Caution: Yogis Ahead!

Well, if one ashram wasn't enough, I decided that I had to visit another one, so that my karma scale would prove that I can be reincarnated in something better in my next life (see? I'm getting the hang of all this Hindu philosophy stuff). This would be a good opportunity to practice my yoga skills (all my 10 day yoga experience from Thailand), as this particular ashram prides itself with being one of the most renowned yoga centers in India. Also, in Varkala, I've met lots of escapees from the yoga center, who, despite having left mid-course, encouraged me to go see what it was all about.

The last kilometer, from the bus station to the yoga retreat, I accompanied a thousand year old swami, who proceeded to recount (while waving his staff at unseen butterflies or some spirits of the forest) how he can only spend two days at any given ashram and then has to find somewhere else to go, with no money and no way of getting any. As I would later find out, there were posters all over the ashram telling people not to encourage begging swamis - not that he was implying anything, mind you, but he did strike a sensitive chord and I would have given him something,  if he just asked.

Sivananda Yoga arrival: namaste! Welcome and just fill in these first fifteen forms and then we'll have a nice chat. Leave your valuables here, get your sheets, blankets and mosquito net over there... Oh, yeah, look at the nice people who breathe in their one-two-threes – hooold the breath – EX-hale – the starting scheme of yoga practice... You must get up at 5.30, do some chanting and meditation for one and a half hours, get some tea and then you get two whole hours of yoga practice. 10 AM is brunch hour, one of two meals per day, which you do not eat until you Hare Rama for 10 minutes and then you have some Karma yoga – odd jobs in the name of collective good –, cleaning the girls’ dorm room, along with 7 other girls. If you’re up to it, you can get a yoga coaching class at 12.30, where you can practice your asanas with the help of a 76 year-old teacher (more on him later). There’s some tea at 1 PM and then you have other ‘classes’ for another two hours. At 3.30 you start the afternoon yoga classes, eat dinner at 6 and then chant some more. It’s advisable you be inside by 9 or 9.30. Lights out – 10.30. This would have to be your schedule for the next 2 weeks (that’s how long the courses take) but only three days are compulsory.

Knowing all this, I shuffle to the dorm room with backpack, sheets and all and look for a free bed. It’s almost 10 AM, so people are showing up, all sweaty and shanti after the morning yoga session. After asking around I ponder the information: there’s a beginners’ class and an intermediate/advanced one, but the teachers from advanced afternoon are far better than the beginner ones and morning classes are better with the beginners. Having had all that practice (10 days – one and a half hour a day), I decide I can easily go to the intermediate course and show them how it’s done. If it’s too hard, I’ll stick to the beginner’s course for a while.

The class after brunch is something about some meditation related stuff but I cannot get over the sheer boring abilities of the British teacher, who can probably get people into a meditation state just by talking to them (any escape will do!). It’s like listening to lullabies with no meaning whatsoever. Like most other people (we’re about 50 all in all and there’s just a handful who take notes from the class), I manage to instantly forget what this lady is saying the moment she says it. This reminds me of the imprint of children’s faces on windows: they disappear the second they take their faces away.

Yoga practice on the other hand is promising: two rows of about 10 mats facing each other in a large hall, where the teachers wear wireless microphones, one giving the instructions, the other one checking for accuracy. Everything starts with the breathing.

First breathing exercise: breathe out from the stomach.

inHAAAle, hold-the-breath… and EX-hale, EX-hale, EX-hale, EX-hale, EX-hale, EX-hale, EX-hale, EX-hale.

inHAAAle.

Breathe normally. (Repeat until you turn green)

Second breathing exercise: holding the breath.

inHAAAle, hold-the-breath. (Stay like this until you turn green).

Third breathing exercise: breathing through one nostril.

Plug your left nostril with your right thumb and index finger.

inHAAAle-right OM-one-OM-two-OM-three-OM-FOUR, hold-the-breath, EX-hale-left OM-one-OM-two-OM-three-OM-four-OM-five-OM-six-OM-seven-OM-eight.

inHAAAle-left OM-one-OM-two-OM-three-OM-FOUR, hold-the-breath, EX-hale-right OM-one-OM-two-OM-three-OM-four-OM-five-OM-six-OM-seven-OM-eight.

inHAAAle-right-OM-one…

(Repeat until you’re out of breath completely and turn turquoise).

Finally, the breathing exercises are over. You get to REEE-lax. REEE-lax. REEE-lax.

And then and only then it all starts: various asanas and yoga exercises which leave me breathless and confused, like a prisoner who managed to escape his chasers but can still be in danger of getting caught. I swim in my own, personally produced puddle of sweat and all my clothes stick damp to my skin, while the class culminates with the final relaxation, which could take me to the land of (totally deserved) sleep, were it not for the evening mosquitoes, which decide to make me their dinner. Intermediate, you say? Well, guess again!

