Hell yeah

All signs in Gokulum indicate that the yoga season is winding down.

Sharath’s last day teaching will be Friday, April 9th. Saraswathi will continue teaching keeping the shala open until the end of April, and then again beginning in June. Sharath will run the second annual session of teacher trainings (invite only) in June and July, and then resume teaching in mid-August. Many students are already planning their next trip back, even as this one winds down. And for the time being, winding down is certainly what is happening.

We’ve watched students depart and noticed smaller and smaller classes on led days and waits on Mysore days. This week Sharath cancelled the second Led Primary class on Sunday, as the number of students has dropped enough to fit them all (though not exactly comfortably) into one class. Direct result: less haste from Sharath in turning over the room to the next group, meaning Sunday’s 430a class had, according to Sharath, “longest savasana since January.” This is true, but not all that remarkable, as many led classes didn’t have any rest, and often not even a closing chant. We will reregister one more time, as our current registration will expire two days before the end, and in all likelihood end up with a 430a start time on Mysore days, beginning with the first group of the morning. That will also be the last and best opportunity to say whatever we have to say—if anything—to Sharath.

The posture distribution (or lack thereof) is forever an interesting and entirely useless topic of conversation. K’s long drought ended this morning when she was given two new postures. She is now up to parsva dhanurasana. There is loose talk about using that last reregistration time to ask to Sharath for “help” with the postures up through kapotasana, in effect requesting more postures. Usually asking directly is a serious faux pas, but the ways in which students ask-without-asking are myriad. (Read some thoughts on this by long-time ashtangi Matthew Sweeney here.)

Most common is to simply do your last posture over and over again, giving Sharath that many more opportunities to notice you and your obvious need for the next posture. Some students who really make use of this strategy seem to be stuck in a loop and, especially if they are on the mat next to you, it can take a few cycles and some mild deja vu before you realize that time is still passing for everyone else. Another strategy is making sure to get Sharath, not Saraswathi, for backbending.
















A quick recap: in backbending, the typical procedure is three “press-ups” (urdhva dhanurasana) from the floor coming up to standing after the last one. Then three cycles of dropping back and standing up. At that point, you wait for the assist, standing at the front of the mat with your arms crossed (the signal). Most people want to get Sharath for this, because he will often use the opportunity to give another posture. Accomplishing this (getting Sharath) is often a matter of avoiding Saraswathi by: adding extra dropbacks, going to the locker room, fixing your hair/mat/clothes, doing your own improvisational “warm-ups,” and generally keeping your eyes open so that you can appear ready if Sharath comes near and not ready if Saraswathi is near. Be warned, though, Saraswathi is cagey. She’s less than five feet tall and moves through the room largely unseen. Many a yogi has confidently crossed the arms in the “I’m ready” signal upon seeing Sharath approaching, only to have Saraswathi spring up out of nowhere.

Both of us have made peace with Saraswathi’s assists and have made significant progress with her help. This simplifies things and avoids the most significant risk in using any of the stalling tactics mentioned above: Sharath may come over and tell you to hurry up and finish, because people are waiting. This means: “Hey, I see you already and I’m not going to give you a pose, so let’s wrap this thing up.”

As this season draws to a close, we’re saying goodbye to the students we’ve met, and the far greater number that we don’t know, but recognize and therefore have developed a system for referring to. So, to Incense Lady, Sleeveless, Line Cutter, Guy We Thought Was Fabio, Tiny Shorts, Line Cutter’s Friend, That Awesome Chick, Fashionista, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Boris, The Bobsey Twins, The Russian Mafia, Old Hollywood Girl, The New Hollywoods, Guy w/ the Baby, Lululemon Bra, and so many others: we can only guess at your names for us; see you all again soon.

We’ve wrapped up a busy week (for us, for Gokulum), the highlight of which was surely a five day anatomy course with Noah Mckenna. Noah is one of the yogi/entrepreneurs here who does not study at the shala, but comes into town when the numbers at the shala are high. He teaches anatomy courses and gives individual body scan/typing & yoga therapy sessions. We found the anatomy course very useful, with just the right combination of information and application to keep it relevant and interesting. Focusing primarily on the skeleton, musculature, and nervous system we talked a lot about kinesiology and the impact of body types and movement patterns on posture. Also inherent were some indirect but significant challenges to the rigidity and, in some ways, poor sequencing of the ashtanga vinyasa system. Noah kept these subtle, obvious-but-unstated conclusions to be drawn, of course, not wanting to be run out of town, but as a yoga therapist who sees many ashtangis come in with MRIs and blown out joints the universal application of the system and especially its tendency to breed blind faith must be, at times, bewildering. It may seem odd, but we love these challenges just as much as—in fact, probably more than—the hero worship, and fundamentalism in the air. It seems that the more we get to know the inherent limitations and flaws of any given system, the better students and teachers we can become.
So we are enjoying the last few weeks, indulging (but not too much) in all the favorites: Hot Chips, street noodles, mangoes, etc., saying things to each other like “Just so you know, I’m up for Gobi Manchurian anytime.” We are systematically working our way through the list of chats (snacks) at Gokul Chats, the best little restaurant in town. We’ve pegged the best dosa joint and know where to get gossip and coconuts in one spot. It’s a strange place to be at times, perhaps most analogous to a college campus. There is a diverse but small (relative to the size of the community as a whole) population here for one central reason. Within the larger Indian community there is a modest infrastructure to support the yoga population and most students exhaust all the opportunities in that infrastructure in a number of weeks. It can become claustrophobic or even boring if you’re not careful. Luckily, we are.

