Guten mornin, (a little german? where did that come from?)
sitting here in the sunshine... at my new favourite internet "cafe". The choosing of a GOOD internet cafe is full of nuances that at first might not be obvious. There are so many factors involved in the choosing: Speed, of course, is pretty high on the priority list.
There is this place called Red Chilis, its actually a rafting and trekking expedition office with a few computers set up. It is clean, modern and with the second best view in the whole neighborhood (barring my favourite upscale hotel decktop restaurant's view: the prices are a rip off but the food and view are next to none).
So Red Chilis has also, not only this killer view overlooking the Ganga, tons of windows and a balcony, but also a bathroom, and not just any bathroom, but a bathroom that is cleaned daily, that doesn't smell, that has a western style toilet (not always a plus, but sometimes it is) and SOAP, and on a lucky day... toilet paper. So one would think that this would be the best place to go for internet. The staff are friendly and professional too and it is an overall groovy good place. Except for one thing: they haven't updated their internet in at least two years and sometimes it can be as slow as molasses in the Himalayas, if you know what i mean. If you take your laptop and go for wi-fi, sometimes it drops your service, so you spend a little extra time and money getting them to reconnect you to wireless for you (they don't give you the passwords, but rather, you give them your laptop and they hook you up). when the internet is slow, you pay more for less, cause they charge by 20minute blocks, at a rate of about 40cents an hour.
So there are other factors, i've listed a few aready: bathroom accessibility (cause sometimes you are online for an hour or more, drinking water or chai the whole time), proximity to your ashram or guesthouse is a big factor, comfortability of the chairs.... some places have these metal chairs that freeze your butt off if you don't bring a shawl to sit on. Some places have sun, some are cold as ice. But its always a trade off. Some places play amazing music, or they let you play your own amazing music. Some have quite a "scene" going on... pool tables (the place with the pool tables and the view and the groovy music... their internet NEVER works when i go there, so i stopped going there).
Sometimes you have to sacrifice proximity for warmth, or speed for a view. .... and this all depends on your mood, of course. Another factor i haven't yet mentioned is the amicability of the staff. Some places the staff is downright surly and will overcharge you the moment you stop paying attention (your fault in the end, for letting your guard down and being an idiot. i call this one "tourist tax".) The best places for staff are inevitably places that do other business there in addition to internet, namely, the rafting, guiding, trekking type places. They are filled with these young, sharp, outdoorsy, easygoing, and laid back type people who are not so chuffed about the odd rupee for the odd minute here and there, cause they got bigger fish to fry running their tours and stuff.
So this morning, i sit at my new favourite place. Favourite because it is one of the aformentioned guiding/rafting expedition type places, its not far away from my place, and its not near, its rather centrally located. I like it because in the morning there is this one computer station near the window where the sun shines in, and although it lacks the view of red chili, the speed is fast, the computers are not total dinosaurs and the staff are friendly, laid back, the vibe is good, unpretentious, and there is a bathroom nearby, though not IN the actual place. Oh and also, the chairs are padded, soft and warm, and they've never tried to overcharge me here.
And incidentally, it is right next door to the rooftop restaurant we like so much (just had dinner with mom there last night and took some pictures, i'll try to post them soon to the blog , they are the same pictures she is probably posting on her blog).
Funnily enough, this computer is set to b.c. time. so its 8:49pm on tuesday night for you guys, and about....10:20am the next day for me.
So i am sitting here, in the sunshine, drinking some chai (sent over from next door, service in india is great,.... sometimes, that is, when it's not being atrocious) and catching up on some emails and stuff.
Nights are coooooooollllldddd! We just got issued our winter blankets at the ashram, so last night was the first night that i was truly and totally cozy while i slept. felt so good to be sealed under those heavy blankets.
now i am dreaming..... GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAA!!!! dreaming about Goa. In three weeks we will be in Goa, in the south. Warm beaches, palm trees... the works. Its 30 degrees there right now. I can hear her calling my name. I can see the umbrellas in my pineapple drink and the shellfish in my coconut curries. yum.
obsessed with food? no, not me!
alright, off to the loo...
Time for an adventure....
love and lots of kisses
ang
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
where to live, where to live....
my computer doesn’t like india so much, so much dirt and dust makes her grumpy.
She is pulling all kinds of weird things on me.
And you wouldn’t think that cows could live off cardboard....but they do, in india.
There is a three legged white cow that lives in my neighbourhood. Looks like she has a calf too cause sometimes i see her with a smaller sized sidekick, or maybe it is just a buddy.
Right now i am sitting at a CHINESE breakfast cafe. It is new since the last time i was here, it is full of Chinese people! What the....? and they are serving eggs, which is pretty rare in rishikesh. Runny eggs and wonder bread. Yuck. Its so early still so i thought i’d stop here for a chai. Smells a bit like toilet so don’t think i’ll stay long.
i just left the ashram after breakfast to go out for a stroll and to sort out some tangled up hotel reservations i made yesterday. Seems i made a reservation on line with my visa and then it just vaporized into the ether. yay! They said a confirmation email and number would be sent to my email address but it never arrived, and to make matters worse, i hit the submit button twice because i wasn’t so sure i hit it the first time, so i’m not so sure that i haven’t made TWO charges to my card. I’m sure its all fine. I have some numbers to call to sort it so.. . i’m not too worried.
And a little writing. Feeling much better today. Not so existential as yesterday. Don’t know what is up with all the moods. I’m up, i’m down, and really high and then really low, not just little ripples of mood but huge tsunamis of emotion.
Mom has moved into the taj mahal of guest houses. I have never seen her happier. I wanted to move in with her but she won’t let me. HAHA! She is renting a room above the ayurvedic cafe near my ashram, run by a lovely family who moved here from Delhi a few years ago to escape the rat race. I am so excited for her, i am thinking of renting a room there myself if one becomes available. There are only 4, one is occupied by my mother (who won’t share, and to be fair, its really only big enough for one, the huge four poster bed takes up the whole room almost), the other is occupied by the owner’s mother, the third is an extra large room for families and twice the price, the fourth is occupied by another couple who may vacate in 4 or 5 days, at which point i am considering moving in. The energy of the place is amazing, and the ashram, frankly, is so crazy right now with the energy of all these 500hr teacher trainees, mealtime in the lunch hall sounds like recess in a kindergarten class. Well, that was rather insulting. I didn’t quite mean for it to be THAT insulting, i only meant that it is loud, VERY loud, and it is hard to digest one’s food.
There are other factors causing me to consider a move. I share a 3 bed room, not a 2 bed room, so i have two roommates, they are sweet, but i like to get up so early and shower and go through my whole routine before the 5:30 bell even rings so i can be in the yoga hall a little early for meditation. I feel so bad doing this, i tiptoe around like a mouse, trying not to make any sound, but i can tell i am waking them up anyways. Not to mention that i seem to have developed a snore, as i mentioned before. It seems to come and go, some nights i don’t snore, others i do. Now i know how mom must feel, (she snores too) and rob, i’m sorry for kicking you so many times in your sleep.
And then there is price. It is about $15 per day to stay at the ashram, that includes your shared room, 3 meals a day and two yoga classes per day. Its a great deal, undeniably, if you take advantage of all of those things.
Lately I haven’t been hungry in the evening and often skip a meal and just have warm milk. Also the afternoon yoga classes are not always taught by a good teacher. Infact, more often than not, taught by a terrible teacher to whose class i refuse to go back. Of course Vishva’s class in the morning is the best and main reason for my stay. But with all the other factors, and the guest house only being about $7canadian per night, i can stay at the guesthouse, have a room all to myself, a nice room with private bath, a view and lots of light, and just pay for the morning class separately at the ashram (about $3.25 canadian), and i can even take my meals at the ashram too, breakfast is about.... 75 cents and lunches and dinners are a buck fifty for all you can eat, not that i eat all that much, and the food is good, healthy, balanced and full of love. So i figured since i am skipping dinner and the evening yoga class and not really taking advantage of any of the other ashram perks either (like morning fire puja ceremony and the great library) and i am being challenged by sharing a room so snugly with two others... i am thinking it would actually work out to the same price or a little cheaper to stay out, rather.
So i’m mulling it over right now.
The library IS good, but i haven’t’ even BEEN to the library once yet. And i can still go there and use the library during the hours it is open, if i am not staying in the ashram, i just can’t borrow books.
Hmmmm.
Just weighing the options right now... waiting to see how much more of my snoring my roommates can really take. haha!
But mom is so happy. Like a clam, if a clam could be that happy. Really, i think almost every line in her face has disappeared for lack of stress.
Oh and by the way, Rob, i think YOU should start a blog.
thats all for now folks,
talksoon,
ang
She is pulling all kinds of weird things on me.
And you wouldn’t think that cows could live off cardboard....but they do, in india.
There is a three legged white cow that lives in my neighbourhood. Looks like she has a calf too cause sometimes i see her with a smaller sized sidekick, or maybe it is just a buddy.
Right now i am sitting at a CHINESE breakfast cafe. It is new since the last time i was here, it is full of Chinese people! What the....? and they are serving eggs, which is pretty rare in rishikesh. Runny eggs and wonder bread. Yuck. Its so early still so i thought i’d stop here for a chai. Smells a bit like toilet so don’t think i’ll stay long.
i just left the ashram after breakfast to go out for a stroll and to sort out some tangled up hotel reservations i made yesterday. Seems i made a reservation on line with my visa and then it just vaporized into the ether. yay! They said a confirmation email and number would be sent to my email address but it never arrived, and to make matters worse, i hit the submit button twice because i wasn’t so sure i hit it the first time, so i’m not so sure that i haven’t made TWO charges to my card. I’m sure its all fine. I have some numbers to call to sort it so.. . i’m not too worried.
And a little writing. Feeling much better today. Not so existential as yesterday. Don’t know what is up with all the moods. I’m up, i’m down, and really high and then really low, not just little ripples of mood but huge tsunamis of emotion.
Mom has moved into the taj mahal of guest houses. I have never seen her happier. I wanted to move in with her but she won’t let me. HAHA! She is renting a room above the ayurvedic cafe near my ashram, run by a lovely family who moved here from Delhi a few years ago to escape the rat race. I am so excited for her, i am thinking of renting a room there myself if one becomes available. There are only 4, one is occupied by my mother (who won’t share, and to be fair, its really only big enough for one, the huge four poster bed takes up the whole room almost), the other is occupied by the owner’s mother, the third is an extra large room for families and twice the price, the fourth is occupied by another couple who may vacate in 4 or 5 days, at which point i am considering moving in. The energy of the place is amazing, and the ashram, frankly, is so crazy right now with the energy of all these 500hr teacher trainees, mealtime in the lunch hall sounds like recess in a kindergarten class. Well, that was rather insulting. I didn’t quite mean for it to be THAT insulting, i only meant that it is loud, VERY loud, and it is hard to digest one’s food.
There are other factors causing me to consider a move. I share a 3 bed room, not a 2 bed room, so i have two roommates, they are sweet, but i like to get up so early and shower and go through my whole routine before the 5:30 bell even rings so i can be in the yoga hall a little early for meditation. I feel so bad doing this, i tiptoe around like a mouse, trying not to make any sound, but i can tell i am waking them up anyways. Not to mention that i seem to have developed a snore, as i mentioned before. It seems to come and go, some nights i don’t snore, others i do. Now i know how mom must feel, (she snores too) and rob, i’m sorry for kicking you so many times in your sleep.
And then there is price. It is about $15 per day to stay at the ashram, that includes your shared room, 3 meals a day and two yoga classes per day. Its a great deal, undeniably, if you take advantage of all of those things.
Lately I haven’t been hungry in the evening and often skip a meal and just have warm milk. Also the afternoon yoga classes are not always taught by a good teacher. Infact, more often than not, taught by a terrible teacher to whose class i refuse to go back. Of course Vishva’s class in the morning is the best and main reason for my stay. But with all the other factors, and the guest house only being about $7canadian per night, i can stay at the guesthouse, have a room all to myself, a nice room with private bath, a view and lots of light, and just pay for the morning class separately at the ashram (about $3.25 canadian), and i can even take my meals at the ashram too, breakfast is about.... 75 cents and lunches and dinners are a buck fifty for all you can eat, not that i eat all that much, and the food is good, healthy, balanced and full of love. So i figured since i am skipping dinner and the evening yoga class and not really taking advantage of any of the other ashram perks either (like morning fire puja ceremony and the great library) and i am being challenged by sharing a room so snugly with two others... i am thinking it would actually work out to the same price or a little cheaper to stay out, rather.
So i’m mulling it over right now.
The library IS good, but i haven’t’ even BEEN to the library once yet. And i can still go there and use the library during the hours it is open, if i am not staying in the ashram, i just can’t borrow books.
Hmmmm.
Just weighing the options right now... waiting to see how much more of my snoring my roommates can really take. haha!
But mom is so happy. Like a clam, if a clam could be that happy. Really, i think almost every line in her face has disappeared for lack of stress.
Oh and by the way, Rob, i think YOU should start a blog.
thats all for now folks,
talksoon,
ang
no videos
sorry no videos. mom has taken a few but it is just such a headache to download them to youtube. it costs extra here too so... no videos. only pics.
www.greatfreedom.org
thought i might as well post.
internet banking is not cooperating so... i'm drinking a ginger beer (as close as i'm gonna get to getting the real thing, not that i drink beer in canada, but one gets all sorts of strange cravings as soon as you know you can't HAVE something, aaaah, human nature).
Today I have an admission to make, i've kind of got the blues today. Don't know what my problem is exactly, but i.....
i dunno, you just have those days where... you wonder what its all for.
Now itunes wants to download an update so... again, banking is stalled out.
I know it's self-indulgent but I have this terrible case of wanting what i don't or can't have in any given moment, yearning for that which is not right in front of me, idealizing or romanticizing some experience or place that is not my current experience or place, while grossly overlooking the beauty and perfection of the moment and the place that lays right in front of me at this moment. In yoga philosophy, Stephen Cope calls this "samvega" in sanskrit. A constant dissatisfaction with life or a life only considered satisfying when a certain set of conditions or circumstances are in place (ie. found the right mate, married them, have two perfectly behaved children in a house with a view of which the property value goes up 20% each year, etc. etc.)
Currently this finds me dreaming about the sandy warm beaches of Goa in the south of India (palm trees, soft sound of the waves and fresh coconut curries included....where we will be in 3 weeks) while I huddle under layers of wool in my icy room this morning in rishikesh.
The People of India seem to have an infinite capacity to just BE where they are and appreciate the moment, without thinking it would be better sometime, some place off in the future. Maybe a little, but nothing like what I have going on.
Take for example here, india: its not the same as before. I didn't expect it to be the same but... i was on a mission before, i was searching for something, and i found it last time.
Now i don't know what i am searching for. if anything.
not searching for anything this time. don't get me wrong (marie seminuk's favourite expression (sorry about the spelling of your last name there marie) the yoga classes are great, its all great, its just.... last time i was really seeking to dig deep you know? i was so focussed, i wanted to see how deep i could go with my practice, i spent weeks in total silence, for 8 months i tried to follow the rules of the old yogis,(Swami Radha Sivananda spent only 6 months [i think, or was it only TWO?] with her teacher, Swami Sivananda, and she came back and started her own ashram after that!) to experiment and see whether there really was anything to this yoga philosophy, and not just the asanas of course, but the lifestyle, the belief system that the ancients portended would bring humankind great spiritual wealth, peace and happiness, and.... it did. It did work. The more effort and sincerity i poured into my practice, meditating, being of service, studying, eating all the right foods, cleansing, following as much as i could the yogic and ayurvedic lifestyle, the better i felt, the happier, more peaceful, balanced and fulfilled i got. When I returned home from India last time I felt like I was glowing from the inside out. I was amazed at the clarity and calm.
But then what happens when you can't sustain that level of practice, of austerity? How do you go back? Or the question I guess is... not how do you go back, but how do you sustain that level of intensity of practice?
I began to feel this tension building within myself as I watched my level of happiness and peace be totally dependent upon the intensity of my sadhana (spiritual practice). Without sustaining and even increasing my level of spiritual practice, I was unable to sustain the feeling of peace and wellbeing, so there was this constant tension in me between making good choices vs. bad ones. It seemed like... the more I knew how good the "good" choices made me feel, the harder it became to choose them.
I feel like I have been actually backsliding ever since I was 25 or 26 years old.
When I was 25 or 26, somewhere around there, i peaked. I stumbled across yoga when I was 23 and slowly began to practice a little more, a little more, asana and meditation only, and a little pranayama. Actually, some of the pranayama came naturally out of the asana work I was doing. Its a long story really, but I realize now, looking back, that i peaked at 25/26. Because of my natural inclination, my practice grew to be up to 5 hours or MORE each day, of yoga and meditation. Now that is a lot! I was so blissed out. I wanted everyonen I knew to feel as good as I did. I knew so little then about what was happening to me. i was just going with what i was feeling. I didn't even have a teacher, other than myself. I learned from a book. It just fell into me. Looking back to then, I didn't drink alcohol, we had a big garden in the backyard in clearwater, i was a vegetarian, i used to go out to the garden with a colander and a knife and cut what we would eat for the night, and then i would cook it and we would have it in our stomachs within the hour of it coming out of the ground. so much Prana in the food. I felt more amazing then than i had ever felt in my life. I would say that my journey of yoga peaked out then. Certain "powers" were even developing in me as a result of my "experiment", but i was naive, i didn't even know what i was doing or what i was happening, without a teacher to guide me. It was all progressing and happening so naturally. i was just experimenting, playing around, and my body told me what to do.
Then i went to Japan to teach english and pay off my student loan and it all went downhill from there. I stopped practicing, i began partying again in Tokyo, drinking alcohol as everyone else was too, I became lonely, lost on the beautiful island of Okinawa in the East China Sea. Somehow lost my way. Yet, it is ALL my way, it is ALL my path, even the falling off the path is the path. And i will not feel like i've failed or slid backwards. it is all as it should be and it is not my place to ask why, why i was shown or given such a natural light then, that has only proceeded to recede, to get cloudier and darker as the years go by. All i know is that it is all part of a process. some process that is meant to unfold for me.
Anyhow, back to india....
Now that i am here in India again, this seems to be the question: If we are all one, and there is no separation, as yoga philosophy portends, then having a beer is just as wholesome as say... drinking a warm milk. If it is all one, all the same, then there is no difference between meditating or watching a soap opera on daytime t.v. .... right? except there IS a difference. there is. When i meditate, i feel distinctly different, better, than after i watch a soap opera for example. (I don't watch any soap operas, this is just a totally random example) and... When I go for a walk in nature next to a body of water, I feel distinctly better than if I..... watch a scary, gory movie. So there IS a difference.
So maybe i'm barking up the wrong tree, maybe the meditation is in every moment, every moment of awareness, regardless of what you are doing, whether you are meditating on a silk cushion or cleaning the toilet on your hands and knees. The buddhists say its the same. One is not qualitatively superior of an action than the other.
It seems to me that... although I see my teacher's yoga classes work miracles on me, healing my emotions, healing my body and i see the benefits of much of the yoga asana and breathwork i've done, I am still not totally sure that it is a superior action from cleaning the toilet on your hands and knees. I mean, physically speaking, toilet cleaning can be an asana, if done with mindfulness, you can even syncronize your breath with the scrubbing motions as you do it to increase the benefits. As you lean forward with each breath you are gently squeezing and compressing your internal organs which is exactly what we do in yoga class that gives our organs so much benefit and detoxification. PLUS you get the added benefit of having the resulting toilet clean and if you clean someone ELSE's toilet then you get the additional added satisfaction of having served them, helped them, in some small way. see what i'm getting at?
so I guess what I am asking is.... it doesn't seem right to me, to lean AWAY from the things we perceive to be bad or unpleasant in life. I mean, I know in the ashram and in yoga philosophy we are taught to remove ourselves from society a little or to withdraw our senses and attachements to the material world, in order to find the quietude necessary to explore the depths of what lies inside ourselves, in order to KNOW ourselves, but once we do that, once we explore that, then shouldn't it make no difference at all if we spend all day out in the noisy street, talking to all sorts of people, exposing ourselves to all sorts of impure food and impure people, inside, we remain untouched by these outer influences, ultimately. like the lotus flower that blooms out of the mud but is untouched, unmuddied, unsullied by the mud from which it springs. That is the philosophy. So I guess its true.
I just, i watch all these yoga teachers in training at the ashram right now, and i know that was once me, too, the teacher in training, following all the rules, doing what my teacher said, and at first it seemed like the rules were stupid and there was no reason for them, i thought i knew better, and even now i watch the teacher trainees in their program right now and i wonder.... how do they/we survive on our own, when there is no one to tell us what to do, when to eat, what to eat, when to sleep, where to go?
Ultimately we have to be in charge of those things. And still maintain this .... "awareness", that seems to only come from sheltering one's self and not being too prone to distractions and entertainments that we save no time for silence or aloneness and contemplation in our lives.
now i have totally lost my point. i am not sure if there even was one.
just that some part of me intuitively feels that we can't push away all the supposed "evils" in the world: the apple martinis (notice how that one is at the top of my list, haha! ), the.... whatever YOUR equivalent to apple martinis is, the chocolate bars, the bag of chips, the cigarette, whatever your vice, whatever your guilty pleasure. To make it "bad" and struggle against it only increases its power. when someone tells me i can't have an apply turnover, by gosh, that is the only thing i can think about after that. This goes for the difficult emotions and life experiences as well. We go through life trying to increase our pleasure and decrease our discomfort, reduce our pain. We live in a state of constant tension about this: avoiding pain, trying to hold on to and chase pleasant sensations or experiences, when life is clearly overflowing with plenty of both, regardless of what we do to try to control it in our favour.
So the answer must, MUST lay in being rather equanimous or without preference for either the pleasant experiences/sensations or the unpleasant ones. Because we can't change it. People still die, we still lose our jobs, we get divorces. LIFE HAPPENS, regardless of what our point of view about it is, so why not be equanimous about it and then truly enjoy the freedom in THAT, rather than living in the suffering and fear of life changing for the worse. In the stock market of life there will be peaks and valleys, spikes and crashes. Life by its very nature is this way, is it not?
Being equanimous means that I am not constantly living in tension and dread of something bad befalling myself or someone i love. I am not constantly leaning away from life's discomforts and unpleasantness, pushing it away from me while simultaneously trying to cultivate more pleasure, more fun, more favourable circumstances. constant state of tension in doing this. striving.
I know, so deep thoughts today, right?
well what are we gonna do?
if you have any thoughts on the matter, I would love to hear them. Please feel free to comment.
love you all,
miss you all (especially since you are there and I am here, haha)
internet banking is not cooperating so... i'm drinking a ginger beer (as close as i'm gonna get to getting the real thing, not that i drink beer in canada, but one gets all sorts of strange cravings as soon as you know you can't HAVE something, aaaah, human nature).
Today I have an admission to make, i've kind of got the blues today. Don't know what my problem is exactly, but i.....
i dunno, you just have those days where... you wonder what its all for.
Now itunes wants to download an update so... again, banking is stalled out.
I know it's self-indulgent but I have this terrible case of wanting what i don't or can't have in any given moment, yearning for that which is not right in front of me, idealizing or romanticizing some experience or place that is not my current experience or place, while grossly overlooking the beauty and perfection of the moment and the place that lays right in front of me at this moment. In yoga philosophy, Stephen Cope calls this "samvega" in sanskrit. A constant dissatisfaction with life or a life only considered satisfying when a certain set of conditions or circumstances are in place (ie. found the right mate, married them, have two perfectly behaved children in a house with a view of which the property value goes up 20% each year, etc. etc.)
Currently this finds me dreaming about the sandy warm beaches of Goa in the south of India (palm trees, soft sound of the waves and fresh coconut curries included....where we will be in 3 weeks) while I huddle under layers of wool in my icy room this morning in rishikesh.
The People of India seem to have an infinite capacity to just BE where they are and appreciate the moment, without thinking it would be better sometime, some place off in the future. Maybe a little, but nothing like what I have going on.
Take for example here, india: its not the same as before. I didn't expect it to be the same but... i was on a mission before, i was searching for something, and i found it last time.
Now i don't know what i am searching for. if anything.
not searching for anything this time. don't get me wrong (marie seminuk's favourite expression (sorry about the spelling of your last name there marie) the yoga classes are great, its all great, its just.... last time i was really seeking to dig deep you know? i was so focussed, i wanted to see how deep i could go with my practice, i spent weeks in total silence, for 8 months i tried to follow the rules of the old yogis,(Swami Radha Sivananda spent only 6 months [i think, or was it only TWO?] with her teacher, Swami Sivananda, and she came back and started her own ashram after that!) to experiment and see whether there really was anything to this yoga philosophy, and not just the asanas of course, but the lifestyle, the belief system that the ancients portended would bring humankind great spiritual wealth, peace and happiness, and.... it did. It did work. The more effort and sincerity i poured into my practice, meditating, being of service, studying, eating all the right foods, cleansing, following as much as i could the yogic and ayurvedic lifestyle, the better i felt, the happier, more peaceful, balanced and fulfilled i got. When I returned home from India last time I felt like I was glowing from the inside out. I was amazed at the clarity and calm.
But then what happens when you can't sustain that level of practice, of austerity? How do you go back? Or the question I guess is... not how do you go back, but how do you sustain that level of intensity of practice?
I began to feel this tension building within myself as I watched my level of happiness and peace be totally dependent upon the intensity of my sadhana (spiritual practice). Without sustaining and even increasing my level of spiritual practice, I was unable to sustain the feeling of peace and wellbeing, so there was this constant tension in me between making good choices vs. bad ones. It seemed like... the more I knew how good the "good" choices made me feel, the harder it became to choose them.
I feel like I have been actually backsliding ever since I was 25 or 26 years old.
When I was 25 or 26, somewhere around there, i peaked. I stumbled across yoga when I was 23 and slowly began to practice a little more, a little more, asana and meditation only, and a little pranayama. Actually, some of the pranayama came naturally out of the asana work I was doing. Its a long story really, but I realize now, looking back, that i peaked at 25/26. Because of my natural inclination, my practice grew to be up to 5 hours or MORE each day, of yoga and meditation. Now that is a lot! I was so blissed out. I wanted everyonen I knew to feel as good as I did. I knew so little then about what was happening to me. i was just going with what i was feeling. I didn't even have a teacher, other than myself. I learned from a book. It just fell into me. Looking back to then, I didn't drink alcohol, we had a big garden in the backyard in clearwater, i was a vegetarian, i used to go out to the garden with a colander and a knife and cut what we would eat for the night, and then i would cook it and we would have it in our stomachs within the hour of it coming out of the ground. so much Prana in the food. I felt more amazing then than i had ever felt in my life. I would say that my journey of yoga peaked out then. Certain "powers" were even developing in me as a result of my "experiment", but i was naive, i didn't even know what i was doing or what i was happening, without a teacher to guide me. It was all progressing and happening so naturally. i was just experimenting, playing around, and my body told me what to do.