I’m quite speechless (and breathless) by the time we finish our evening class and am happy to really relax while having dinner, which, by the way, although it is served on the floor (on plates of course, but with the plate in front of your crouching self on mats) is quite delicious (and varies from one day to the next). The after dinner social encounters under the main tree bring me face to face with normal people (mostly), but definitely not the type of nutcases I’ve met at Amma’s. And then there’s the evening satsang (the meditation and chanting mantras), which cannot not get intense giggling out of me because I find them utterly entertaining. It’s what I imagine (and have witnessed in a number of American flicks) gospel looks and sounds like, complete with the clapping and the rhythm induced bobbing of heads all around the meditation hall. Day one will end abruptly, as I’m grateful for the sleep I’m getting the instant I let my head meet the pillow.

Day two: wake-up bell, 5.30. Which is not entirely bad, because I’ve finally had eight hours of sleep, rest and a short panicky moment sometime during the night, when I wake up only to find a shadow looming over my mosquito net. It is just my cubicle mate who was probably curious to see how Romanians sleep (compared to Brazilians), so I hope I performed well and I exemplified the ‘good’ sleeping methods. She admits in the morning that she couldn’t sleep and didn’t know what else to do than just haunt other people’s good night’s rest.

The two hours of silent meditation and reading only brings about more fun Kodak moments, so all in all, it’s a pretty nice wake up. Well, because I am already sore from the previous day yoga class, I swallow my intermediate yoga level pride and opt for the beginners’ class. Alas, this is my mistake (although they explain the breathing exercises and I finally understand what I was supposed to do the previous day): it takes forever to get through the two hours. Not that it is easy, mind you, but the pace is that of an overweight turtle heading to war.

The day’s karma yoga is a tad different, as it requires all the students to make a human chain to bring firewood from the forest. Since I arrived I haven’t been wearing shoes and this is definitely a moment when I truly wish for some. Because I end up closer to the forest end of the chain, basically in the jungle, having to take exactly three steps over and over again, always cradling a different log in my arms, from one British weirdo to the next Canadian teenager. It takes a pretty long time to get this done and part two of the action is supposed to take place the next day. You see, we settle for taking the logs half way to the kitchen, so the firewood would only arrive in the kitchen the following day but some devoted karmic yogis decide we should finish the job. Unfortunately, half of the population vanishes right after the intermezzo, not sticking around for the second part, so the chain has to expand its fewer links on a bigger distance, thus making me (as well as everybody else) take more steps with the same logs. Still, we prevail and we’re rewarded with tea and fruit.

However, I decide that four hours of yoga a day are not enough, so I attend the special coaching class, where I just find two other girls and the septuagenarian teacher, a skinny, toothless imp, with a volleyball-shaped belly and elastic limbs. Whose only words for me are ‘Yesss, yessss. Very naaissss!’ I should mention that he is stating the former while pushing my shoulders and forcing my forehead to touch my shins (this being a particular asana he had us do). He is immune to the cries of the other girls, who tearfully try to make him stop before their tendons break. He does not stop. They do not break. Still, the little Smeagol enjoys his torture and grins the whole hour, even when demonstrating the head stand and wiggling his legs at the same time. I couldn’t do it. The head stand. He helps. Yessss, yesss.

Our old timer yogi will appear again the next day as the main character in madam British teacher’s show-and-tell asanas. Which is as boring as always, but you have to hand it to the old man: he’s doing asanas as well as I can scratch my nose!

On this second day, however, there is no madam Boring-You-to-Death, but instead there is the Ayurveda doctor, who tries to explain the benefits of this ancient art and probably does, only it’s in his own, special language, which, at times, resembles English. The only thing I get out of it is that Ayu means life and veda means knowledge and that’s about it.

Evening yoga time. Which to choose? Boring beginners or adamantly advanced? It is a hard one, especially since most of my muscles have already jammed in various contracted positions. But I am here to get out of my comfort zone, right? To achieve greater skills and better health, right? To improve my mental and physical state, right? Right! So I go with the intermediate. And cheat a little bit.

In the evening, instead of the never ending satsang, we get to make a field trip and walk while meditating (ahem!) to the dam close by, where we have yet another session of chanting, accompanied by the eternal clapping and the impromptu smacking of rocks to the rhythm. At least it is completely dark so the show is considerably less harmful.

My observer from the first night does not miss her cue this second night either, only this time I wake up while she is munching on something, which she laboriously keeps extracting from a squeaky plastic bag.

I go through the same motions on the third day, skipping the extra coaching class for the benefit of my already aching physical state. Also, it’s the swimming in the nearby lake that is one highlight of the day. And I swim to the other side (sarong over swim suit, strangling my neck, so as not to offend any – inexistent – Indian bystanders), which is considerably further away than I estimated. And as soon as I get there and try to catch my breath, in sails a boat full of broad-smiled Indian tourists, whose intention is to practically stop on top of me. I sigh and start swimming back as quick as possible. Who knew that the exact place from which I wanted to admire the pretty lake (it apparently stopped having crocodiles in it about two years ago) is a damn docking point?

The other highlight is the evening satsang. Tomorrow’s Friday – free day and field trip day, a day when most yoga students run for the soothing beaches of Kovalam and Varkala. And don’t come back. So everyone’s chipper and crisp while chanting the evening mantras (which will accompany me all through next week: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna…). And how could you not be in a playful mood when you realize that your yoga gurus are actor Michael Clarke Duncan and a fat, bushy browed Michael Jackson?

Oh, and the Smeagol I was telling you about? Here he is: