Yoga school is going pretty well.
The way the class works is you are given a start time based on your experience and whether you are studying with Sharath or Saraswathi (Patthabi Jois' grandson and daughter, respectively). The funny thing about this is the newer students (most of which, including me, study with Saraswathi) get to start at a reasonable time and the more experienced you are the earlier you have to start. Sharath and Saraswathi sort of hint at your advancement by gradually giving you an earlier start time. My time is 8:15 AM, moved up from the 8:45 of my first few days, but the most advanced students start at 4:45 AM. The reason this system of torturing the more experienced students with pre-dawn start times is logical is that they have been "given" more poses and therefore take longer to complete their practice.
When you enter the shala around your start time (their clock is 15 minutes fast which is known by the students as "shala time") there are many students already practicing. Most of them are using a technique known as ujjayi (meaning "victorious") breathing which consists of allowing the air entering and exiting your lungs to sort of swirl around in the back of your throat. This is creates heat as well as a Darth Vader-esque audible breath. Although not an official part of Asthanga asana practice, navigating the hissing gauntlet of students between the shala door and the changing room is arguably as difficult to master.
After changing, you find a spot for your mat, begin to practice at your own pace, and are ocassionally given help or adjustments by the teacher. This style of class is known internationally as "Mysore style." The follow-the-leader style classes that are taught in most studios in the US are taught only once a week here and are known as "led classes."
Ashtanga yoga has a set sequence of poses starting with sun salutations, then standing poses (standing forward folds, one-legged balancey poses, warrior, etc.) followed by what is called the "primary series" of seated poses, between which you do a vinyasa (a general term for movement connected with the breath) that consists of holding your butt and crossed legs off the ground with your hands, kicking your feet back into a push-up position, pressing up into upward-facing dog, back into downward-facing dog and then jumping your feet back through your hands to a seated position for the next pose. You do this not only between the different poses but also between each side of a pose that is done on both sides (eg. between the right and left legs in Janu Shirshasana, a one-legged forward fold pose) and it gets very, very tiring. The shala is not air conditioned and everyone sweats profusely. Sometimes my fingers stay so sweaty that they start to feel like they do when I've been in a pool too long. Pruny. After the primary series, more experienced students move on to the intermediate and advanced series before doing their finishing poses.
Earlier I referred to being "given" poses. This means that at some point during your practice, you are told to stop where are you are in the series and begin your finishing poses (backbends, shoulder stand, headstand, etc.) and as you improve, Sharath or Saraswathi will allow you to do the next pose in the series. Most students that come here to study (including me) have at least attempted all of the poses in the primary series, so it can be a bit frustrating not being allowed to do them all. However, it has forced me to learn the order of the poses as well as their Sanskrit names.
Before coming here, I knew the poses by sight only. I had a funny first few days being sternly told what to do, when to do it, and when to stop (which at first was only halfway through the standing poses, but is now halfway through the seated ones) in broken English by a sixty-something year-old Indian woman.
"Right leg Half Lotus! Take back your hand. Catch your toe. Inhale. Exhale!"
03/03/09 Mysore
I'm getting a little tired of all the Hindu-style vegetarian curries. They are delicious, but they don't vary much. Today I went to a supermarket and bought some ground lamb and rice. I have a small kitchen on the roof of the apartment I'm in and I'm going to try stir-frying some veggies and lamb in some ghee (Indian-style clarified butter) and spices. I'm not doing much intentional sight-seeing right now but it's hard not to see some pretty novel sights just by walking around the neighborhood: men hacking away at mutton hanging in butcher shop windows, whole families whizzing by on scooters (dad driving with an infantile son in his lap, mom on back, older daughter sandwiched between the parents), and street vendors frying every edible thing they can get their hands on in multi-gallon wok-type pots full of oil.
I just moved into an apartment in Gokulam (a relatively quiet area of Mysore where the yoga shala is) a few days ago where I have three roommates: Sharon, Johnny, and Jen. They are all fellow students of the KPJAYI. Sharon and Johnny are both from Toronto, are 30-something and late-20-something, respectively, and have both been here a couple months. Jen is from Connecticut or New Hampshire or something, is in her 20s, and has been here seven months. Sharon is very energetic and talkative. She has shown me around Gokulam and introduced me to several similarly energetic and talkative friends of hers (all fellow students).