Then i went to Japan to teach english and pay off my student loan and it all went downhill from there. I stopped practicing, i began partying again in Tokyo, drinking alcohol as everyone else was too, I became lonely, lost on the beautiful island of Okinawa in the East China Sea. Somehow lost my way. Yet, it is ALL my way, it is ALL my path, even the falling off the path is the path. And i will not feel like i've failed or slid backwards. it is all as it should be and it is not my place to ask why, why i was shown or given such a natural light then, that has only proceeded to recede, to get cloudier and darker as the years go by. All i know is that it is all part of a process. some process that is meant to unfold for me.
Anyhow, back to india....
Now that i am here in India again, this seems to be the question: If we are all one, and there is no separation, as yoga philosophy portends, then having a beer is just as wholesome as say... drinking a warm milk. If it is all one, all the same, then there is no difference between meditating or watching a soap opera on daytime t.v. .... right? except there IS a difference. there is. When i meditate, i feel distinctly different, better, than after i watch a soap opera for example. (I don't watch any soap operas, this is just a totally random example) and... When I go for a walk in nature next to a body of water, I feel distinctly better than if I..... watch a scary, gory movie. So there IS a difference.
So maybe i'm barking up the wrong tree, maybe the meditation is in every moment, every moment of awareness, regardless of what you are doing, whether you are meditating on a silk cushion or cleaning the toilet on your hands and knees. The buddhists say its the same. One is not qualitatively superior of an action than the other.
It seems to me that... although I see my teacher's yoga classes work miracles on me, healing my emotions, healing my body and i see the benefits of much of the yoga asana and breathwork i've done, I am still not totally sure that it is a superior action from cleaning the toilet on your hands and knees. I mean, physically speaking, toilet cleaning can be an asana, if done with mindfulness, you can even syncronize your breath with the scrubbing motions as you do it to increase the benefits. As you lean forward with each breath you are gently squeezing and compressing your internal organs which is exactly what we do in yoga class that gives our organs so much benefit and detoxification. PLUS you get the added benefit of having the resulting toilet clean and if you clean someone ELSE's toilet then you get the additional added satisfaction of having served them, helped them, in some small way. see what i'm getting at?
so I guess what I am asking is.... it doesn't seem right to me, to lean AWAY from the things we perceive to be bad or unpleasant in life. I mean, I know in the ashram and in yoga philosophy we are taught to remove ourselves from society a little or to withdraw our senses and attachements to the material world, in order to find the quietude necessary to explore the depths of what lies inside ourselves, in order to KNOW ourselves, but once we do that, once we explore that, then shouldn't it make no difference at all if we spend all day out in the noisy street, talking to all sorts of people, exposing ourselves to all sorts of impure food and impure people, inside, we remain untouched by these outer influences, ultimately. like the lotus flower that blooms out of the mud but is untouched, unmuddied, unsullied by the mud from which it springs. That is the philosophy. So I guess its true.
I just, i watch all these yoga teachers in training at the ashram right now, and i know that was once me, too, the teacher in training, following all the rules, doing what my teacher said, and at first it seemed like the rules were stupid and there was no reason for them, i thought i knew better, and even now i watch the teacher trainees in their program right now and i wonder.... how do they/we survive on our own, when there is no one to tell us what to do, when to eat, what to eat, when to sleep, where to go?
Ultimately we have to be in charge of those things. And still maintain this .... "awareness", that seems to only come from sheltering one's self and not being too prone to distractions and entertainments that we save no time for silence or aloneness and contemplation in our lives.
now i have totally lost my point. i am not sure if there even was one.
just that some part of me intuitively feels that we can't push away all the supposed "evils" in the world: the apple martinis (notice how that one is at the top of my list, haha! ), the.... whatever YOUR equivalent to apple martinis is, the chocolate bars, the bag of chips, the cigarette, whatever your vice, whatever your guilty pleasure. To make it "bad" and struggle against it only increases its power. when someone tells me i can't have an apply turnover, by gosh, that is the only thing i can think about after that. This goes for the difficult emotions and life experiences as well. We go through life trying to increase our pleasure and decrease our discomfort, reduce our pain. We live in a state of constant tension about this: avoiding pain, trying to hold on to and chase pleasant sensations or experiences, when life is clearly overflowing with plenty of both, regardless of what we do to try to control it in our favour.
So the answer must, MUST lay in being rather equanimous or without preference for either the pleasant experiences/sensations or the unpleasant ones. Because we can't change it. People still die, we still lose our jobs, we get divorces. LIFE HAPPENS, regardless of what our point of view about it is, so why not be equanimous about it and then truly enjoy the freedom in THAT, rather than living in the suffering and fear of life changing for the worse. In the stock market of life there will be peaks and valleys, spikes and crashes. Life by its very nature is this way, is it not?
Being equanimous means that I am not constantly living in tension and dread of something bad befalling myself or someone i love. I am not constantly leaning away from life's discomforts and unpleasantness, pushing it away from me while simultaneously trying to cultivate more pleasure, more fun, more favourable circumstances. constant state of tension in doing this. striving.
I know, so deep thoughts today, right?
well what are we gonna do?
if you have any thoughts on the matter, I would love to hear them. Please feel free to comment.
love you all,
miss you all (especially since you are there and I am here, haha)
Friday, November 26, 2010
hi
i realize my posts haven't been overly "spiritual" in nature. That's because not a lot is going on. Things at the ashram are the same, day in and day out. wake up at 4 or 5, yoga class at 6. this week Vishwa has been teaching all kundalini style yoga. Admittedly I haven't had a lot time with him because he has his hands full with this training course until december 10 and usually he has his wife with him here too to help run the course, but this time she is in canada with their newborn so.... he's occupied.
I think he did take the time to cure me of my snoring though. Apparently I'm snoring.... loudly. I don't know why but ever since i moved back into the ashram with two new roommates and mom stayed on her own in a guest house, i have been snoring. last night was the first night that i didn't. one roommate sleeps right through it, the other doesn't, and i felt absolutely terrible that she was losing sleep, so ... i spoke to my teacher, Vishwa about it, we laughed and had a good giggle that my snoring was keeping up my roommates, so he said he would do something about it. he is in charge of everything and even though he has a full support team of office staff, cleaners and cooks, he is still the go to guy for everything and no one barely makes a move or a decision without him telling them what to do. so if you want anything really done about anything, you gotta tell him and then he gives the appropriate orders. it is really quite interesting.
we joked that if there was another snorer in the ashram somewhere, that i could sleep with them/. the problem is that we are full. i took the last bed, so there is nowhere for me to move to, and no way to give me my own room. but since last night i didn't snore, i am suspicious that he may have had a hand in that. which is fine. if he wants to solve the problem by curing my snoring then... go for it buddy, i am grateful, and my french roommate is grateful as well.
i know you must think i'm off my rocker for thinking this,
but there have been other "incidences" involving Vishwa that have been just a little too coincidental to be racked up to coincidence, if you know what i mean.
I have had spiritual guides here (Babas) tell me that that night they would appear in my dream, and they did it. power of suggestion? perhaps. Its only far fetched in "our" world, our western world of rational thought and scientific proof.
anyhow,
things are run of the mill at the ashram otherwise. my roommates are clarance and norma, from france and mexico city respectively. yoga classes are good, food is fine, doing lots of laundry by hand.
and life goes on.
sending all my love
ang
I think he did take the time to cure me of my snoring though. Apparently I'm snoring.... loudly. I don't know why but ever since i moved back into the ashram with two new roommates and mom stayed on her own in a guest house, i have been snoring. last night was the first night that i didn't. one roommate sleeps right through it, the other doesn't, and i felt absolutely terrible that she was losing sleep, so ... i spoke to my teacher, Vishwa about it, we laughed and had a good giggle that my snoring was keeping up my roommates, so he said he would do something about it. he is in charge of everything and even though he has a full support team of office staff, cleaners and cooks, he is still the go to guy for everything and no one barely makes a move or a decision without him telling them what to do. so if you want anything really done about anything, you gotta tell him and then he gives the appropriate orders. it is really quite interesting.
we joked that if there was another snorer in the ashram somewhere, that i could sleep with them/. the problem is that we are full. i took the last bed, so there is nowhere for me to move to, and no way to give me my own room. but since last night i didn't snore, i am suspicious that he may have had a hand in that. which is fine. if he wants to solve the problem by curing my snoring then... go for it buddy, i am grateful, and my french roommate is grateful as well.
i know you must think i'm off my rocker for thinking this,
but there have been other "incidences" involving Vishwa that have been just a little too coincidental to be racked up to coincidence, if you know what i mean.
I have had spiritual guides here (Babas) tell me that that night they would appear in my dream, and they did it. power of suggestion? perhaps. Its only far fetched in "our" world, our western world of rational thought and scientific proof.
anyhow,
things are run of the mill at the ashram otherwise. my roommates are clarance and norma, from france and mexico city respectively. yoga classes are good, food is fine, doing lots of laundry by hand.
and life goes on.
sending all my love
ang
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
untoward tales of underwear
HA HA HA< And I thought I would have nothing to write about on this trip to India, thinking, so mistakenly, that I must have seen everything, done everything the first time. How wrong I was.
My original opening for this posting was going to be a "plea". A desperate plea for assistance, to all of you, to send me some UNDERWEAR! please.
You see, this is the story: From all the oil massages (rather more like oil "baths") of the panchkarma program we just completed, many pairs of underthings were virtually ruined as you cannot wash the oil stain or the herbed oil smell out of these garments.
I knew the whole underpants thing was an issue in India from my first trip when I attempted to buy a simple tank top undershirt type thing. The underclothes issue is just like the shoes issue here.... can't find any that work. They are just too uncomfortable, too poorly made or too ugly. Call me vain but shoes and underwear are the two things I do not skimp on when packing to come here.
So.
Mom and I were both in this kind of situation with the underpants, so she ventured down to the market yesterday and came back with these "things". Four pairs that you can't try on because there is no change room she came back with. Well be both try them on when she gets them home and its like.... imagine for a moment the MOST uncomfortable pair of underpants you have ever put on before in your life. It was like that! So they are basically useless. maybe to polish the bathroom floor or something like that.
So today marked another first for me.... I went to the market, I saw the places, the stalls in the street, the streetside shops from where she bought the ill-fitting ones, I passed them by and I thought to myself: what are these women wearing under their sarees then? what? Cause I don't care HOW tough you are, they are NOT wearing these super duper uncomfy grey jobbies next to their delicate skin.
Then i saw it. The "lingerie" shop. (There are no department stores per se in this part of the country as far as I know). So this was an India "first" for me today... My first trip to an Indian lingerie shop.
So first of all, the shop is staffed entirely by men. There are no fewer than 5 of them, of varying ages. Trying to appear as undaunted as possible when I walk in, all 10 eyes turn towards me... I decide to just take the bull by the horns (so to speak) and announce "ok, who speaks the best English?". Because can you imagine buying panties, in India, from a team of all male sales clerks?
Before continuing, I must tell you that this is a culture, in case you are unawares, where the women bath in the river fully clothed while men are free to urinate in the streets, just with their backs turned to you. Not that I am judging. It is what it is. I just want you to know that it is a very conservative country when it comes to sexuality, to undergarments, to public displays of affection or other such indiscretions. It is not better or worse necessarily, than our culture in some respects, it is simply different. If one wanted to qualify it, I would have to say that there are positive things and not so positive things in both our cultures, and vast differences to go with them.
Men and women are happily segregated in many circumstances here and the system works quite nicely. That is why I was so shocked to find that I was about to have this experience of discussing with and purchasing my delicates from a handful of Indian males. I am not even barely comfortable buying underwear from a gay male clerk in Canada, for the simple fact that I am just wondering how he can possibly know the intricacies of the what we are dealing with here?
That reminds me of a story where I actually did have to buy a bikini, in Kamloops no less, with a gay male clerk's assistance, but that is another story and i will digress if i tell it. so....
Sticking to india... it was hilarious. It was just one of those priceless moments I love about the silly place.
I couldn't help myself from then exclaiming, since I was the only customer in the store "how is it that it is all men working in a store that sells women's underthings?!". To which one of the older gentlemen rationally replied "ma'am, anything can happen in India". Well i could not argue with that.
Ok, so let's get down to business. When buying products in India: shawls, rugs, shirts, bedsheets or scarves, it is customary for the shopkeeper to spread out, with a flourish, every style, fabric, or colour variation that you show the slightest passing interest in, for your scrutiny and/or perusal. When buying underwear, the process differs not. As I pointed to displays and colours to one man, he would say something to another man at the other corner of the store who would then pull boxes out and toss them across the store to other man. He would then open each box, inside were other boxes, and he would open those ones too and out would come...... the panty. Every panty was granny style. Varying colours and designs, but every style was granny. Now i have nothing against them in principle, I just personally find them not very comfortable, too much fabric. But they were soft and the elastic was soft and well....I guess I don't need to turn this into a lesson on how to buy decent panties. I did look at quite a few and tried to guess at the size that would be most comfortable, without being over-large. I kept thinking: wow, is THIS what everyone is wearing under their beautiful sarees and salwar kameez? granny panties? There were a couple of sexier varieties there, but they were lots more expensive and didn't look all that well-made or comfortable. Plus, what am i gonna do with sexy panties way over here in India?
Ok, waaaay too much information. Again, I apologize. I REALLy apologize. Just being real here.
I guess as I am getting older each year, I don't have quite so many taboo subjects in my repetoire any more. Whatever. Its life. We are human and we all have to wear underwear.
So that is pretty much the end of my Indian underwear story. I made my decision, they wrapped them discretely in brown paper as they assured me that the "BODY CARE" brand of underthings were the top quality in India. And then I left. Mission accomplished.
And that is the story of my trip to the lingerie store in Rishikesh.
I brought them home. I tried them on. They'll do.
I'm sure you are so relieved to know that.
