November 25, 2010

Thankful

Just back from a Thanksgiving dinner with friends, eaten on the beach with bare feet in the sand under strands of colored lanterns and a sky full of stars.. Instead of turkey and mashed potatoes we stuffed ourselves with vegetable pakoras, masala curries, dum aloo, palak paneer and stacks and stacks of fresh hot rotis. We were a very multicultural table, with Indians, Bhutanese, Mexicans, Dutch, Swiss, Australian, Icelandic, Norwegian, and we four Americans reminisced about our past Thanksgivings, compared recipes for our favorite foods, and horrified the others with a telling of the Thanksgiving story. There is something about spending holidays 7,960 miles away from the people you love that really makes you appreciate the good in the people you are with.
I am so thankful for everyone in the world that I love; thankful for our health and prosperity, especially when faced with the reality of how so many others in the world live. I’m thankful for the opportunities I have had to travel and see, taste, experience new things every day, for the people I have met that became my adopted family out in the world. And although I am ashamed to admit it, I am thankful that when my travels here are done I have a return ticket back to my peaceful, clean, wealthy country.

November 23, 2010

Three Weeks

Today is exactly three weeks in India, 21 days of dal fry and veg thali, very early mornings and intense asana practice, countless breaths spent in Ardo Mukku Savanasana (Downward Facing Dog).  It’s been wonderful so far, but I am also in paradise as far as Indian villages are concerned. This has been an incredibly quiet little rural village up until now, but this week so many new little shops selling exactly the same things as the others have opened and new restaurants, guesthouses and massage clinics too. 
The monsoon season is officially over and the people here are really kicking it into high gear and preparing for tourist season, all of our favorite places to eat have raised the prices by 5-15 INR! It’s hot and humid still, but I am finally getting used to the constant sweat I’ve been in, and although there is no physical change that I can see, my body feels so much stronger. When we first started the course, vinyasas were a struggle. Flowing smoothly through Sun Salutations, holding poses for the full five breaths, doing push up after pushup and rolling from Chattaranga (Plank) to Up Dog, it was all so hard and exhausting! Now its almost easy, and after four hours of yoga everyday I’m still ready to shower and go out, no longer so utterly dead tired that I could barely keep my eyes open at 7pm!
We started teaching sections of the Primary Series in our second week and have moved onto developing our own sequences and styles in the afternoon classes. I am so proud of myself, having been asked to teach more than anyone else in our class by our teacher Deepak and by my fellow students. Today after jumping in and leading a class of 19 for an hour all through the standing poses and half of the sitting, using all the Sanskrit names, mentioning dristi, bandhas and breath count, I was told by my peers that it felt like a regular class, and that I teach like I’ve been doing it for years. It was so nice to hear, so nice to have embraced this training.
But it’s almost over! Time is such a funny thing, moving so quickly these days that I barely have time to experience the days before the sun is setting! Although I grumble getting out of bed in the dark every morning at 5:30 am, there is something magical about being up before the sun and it is so wonderful to have the whole day planned out, to not have any decisions to make other than what to eat for dinner… if I could, I would do another TTC next month, I would stay in this healthy, spiritual environment as long as possible.
I’ve decided that although I want so badly to see the Himalayas and the high altitude lakes and plains of northern India and Nepal, I am instead going to head south when I leave here next week. It would be so cool to go to the mountains but I just did not pack and prepare properly for anything but the tropics. That just means that I will have to come back again, and I do not mind that thought at all.

