Circling back home

2 more sleeps before my flight back to Kuala Lumpur.

Being in this moment right now takes me exactly to that time when I am seated on the floor of my little tiny bamboo hut in Koh Samui, looking at my neatly packed bag and wondering what life would be like once I get back to the motherland and learn to integrate my experiences in the last one month into my daily life.

The only difference I feel is the magnitude of experience and changes that has occurred within myself while being away to focus solely on deepening my yoga practice. While before during my Teachers Training in Koh Samui the realisations that occurred were more obvious and exponential, this time around the lessons that came to me were subtle. If 2 years ago I went away merely to fulfil the curiosity of an intensive yoga practice and a brief respite from the corporate world, this time around I went away with nothing else in mind besides wanting to be close to this woman whom I had met once but felt a pull to return to in a way that can’t be quite justified in words and to return as a ‘full cup’ so that I can share more with those whom I come across in my own classes.

My life has been simple in Mysore. Waking up at 5 am. Practice at 6am .Finding simple joys in the cool breeze and scent of jasmine in the air as I walk to the shala. Breakfast at home. Laundry then heading out for coffee with some friends. And then it’s back at home. Reading. Writing. Brainstorming on the next project. Connecting with potential business partners. Appreciating the clear clear blue sky and the view of coconut trees against it (when it’s not raining of course). Cooking dinner or looking for dinner in one of the many nearby places. Soaking in the Mysore environment. The life of a KPJAYI student. And truly just beginning to understand the magic this place holds that has many dedicated practitioners returning annually for decades after. I may not entirely grasp the full understanding of parampara or teacher-student relationship just yet though by all means I fully acknowledge its importance, I feel like I am beginning to experience the tiny buds of practicing and being close to a guru.

The learning doesn’t come so obviously like how one would expect by attending a workshop. There are no lengthy explanations during those Mysore practice. All discussions were saved for conference time. There are no complicated demonstrations. Just the occasional “You, what you do?”, “Tomorrow/or another specific day, you do [insert next pose]’, ‘You, wait”, “You, stop” and “Very good”. The first 2 weeks I was here, my mind struggled with this method of learning. I didn’t feel like I was learning anything new. I didn’t feel like I was progressing, what more the benefits of practicing so close to and under the direct guidance of a globally recognised guru. “What’s the big deal??” and “WHY am I here again??” kept returning to my head, especially on those days when I felt like I didn’t give my 100% to the practice or that my practice was just NOT as I had wanted it to be.

If there was one thing that I could do over, was to allow myself to stay open without judgments to the motions that I was going through. To allow myself to be distracted by the awe of practicing in a packed shala, by the next person with the most graceful jumpthroughs and by that lady behind me who is doing her chaturrangas incorrectly. To allow all this without chastising myself for not being focused. Because this is what it means to see things with a brand new pair of eyes. If there is a next year for me to return, my experience and I am sure of this would be entirely different.

A lot of what we admire or dislike in other people are merely the reflection of what we yearn or dislike within ourselves. Without even knowing it, we are already what we yearn for even if it is not executed so obviously in its physical form. Just today, I was practicing next to this amazing soft spoken girl who was a former Wall Street Investment banker.  I remembered in my first few weeks here hearing her cries as she dropback and assisted into catching her feet. I remembered Saraswathi saying to her (and in a room so quiet like that, everything she says sounds loud) “breathe, no cry”. I remembered feeling “oh man, no dropbacks for me anytime soon!” as I felt some of her discomfort being in that position. Today her entire Primary practice seemed effortless, graceful and one that left me amazed at how much persistent practice and patience can manifest itself eventually in the physical world. And it occurred to me, the lessons I have learned from being this close to her are subtle, one that doesn’t need formal words to explain, and one that hits right home in an instant.

There are many things that attract me initially to this practice, and as I spend more time dedicating and focusing my own practice on just Ashtanga , I see more of its beauty. I love the way the practice demands at most 2 hours of your time in a day and for the rest of the day you are to live your life as any other human being. Families, friends, relationships and careers are all given equal attention. The pace of life in Mysore may be slower than normal, but if you know how to utilise the rest of the hours in a day after your practice, it actually mimics a regular day you would have back at home. To me, this has not felt or was intended to be a holiday. When some people responded to my statement of coming to Mysore as “oh you mean like a yoga retreat??” I honestly did not know what to say and chose instead to smile and keep silent.