HAHAHAA.
ok well folks,
that's it for real news from Rishikesh.
hope you are all enjoying that snow we got, and the cold weather. What to say? Just remember, its all the same in the end so it make no difference to have one preference or another, snow or no snow, cold or no cold.
I bought purple leg warmers and orange mittens to keep me warm here cause its cold here too, and no central heating and no fireplaces. maybe it gets down to plus 5 at night here in dec. jan, so that is where we are heading, which is why WE are heading south december 21st. Spicejet airlines will take us in 2.5hrs what would take us 38hrs on the train. We will fly there (Goa) and save that deliciously long train ride for the trip back to delhi at the end of Jan. (just a smattering of sarcasm there)
ok,
really gotta fly now.
have a wedding to attend (or maybe its just the reception, i wasn't clear) and i still have to pick my clothes up from the tailors.
love you all,
doing my best to keep you posted.
peace.
My original opening for this posting was going to be a "plea". A desperate plea for assistance, to all of you, to send me some UNDERWEAR! please.
You see, this is the story: From all the oil massages (rather more like oil "baths") of the panchkarma program we just completed, many pairs of underthings were virtually ruined as you cannot wash the oil stain or the herbed oil smell out of these garments.
I knew the whole underpants thing was an issue in India from my first trip when I attempted to buy a simple tank top undershirt type thing. The underclothes issue is just like the shoes issue here.... can't find any that work. They are just too uncomfortable, too poorly made or too ugly. Call me vain but shoes and underwear are the two things I do not skimp on when packing to come here.
So.
Mom and I were both in this kind of situation with the underpants, so she ventured down to the market yesterday and came back with these "things". Four pairs that you can't try on because there is no change room she came back with. Well be both try them on when she gets them home and its like.... imagine for a moment the MOST uncomfortable pair of underpants you have ever put on before in your life. It was like that! So they are basically useless. maybe to polish the bathroom floor or something like that.
So today marked another first for me.... I went to the market, I saw the places, the stalls in the street, the streetside shops from where she bought the ill-fitting ones, I passed them by and I thought to myself: what are these women wearing under their sarees then? what? Cause I don't care HOW tough you are, they are NOT wearing these super duper uncomfy grey jobbies next to their delicate skin.
Then i saw it. The "lingerie" shop. (There are no department stores per se in this part of the country as far as I know). So this was an India "first" for me today... My first trip to an Indian lingerie shop.
So first of all, the shop is staffed entirely by men. There are no fewer than 5 of them, of varying ages. Trying to appear as undaunted as possible when I walk in, all 10 eyes turn towards me... I decide to just take the bull by the horns (so to speak) and announce "ok, who speaks the best English?". Because can you imagine buying panties, in India, from a team of all male sales clerks?
Before continuing, I must tell you that this is a culture, in case you are unawares, where the women bath in the river fully clothed while men are free to urinate in the streets, just with their backs turned to you. Not that I am judging. It is what it is. I just want you to know that it is a very conservative country when it comes to sexuality, to undergarments, to public displays of affection or other such indiscretions. It is not better or worse necessarily, than our culture in some respects, it is simply different. If one wanted to qualify it, I would have to say that there are positive things and not so positive things in both our cultures, and vast differences to go with them.
Men and women are happily segregated in many circumstances here and the system works quite nicely. That is why I was so shocked to find that I was about to have this experience of discussing with and purchasing my delicates from a handful of Indian males. I am not even barely comfortable buying underwear from a gay male clerk in Canada, for the simple fact that I am just wondering how he can possibly know the intricacies of the what we are dealing with here?
That reminds me of a story where I actually did have to buy a bikini, in Kamloops no less, with a gay male clerk's assistance, but that is another story and i will digress if i tell it. so....
Sticking to india... it was hilarious. It was just one of those priceless moments I love about the silly place.
I couldn't help myself from then exclaiming, since I was the only customer in the store "how is it that it is all men working in a store that sells women's underthings?!". To which one of the older gentlemen rationally replied "ma'am, anything can happen in India". Well i could not argue with that.
Ok, so let's get down to business. When buying products in India: shawls, rugs, shirts, bedsheets or scarves, it is customary for the shopkeeper to spread out, with a flourish, every style, fabric, or colour variation that you show the slightest passing interest in, for your scrutiny and/or perusal. When buying underwear, the process differs not. As I pointed to displays and colours to one man, he would say something to another man at the other corner of the store who would then pull boxes out and toss them across the store to other man. He would then open each box, inside were other boxes, and he would open those ones too and out would come...... the panty. Every panty was granny style. Varying colours and designs, but every style was granny. Now i have nothing against them in principle, I just personally find them not very comfortable, too much fabric. But they were soft and the elastic was soft and well....I guess I don't need to turn this into a lesson on how to buy decent panties. I did look at quite a few and tried to guess at the size that would be most comfortable, without being over-large. I kept thinking: wow, is THIS what everyone is wearing under their beautiful sarees and salwar kameez? granny panties? There were a couple of sexier varieties there, but they were lots more expensive and didn't look all that well-made or comfortable. Plus, what am i gonna do with sexy panties way over here in India?
Ok, waaaay too much information. Again, I apologize. I REALLy apologize. Just being real here.
I guess as I am getting older each year, I don't have quite so many taboo subjects in my repetoire any more. Whatever. Its life. We are human and we all have to wear underwear.
So that is pretty much the end of my Indian underwear story. I made my decision, they wrapped them discretely in brown paper as they assured me that the "BODY CARE" brand of underthings were the top quality in India. And then I left. Mission accomplished.
And that is the story of my trip to the lingerie store in Rishikesh.
I brought them home. I tried them on. They'll do.
I'm sure you are so relieved to know that.
HAHAHAA.
ok well folks,
that's it for real news from Rishikesh.
hope you are all enjoying that snow we got, and the cold weather. What to say? Just remember, its all the same in the end so it make no difference to have one preference or another, snow or no snow, cold or no cold.
I bought purple leg warmers and orange mittens to keep me warm here cause its cold here too, and no central heating and no fireplaces. maybe it gets down to plus 5 at night here in dec. jan, so that is where we are heading, which is why WE are heading south december 21st. Spicejet airlines will take us in 2.5hrs what would take us 38hrs on the train. We will fly there (Goa) and save that deliciously long train ride for the trip back to delhi at the end of Jan. (just a smattering of sarcasm there)
ok,
really gotta fly now.
have a wedding to attend (or maybe its just the reception, i wasn't clear) and i still have to pick my clothes up from the tailors.
love you all,
doing my best to keep you posted.
peace.
driving and my pathetic lack of Hindi
oh i know, i'm becoming a blogaholic now.
So first, some musings and pontifications. not so much deep questions, just a few thoughts.
1. why is it that..... i have logged almost 9 months in this here country and the word i most frequently and proudly use is "shubratri", which means "goodnight", and with what I deem to be flawless pronounciation, i might add. i am so proud of this, even though it is only one of 7 words i know in Hindi. I must do something about this and soon, learn more Hindi i mean.
the second random thought is:
Indians must navigate the streets, both while driving and while walking, in a similar way that a skier or snowboarder must navigate a densely populated tree run.... by focussing HARD on the spaces between the trees and not on the trees themselves, because as any tree boarder or tree skier knows, (and god help them, the tree skiers that is, they risk much more than a boarder does, being on two planks instead of one, leaving room for the ever-dreaded tree "straddle") if you focus on the tree, (or the obstacle you need to avoid) then THAT is the direction you become headed. If you focus on the tree, then your body goes towards the tree, however if you focus (optimistically) on the space between, then your body follows into that space. "Energy flows where attention goes" - a Huna principle.
The comparison came to me today as I, myself, navigated, as a person on foot, between a 3 personed moped and a semi-truck. Learning who has the right of way and what to do and which way to leap (successfully AND gracefully) at any given moment is KEY to survival in the art of Indian street navigation. There IS a hierarchy, and I am learning, a strange rank of priorities amongst the varied users of the road. There is the pedestrian, the dog, the monkey, the cow, the bicycle, the bicycle rickshaw, the bicycle propelled cart, the animal propelled cart (be it oxen, water buffalo, yak or mule), then there are the packs of construction mules, usually or 4 or 5, loaded with sand or river rocks and guided by their switch-carrying herder. Then of course, also using the road are the rickshaws, the cars, trucks, mopeds and motorcycles carrying anywhere from 1 to 4 passengers and occasionally a ladder or two.... hmmm, what else? busses, bigger trucks...
Anyhow, there is this whole hierarchy... and this list here is neither exhaustive nor in any order of priority. But somehow, I am intuitively learning where I fall in this hierarchy. The rules are not fast and hard, which is why I cannot articulate them here, but it IS interesting how I am intuitively learning when i need to stop and give way, when to lean in to someone (to make way), or when to step up to the curb or to higher ground, or right off the roadway altogether, and when I can just continue to walk in the middle of the road, even though I hear a honking vehicle approaching. I can't explain it, but somehow the system works.
And this morning...
I saw a mother, teaching her young teenage daughter to drive a moped. She had the daughter sitting right in front of her, but the mother was doing all the driving (and the requisite honking). The daughter was concentrating intently on the whole process and absorbing every cue, every nuance of the lesson.
I have noticed before, the level of concentration the drivers (most of them) give to the process of driving. It is like a game, except a deadly game, if they don't concentrate, many things can and will go wrong. I once saw a friend drive by on his motorbike as I passed the other way in a rickshaw. Neither of us was travelling very fast but even though I yelled his name so loud right at his face as we passed within inches of eachother, he never once turned or took his eyes off the road to look back. To do so could have been fatal to him or another. Total and utter concentration. Reminds me of a teenager playing an intense video game (or even some adults i know - and you KNOW who you are!), they can't take their eyes off the screen for a second and if you happen to walk between them and the t.v., they duck and dive their head around so as not to miss a thing.
well, that's it.
Tales, tails, tells
kisses and kisses and more kisses to all of you!
So first, some musings and pontifications. not so much deep questions, just a few thoughts.
1. why is it that..... i have logged almost 9 months in this here country and the word i most frequently and proudly use is "shubratri", which means "goodnight", and with what I deem to be flawless pronounciation, i might add. i am so proud of this, even though it is only one of 7 words i know in Hindi. I must do something about this and soon, learn more Hindi i mean.
the second random thought is:
Indians must navigate the streets, both while driving and while walking, in a similar way that a skier or snowboarder must navigate a densely populated tree run.... by focussing HARD on the spaces between the trees and not on the trees themselves, because as any tree boarder or tree skier knows, (and god help them, the tree skiers that is, they risk much more than a boarder does, being on two planks instead of one, leaving room for the ever-dreaded tree "straddle") if you focus on the tree, (or the obstacle you need to avoid) then THAT is the direction you become headed. If you focus on the tree, then your body goes towards the tree, however if you focus (optimistically) on the space between, then your body follows into that space. "Energy flows where attention goes" - a Huna principle.
The comparison came to me today as I, myself, navigated, as a person on foot, between a 3 personed moped and a semi-truck. Learning who has the right of way and what to do and which way to leap (successfully AND gracefully) at any given moment is KEY to survival in the art of Indian street navigation. There IS a hierarchy, and I am learning, a strange rank of priorities amongst the varied users of the road. There is the pedestrian, the dog, the monkey, the cow, the bicycle, the bicycle rickshaw, the bicycle propelled cart, the animal propelled cart (be it oxen, water buffalo, yak or mule), then there are the packs of construction mules, usually or 4 or 5, loaded with sand or river rocks and guided by their switch-carrying herder. Then of course, also using the road are the rickshaws, the cars, trucks, mopeds and motorcycles carrying anywhere from 1 to 4 passengers and occasionally a ladder or two.... hmmm, what else? busses, bigger trucks...
Anyhow, there is this whole hierarchy... and this list here is neither exhaustive nor in any order of priority. But somehow, I am intuitively learning where I fall in this hierarchy. The rules are not fast and hard, which is why I cannot articulate them here, but it IS interesting how I am intuitively learning when i need to stop and give way, when to lean in to someone (to make way), or when to step up to the curb or to higher ground, or right off the roadway altogether, and when I can just continue to walk in the middle of the road, even though I hear a honking vehicle approaching. I can't explain it, but somehow the system works.
And this morning...
I saw a mother, teaching her young teenage daughter to drive a moped. She had the daughter sitting right in front of her, but the mother was doing all the driving (and the requisite honking). The daughter was concentrating intently on the whole process and absorbing every cue, every nuance of the lesson.
I have noticed before, the level of concentration the drivers (most of them) give to the process of driving. It is like a game, except a deadly game, if they don't concentrate, many things can and will go wrong. I once saw a friend drive by on his motorbike as I passed the other way in a rickshaw. Neither of us was travelling very fast but even though I yelled his name so loud right at his face as we passed within inches of eachother, he never once turned or took his eyes off the road to look back. To do so could have been fatal to him or another. Total and utter concentration. Reminds me of a teenager playing an intense video game (or even some adults i know - and you KNOW who you are!), they can't take their eyes off the screen for a second and if you happen to walk between them and the t.v., they duck and dive their head around so as not to miss a thing.
well, that's it.
Tales, tails, tells
kisses and kisses and more kisses to all of you!
Sunday, November 21, 2010
"Emotionally Yours"
Starting to feel better.... better and better. What do I mean by that you ask? Well, stronger, cleaner, more clear headed, more breath, more lifeforce in my body, more YOUTH.... happier. The list goes on. You don't realize how good you DON'T feel until you start to feel really good, and THEN you realize, you were just a little bit sick before.
Still don't know what I mean?