The power just went out at the internet cafe I'm in and there isn't much backup battery so I'll post more about the daily grind-type life-of-a-yoga-student stuff soon*...
*Every train or bus I have taken in India so far has been significantly late in arriving and/or departing and a lot of the travellers I have met refer to this as "India time." I'm trying to live as Indianly as I can manage while here (eating with my hands, squatting to poo, etc.) so in keeping with this when-in-Karnataka** attitude, "soon" doesn't necessarily mean anything.
**Fun Fact: "-do-as-the-Kannadigas" would be proper ending to this. I'm in Karnataka state where the official language is Kannada and the locals (technically only the ones who speak Kannada) are known as Kannadigas.
02/26/09 Mysore
I'm in Mysore and happy to be getting away from other tourists. In Gokarna, a small touristy town on the coast where I spent two days with some of the climbers I met in Hampi, I realized that India is to Europe as Mexico is to the US: somewhere warm to smoke cheap weed and get hammered. Except here there is an element of faux-spirituality to the whole thing that makes the more blatant hedonism of Americans in Mexico seem refreshing. But enough with the bitter-sounding tourism commentary.
I took a train along the Konkan Railway, which connects Mumbai to Mangalore along India's western coast, from Gokarna to Mangalore. I boarded at around 5 PM (40 minutes later than scheduled) and got to watch the sunset as the train chugged southward. Whenever the train entered a tunnel, all the children onboard would scream at the amplified clickety-clacking as if on a rollercoaster plummeting downward.
On arriving in Mangalore about an hour late, I had to rush to the bus station to get my seat next to Captain Sweaty (who found my shoulder to be a fine pillow) on the bus to Mysore. I was the last one to board and had to hold my big backpack in my lap for a couple hours until some room opened up overhead for my luggage. Night buses in India kind of feel like transportation between concentration camps. Occasionally, the drivers stop to take a break, turning on the lights and yelling militarily in Hindi or Kannada when they do. At this point anyone who wants to* can get off and wearily shuffle around the rest stop, which is usually a grim, fluorescent-lit concrete mess hall-type building where a dirty kitchen serves up simple meals of something like spiced chickpeas and chapathi.
Now that I am here in Mysore, I am repeatedly being accosted by men who at first act like they are merely interested in where I am from, but then claim that they either own or work at "coffee shop... like Amsterdam!"
I am looking forward to going to another AA meeting tonight. It's great to get to talk to locals who aren't trying to sell me something.
*The non-compulsory nature of the this event is the main disparity between Indian bus travel and Auschwitzian transportation, although I have heard stories from other tourists about being forced off of the bus at a rest stop/restaurant in the wee hours with yells of "DINNER! WE TAKE BREAK!"
02/18/09 Hampi
Just before my eight-hour bathroomless bus ride to Hampi Saturday night I got a case of gurgle-gut. To avoid what seemed to be an inevitable shitsplosion in transit, I took some Immodium. Because whatever wanted to leave me could not, I ended up with a headache and sore throat on Sunday that is now much more mild. Normally I love a good bowl-splatter sesh, but that just wouldn't work on the bus.
Hampi is absolutely amazing. There are so many ancient carvings everywhere that I found myself nearly stepping on a few as I hiked around through the boulders. Last night I ate at a restaurant that is situated under a huge mango tree and looks out across the Tungabhadra river at a landscape covered in temple ruins. This morning I took a yoga class held in the ruins of what seemed like an old reservoir.
There are a lot more tourists here than in Bangalore. Mostly eurpoean and almost all wearing goofy locally-made flowy pants and shirts. For six bucks I had some light cotton pants tailored (by a soft-spoken Rajasthani pothead) to be less baggy than what seems to be par around here.
02/14/09 Bangalore
At an AA meeting last night I met a local doctor who let me stay at his house. I rode on the back of his scooter through bangalore with my heavy backpack making it unnervingly hard to hold on. We ate for free at his hospital's cafeteria. I knew AA was good for something.
Someone just walked by and sprayed some Lysol-y shit. I would rather smell the no-waste-management smell that I'm starting to get used to. This internet cafe has these creepy little booths for the computers and I can't help but think that they're just private enough that people probably jerk it in here. I'm on my way to Hampi on a bus tonight, psyched to get out of the city and see if my shoulder will let me climb a little. I have also heard there are monkeys there. This is exciting.
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