I have been humbled, surprised and tickled by the many different facets of people that I have met. Mostly I am thankful for the few special ones that I got to know better in the last few weeks. The incredible energy that each person exudes and share. The stories told and the perspective gained from these. And the people these people remind me of, the people whom I have missed. It is amazing how we differentiate ourselves from the rest of the world, by race, ethnicity, skin color, nationality, political preference and god knows what else, but that at the end of the day there is a common thread that binds us all together. It is this very thread I believe that makes me feel like I have known these people whom I have just met, for a very very long time. A wise person once wrote ” Divinity is right here, right now, inside you, inside me, there is no separation, we are one, but we are definitely not the same, and that is the beauty and complexity of the multiplicity of one”.

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Day 21 – Around the corner

Has it really been 3 weeks already??

I was looking at the calendar yesterday and realised that I have only 2 Sundays more before I board that plane back home. Although, this little town right here has always feel like a second home to me the minute I arrived at the doorstep of my landlord’s (ok ok fine, if we were strictly speaking factual stuff, it took me a few hours after that arrival and some sleep before I actually felt like it’s second home to me).

Reflecting on my experience so far, it felt like the first 2 weeks was spent feeling like I don’t want the 1 month to end. Which is kinda self defeating because that felt like I had wasted the initial 2 weeks worrying about the inevitable, which is going to come anyway. It was only towards the tip end of the 2 weeks that my highly strung “oh my god this wholesome awesome goodness is going to end SOON” mind began to relax and accepted the fact. I think it had mainly to do with allowing my mind to soak in and process everything that is happening. Even if from the outside, a person who has no idea of the Ashtanga practice much less the daily in and outs of being a KPJAYI student might feel like there is not much going on aside from the 6 times weekly practice, there is a LOT that is happening within that short space of 1.5-2 hours in the shala every single day and that alone was enough to keep me overwhelmed for the rest of the day, on some days.

In my first 2 weeks of arrival, my challenge was merely trying my hardest to draw in all my senses inwards during practice. In a downward dog, I’m easily distracted by that girl with the splaying arms in her chaturranga. My mind was kept busy thinking “oh girl, you are going to hurt yourself if you keep doing that”. It took me a while to be able to remove and humbly place down my ‘teacher’s’ cap. Here I am the student. 100%. And my perspective needed to change as observer without a wanting to correct, change or share my opinions about someone else’s practice. Because frankly, as a student, it is not my place. And then there was the constant instructions coming from Saraswathi, calling out to the next student, “you catching?” referring to Marichyasana D more often than not, or “you, what are you doing?” and that “you” was always enough to make feel “is she talking to me??” followed by that 50/50 indecision of whether I should look up and towards where her voice was coming from, risking altogether looking like the distracted, kaypohchi student that I was or not looking up at all and just continuing with whatever I was doing like as if the comment might’ve been for someone else.

9 out of 10 times it was meant for someone else. The one time I decided to continue, the girl on the next mat had to turn around and nudge me whispering ‘I think she’s talking to you’ which of course resulted me in sitting up as quickly as I could (the correct term would most probably be popping up) followed by a meek ‘sorry?’. Because truth be told, my level of respect for her is deep enough that she actually infers some sort of a mixture of respect/fear/awe towards me. It turns out, I got my next pose on that day. “Tomorrow, you do Garbha”.

I have been doing Garbha a few times in my Mysore practice back in KL. So it wasn’t an entirely new thing for me. But just that feeling of being handed the next pose by this respected woman, I felt like I wanted to go skipping down those stairs pumping my fist in the air crying out WOOHOO to the coconut man standing outside.

I love it here, There is no doubt about that. But I also have a life back home. And that can’t possibly stop while I am here. And so after practice, there are days where H and I will be locked in intense discussions about where we are taking this little “baby” of ours, or I will be sorting out my November teaching schedule, or answering someone’s Whatsapp about an upcoming class.

