Yoga - Days 3-6

Things are now becoming routine. The constant cups of tea. The musty-smelling room. The spiderweb highways that adorn the trees all around the center including right outside my window.  Not sure if you can actually see the huge spider in the first picture and the highway in the second...they're ALL over in the trees here, it totally freaked me out my first two days. I think I've mostly made peace with the spiders and mosquitoes here and I've been free from scares. Knock on wood.

The long breaks in between classes. The very quiet lifestyle that seems to define this center. Aside from the constant hocking and nasal and throat cleansing. The neti pots have been getting good use every morning. Watch where you step.

I'm getting used to the views.

This is the viewpoint from where I sit in my plastic chair and read during the day when I'm not in class. Not a bad view. The Himalayas are hiding behind those clouds and I'm looking forward to actually seeing them soon.

The classes are still going about the same. Apparently there are usually quite a few instructors here, but at the moment we just have one. Even our guru left for a yoga convention in India, so I happen to be at the center during a very, very quiet time. Our one instructor, Sukesh, is a skinny Indian guy who has the classically monotone Indian instructor voice and his eyes roll into the back of his head every time he closes his eyes in a posture or in meditation. He’s really difficult to understand and was trying to explain a particularly difficult/obscure pose having to do with trying to clenching some muscle by the perineum. I think he was a little embarrassed to try to instruct a girl on this one. He mostly directs his instructions to the male in the class anyway.  

The other person who’s a fixture at the center is a young Nepali guy, Swabiman, who can pretty much be described as the care provider here. The guru is mentoring him, and he seems to be up to his eyeballs in karma yoga—that is, being in selfless service to others. This guy does everything here at the center. He cooks and serves all of the meals by himself. He cleans and prepares rooms for the guests. He’s always doing laundry, sweeping, cleaning dishes, or otherwise busily employed. And he has such a kind face and doesn’t seem to feel any condescension from others or feel that he has a hard lot. He always smiles, is so polite and he just kind of seems to be a wonderfully kind person. I have a lot of respect for his hard work and patience. 

Other than that, I’ve started reading one of the yoga library books in my free time. This is going to sound incredibly naïve, but I didn’t realize how extensive yoga is. My yoga classes in the U.S. and in Australia have focused mainly on the physical part of yoga, the postures (asanas, I now learn they’re called) and to an extent the breathing (pranayama). I sort of figured that yoga and meditation went hand in hand, but I didn’t realize that yoga also encompasses meditation and has an end goal of enlightenment and bliss.  

I’m learning all kinds of new Sanskrit words and yoga terminologies—the five koshas, the six chakras (I’d heard of chakras of course, but never read anything about them), the pranas, the gunas, the nadis… I’m trying to read slowly to absorb and reflect upon what I’m reading. The nice thing is that the one other person still here taking classes with me, Halka (the German guy) is doing the yoga teacher certification classes and has built up a solid base of yoga knowledge. So we can talk about these different yoga concepts and weave them into our perceptions of life and philosophy. I find that our guru and instructor aren’t very fluent in these areas (in English) so it’s nice to be able to converse and really try to internalize and remember these lessons.  

All is well in yoga land.