Well,
maybe SOME of you wake up in the morning, bound out of bed with a big smile, full of energy, deeply rested, excited, gleeful even, to be alive, with nary an ache nor a pain in sight, no stiffness, full and deep and relaxed with our breath, no congestion, no phlegm, no negative thoughts, no worries, no stresses.... MAYBE.... SOME of you. But chances are.... NOT! Most of us are waking up with some or many of these afflictions to our health and wellbeing.
(small aside here, speaking of wellbeing.... I just got bit by a really fat mosquito, hope it is not a malarial one, haha)
So, what the heck am i getting at here you are wondering?
Well, what I am getting at is THIS:
actually, our normal, natural, balanced state of being as a human being on this earth is... to wake up bounding out of bed with a big smile, full of energy, deeply rested, excited, gleeful even, to be alive, with nary an ache nor a pain in sight, no stiffness, full and deep and relaxed with our breath, no congestion, no phlegm, no negative thoughts, no worries, no stresses....and to WAKE UP spiritually, meaning: waking up to the fact that we are more spiritual in nature than material flesh and bones and, in that realization, we will find our happiness. This is our birthright, this is our full potential as human beings. If this is not the case, then we owe it to ourselves to figure out why, why do we not? (you know, barring a death in the family or some other such event, then it is natural to grieve or feel sadness for a period of time, until the feeling passes).
That is not to say that there are not stresses in life, worries, negative thoughts, yadda yadda... there are. That is life. They are there, of course, part of life, but just like a cloud passing through a big blue sky, our perspective CAN be that it is only a cloud passing through, and we are the perfect blue sky, we are not the cloud.
Wow. You must all be thinking i'm just a weirdo by now. I promise you, this is all just coming from me feeling better and better, day by day, cleaner. The healthy eating, no meat, the no alcohol, the cleansing processes of the panchkarma and then the yoga classes with my teacher, and the kindness and love of the Indian people I talk with every day ... it is all combining to make a very powerful tonic for what ails me in mind, body and spirit.
And I mean... I was in relatively good health before I left for India this time. You know, I have no major healthy problems, yet. The yoga practice keeps disease pretty much at bay, but I will not lie, I did have my indulgences. Allowed my palate to dictate my food choices way too often. Gave in to the temptation of a glass of wine from time to time. I do find it challenging to maintain a lifestyle that is so counter to the mainstream of whatever culture I am currently living in. Ever the chameleon, when I am in Rome, I almost always do what the Romans do. Don't go jumping off any bridges, cause I might follow. (metaphorically speaking, of course).
I guess that is one of the reasons I definately come to India, it is because the lifestyle of the culture here inherently supports health and wellbeing so much more than in the West in these modern times, I find. This is my opinion only.
And I know, I know.... no one is forcing the meat down my throat or pouring the wine down my gullet, it is my choice, but somehow I struggle to make that choice when I am in Canada, surrounded by it.
Hmmm, food for thought. (Huuuuuge apology for that pun).
Perhaps slowly slowly, bit by bit, my resolve will grow stronger with time. Not just my resolve or willpower, but more rather... I think it will go something like this: as I begin more and more to touch and feel ongoingly and sustainably the powerful benefits of the full yogic and ayurvedic lifestyle, the lure of intoxicants and harmful foods will simply drop away. I'll just lose interest. Does anyone relate to what I am talking about?
As I heal on all levels, the desires and cravings will just naturally fall away. Essentially, I will "grow up". haha. And I think that this is the only way. Because anything else is just repression. Anything else and it is just you, constantly fighting with yourself, constant tension as you fight to do what you know is right, yet still give way to what you know is "bad", when really, as many of you know, there is no "good" and "bad" and this fighting with yourself... is exhausting. Takes so much energy! At the end of the day... you cannot push the river.
And in my tradition or training in yoga, in the broader sense of the word yoga, you cannot teach yoga or ayurveda, without yourself accepting and adopting the lifestyle as completely as you can. You absolutely must practice what you preach. So this is the dilemma. That being said, I can still see how a teacher can be of tremendous benefit to many people even if she is not perfectly pure, perfectly never touching a drop of wine ever, never enjoying a skewer of souvlaki from time to time, it only means that the power of her ability to hold energy for other people is lessened. Her/his ability to be of service to others is diminished in direct correlation to the degree of impurities he or she puts in their body. Again, all my opinion. Feel free to disagree.
Waaaaay too philosophical for you? I apologize for that. But these are my musings for today.
One more funny though... I saw a T-shirt yesterday that said: I "heart" Job Offers.
Only in India.
oh, and another funny: whilst researching trains, planes and automobiles to get us to Goa during the busiest season of the year (don't ask), I came across this motto for an airline: Sahara Airlines - "Emotionally Yours". Again, only in India. What a slogan. An attest to the heartfeltness of the Indian culture.
On the front of the menu of the Madras Cafe, one of my favourite haunts in Rishikesh, it reads: "We serve relationships". Hinglish. Indian English. I love India.
Still don't know what I mean?
Well,
maybe SOME of you wake up in the morning, bound out of bed with a big smile, full of energy, deeply rested, excited, gleeful even, to be alive, with nary an ache nor a pain in sight, no stiffness, full and deep and relaxed with our breath, no congestion, no phlegm, no negative thoughts, no worries, no stresses.... MAYBE.... SOME of you. But chances are.... NOT! Most of us are waking up with some or many of these afflictions to our health and wellbeing.
(small aside here, speaking of wellbeing.... I just got bit by a really fat mosquito, hope it is not a malarial one, haha)
So, what the heck am i getting at here you are wondering?
Well, what I am getting at is THIS:
actually, our normal, natural, balanced state of being as a human being on this earth is... to wake up bounding out of bed with a big smile, full of energy, deeply rested, excited, gleeful even, to be alive, with nary an ache nor a pain in sight, no stiffness, full and deep and relaxed with our breath, no congestion, no phlegm, no negative thoughts, no worries, no stresses....and to WAKE UP spiritually, meaning: waking up to the fact that we are more spiritual in nature than material flesh and bones and, in that realization, we will find our happiness. This is our birthright, this is our full potential as human beings. If this is not the case, then we owe it to ourselves to figure out why, why do we not? (you know, barring a death in the family or some other such event, then it is natural to grieve or feel sadness for a period of time, until the feeling passes).
That is not to say that there are not stresses in life, worries, negative thoughts, yadda yadda... there are. That is life. They are there, of course, part of life, but just like a cloud passing through a big blue sky, our perspective CAN be that it is only a cloud passing through, and we are the perfect blue sky, we are not the cloud.
Wow. You must all be thinking i'm just a weirdo by now. I promise you, this is all just coming from me feeling better and better, day by day, cleaner. The healthy eating, no meat, the no alcohol, the cleansing processes of the panchkarma and then the yoga classes with my teacher, and the kindness and love of the Indian people I talk with every day ... it is all combining to make a very powerful tonic for what ails me in mind, body and spirit.
And I mean... I was in relatively good health before I left for India this time. You know, I have no major healthy problems, yet. The yoga practice keeps disease pretty much at bay, but I will not lie, I did have my indulgences. Allowed my palate to dictate my food choices way too often. Gave in to the temptation of a glass of wine from time to time. I do find it challenging to maintain a lifestyle that is so counter to the mainstream of whatever culture I am currently living in. Ever the chameleon, when I am in Rome, I almost always do what the Romans do. Don't go jumping off any bridges, cause I might follow. (metaphorically speaking, of course).
I guess that is one of the reasons I definately come to India, it is because the lifestyle of the culture here inherently supports health and wellbeing so much more than in the West in these modern times, I find. This is my opinion only.
And I know, I know.... no one is forcing the meat down my throat or pouring the wine down my gullet, it is my choice, but somehow I struggle to make that choice when I am in Canada, surrounded by it.
Hmmm, food for thought. (Huuuuuge apology for that pun).
Perhaps slowly slowly, bit by bit, my resolve will grow stronger with time. Not just my resolve or willpower, but more rather... I think it will go something like this: as I begin more and more to touch and feel ongoingly and sustainably the powerful benefits of the full yogic and ayurvedic lifestyle, the lure of intoxicants and harmful foods will simply drop away. I'll just lose interest. Does anyone relate to what I am talking about?
As I heal on all levels, the desires and cravings will just naturally fall away. Essentially, I will "grow up". haha. And I think that this is the only way. Because anything else is just repression. Anything else and it is just you, constantly fighting with yourself, constant tension as you fight to do what you know is right, yet still give way to what you know is "bad", when really, as many of you know, there is no "good" and "bad" and this fighting with yourself... is exhausting. Takes so much energy! At the end of the day... you cannot push the river.
And in my tradition or training in yoga, in the broader sense of the word yoga, you cannot teach yoga or ayurveda, without yourself accepting and adopting the lifestyle as completely as you can. You absolutely must practice what you preach. So this is the dilemma. That being said, I can still see how a teacher can be of tremendous benefit to many people even if she is not perfectly pure, perfectly never touching a drop of wine ever, never enjoying a skewer of souvlaki from time to time, it only means that the power of her ability to hold energy for other people is lessened. Her/his ability to be of service to others is diminished in direct correlation to the degree of impurities he or she puts in their body. Again, all my opinion. Feel free to disagree.
Waaaaay too philosophical for you? I apologize for that. But these are my musings for today.
One more funny though... I saw a T-shirt yesterday that said: I "heart" Job Offers.
Only in India.
oh, and another funny: whilst researching trains, planes and automobiles to get us to Goa during the busiest season of the year (don't ask), I came across this motto for an airline: Sahara Airlines - "Emotionally Yours". Again, only in India. What a slogan. An attest to the heartfeltness of the Indian culture.
On the front of the menu of the Madras Cafe, one of my favourite haunts in Rishikesh, it reads: "We serve relationships". Hinglish. Indian English. I love India.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
the laundry blues
This morning was the "hunt for laundry".... which is sort of like "Hunt for Red October" but a lot less gory (and i don't think they are gonna make a movie out of it either). haha. Ya, just strolling around with my duffle full of laundry that i am not committed enough to wash by hand, ie: hoody, towels, sweaters etc. inquiring here, inquiring there, trying to find the best price where they don't charge you 25 cents per sock! for real! last time i remember we used to negotiate it by each of us sort of weighing the bag by hand, holding it in the air and bouncing it up and down a couple of times and then offering our price. A couple of counter offers later and a chai and BAM! there you have your laundry dropped off, to be delivered the next day, and NOT for the price of two arms and one leg. Anyways, I finally settled on an arrangement where they would charge me about 12 cents per piece, and only 5 cents for a sock. Funny right? But this is life here. Most of our other laundry we have been washing ourselves by hand, delicates, light cottons and scarves but some of the heavier things are impossible to clean yourself without either a machine or banging it on a big rock by the Ganga (not hauling my laundry down to the river, by the way. Have to draw the line on going native SOMEwhere)
So now i am on the computer again, so soon. Blogging. When i SHOULD be researching train tickets and schedules, but i am procrastinating that so... here i am.
Oh, and Steph, THANKS for lending me that book. BOTH those books. I tried like crazy to finish the last one before i left, i was reading like a madwoman, but still, it sits incomplete on my nightstand in kamloops. I was so close to the end!
So I was going to say, that if you need it back, please feel free to call my house after december 12th or something 554-0978(that's when harvey will be home) and stop by to pick it up, that would be cool. I AM going to finish it though, i am totally hooked. and now that we are going to Agra on the 21st of december (solstice AND full moon) i am doubly interested in seeing the fort and everything, not just the Taj Mahal, of course.
ok, really gotta go.
love you love you love you all, and india loves you too
So now i am on the computer again, so soon. Blogging. When i SHOULD be researching train tickets and schedules, but i am procrastinating that so... here i am.
Oh, and Steph, THANKS for lending me that book. BOTH those books. I tried like crazy to finish the last one before i left, i was reading like a madwoman, but still, it sits incomplete on my nightstand in kamloops. I was so close to the end!
So I was going to say, that if you need it back, please feel free to call my house after december 12th or something 554-0978(that's when harvey will be home) and stop by to pick it up, that would be cool. I AM going to finish it though, i am totally hooked. and now that we are going to Agra on the 21st of december (solstice AND full moon) i am doubly interested in seeing the fort and everything, not just the Taj Mahal, of course.
ok, really gotta go.
love you love you love you all, and india loves you too
come what may....
I love India. Again.
It all just came back to me why. Its all the unexpected surprises. The way things work out sometimes in the most magical way. In letting go, there is space... for miracles to occur, as long as you don't fight the UN-miracles: the poverty, the apparent suffering and struggle for survival. Take the good with the "bad".
In the west, we try to control everything, we know pretty much what to expect at every turn, not much is left up to chance, we seem to like it that way. Faith is not required.
By comparison, here, so much seems to be left up to chance. Take the following exchange I had yesterday with a guy yesterday when we were looking for a room:
guy: "OH, you want to rent a room here? well the boss isn't here, but he'll be back in 3 days." (this is my translated version, the ACTUAL version sounds more like: "oh, room? (so and so) no here. back 3 days.") (this is another small miracle, that many people of India blessedly can speak SOME English, and I think I know about 4 words in Hindi.
so then i respond to that: "oh, so, i'll come back in three days then" (at this point there's no point in mentioning that we need the room for today)
guy: "yes ma'am".
Exchanges like that. Totally random. Totally no concern for the fact that business might be lost by this. This is totally normal. "come back later ma'am". just later.
Strangely, I am not frusterated or exasperated in the least by these exchanges. Instead it feels like India and its people slowly transform you into this patient, accepting person who can enjoy the small and simple things in life, if you allow it and them to change you. As a result of one door appearing to close, another one opens and you step through and continue on your path of destiny losing barely a moment hesitation/trepidation. If you let go of your strong Western impulse to change them, to "improve" them. I mean, sure, there are problems in India, no one denies that, but there is so much to be learned too, if you allow it.
