Saturday morning, eager and nervous, I left our flat and headed to the train station. Two stops north at Santa Cruz, I got off and headed to the East exit to unexplored territory. Just a short walk through a relatively quiet neighborhood, I found the Yoga Institute. After registering for the seven day course, I waited in a large hall, sitting cross-legged on the hard tiled floor with just a thin mat separating my skin from the cool floor.
As Greg and I were preparing to go to India, both of us were excited about the opportunity to explore yoga more. Over the past year, we both attended class once to twice a week with Prasad (yogaprasad.com) at the American School. I’ve really enjoyed Prasad’s classes a lot, with his focus on breathing and opening the chest. He’s been doing yoga since age nine and now teaches classes all over the world. I walk out of his classes feeling relaxed and calm. Then I step out into chaotic Mumbai and I struggle to hold onto that calmness.
Some of the ASB mom’s I’ve spent time with have been taking various yoga teacher training courses, which are all about a month long. I enjoyed hearing about the courses but couldn’t fathom finding a month to do something like that. Around April, I realized that I have spent so much of my time focused on finding work and contributing financially while in Mumbai, that I had pushed aside my goal of learning more about yoga and trying to deepen my practice. I thought to myself, “I’m in India! What am I doing, I need to take advantage of this.” So, I went online and found The Yoga Institute (www.theyogainstitute.com), which is about two neighborhoods north of where I live. Their teacher training courses are 3 months and 7 months, which I was not ready to commit to. Then I found they had a seven day Basics of Yoga course and I decided that I could figure out how to make that work. So, while Greg was finishing up teaching, going to graduation, and attending end of the year parties, I headed to the Yoga Institute at 6:30am and came home at 8pm for one week.
Our day started off with asanas. This is the part of yoga that is practiced in the western world, the physical aspect. The Institute teaches basic poses with the focus on full concentration and presence, and breathing while doing each asana. It was such a wonderful way to begin each morning and I was reminded of my morning class I use to attend in Jackson. Energized and calm, I was ready to face the day.
All meals were provided by the Institute and were vegetarian. Food is an important part of maintaining positive attitude and non-judgment. Food that is fresh, not processed, and flavored with non-spicy spices is called Satthvic. It’s easy to digest and gives the body nutrients it needs. After a week of eating this food, my body felt wonderful and my taste buds were happy. My other classmates, most were Indian, were curious about how I liked the food. I don’t think all of them were as happy with it as I was. Of course I bought a recipe book, so I can try to incorporate some of the yummy food into my diet.
There are eight parts to yoga called the eight fold path. Asanas are one part. The other parts are Yamas (social behavior, how you treat others), Niyamas (Inner discipline and responsibility), Pranayama (control of breath), Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), Dharana (concentration), Dhyana (uninterrupted meditation), Samadhi (ultimate goal of bliss). The course focused on the first five parts with daily classes in each. All of the classes and techniques are to help a person lead a life that is filled with positive attitude, non-violence and non-judgment, and help obtain inner peace.
My task now is to continue the practice in daily life. I appreciated being told by each teacher to start with small steps. Choose one or two aspects to start doing each day. What I usually do after courses such as these is try to do it all and then when I can’t I just stop doing any of it all together. Travelling for two months right after this course also presents a challenge since I won’t have a routine. But, so far I’ve been able to do something every day.
Lastly, part of yoga is remembering to have some sort of recreation each day. Our last day, we had to give a performance of some sort. I ended up doing a dance with two other women. I was Krishna and one of the women dressed me up in full costume. It was great. All my other classmates were taking pictures with me and were so excited about my outfit. After my performance, they were impressed that some of my moves matched the lyrics of the song. The song we did was in the movie Laagan, an excellent Hindi film that you can rent from Netflix.
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