yay!

I graduated! what a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. Thank you everyone for believing in me, supporting me, helping me, listening to me and contributing to me. I am very grateful.

Love to everyone

om

end of week 2 YIPEE!

Hello!

Yes, I am still hear. here.

sort of, all here.

I need to be concise right now as there is much studying that needs to be done for our "midterm" exam tomorrow. Today, being Sunday, my day off, I was going to dedicate the whole day to studying but already it is noon and I have to have lunch still.

I popped out of the ashram to buy a t-shirt. I am running out of clothes sometime near the end of the week and can't find time to do all my laundry we are so busy. So I come "downtown" (down the hill and across the river, not really downtown, per se, but the closest thing to it that I'm going to get for awhile) and I pick out a t-shirt and a pair of pants after much deliberation and negotiation and waiting for the actual store owner to return to his store. When I go to pay the man, lo and behold, I have forgotten to "replenish" my wallet with rupees and find there is NO cash inside, at all. And here I am trying to be all efficient and timely so I can hit the books asap. So I have to run all the way back up the hill, get the money and come all the way back down. And of course, its India, so there are people that stop you and talk to you all along the way, some friends, some acquaintances, some strangers. It takes forever. So now its past noon, i haven't had lunch yet, and I still wanted to write some words to you lovely people. It has been so long.

Phew!! I am out of breath just typing that.

It just goes to show that the more you hurry, the longer it takes.

So, I have been missing my Indian friends and daily interactions, conversations and musings as I have no time during the week to go out and mix and mingle. I am now surrounded in the ashram by people who are just like me, for the most part, day in and day out, the rest of the women in the course. Canadian women in their 30's mostly. Big cultural difference between that and India. And these women haven't gotten "Indianized" at all in the two weeks that they've been here because they've been sheltered in the ashram. I notice for me, even, coming out into the streets now after not coming out really for two weeks, I am smelling everything anew. My nose is really sensitive again to all the smells and stinks in the street, as I, too, have been sheltered in the ashram for the past two weeks. And this ashram is not India. This one is IN India, technically, but it is so squeaky clean and smelling lovely and breezy and appealing to Western sensibilities. I call it my five star hotel. And the street, in contrast, is all smelly and filthy and noisy and chaotic and beautiful and ugly and alive, all at the same time. And I love it.

Anyhow.

Sorry, my thoughts are all over the place, and disjointed. The past two weeks have been so stimulating and left brain. Very intellectual and cerebral. Not so much intuitive feeling, which is what I have mostly been developing up until this course started. I guess it's good. I guess you need both to be really effective in the world. I guess it is good practice in going back and forth from the deep meditative states back into the extroverted linear interactions. I am hoping to integrate these two even more as I go. Because I find that when I am using my brain to take notes and comprehend anatomy, for example, and asking questions and conversating about it.... it makes it really challenging then to drop into a meditation or to access my intuition (right brain) right after that. And the opposite also is happening: that if I go into a really deep meditative state in the morning with our yoga class and meditation and the silence before 9am, then I am very very reluctant to let that go, to break that spell and begin talking again and using my intellectual part of my brain. But the course requires you to go back and forth between the two continuously, so I guess I am developing my ability to do that, which will probably be very useful in the "real" world. I dislike that term "real" world. It's ALL the real world.

We have finished two weeks now and two more remain. It is going quickly. This morning I taught my first practicum class with a partner. We peer teach and then get feedback, so it is very useful. Amazing how nervous a person can get teaching their peers. why is that i wonder?

Hmm, this is very interesting. From using my left brain so much, my writing is different. It seems more 2+2=4. You know? Like, this happened, then that happened, very linear. I don't feel like I'm really expressing from the heart, it's just really black and white basic writing. I feel the happiest writing when I have alot of time to daydream and let my creative contemplative side of my brain work. Now I understand why people go into retreat or sabbatical to write books. That quiet empty time is perfect for letting things bubble to the surface to be written down. Reducing the new impressions so the old ones can bubble forth.

These are just some of the observations I am making.

We are learning alot. It is very informative. I haven't had to have this much discipline since I was in university. There is alot of work and very little time.