And…we're back

This brief blog hiatus was brought to you by Indian stomach flu/food poisoning/ick.
Another week has passed in Mysore and I (E) haven’t seen the inside of the shala since leaving with chills halfway through student conference. Digestive problems—what we might call “stomach flu” in the states, though in this case it’s definitely bacterial and not viral—is a risk and on our last trip we both fell ill after eating some fruit from a street vendor. This time was better, as only I got sick, but it was also worse, because I was really sick. Anyway, to shorten a long story, after some antibiotics and rehydration at the Gokulum hospital I’ve gradually improved all week (with wonderful caretaking!) and think I’m up to returning to the shala for 430a led class on Sunday.

Word is that the numbers are quickly dwindling. Sharath’s last teaching day of April 9th is fast approaching (though he has since announced that he will resume teaching in mid-August of this year) and many students are finishing up and leaving. This means that most students with any level of experience are getting in to practice by 630a or so. It also means there is a terrific logjam of students from about 530a on. Sharath’s policy seems to be “You wait so I don’t have to;” as long as he can say “One more!” and have a student quickly appear out of the waiting room, he doesn’t much care about shortening your wait time, so he has moved a huge number up students up to 530a. It is just as it used to be at the old shala with Guruji in Lakshmipuram. There it was the legendary wait on the stairs outside, with some students cutting in line and vying for position, or simply being called in out of turn by Guruji. Just like at that time, in the end everyone gets to practice and is almost certainly humbled by it.

Speaking of which, we were very excited to see the arrival two weeks ago of Alex, a very advanced student we first saw two years ago. At that time we saw him practicing at least part of the fourth series (Advanced B), which makes him the most advanced student we have seen. I, for one, distinctly remember seeing Vrschikasana (forearm balance with feet on the head). That was two years ago, so we are waiting to see what he does this time.

For advanced students (those proficient in two, three, or more series’), it seems standard to build into capacity: each student does Primary for the first week, Intermediate the second, Advanced A the third, etc until reaching his/her threshold, depending on how many times they’ve been. Alex has been doing Advanced A this week (seemingly his third week). It’s not clear whether such students follow the daily schedule here (Intermediate on Sunday, Advanced A on Mondays, etc) or if they do what other students do: their most advanced, “leading edge” practice every day, periodically receiving new postures. For us, it can be hard to do your own practice while constantly gawking at another student—especially if you are across the room from one another, for example—but we’re getting good at it.

Like anyone proficient in a skill, advanced students have a “style.” Alex does’t have the same powerful, gymnastic presence of some other advanced students, but is light, poised, and, seemingly, completely unaffected by the difficulty of the postures. He is also great fun at student conference, and often spends nearly as much time talking as Sharath. There is a great and obviously long-standing relationship between the two, and they often tell stories about one another. For example, Sharath said that at one point Alex said to Sharath “I want to see your asana practice.” Sharath said that that was impossible, because he practices at 230a, but Alex insisted. (You’ve got to love anybody with the stones to do that.) So one morning Alex came over and watched Sharath’s practice. “Such advanced postures,” Sharath said, “that just seeing them, he became enlightened.”

We celebrated the Hindu New Year on March 16 by having some kind of sweet flatbread with our landlord and family. It’s great fun to experience a set of holidays “from the outside” and take in the traditions in complete novelty. Also a wonderful random moment in the marketplace: as we were buying some fruit, a sadhu (a wandering holy man) shuffled over. He looked the part: white hair and beard, walking stick, barefoot, naked to the waist. He was hunched and little palsied with age, with a face absolutely lit up with a beatific smile.