I remembered also that the most fun writing on the blog is writing in real time and then firing it off into cyberspace. This is the best way.
As you may or may not know, I have bravely brought my computer here. So far so good yes?
I had this brilliant idea that I would write all my blogs and emails on my computer in the comfort of my guesthouse or ashram THEN pop it onto my pen drive and just trot down to the internet cafe, spend about 10 minutes posting and sending it all, copy the incoming emails and then head home. Sounded good on paper but it doesn't work.
I mean, it works, theoretically, I guess, but there are a couple of snags. One of them is the creative juices just don't seem to flow when you are not "online" realtime, the second is that I can't seem to keep track of what i've posted and what i haven't, what emails i've responded to and which ones i haven't, so its a bit of mess in that respect. So i've given up on trying to save 50cents and time in the cafe by doing it that way. i'll just camp my butt down here at the internet place every few days and get'er all done at once.
Anyhow.
So logistics aside, here is where we're at:
I am sitting at our neighbourhood internet joint, drinking my warm milk with cardomom and raisins that I got from the ayurvedic restaurant near where we are staying. The NEW place we are staying.
I want to apologize to any of you who were reading about my graphic description of the panchkarma treatments. it was not my intention to offend anyone but I made a vow to myself that I would not censor myself in my writing on this blog, come what may.
Today was a milestone. Mom and I both finished our panchkarma program and we moved into some new digs. Its a nice little room with a balcony and a view, away from the hustle and bustle, up a bit in the hills and close to the ashram. Its mom's place really. I'm only staying there one night and then its back to the ashram for me. 6am yoga classes here i come!
I am glad i went through the panchkarma process with her, to support her, and also for my own health and wellbeing. Now that she is established and more or less sick of me micro managing her life here, she can branch out and do her own thing and i can go back to doing mine. She may continue with a few more days of panchkarma, she hasn't decided yet.
Mom and me hit a wall, not a hard wall, just a soft, padded, slightly fuzzy wall. After sleeping head to head for almost 20 days now, (often sharing the same bed) we are both ready for a little space. Nice that its mutual and no one's feelings are bruised. I am feeling fully confident and at ease with her doing everything on her own, going anywhere on her own. She is totally self-sufficient and i'm sure, wanting to be free of my protective smothering mothering to explore the rest of rishikesh on her own.
It is really nice for me too, and I know it will be for her the same, to have time alone to just reflect. No distractions, no one chit chattering to you all the time about the most mundane things.
Have you ever wondered how much of what comes out of our mouths is not only mostly unnecessary but how it is totally NOT an improvement on the perfect silence that came before it? I have.
Hmm, so what's next?
the panchkarma was pretty cool. There is absolutely too much to say about it here... and i fear i've said too much already, haha.
So ya, now mom will camp out at "her place" and "get organized". I put that in quotations because she is constantly obsessed with getting organized. She says it is an age related thing. I figure if i need to be THAT organized by the time i'm her age, I better start now!
And the ashram awaits me. I will have 3 weeks with my teacher before he leaves for Canada for a month and a half (ironic right, i come here to see him, and he goes to canada!) But he'll be back at the end of january for 2 months, so i will get to spend all of february and march with him.
So then the next thing is mom and i planning out our travel plans for the next couple of months. we will leave rishikesh around dec. 15th. spend about a week at another ashram downriver i wanted her to see, and then head to Agra to see the Taj Mahal! It is possible we may spend christmas there.
We are both quite eager to arrive in Goa in the south. That is our destination after Agra and it will be a month there, doing www.greatfreedom.org (i think that is the address) and eating coconut curries and walking barefoot in the sand in the surf at the beach. hip hip hurray!! It will be so warm and inviting there compared to here in the winter so i am so looking forward to that time. Not that i don't love it here, but something different is always fun.
Mom is having a great time. I am so relieved that she loves India as much as I do and is adjusting like a fish takes to water.
well, i better sign off. have some emails to get to.
much peace and love to all, and leave comments if you have any so i know i am not just writing to the ether. or email me! cause i love to get emails from home. makes me feel connected.
love and kisses!
oh, before i go, i just wanted to tell you quick what the last day of panchkarma was like today. We did the usual hot oil massage, and oiling of the nose, ears and eyes, and the crown of my head, that was all usual stuff.... but for the grande finale, both the girls covered my whole body with mud and let me simmer for a bit with that, then they had these sort of round firm sponges that they dipped in some kind of heated liquid herbal "scrub" and they simultaneously rubbed me all down in small circles, toe to neck, redipping their sponges in the warm substance every few seconds. Here I am, laying there with my eyes closed and rose water soaked cotton balls over my eyes (standard issue) with no clue as to what is going on, or what may transpire next, cause they don't tell you, and the two girls speak about 9 english words between them and i'm totally covered in two kinds of goo.
Then the GRANDE grande finale was they had me sit on a chair and two large tubs of rose petal filled warm water sat on the floor in front of me. Before i knew it, one was dumping huge buckets of this warm rose water over my head, it was a deluge. (sort of like when you are trying to surf and you get rolled by a wave and you just come up for air only to have another one break on top of you). The other girl was shampooing me madly like I was a four year old who couldn't wash her own hair and the buckets of water kept coming and coming, my eyes were squeezed shut, I was stealing sips of breath when I could. What felt like many young female hands rubbed my body free of all the mud and muck and herbal scrub. My eyes were still squeezed shut to keep out the soap so this was all by feeling. Wow. Still haven't decided if i loved it or hated it.
I had rose petals in places i never knew i could have rose petals.
It all just came back to me why. Its all the unexpected surprises. The way things work out sometimes in the most magical way. In letting go, there is space... for miracles to occur, as long as you don't fight the UN-miracles: the poverty, the apparent suffering and struggle for survival. Take the good with the "bad".
In the west, we try to control everything, we know pretty much what to expect at every turn, not much is left up to chance, we seem to like it that way. Faith is not required.
By comparison, here, so much seems to be left up to chance. Take the following exchange I had yesterday with a guy yesterday when we were looking for a room:
guy: "OH, you want to rent a room here? well the boss isn't here, but he'll be back in 3 days." (this is my translated version, the ACTUAL version sounds more like: "oh, room? (so and so) no here. back 3 days.") (this is another small miracle, that many people of India blessedly can speak SOME English, and I think I know about 4 words in Hindi.
so then i respond to that: "oh, so, i'll come back in three days then" (at this point there's no point in mentioning that we need the room for today)
guy: "yes ma'am".
Exchanges like that. Totally random. Totally no concern for the fact that business might be lost by this. This is totally normal. "come back later ma'am". just later.
Strangely, I am not frusterated or exasperated in the least by these exchanges. Instead it feels like India and its people slowly transform you into this patient, accepting person who can enjoy the small and simple things in life, if you allow it and them to change you. As a result of one door appearing to close, another one opens and you step through and continue on your path of destiny losing barely a moment hesitation/trepidation. If you let go of your strong Western impulse to change them, to "improve" them. I mean, sure, there are problems in India, no one denies that, but there is so much to be learned too, if you allow it.
I remembered also that the most fun writing on the blog is writing in real time and then firing it off into cyberspace. This is the best way.
As you may or may not know, I have bravely brought my computer here. So far so good yes?
I had this brilliant idea that I would write all my blogs and emails on my computer in the comfort of my guesthouse or ashram THEN pop it onto my pen drive and just trot down to the internet cafe, spend about 10 minutes posting and sending it all, copy the incoming emails and then head home. Sounded good on paper but it doesn't work.
I mean, it works, theoretically, I guess, but there are a couple of snags. One of them is the creative juices just don't seem to flow when you are not "online" realtime, the second is that I can't seem to keep track of what i've posted and what i haven't, what emails i've responded to and which ones i haven't, so its a bit of mess in that respect. So i've given up on trying to save 50cents and time in the cafe by doing it that way. i'll just camp my butt down here at the internet place every few days and get'er all done at once.
Anyhow.
So logistics aside, here is where we're at:
I am sitting at our neighbourhood internet joint, drinking my warm milk with cardomom and raisins that I got from the ayurvedic restaurant near where we are staying. The NEW place we are staying.
I want to apologize to any of you who were reading about my graphic description of the panchkarma treatments. it was not my intention to offend anyone but I made a vow to myself that I would not censor myself in my writing on this blog, come what may.
Today was a milestone. Mom and I both finished our panchkarma program and we moved into some new digs. Its a nice little room with a balcony and a view, away from the hustle and bustle, up a bit in the hills and close to the ashram. Its mom's place really. I'm only staying there one night and then its back to the ashram for me. 6am yoga classes here i come!
I am glad i went through the panchkarma process with her, to support her, and also for my own health and wellbeing. Now that she is established and more or less sick of me micro managing her life here, she can branch out and do her own thing and i can go back to doing mine. She may continue with a few more days of panchkarma, she hasn't decided yet.
Mom and me hit a wall, not a hard wall, just a soft, padded, slightly fuzzy wall. After sleeping head to head for almost 20 days now, (often sharing the same bed) we are both ready for a little space. Nice that its mutual and no one's feelings are bruised. I am feeling fully confident and at ease with her doing everything on her own, going anywhere on her own. She is totally self-sufficient and i'm sure, wanting to be free of my protective smothering mothering to explore the rest of rishikesh on her own.
It is really nice for me too, and I know it will be for her the same, to have time alone to just reflect. No distractions, no one chit chattering to you all the time about the most mundane things.
Have you ever wondered how much of what comes out of our mouths is not only mostly unnecessary but how it is totally NOT an improvement on the perfect silence that came before it? I have.
Hmm, so what's next?
the panchkarma was pretty cool. There is absolutely too much to say about it here... and i fear i've said too much already, haha.
So ya, now mom will camp out at "her place" and "get organized". I put that in quotations because she is constantly obsessed with getting organized. She says it is an age related thing. I figure if i need to be THAT organized by the time i'm her age, I better start now!
And the ashram awaits me. I will have 3 weeks with my teacher before he leaves for Canada for a month and a half (ironic right, i come here to see him, and he goes to canada!) But he'll be back at the end of january for 2 months, so i will get to spend all of february and march with him.
So then the next thing is mom and i planning out our travel plans for the next couple of months. we will leave rishikesh around dec. 15th. spend about a week at another ashram downriver i wanted her to see, and then head to Agra to see the Taj Mahal! It is possible we may spend christmas there.
We are both quite eager to arrive in Goa in the south. That is our destination after Agra and it will be a month there, doing www.greatfreedom.org (i think that is the address) and eating coconut curries and walking barefoot in the sand in the surf at the beach. hip hip hurray!! It will be so warm and inviting there compared to here in the winter so i am so looking forward to that time. Not that i don't love it here, but something different is always fun.
Mom is having a great time. I am so relieved that she loves India as much as I do and is adjusting like a fish takes to water.
well, i better sign off. have some emails to get to.
much peace and love to all, and leave comments if you have any so i know i am not just writing to the ether. or email me! cause i love to get emails from home. makes me feel connected.
love and kisses!
oh, before i go, i just wanted to tell you quick what the last day of panchkarma was like today. We did the usual hot oil massage, and oiling of the nose, ears and eyes, and the crown of my head, that was all usual stuff.... but for the grande finale, both the girls covered my whole body with mud and let me simmer for a bit with that, then they had these sort of round firm sponges that they dipped in some kind of heated liquid herbal "scrub" and they simultaneously rubbed me all down in small circles, toe to neck, redipping their sponges in the warm substance every few seconds. Here I am, laying there with my eyes closed and rose water soaked cotton balls over my eyes (standard issue) with no clue as to what is going on, or what may transpire next, cause they don't tell you, and the two girls speak about 9 english words between them and i'm totally covered in two kinds of goo.
Then the GRANDE grande finale was they had me sit on a chair and two large tubs of rose petal filled warm water sat on the floor in front of me. Before i knew it, one was dumping huge buckets of this warm rose water over my head, it was a deluge. (sort of like when you are trying to surf and you get rolled by a wave and you just come up for air only to have another one break on top of you). The other girl was shampooing me madly like I was a four year old who couldn't wash her own hair and the buckets of water kept coming and coming, my eyes were squeezed shut, I was stealing sips of breath when I could. What felt like many young female hands rubbed my body free of all the mud and muck and herbal scrub. My eyes were still squeezed shut to keep out the soap so this was all by feeling. Wow. Still haven't decided if i loved it or hated it.
I had rose petals in places i never knew i could have rose petals.
Monday, November 15, 2010
panchkarma
SO lazy about writing, i know, its ridiculous.
The thing is.... mom and i have been so busy, interviewing ayurvedic doctors, arranging appropriate accommodations for our stint of panchkarma, and then actually doing the panchkarma and all of the side duties that that entails, that I have had little time to hit the internet. And you'd think that once you came away to India "on vacation", you'd have all the time in the world, right? not so, not so. A vacation it is not. A little time to reflect and breathe, yes, it is that, but it it is inspersed between hairy rickshaw rides and negotiations in the market and negotiations with landlords and ..... well, you get the picture.
So i'll just get the point right here and now. We are now on day 5 of our 10 days of panchkarma. panchakarma, in case i hadn't told you before is the ancient traditional ayurvedic medicine of cleansing and detoxing the body. It is used for healing many conditions and for nipping in the bud anything that might be developing in the body in the way of sickness or ailments. Boy does it involve a LOT of oil and special dietary recommendations. It is all I can do to follow it all. Thankfully, mother and I are undertaking this together, so we have one another for emotional support. I don't know if i could do it alone.