November 7, 2010

Goa


India.
It is so different here than I expected, although admittedly I did not have a clear picture in my head of what I would find when I finally got to Goa. Instead I am astonished that things that I could never have imagined a week ago are so commonplace here! I arrived on this continent for the first time six days ago, and the first thing I noticed when I stepped off the plane in Goa was how differently the air smelled from anywhere else I have ever been. Its funny, but before I left for Italy when I was 18 my sister told me to pay attention to the different scents wherever I went, and that thought has really stuck with me. I think that our sense of smell is much more powerful than taste, touch or sight, how you can smell a certain food or animal or flower and be instantly reminded of people, places, a moment brought back from childhood. That is what is amazing me here, is that the air is heavy with spices and foods and exotic perfumes as well as the heavy, musty smell of rain and earth, and yet none of it is familiar! Everything is brand new to me!
 I was on my guard when I landed in Goa, ready to be haggled and bothered and ripped off, seen as easy prey by the locals, keeping my eyes wide open for men who would be trying to take advantage of me, beggars, pickpockets, thieves… But it was exactly the opposite! I walked out of the airport and straight to a stand that said TAXI, told a group of sweaty, smoking men I needed to go to Agonda Beach and instantly they were all smiles and handshakes, helping me with my bag and giving me the exact price my friend had told me to ask for. It was an hour and a half drive down tiny jungle roads to the beach, and as I had been traveling for 68 hours straight I was barely coherent, but I somehow managed polite conversation with my driver while I stared out the window at passing coconut trees and little shacks, herds of cows, women wearing bright saris and signs advertising all sorts of foreign things. Agonda Beach is really lovely. It is a tiny little town consisting of one road about a mile and a half long that is more dirt than pavement, and all along it are guest houses, little restaurants and shops that sell only a few things each. The beach is a crescent of white sand in between two hills, with palm, banana, mango and coconut trees on one side and the dull blue of the Arabian Sea on the other. Herds of cows roam everywhere here, and at midday they go to the beach wading into the water to cool off, before laying down in the shade of the trees for a nap. Packs of stray dogs roam around, whining and following you until you pet them behind the ears, and huge grey and black pigs root around in the bushes.
The people are all incredibly open and curious so far, I haven’t met anyone who has tried to hassle me for money, nor have I been bothered by leering and catcalling men. In short, its exactly the opposite of everything the guidebook told me, although I am in the south of Goa, where woman can wear shorts and tank tops and not have to worry like they do in the more northern, conservative states.
The yoga is great and my body feels amazing. I am beginning to gain a more in depth understanding of what yoga actually is, the history, the philosophy, the science behind it and the way you must live in order to call what you do “yoga”. The asanas are the least important of all the eight limbs of Ashtanga yoga, and it’s amazing how much I am learning! Its hot and humid and I sweat more than I ever have before during practice, and as I have been here less than a week I am feeling a little stiff and sore, but honestly not nearly as bad as I expected.
Every morning at 6:20 we have a pranyama and meditation class until 7:45, followed by a two-hour asana practice before breakfast. Then we are back an hour later for our philosophy lecture and a talk on ayuveda. This is fascinating to me, and I cant wait to go deeper into the 5000-year-old medical science of India! During our 2.5-hour lunch break the other students and I have been eating a quick Indian lunch like roti or papad masala and then going to the beach for a swim and then to study. At 3pm we are back for anatomy and our afternoon asana class. By 6pm I am tired and have just enough energy for a banana lassi while we watch the sunset and make small talk before passing out.  Its great. I like it here.


November 2, 2010

flying

The nine-hour flight from London to Mumbai was the third long haul, overnight flight I was on in as many days, and I was running on fumes. After 60 hours of flying and layovers from Sao Paulo to Rio to Atlanta to NYC to London I had only been able to get about ten hours of sleep, and that had been sitting upright at 38,000 feet so my body was starting to feel it. I shut my window in darkness at midnight flying over the Ukraine, and opened it again four hours later to bright sunlight and by the interactive map we were directly over Pakistan. It was one of the most striking landscapes I have ever seen. Desert as far as I could see (which from 5 miles was pretty far!) cut by huge mountain ranges and dunes so large that I could see the shadows they cast from as high as I was. Every now and then I noticed tiny grids of villages or towns, little square plots of farmland, but not many and those were far between. It’s amazing how much land there is in the world. Nothing seen from a plane looks real to me, maybe its because no matter how many times I fly I can never quite wrap my head around the fact that I am miles, hurtling forwards at 500 miles per hour in a little aluminum capsule, but it was still incredible to see a part of the world that I have heard so much about. I wonder if it really is just chance that I was born in the wonderful utopia that is Olympia?