And it occurred to me, my biggest 2 challenges became so crystal clear while I am here. Allowing myself to be entirely present in the moment (without thinking about tomorrow, next month, or WHEN I am coming back here), and secondly, practicing non judgement when I finally get into the zone of the present moment. Like when I am finally paying attention to the group’s conversation and it veers to a specific pose, a specific something about the practice, and I think “practice, practice, practice, why is everyone talking about their practice again?”

Sometimes I believe, these are just the knee-jerk reaction to cope with new environments. new people and new experiences. I do believe the mind in some ways need to be able to link back an experience to an understanding which already exist, it demands new things to be categorised neatly in a box so that it doesn’t become too overwhelmed. And because of this, more than ever, it is a time which demands keen observation of the mind.

Life in Mysore has been gentle. Like a warm cradling arm of a mother to a child. The days melt and blend into one another that somedays you forget what day or date it is. Most days that doesn’t really matter. It allows me to truly pin point the things that I needed to focus on. 2 weeks is a long time to allow the mind to settle in, even if from day 1 physically I fit right into the place. But it is what it is, and it is a nice feeling to finally accept that as with all things, this too shall pass..

Day 9 – When is it coming?

Part of what made me fell in love with the practice was the idea of commitment, consistency and perseverance which Ashtanga demands before you are rewarded with the fruits of your labour. These fruits come in the form of self-accomplishment, and a deeper understanding and acceptance of your own possibilities.

Guruji was known to have said this to his students when he was alive, “practice, practice, practice and all is coming”.

I was excited when I saw glimpses of this truth manifesting in my practice when I begin my daily Mysore classes at Upward. From Navasana (boat pose), I was given, and this I am describing in my own words and perception, the notorious Bhujapidasana (shoulder pressure pose). One of the gate or ‘peak’ poses in the Ashtanga Primary Series. I lost count of the number of times I had to awkwardly untangle myself from the pose because my body just could not register the level of strength required to pull myself out of it into a Bakasana (crow pose) AND jump back from there.

A few days later, I figured out how to come up without untangling myself. But I kept falling on my bum. And believe me, with my bony frame, it was literally bones against the mat over and over again. Thank God for those well padded Black Pro Manduka mats. My head would come up and I would move to the instruction of either of my teachers (“straighten your legs, pick up your bum, straighten those legggsss”) and BOOM I would fall. And there are days when doing one of those was enough and I would much rather lie flat on my mat after and she would smile slightly and say, “try, 3 more times”.

THREE more times?! My wrists felt like it was about to detach itself and run away to be the understudy for Idle Hands movie.

But I did. Grunting. Breathing like my life depended on it. There was no ease in that pose. Definitely no sukham in those few long minutes. A little over a week later, I came up. Bum up. Stayed up. And I eased (or at least tried to channel some ‘ease’) into something that resembled a Bakasana, and stepped back. All in a little over a week of 6 times a week practice, plus a few more moon days in between.

And so I had thought, by coming here, and being so close to the source itself would help me progress faster. I am coming into week 2 of my 1 month stay. At the back of my head I am filled with a slight but very real pressure of returning home having completed the entire Primary series. But my practice seemed to be just at Supta Kurmasana and everyday I am hoping Saraswathi would say “Tomorrow you try Garbha” which is the next pose in the series. Everyday I approach my Shirshasana (headstand) with a deep resentment and a splinter of hope because I know how it will be. Halfway and I am stuck. That hope is mostly a little bit of courage to try to balance on my own. But mostly it fizzles out as soon as I am on the tip of my toes. Or these days, I catch the attention of David, her assistant, and he kindly helps me with the full headstand and the pike headstand. Supporting me and ensuring I don’t go flipping backwards and shock the entire room with a big bang.  I feel like I could write a whole entire book about my journey into trying to stand and balance on my head. It has been 2 years and I can’t help but feel that typical ‘dang! is there something inherently wrong in my physiology that it’s taking me this long? When is it coming already??”. What took others a few days to learn (I have seen this happening personally), I am still struggling with. 2 years later and I have progressed forward at the rate of a very sleepy tortoise. Maybe that is the challenge that I have to face. To detach myself of the desire to progress at MY own timeframe, but rather allowing it to happen on its own. Perhaps.