That being said, I am enjoying it tremendously and am super happy just to be here, finally and having the opportunity to learn what I am so hungry to learn. It is very gratifying. Jasmine, she is my partner in the practicum classes, she is from Germany but of Afghani background. she did a good job of making our class laugh. She is wonderful. Me, I thought i just put everyone to sleep. It is very challenging to teach a beginners class to a bunch of advanced students. I kept thinking "oh, they're bored, they can't wait for the class to be finished, etc. etc." but i was surprised when the feedback all came and everyone really enjoyed the class. Its so hard to tell what people are thinking while you are doing it. You can't tell if they are liking it or hating it. And even when they tell you they liked it, you wonder if they are just saying that to be nice. There were alot of points in my mind that I would do differently or improve, and they did give some constructive criticisms, along with the teacher's, but mostly they seemed really genuinely to think it was very good.

So we have two more classes like that so we can improve on them and gain our confidence.

Wow, its just so much work. I cannot say this enough. It's good, its just.... I haven't been in a situation that requires so much focussed energy for such a prolongued of time. Usually in my life I have alot of time for reflection and contemplation. Maybe too much. So this could be good for me, being so structured and so busy and learning how to manage your time efficiently. Your life is not your own.

anyhow.

Update on my Bengali family: The son just got married and I went to the wedding reception at their house. I was late because they didn't tell me exactly what time to come but apparently they fed like 200 people!!!!! all out of their kitchen, if you can believe it. wow. and that night was their wedding night, "golden night" he called it, the first night that they are allowed to spend together. amazing. they have been married officially for like 36 hours but the time since the ceremony has been so filled with family and more ceremonies and rituals and visits to temple that they aren't officially allowed to sleep together until then. And they are virtual strangers, having only met once or twice before. I know this seems unbelievable from our cultural perspective, and it does to me too when I put myself in my own cultural shoes, but now that I have been here for awhile and spent so much time with the family and talked to alot of people, it makes complete sense to me now, complete sense. Funny how your perspective can change. Our perspective is totally socialized. Determined by our culture of origin.

So the women of the family decorate the wedding bed, cover it with fresh flowers (can you imagine?) wow. They showed me pictures. It was beautiful and amazing. The whole room is decorated with fresh flowers and scents for the first night. and get this: its MY room! Its the room that they always give me in the guesthouse when I come to stay there, the upstairs corner room overlooking the valley. So that made me laugh.

It was really good to see them again and the mother seems to be recovering well from losing her husband only a few weeks back.

Let's see... what else?

um, I think I pretty much covered everything. Just that everything is going great and its alot of work to do and information to absorb. But i'm happy. Very happy.

Back feels good. The proper yoga we have been doing seems to be strengthening it and healing it.

Ya, so i'll write again, hopefully when i get my poetic brain back again.

lots of love to all.

we-re through week one!

Namaste!

I have been very eager to get out and write to you guys. Now I'm on a combined sugar high from a piece of cake and a technology high from having my fingers on a keyboard again, access to the whole world is intoxicating after not stepping foot outside the ashram for a whole week.

So... its going great!

The program so far has completely surpassed my expectations and is more than I could have ever hoped for it to be. I feel blessed.

That being said, it is very intense. I barely have time to scratch my nose, we are so BUSY! wow.

So needless to say, I haven't left the building except to sprawl on the grass on the lawn with one of the books or manuals to try to speed read as many chapters as I can in the one hour and a half break we have a day.

But I am very happy. I am very happy to do what I love to do and I am just gobbling up all the information I can, and there is aLOT.

We are doing alot of hands on adjustments so we are getting used to touching people in a helpful and respectful way to direct and guide their yoga poses. I haven't had this much physical contact in 5 months. Its quite wonderful. It is funny because all these 30 women are just as passionate about yoga as I am. Their bodies are amazing too. Everyone is in such amazing physical condition.

My teacher is great. Really great. His style is just the type of thing I need to learn. his style of yoga and his style of teaching. I got lucky finding him. He grew up in an ashram since he was 8 years old. He told us a story of how when he was 6 years old he ran away from home and went to a nearby ashram because he wanted to wear the orange robes that the yogis and swamis there wear. The swami there gave him candy and took him home, but when he was 8, they took him in and he lived there and learned everything.

He teaches from direct experience. Plus he also has a phd in yoga, which is something you can only get in India. no, that's not true, canada has one program in toronto. anyhow...

I knew if I just came to Rishikesh, put my feet on the soil, I would find what I needed to find here. I did this on faith. I didn't find out about this training until I was in Rishikish. Having gone on faith and followed my gut instincts, it makes me tend to want to follow my gut instincts more and repeatedly I see them guide me to the best possible outcomes.

