji traveled, helping the yoga master navigate the complexities of airports, different cultures, bureaucracies, and tour difficulties. He's a fascinating fellow, who now has a guest house here in Mysore for yoga students. He may not know everyone, but it's darn close.

He has a 500cc Royal Enfield, single cylinder motorcycle. This is truly the big bike of southern India, as most of the motorbikes are 100cc in capacity. It makes a satisfying, Harley-like thump-thump. I got a tour of Gokulam, riding on the back.

(The picture at the top is actually another Enfield, a 350cc model, not Joseph's. But they look essentially the same.)

Headed downtown for lunch later.

Cheers.

To Ooty and Beyond

Four of us hired a car and driver on Friday morning, after led class, and drove up to Ooty. Ooty is the foreshortened name of a hill-top town surrounded by beautiful, steep mountains which are terraced with tea plantations. The route up crosses a wildlife sanctuary, where we saw elephants and monkeys. It is supposedly a tiger preserve, but we saw no striped predators.

Ooty was one of the English hill stations, towns to which the English colonialists retreated during hot weather. Some of the British architecture remains, although the Raj is long past. We stayed in a British-era hotel up very high, and it provided a welcome counterpoint to the heat, bustle, and dust we experienced during the drive up; exactly what the British had in mind. Contemporary plumbing, hot water, and cold beer were also welcome.

After a sound night's sleep, we had a terrific breakfast, cooked to order, in the gazebo of the English-style garden. We were joined by an American couple, both of whom have traveled extensively in India. He is spending five months teaching at a college in Chennai (Madras), as part of an exchange program. Two of our guests debated Mahler, Wagner, and Leonard Bernstein's music extensively.

After breakfast, we read in the garden as the morning sun burned off the evening cool. I was reading E.M. Forster's "A Passage to India," a classic tale about the interaction of cultures in India during the era of the Raj. The Brit hotel garden was a most appropriate setting.

After checkout, we took the narrow gauge railroad from Ooty down to Coonor -- the hills are too steep for standard tracks. I posted a photo of myself below, with a slightly manic grin as we descended the mountainous terrain.

After the train ride, it was a long drive back to Mysore, via a new route which featured 36 hairpin turns and would have been perfect for a Tour de France stage.

Practice notes: I tweaked my right knee mildly on Friday (led class) so I'm doing a few modifications, but no problem. My level of energy for the full primary series in now much better, and I can hold headstand comfortably for Saraswathi's very long count. Her fifteen is someone else's fifty.





Cheers.

To Market

I remember as a kid in New Jersey the thrill of taking the train into Manhattan on my own. I once navigated my brother and myself from our suburban town to the 1964 World's Fair in Queens, a maneuver requiring, I think, four train changes.

It wasn't the same level of orienteering achievement, but yesterday I took an auto rickshaw downtown, found the silk and fabric store, picked up an item I had ordered, and then found my way to the downtown market. Given the chaos of the downtown area, and the winding streets around the market, I counted myself lucky not to get sidetracked and lost. I learned the Mysore technique of hiring a rickshaw driver and having him wait -- something I thought only investment bankers did. I also got some other market pictures which I will post later, as well as a video on the way home of the public laundry area. I dubbed it, lamely, "Field of Cleans." Here's the video:

Jimmy Cliff Does Marichyasana D (Only Yoga)

After years of futzing around, and being hogtied into the posture by our patient (and strong) teacher at home, I got both sides of Marichyasana D in the mysore class today at AYRI. Afterwards, I thought of the Jimmy Cliff song:

"You can get it if you really want
You can get it if you really want
You can get it if you really want
But you must try, try and try
Try and try, you'll succeed at last."

This self-congratulation is distinctly un-yogic. It shows the maturity level of a middle school pep rally. Still, it was a good moment. Take 'em when they come!

Cheers,

Jim

p.s. Another Jimmy Cliff lyric, of course, is more sobering: "The harder they come, the harder they fall, one and all."

The Challenge of Mysore

I have now been here roughly two weeks, and as I expected, practicing ashtanga in Mysore has been challenging. As I've passed through the initial tsunami of fatigue, the challenge has become a bit less physical and a bit more cultural.

Some of the differences are obvious: the traffic is driving on the left. For light switches, down is "on" -- the opposite of the American paradign. Some are more complex: the Indians don't use toilet paper, but resort to a system with a couple of buckets. (You try to figure it out -- or not.) Everything is more crowded, as there a lot more people. Food is complicated, and very different. I don't know the names for much anything on the menu, and if I go to a restaurant by myself, it's a game of food roulette. Every scooter jockey and auto rickshaw driver honks at every vehicle or pedestrian they overtake. Cacophony.

Surprisingly, the hardest part for me to adjust to, is dirt and litter. Is this my bourgeois, American bias? I'm not sure. It can't be good to have this much litter everywhere in the landscape, in front of the smallest shack or the larger house. The edges of the streets are full of dirt, and it's odd to watch women with hand-made brooms trying to clean it up -- an utter impossibility. I'm convinced that the principal function of sidewalks is for the storage of construction materials, such as sand and stone. You walk on the side of the streets, in the dirt. There was a cow pie on the sidewalk immediately in front of the gate to my fairly nice apartment building, for days. No one cleaned it up; eventually, we had a good hard rain. While no clean freak, I can't put aside a chronic feeling of unease about the (apparent) lack of cleanliness.

I've avoided (sound of knocking on wood) illness, and the ashtanga people are kind and friendly. Still, the feeling of being taken completely out of one's normal physical and cultural environment is not to be underestimated.

But I just had a cheese omelet at Santosha's, talked financial regulation with an economist from Canada, and I'm now ready to take a rickshaw to the downtown market. Life is good, especially after two excellent cups of coffee and a chance to play with Muffin, the cafe dog(shown at the top of the blog).

Below is a pretty poor photograph of a sandlot game of cricket at dusk last night, about three blocks from my apartment. Some things are beyond cultural differences. Kids playing pickup sports transcends all distinctions.






Cheers.