We go to the clinic everyday for 6 hours, from 8am to 2pm. We consult with the doctor, he takes our pulse, asks us a bunch of questions, we have a good solid chat and then he sends us to our own personal rooms with our own personal attendants. I know, I know, i sounds a little like living in the harem at court in Mughal India, beging waited on hand and foot. And it is a little bit like that, EXCEPT, the digs are not what most westerners expect. It takes a bit of getting used to at first, admittedly. I had been exposed to an Indian "treatment room" from my last trip, so it was not so shocking for me. That first day though, i wondered, as they separated my mother and i, how she would react, how she would fair, under the circumstances. Initially you feel as if you don't want to touch anything, as if no surface is clean or sanitary. It is not the sparkling, shining, sterilized environment of a treatment room in the west. No siree Bob.
It is clean, by Indian standards. I have even smelled bleach in the place (the one and only time i have every smelled bleach anyplace in India, EVER). I think the problem lies in the fact that things are clean, everythings is just really old and worn and used, because there is so much less money here than in Canada or other western countries, things are used until they are unusable any more. They are not thrown out because they have a scratch or a blemish or because the paint is faded, like they are in Canada. The second contributing factor is that the processes of panchkarma involved and incredible amount of OIL. Medicated oil, herbed oil, oils for this and oils for that. Oils that go in your nose and burn like a mother in your nasal cavity but are supposed to balance your nervous system, oil for in your ears, oil for in your eyes! (yes, indeedy, this is true, it is one of our treatments and it is amazing, it actually clears your eyesight, my mom's macular degeneration has totally improved already). Then there is the 2 massages per day that you get, of course you need oil for those. Now I have to say at this junction, that any program that begins with a hot oil massage every morning is alright by me. And now I have to mention the oil enemas. Totally not as uncomfortable or unpleasant as you might think. Don't mind it a bit and its totally natural. So of course there is a special herbed oil for that. Then there is a special oil they use just for your head. And then we steam. Its all very nurturing. I sleep half the time, and my little Indian girl attendant who speaks about 4 words of English: "lunch", "good morning", "turn" and "ok?". "OK?" with a question mark. She is the cutest thing. she dresses me and unscrews the lid off my water bottle and hands it to me and helps me sit up in my bed and dries me off after the steam. Its hilarious. I imagine myself a queen in India during ancient times when she does these things. Its the only way to enjoy it. I just stand there with my arms outstretched and let her do everything, because she is insistant. If I try to do anything myself, she sort of pushes my hands away. It was a challenge for me at first because of course I am used to taking care of myself and doing everything for myself. I've never had such a personal attendant before.
The doctor is great. He is the same doctor I had last time I was here and he was introduced to me by my Reiki teacher. His office is on the other side of town. Two rickshaws away from where we are staying. He can take your pulse and then tell you all the things you are experiencing, if you are constipated, he knows, if your energy is low, he knows, if you have depression, he knows, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, stiffness or pain in your joints.... arthritis.... you name it. Its amazing. and he has the most beautiful kind face and eyes. His family is equally beautiful. His wife is the one in charge of the panchkarma and she oversees everything.
So our typical day... we get up at 6, get ready and head out to the street, flag down a share rickshaw into the market. Get out walk a block to catch another rickshaw. They are just like busses, they have routes that they go, you just have to ask them if they are going where you want to go. The only thing is that they don't have set schedules. Many rickshaws will ply the same route and the timings just depend on... well, it depends on all the variables one encounters in India: traffic, cows, number of passengers, the mood of the driver, whether he needs to stop and have short chat witha buddy or not, but generally they are very effective and efficient modes of transportation.
We arrive at the clinic at around 8 after disembarking our final rickshaw and having a pleasant morning walk through a rather nice neighborhood to the clinic.
So then we each have our consult with the doctor, then we each go into our rooms which have a bed and are heated with a space heater. We disrobe and get into our bed and it all starts with a full body hot oil massage. LOTS of oil. The premise being that the body needs to be well oiled, well lubricated, and elimated of all dryness. Well, this is so true. After 5 days my body has never been so well lubricated, let me tell you.
So we get the massage, then we get the steam. There are two steams. One is in a steam box lying down with just your head sticking out. The other is seated and the blow hot steam on you, first your back, then your front. The steam has medicine and herbs specific to your disposition and condition to balance you.
Then we drink the warm herbed milk with ghee (clarified butter). Now. I kinda like the warm oily herbed milk. Sure it has a layer of melted butter on the surface, and some other unidentified smell to it, but it also has nutmeg and i am allowed to add honey to taste, so to me, i imagine it is warm egg nog at christmas, and it goes down without an issue. Mom, on the other hand, cannot get this concoction down. She just cannot. It makes her gag. So I don't know what other thing the Dr. is giving her to get this stuff into her. I haven't asked. But its kinda funny.
Anyhow, and so then begins the oiling of the things. Some days it is nose and ears, other days it is nose, ears and eyes, still other days it is the nose and the crown of your head. For me also, they are applying hot oil treatments to my back and neck, which feel wonderful. You know, for my lower back that had the disk issue. And it really feels good. Then of course, the friendly oil enema, which is totally fine. Actually, they do that after the steaming part, and you can go to the toilet anytime. Is this too much information? I apologize if you tuned in to this blog looking to read all about lovely beautiful pleasant things and such. but this is life, and this is health. We do this because we believe in healing our own bodies, and so though it doesn't look pretty maybe, it is real and true.
So after all that, we get another marma massage, where she does all the marma points on the hands and feet. I almost always fall asleep during this part. Always surprised when my little Indian girl whispers "ma'am, lunchy". That is how she pronounces lunch, its lunchee. so cute. and by then i am so somewhere else, floating far away. It is a surprise for me to come back and to eat lunch. The surprise is almost because the place i had been floating.... the being i had been there, is not a being who takes lunch, not an entity who needs lunch, or dinner or breakfast. So I come back into my body, a little reluctantly. I sit up and have a plate of kichari brought to my bedside. It is delicious and nutritious. Kichari is traditional food of the yogis and food of the ailing. It is very easy to digest and very nutritious, the equivalent would be chicken noodle soup in Canada. It is made of boiled rice and moong dahl (green lentil) and vegetables and cumin and other things, boiled until it is a mushy consistency.
So I eat that, and then I get dressed and have another consultation with the wife of the Doctor now. She asks me a bunch of questions about how I am and what I am doing and then gives me all the dietary restrictions of things i can and can't eat for the next day. It is very very specific her instructions. They also give us herbs to take with meals and there are very specific instructions for those too.
its pretty crazy.
but i feel pretty amazing.
my head is so clear.
my body feels loose and pain free.
all the stiffness in my neck is gone, my back feels better and i am way more flexible as the inflammation has been melted and massaged out of me by the steaming and massages.
so we have 5 more days to go. apparently it only goes deeper, the process, and new things will be added as we go.
wow.
ok,
so that is what we are doing right now. There you have it... in all the gory details.
so funny, i am sitting in a bean bag chair right now, writing in a cafe called "Muktis". We just had a power surge and because I have my trusty laptop, i didn't lose everything i have written, cause i have a battery backup. that's pretty cool. a benefit of lugging my laptop half way across the world, i am somewhat immune to India's frequent power outages. I wouldn't call them black-outs, like Nepal had last trip.
The thing is.... mom and i have been so busy, interviewing ayurvedic doctors, arranging appropriate accommodations for our stint of panchkarma, and then actually doing the panchkarma and all of the side duties that that entails, that I have had little time to hit the internet. And you'd think that once you came away to India "on vacation", you'd have all the time in the world, right? not so, not so. A vacation it is not. A little time to reflect and breathe, yes, it is that, but it it is inspersed between hairy rickshaw rides and negotiations in the market and negotiations with landlords and ..... well, you get the picture.
So i'll just get the point right here and now. We are now on day 5 of our 10 days of panchkarma. panchakarma, in case i hadn't told you before is the ancient traditional ayurvedic medicine of cleansing and detoxing the body. It is used for healing many conditions and for nipping in the bud anything that might be developing in the body in the way of sickness or ailments. Boy does it involve a LOT of oil and special dietary recommendations. It is all I can do to follow it all. Thankfully, mother and I are undertaking this together, so we have one another for emotional support. I don't know if i could do it alone.
We go to the clinic everyday for 6 hours, from 8am to 2pm. We consult with the doctor, he takes our pulse, asks us a bunch of questions, we have a good solid chat and then he sends us to our own personal rooms with our own personal attendants. I know, I know, i sounds a little like living in the harem at court in Mughal India, beging waited on hand and foot. And it is a little bit like that, EXCEPT, the digs are not what most westerners expect. It takes a bit of getting used to at first, admittedly. I had been exposed to an Indian "treatment room" from my last trip, so it was not so shocking for me. That first day though, i wondered, as they separated my mother and i, how she would react, how she would fair, under the circumstances. Initially you feel as if you don't want to touch anything, as if no surface is clean or sanitary. It is not the sparkling, shining, sterilized environment of a treatment room in the west. No siree Bob.
It is clean, by Indian standards. I have even smelled bleach in the place (the one and only time i have every smelled bleach anyplace in India, EVER). I think the problem lies in the fact that things are clean, everythings is just really old and worn and used, because there is so much less money here than in Canada or other western countries, things are used until they are unusable any more. They are not thrown out because they have a scratch or a blemish or because the paint is faded, like they are in Canada. The second contributing factor is that the processes of panchkarma involved and incredible amount of OIL. Medicated oil, herbed oil, oils for this and oils for that. Oils that go in your nose and burn like a mother in your nasal cavity but are supposed to balance your nervous system, oil for in your ears, oil for in your eyes! (yes, indeedy, this is true, it is one of our treatments and it is amazing, it actually clears your eyesight, my mom's macular degeneration has totally improved already). Then there is the 2 massages per day that you get, of course you need oil for those. Now I have to say at this junction, that any program that begins with a hot oil massage every morning is alright by me. And now I have to mention the oil enemas. Totally not as uncomfortable or unpleasant as you might think. Don't mind it a bit and its totally natural. So of course there is a special herbed oil for that. Then there is a special oil they use just for your head. And then we steam. Its all very nurturing. I sleep half the time, and my little Indian girl attendant who speaks about 4 words of English: "lunch", "good morning", "turn" and "ok?". "OK?" with a question mark. She is the cutest thing. she dresses me and unscrews the lid off my water bottle and hands it to me and helps me sit up in my bed and dries me off after the steam. Its hilarious. I imagine myself a queen in India during ancient times when she does these things. Its the only way to enjoy it. I just stand there with my arms outstretched and let her do everything, because she is insistant. If I try to do anything myself, she sort of pushes my hands away. It was a challenge for me at first because of course I am used to taking care of myself and doing everything for myself. I've never had such a personal attendant before.
The doctor is great. He is the same doctor I had last time I was here and he was introduced to me by my Reiki teacher. His office is on the other side of town. Two rickshaws away from where we are staying. He can take your pulse and then tell you all the things you are experiencing, if you are constipated, he knows, if your energy is low, he knows, if you have depression, he knows, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, stiffness or pain in your joints.... arthritis.... you name it. Its amazing. and he has the most beautiful kind face and eyes. His family is equally beautiful. His wife is the one in charge of the panchkarma and she oversees everything.
So our typical day... we get up at 6, get ready and head out to the street, flag down a share rickshaw into the market. Get out walk a block to catch another rickshaw. They are just like busses, they have routes that they go, you just have to ask them if they are going where you want to go. The only thing is that they don't have set schedules. Many rickshaws will ply the same route and the timings just depend on... well, it depends on all the variables one encounters in India: traffic, cows, number of passengers, the mood of the driver, whether he needs to stop and have short chat witha buddy or not, but generally they are very effective and efficient modes of transportation.
We arrive at the clinic at around 8 after disembarking our final rickshaw and having a pleasant morning walk through a rather nice neighborhood to the clinic.
So then we each have our consult with the doctor, then we each go into our rooms which have a bed and are heated with a space heater. We disrobe and get into our bed and it all starts with a full body hot oil massage. LOTS of oil. The premise being that the body needs to be well oiled, well lubricated, and elimated of all dryness. Well, this is so true. After 5 days my body has never been so well lubricated, let me tell you.
So we get the massage, then we get the steam. There are two steams. One is in a steam box lying down with just your head sticking out. The other is seated and the blow hot steam on you, first your back, then your front. The steam has medicine and herbs specific to your disposition and condition to balance you.
Then we drink the warm herbed milk with ghee (clarified butter). Now. I kinda like the warm oily herbed milk. Sure it has a layer of melted butter on the surface, and some other unidentified smell to it, but it also has nutmeg and i am allowed to add honey to taste, so to me, i imagine it is warm egg nog at christmas, and it goes down without an issue. Mom, on the other hand, cannot get this concoction down. She just cannot. It makes her gag. So I don't know what other thing the Dr. is giving her to get this stuff into her. I haven't asked. But its kinda funny.
Anyhow, and so then begins the oiling of the things. Some days it is nose and ears, other days it is nose, ears and eyes, still other days it is the nose and the crown of your head. For me also, they are applying hot oil treatments to my back and neck, which feel wonderful. You know, for my lower back that had the disk issue. And it really feels good. Then of course, the friendly oil enema, which is totally fine. Actually, they do that after the steaming part, and you can go to the toilet anytime. Is this too much information? I apologize if you tuned in to this blog looking to read all about lovely beautiful pleasant things and such. but this is life, and this is health. We do this because we believe in healing our own bodies, and so though it doesn't look pretty maybe, it is real and true.