So a typical day is like this:

I tend to wake up before the 5:30am bell and shower and get ready and get into the yoga hall early, before the crowds, so I have some peace and quiet to meditate or write. I don't know if my roommate minds that I am puttering around at like 4:30am sometimes. Surely she thinks I'm bonkers, but she says it doesn't bother her. Usually I'm in the bathroom with the light on, writing in my journal, waiting for the hot water heater to heat up for my shower.

We have yoga class from 6 to 8. Usually the class makes me cry at some point during it because my teacher is so powerful in his ability to get you in deep and transforming you and growing you with breath, meditations, and words. He seems to know just what to say, when , and how. I feel like I'm being positively reprogrammed.

Then we hussle downstairs for breakfast. Silence is observed before 9am. Sometimes after breakfast I partake in the daily fire ceremony. Most of the other women don't attend, it is usually just Indian people, which is nice.

then from 9 to 12 we have yoga philosophy and techniques classes.

lunch. then free time from 1 until 2:30 then back in the hall for classes from 2:30 to 6pm

dinner

and then evenings free to study. except monday and wednesday nights when we have 1.5 hrs of chanting, singing and other stuff.

soon we will have an oral presentation, 20 minutes, to present. and a 1500 word essay and then we begin teaching practicum classes. oh and we have a test too.

so this is just the beginning of busy.

it is only going to get busier. but i'm happy. its hard work and you feel like you don't have 3 square minutes to yourself in a day but it is satisfying and rewarding and rich. and good practice for managing your time and being efficient and minimizing your life, pairing it down to the absolutely essential activities like cleaning your body and cleaning your clothes. streamlining everything and dropping anything unnecessary.

it is bizarre living with such a large group of people from my cultural background again.. its like having a mini canada in the ashram. its like i've gone home to vancouver or something. its not like india anymore.

i kind of like hanging out with Indian people and try to spend as much time as possible with them. They are down to earth, practical, unpretentious and straightforward, caring and generous. I find they possess all these qualities that I strive to learn and develop in myself. They are so unself-conscious and unself-centred. it is so refreshing. and i think it is so important for us to learn these things, as yoga teachers, how NOT to have an ego, for example, or how NOT to talk about yourself ceaselessly.

My teacher-s family is very involved in the ashram, which is lovely. His wife, Chetana, is from Canada, and she teaches the yoga philosophy, and they have a 2 year old girl, Uma, and she's cute as a button and running around and the best behaved little girl you ever met. Vishwa's brother is around, and his niece, and his mother lives downstairs and there are many other lovely staff members that I have grown quite fond of. They are such wonderful people.

sorry to be gushing here, but I have to tell you all the good stuff. I enjoy to spend time with the Indian people around the ashram, I find them so grounding for me, even if I don't speak Hindi and they don't speak English, I like to just be with them, and we find a way to joke or smile or play or interact somehow. I cherish these times and these experiences and feel that they are as valuable as the formal time i spend in class with the training. They teach me how to LIVE, how to BE, as a human, as a loving compassionate human being. They are so warm. but I have talked about this all before.

what else do i feel i need to say now?

our cow had her baby today!! she is black, just like her mama. and so BIG! wow.

I think the cow was overdue. I think they were expecting the calf a few days back.

Oh, my back. My back has been doing quite well. knock on wood. one week down and 3 more to go, it seems to be responding favourably to all the yoga and of course, i am being gentle and not pushing too hard. But I am getting stronger, and this is a good thing for my back. i still feel sensations, but it seems to be just staying the same and not getting worse, if anything the increase in my strength and breath capacity is making my posture better so i am straighter and more aligned, lifting from my core rather than slouching into my joints. ha ha, yoga talk.

There is sure alot to learn though. holy cow. All the women are starting to get their voices, their yoga voices. I am lucky in that respect because i[ve already taught a little bit, so i[ve alreadz had to work out what to say when you are teaching. it isn[t easy, that[s for sure, its all about confidence. ( sorry the apostrophe is not working and is coming out as a [ every time)

and of course you won[t remember everything, but our teacher is really good at making sure we hit the safety points, like the things that are potential issues of safety, and of course we have notes for all the details, so we can study them and really get to know them.

I can[t say enough good things about the teacher, he is just SO good.

welll..... i think i might go and try to post some pictures. Try not to be on this computer ALL day.

Peace and love to everyone. Love and miss you all.

Ang