This is a tradition we obviously cherish, so we are cautious not to be taken in by the many charlatans in orange robes, but we both had the sense that this guy was the real deal. He seemed somehow totally apart from the craze of the market and everyone in it. He shuffled over, used a long thumbnail to pinch red tikka powder from a bag, smeared bindus (forehead dots) on us, and then rested his hand on top of each of our heads for a moment (he was so small and hunched we bent down for this). Beautiful.
Finally, one more funny story, completely unrelated. Our friend David (who has since gone back to Toronto) told us about the last years of Guruji teaching. Guruji officially retired in 2007 though for some time before that Sharath was shouldering most of the load (there are stories of Guruji doing things like dozing in his chair during Mysore practice days). David said that he was in some of these Mysore classes in “the later years” and it was not uncommon to be in, say, a standing posture like Utthita Parsvakonasana and feel Guruji’s old-but-strong hand on your shoulder, side, or head. Expecting an adjustment, you would be at first surprised to see Guruji moving on to the next student—only to realize that Guruji was not giving adjustments, but instead using the students as support to cross the room. Getting a handhold wherever he could—shoulder, side, head, arm, or whatever—he would lean on one and then grab the next, like a horizontal rock climber. No disrespect here—the man was in his 90’s—but that makes for a funny visual, Guruji walking/leaning/swaying through the room, his touch at first bringing excitement, then confusion, and then possibly annoyance from each student as he bounced from one to the next.

Guruji is no longer around to wreak such havoc in the practice space, but Sharath’s youngest (two-ish) does his best, tearing into the room at any given time, echoing his dad’s count at the top of his lungs during led class, or banging his plastic cricket bat against any given thing in the otherwise quiet room. It’s hard to keep a straight face when you are in, say, setu bandhasana, reclined with the head back, shaking with effort and you suddenly see tiny, sneakered feet creeping by with all the care and caution a two-year-old can manage.

Five Weeks In

Re-registration went well. It’s a little awkward being alone in the office with Sharath, and we never know what to say, and you have to pay in cash and it’s thousands and thousands of rupees so you have this cumbersome, ridiculous wad of bills and you have to count it all out and then Sharath runs it through this bill counting machine and you can’t help but be sort of put off by the money part of it, as if that somehow taints everything, but of course THAT’S stupid, and if we could only think of something to TALK about to break the awkward feeling in that tiny office…and then it’s over. We were officially moved up to 630a, and within two Mysore practice days are sitting at 530a. There must have been quite an exodus of students in the last few days, with more arriving to fill in the later times as the students who have been here for some time move earlier and earlier into the morning. Also, strangely enough, Sharath used the re-registration time to assign me (E) Krounchasana.

Sunday proved to be quite an interesting student conference. We have not been typically impressed by student conferences in the past. They are often vague, with few questions, or with questions that Sharath doesn’t really address in specific. For whatever reason, this conference was different. Sharath was in an expansive mood and talked in specific about breathing and bandha techniques. Over the course of a few follow-up questions about how to work in the lower belly, he stripped to the waist and demonstrated uddiyana bandha (lifting and stabilizing the lower abdomen) as well as a jumpback from padmasana, saying “Now, can you do chatvari like that?” It’s nice to be taunted by your teacher. No comments about visas, so we’re guessing it’s all good for the time being.

Sharath also talked about Guruji’s final days (he died in May of 2009) as an illustration of his (Sharath’s) understanding of the purpose of practicing yoga postures: cultivation of equanimity. Though Guruji often comes up during conference, there is usually an element of deification that makes it feel superficial and saccharine. This time, however, Sharath talked with poignancy and objectivity about “this 94 year-old-man” in the hospital, being stuck with needles, in obvious pain, but serene and gracious. It was more than a student saying the obligatory things about his guru, it was a man talking about watching his grandfather in his final days and being truly surprised and inspired by the composure and mastery he saw. Sharath studied under Guruji for something like 30 years, and their bond must have been remarkable. The spontaneity and candor of Sharath’s words about Guruji’s death brought this home more powerfully than anything we have read or seen before.

It has been a nice, long week of Mysore-style practices, with no moonday getting in the way. K continues to work on the no-touch jumpback and in general we’re both working the jumping aspect of the practice intensely, as always. We are both catching the ankles consistently during backbending with both Sharath and Saraswathi. My knee continues to slowly, slowly stabilize. We’ve had some discussions with other students about injuries, and have come to appreciate something we already knew: they can take a long, LONG time to heal. One person described tearing a psoas muscle (!!!) during “hangbacks” (standing backbending practice), an injury which took “a good three years” to heal.

When practicing at this level and intensity, it is virtually inevitable that injury will happen periodically. That said, it may be useful to qualify and flesh out the understanding of “injury,” which in this context is more nuanced than usual. No doubt there are good old-fashioned injuries—as in pulled, broke, or sprained something (this current knee injury is one of these). However, in other cases a yoga injury is often the peak experience of an imbalance, or a blazing beacon to draw attention to a dead zone in the body, or a strong (possibly perceived as violent) shift in the body. It would be nice if opening/awareness always progressed slowly—it usually does—but occasionally the movement is abrupt, the way that decades of slow, imperceptible adjustments in the Earth’s crust lead to a sudden shift. After the body has healed/pain has resolved, what remains is balance and awareness, but it can be rough going in the middle of it.

With good reason, this process not often discussed by yoga teachers, for fear of encouraging recklessness. It is mostly in advanced postures that this sort of thing occurs. One student who is beginning Advanced A under Sharath was given Kasyapasana (supine leg-behind-the-head). As Sharath adjusted him in the posture, he (Sharath) said “Knee will break.” The student said “It feels ok…” and Sharath said “No, MUST break,” meaning that he (Sharath) perceives that there is still a major shift needing to happen in the knee. It’s food for thought when you consider that a) Sharath is probably one of the most advanced teachers and practitioners in the world and knows his $h*t and b) he has been known (mostly in the past) for “blowing out” knees by overadjusting. Hmmmm…

There is much buzz around Gokulum about teacher training with Sharath. It’s obviously invitation-only, but we have heard of at least one meeting he called with hand-picked students to fill out forms/gather info about teaching and teacher training. The surprising thing is that these students are not all on their 10th or 20th trip: some have only been a couple or a few times. This, of course, has set everyone speculating. It is remarkable to consider how much time and energy must be wasted every day by students trying to figure out what Sharath is thinking.

We’re looking forward to off-day, including dinner with some friends tonight, then led class on Sunday and moonday on Monday. Off-days (and especially the nights before: off-day/moonday eve) are always good for staying up a little later and sampling street food. Let the feast begin!

Ouch

When the daily schedule revolves around yoga practice, as it does for a student in Mysore, even small changes make for big differences. Already it’s nearly the weekend again, with the moonday last Sunday making this week feel short. We have succeeded in getting to early (430a) led class on Sundays (or Mondays, when the moonday falls on Sunday) since that problem the first week, but it is no picnic and throws the schedule for the rest of the day off. Up at 3, done with practice at 530…what now? Still, Sharath only teaches one led Primary class on Sundays (Saraswathi teaches the other) and we will do whatever is necessary to see him every day.

The speed of progress has been on our minds this week in a number of ways. Such conjecture is impossible to avoid in this environment. This week I (E) managed to finally catch in backbending (Tirieng Mukha Uttanasana). Thank you Sharath! It only took two years of daily attempts and, in all seriousness, that’s pretty good, considering how awful backbending was when I started and what a ridiculous thing it is to try do in the first place. The only problem is that now Sharath expects it EVERY DAY. For K, after a drought of over a week waiting for another new posture, today Sharath said, with vague hand gestures to describe the postures, to “take Salambhasana and Bhekasana, BOTH”—sounds like “boat”—on Monday.

The distribution of postures is the subject of much speculation, prognostication, and confabulation. Though theoretically Sharath is doling out postures as each student is ready, in practice it seems at best a product of circumstance rather than design. Most important is certainly how much time you have spent studying with him. Beyond this, it is a matter of various seemingly random factors: if he happens to be by you as you are coming to the end of your postures, the mood he is in, etc. In short, nobody really knows why. But yoga students being who they are, there is a drive to assign great, glorious plans and insights into the giving or withholding of the next posture, though this is most probably a device for obscuring from ourselves just how random it all is.

That said, overall the postures seem to be coming fast and furious for most students. One theory is that Sharath is recognizing that, being that he is only officially teaching for three months this year, it’s now or never for assigning more postures to students. There are still basic guidelines, however, (especially in the Primary Series) that seem intractable and without exception: just today, K talked with a middle-aged student who is on his fourth trip to Mysore and is still working on Marichyasana D. That is, he is still held up about halfway through the Primary Series and said that progress for him is “quite slow.” It’s all relative.

Friday we will register for our second month at the shala, and probably be given a yet-earlier start time (were currently about 645a or 7a). There has been no more information about the potential visa problems, either rumored or official, and it seem to be business as usual around town. Well, one exception: the two Westerner-run cafes catering to yoga students (can you say omelets and baked goods?) have closed due to pressure. They were not legitimate businesses, due to the owners’ tourist, rather than business, visas. It’s a wise move in the present climate, but further cuts down our already paltry ration of wi-fi and drip coffee.

A minor ashtanga celebrity sighting this week: Petri Raisanen has started practicing at the shala. He is quite reserved and has a start time way after ours. Surprising.

Our apologies for not having our own pics this time. Our batteries from home have run out and we're having a difficult time finding batteries good enough to use in the camera. Soon.