So after all that, we get another marma massage, where she does all the marma points on the hands and feet. I almost always fall asleep during this part. Always surprised when my little Indian girl whispers "ma'am, lunchy". That is how she pronounces lunch, its lunchee. so cute. and by then i am so somewhere else, floating far away. It is a surprise for me to come back and to eat lunch. The surprise is almost because the place i had been floating.... the being i had been there, is not a being who takes lunch, not an entity who needs lunch, or dinner or breakfast. So I come back into my body, a little reluctantly. I sit up and have a plate of kichari brought to my bedside. It is delicious and nutritious. Kichari is traditional food of the yogis and food of the ailing. It is very easy to digest and very nutritious, the equivalent would be chicken noodle soup in Canada. It is made of boiled rice and moong dahl (green lentil) and vegetables and cumin and other things, boiled until it is a mushy consistency.
So I eat that, and then I get dressed and have another consultation with the wife of the Doctor now. She asks me a bunch of questions about how I am and what I am doing and then gives me all the dietary restrictions of things i can and can't eat for the next day. It is very very specific her instructions. They also give us herbs to take with meals and there are very specific instructions for those too.
its pretty crazy.
but i feel pretty amazing.
my head is so clear.
my body feels loose and pain free.
all the stiffness in my neck is gone, my back feels better and i am way more flexible as the inflammation has been melted and massaged out of me by the steaming and massages.
so we have 5 more days to go. apparently it only goes deeper, the process, and new things will be added as we go.
wow.
ok,
so that is what we are doing right now. There you have it... in all the gory details.
so funny, i am sitting in a bean bag chair right now, writing in a cafe called "Muktis". We just had a power surge and because I have my trusty laptop, i didn't lose everything i have written, cause i have a battery backup. that's pretty cool. a benefit of lugging my laptop half way across the world, i am somewhat immune to India's frequent power outages. I wouldn't call them black-outs, like Nepal had last trip.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
howdy
Ha HA!!
Today is the 9th, yes?
What a time warp. Still adjusting. I haven’t been inspired to write. Just not inspired. Don’t know why. Possibly because I don’t feel like qualifying my experience, i just want to be here. I don’t feel like labelling it, catagorizing it or analyzing it in any way. Do you know what I mean?
Having mom here is wonderful. It’s like bringing home with me. Jetlag is finally dissipating for both of us. We both got bit by a mosquito when we were in Delhi, and then I proceeded to have psychosomatic malaria symptoms all night, convinced that I could feel the buggy malaria sickness from that one mosquito bite instantly coursing through my veins. But I haven’t had a night like that since, and mom says she is sleeping fine. No symptoms. Makes me wonder about my first trip when i was sure I had malaria, especially after I took the malaria antidote and all my symptoms magically cleared up. Could it have been my imagination? The whole thing? Is my imagination so powerful?
So anyhow, I’ll keep you posted on the malaria front if any symptoms begin to present.
It is different this time, this trip, compared to last. The first trip to India was full of wonderment and first impression. Now, it is all just a familiar, a sort of “coming home” of sorts. So there is so much less to write about. Really. It’s a little...depressing. Not really depressing, just different. It is still wonderful, but in a calmer more friendly way.
Before, I was all stories about elephants and snake charmers and other novelties. It is fun experiencing everything fresh and new through my mother’s eyes though. Last night we went to the Ganga Aarti at Parmarth Niketan ashram. This is the fire ceremony and devotional singing that goes on every night on the steps of the ashram Ganga-side (Ganga is the Ganges river, of course, the sacred river that runs through India. In Rishikesh, the Ganga is still relatively clean as there are very few communities upstream from us between us and where the river sprouts out of the ground up in the Himalayas. The river is widely used, and of course, the further down you go, the more “used” it gets, but its sacredness is never diminished in the eyes of the Hindu people, no matter how dirty the water becomes, in Varanasi and other locales. The belief is still that a bath in the river will cleanse you, wash you clean of all your “sins” so that you may be blessed and begin life anew. So there is a little history on mother Ganga). So here, the river is relatively clean. I would easily swim in her, although one must be careful, in places the current is strong and the water deep. I have even drunk her waters, when asked to, during certain ceremonies with sincere holy men. I figured it was worth the risk, since it was so meaningful to them, and meaningful to me not to offend them. I never fell ill from this practice (knock on wood, and not that I am recommending it). Call me superstitious but I figured that the sacredness of the water must trump any fatal bacteria that may lurk therein (within reason, you won’t see me scooping up handfuls of the Ganga in Varanasi).
So Ma loved the Ganga Aarti. With all its varied people from all over India and all over the world, the young “monks” in training and all of the ritual and ceremony. There was much hand clapping and swaying, singing and even dancing on the steps leading down to the river. The river is so close here, in fact, that there was only one step between us and her holy wetness. This fall actually, in September, the river came up and flooded from the heavy rains of the monsoon. The last time the water came that high was 25 years ago. “Very dangerous” my friends here tell me. No kidding. I watched it on youtube. There was footage of the river and how it came up so high it swept away the 10foot high statue of Shiva that stands on a platform in the river, just in front of where the Aarti singing was last night on the steps of Parmarth Niketan. The river came up so high it washed the statue right away!! And within 2 days they had it replaced with another. The flood also washed the roads out on the way to Rishikesh, cutting it off from the rest of India. The Shiva statue was replaced before the roads were restored. Priorities, right?
Also in that flood, my favourite Nepali breakfast cafe got wiped out. It was just a little too much in an inauspicious spot i guess. The neighboring Ganga Beach Cafe survived, Nepali restaurant: not. I spoke with the owner of Ganga Beach cafe. He said the water came up and washed right through the neighbours restaurant. But the Ganga Beach was saved. It was crazy he said. And i nodded in amazement. If you could see the distance the river would have to rise to come up that high... well, it is nothing short of incredible. Such volume of water, i can barely imagine. And huge waves too, he said. I am glad that Ganga Beach didn’t get wiped out. They make the BEST lemon nanas there. This is something i introduced to my mom and she loves it now. Try it at home. Its fresh lemon juice, fresh mint and honey or sugar (or maple syrup) blended with ice into a refreshing slushy. Its amazing on a hot day. Oh, i guess you’ll have to wait until next summer to really enjoy this one.
Yesterday we went looking for money. To the bank machine. But the usual bank machine, the one that is closest to us here, was out of cash. Just plain out of rupees. Where does that happen except in India? Kinda makes you nervous, cause no place takes visa or debit here. If the bank machines didn’t spit out cash, what would we do? What if something happened to the economy or the global banking system went down and you couldn’t just swipe a card or go to the ATM and withdraw cash? It could happen you know. It could. So anyhow, we didn’t have to worry about that this time, we just hopped in a rickshaw and popped downtown rishikesh, found another bank machine and PRESTO! 15,000 rupees in your pocket. This is the daily maximum you can withdraw at the ATM. Thats about $400canadian. Doesn’t matter if your ATM limit at home is 2 grand, in india its four hundred. So if you need more, you have to make several trips over consecutive days. Fun hey.
So today we are heading out to continue our search of ayurvedic doctors. We interviewed two already yesterday. Mom is looking for a good ayurvedic panchakarma program to put herself into. Panchakarma is a series of ayurvedic cleansing techniques to detoxify the body. You can go on a 2 week program, or 3 or 4 or more. Today I will take her out to the other side of town to my doctor. He sees patients out of this dingy, run-down little shack on the side of the road, looks like a bombed out bomb shelter, but he is a superb doctor. I was seeing him last time i was here, my Reiki teacher introduced me to him. He is really good. He takes your pulse and then tells you all about yourself. All about your ailments and tendencies and weaknesses. Some things you know already and he hits it bang on, and other things are sometimes new information that you might not have known, then he gives you herbs or lifestyle recommendations based on your condition and disposition. And in the case of my mother, he will put her on a full cleansing program that will involve massages, herbs, different concoctions, not to mention enemas and other delightful techniques i won’t get into here. So that is where we are off to today. He has a squeakier cleaner clinic where he actually does the panchakarma treatments so don’t worry. I’m not sending my mom off to some quack doctor in a dingy bomb shelter. haha
The weather is fine, the music is sweet. Its a totally different experience travelling with someone. I like it. Its not better or worse, just different. There are many many perks and delights, but it does insulate you more. When you travel alone, you are out there, on your own, interacting with all that you meet, talking, making friends and out there. When you travel with someone you know, you can get all of your social needs met with that one person, you don’t need anyone else so much, and you tend you kind of just hang out with yourselves more, its easy and familiar.
The morning yoga classes at 6am are just amazing. So much breath, so much prana. It brightens you from the inside out. And clears out the cobwebs. With so much more focus on the overall practice of yoga, not just this emphasis on asanas that we have in the west. In the west we are obsessed with asanas, as if performing a perfect triangle pose will bring us enlightment on the spot. No, here, it is so much more holistic in approach. You can see those who just want asana, asana, asana in the class are a little impatient and hungry.
There is another class at 4pm but it is an optional class to take, not a mandatory class. The food is amazingly good. Veg, rice, dahl and chapati but its a different dahl everyday, and a different veg too of course, and so healthy. Made with lots of love.
Alright well, i better get off this thing so we can hit the road.
Love to one and all of you.
And peace.
Today is the 9th, yes?
What a time warp. Still adjusting. I haven’t been inspired to write. Just not inspired. Don’t know why. Possibly because I don’t feel like qualifying my experience, i just want to be here. I don’t feel like labelling it, catagorizing it or analyzing it in any way. Do you know what I mean?
Having mom here is wonderful. It’s like bringing home with me. Jetlag is finally dissipating for both of us. We both got bit by a mosquito when we were in Delhi, and then I proceeded to have psychosomatic malaria symptoms all night, convinced that I could feel the buggy malaria sickness from that one mosquito bite instantly coursing through my veins. But I haven’t had a night like that since, and mom says she is sleeping fine. No symptoms. Makes me wonder about my first trip when i was sure I had malaria, especially after I took the malaria antidote and all my symptoms magically cleared up. Could it have been my imagination? The whole thing? Is my imagination so powerful?
So anyhow, I’ll keep you posted on the malaria front if any symptoms begin to present.
It is different this time, this trip, compared to last. The first trip to India was full of wonderment and first impression. Now, it is all just a familiar, a sort of “coming home” of sorts. So there is so much less to write about. Really. It’s a little...depressing. Not really depressing, just different. It is still wonderful, but in a calmer more friendly way.
Before, I was all stories about elephants and snake charmers and other novelties. It is fun experiencing everything fresh and new through my mother’s eyes though. Last night we went to the Ganga Aarti at Parmarth Niketan ashram. This is the fire ceremony and devotional singing that goes on every night on the steps of the ashram Ganga-side (Ganga is the Ganges river, of course, the sacred river that runs through India. In Rishikesh, the Ganga is still relatively clean as there are very few communities upstream from us between us and where the river sprouts out of the ground up in the Himalayas. The river is widely used, and of course, the further down you go, the more “used” it gets, but its sacredness is never diminished in the eyes of the Hindu people, no matter how dirty the water becomes, in Varanasi and other locales. The belief is still that a bath in the river will cleanse you, wash you clean of all your “sins” so that you may be blessed and begin life anew. So there is a little history on mother Ganga). So here, the river is relatively clean. I would easily swim in her, although one must be careful, in places the current is strong and the water deep. I have even drunk her waters, when asked to, during certain ceremonies with sincere holy men. I figured it was worth the risk, since it was so meaningful to them, and meaningful to me not to offend them. I never fell ill from this practice (knock on wood, and not that I am recommending it). Call me superstitious but I figured that the sacredness of the water must trump any fatal bacteria that may lurk therein (within reason, you won’t see me scooping up handfuls of the Ganga in Varanasi).
So Ma loved the Ganga Aarti. With all its varied people from all over India and all over the world, the young “monks” in training and all of the ritual and ceremony. There was much hand clapping and swaying, singing and even dancing on the steps leading down to the river. The river is so close here, in fact, that there was only one step between us and her holy wetness. This fall actually, in September, the river came up and flooded from the heavy rains of the monsoon. The last time the water came that high was 25 years ago. “Very dangerous” my friends here tell me. No kidding. I watched it on youtube. There was footage of the river and how it came up so high it swept away the 10foot high statue of Shiva that stands on a platform in the river, just in front of where the Aarti singing was last night on the steps of Parmarth Niketan. The river came up so high it washed the statue right away!! And within 2 days they had it replaced with another. The flood also washed the roads out on the way to Rishikesh, cutting it off from the rest of India. The Shiva statue was replaced before the roads were restored. Priorities, right?
Also in that flood, my favourite Nepali breakfast cafe got wiped out. It was just a little too much in an inauspicious spot i guess. The neighboring Ganga Beach Cafe survived, Nepali restaurant: not. I spoke with the owner of Ganga Beach cafe. He said the water came up and washed right through the neighbours restaurant. But the Ganga Beach was saved. It was crazy he said. And i nodded in amazement. If you could see the distance the river would have to rise to come up that high... well, it is nothing short of incredible. Such volume of water, i can barely imagine. And huge waves too, he said. I am glad that Ganga Beach didn’t get wiped out. They make the BEST lemon nanas there. This is something i introduced to my mom and she loves it now. Try it at home. Its fresh lemon juice, fresh mint and honey or sugar (or maple syrup) blended with ice into a refreshing slushy. Its amazing on a hot day. Oh, i guess you’ll have to wait until next summer to really enjoy this one.
Yesterday we went looking for money. To the bank machine. But the usual bank machine, the one that is closest to us here, was out of cash. Just plain out of rupees. Where does that happen except in India? Kinda makes you nervous, cause no place takes visa or debit here. If the bank machines didn’t spit out cash, what would we do? What if something happened to the economy or the global banking system went down and you couldn’t just swipe a card or go to the ATM and withdraw cash? It could happen you know. It could. So anyhow, we didn’t have to worry about that this time, we just hopped in a rickshaw and popped downtown rishikesh, found another bank machine and PRESTO! 15,000 rupees in your pocket. This is the daily maximum you can withdraw at the ATM. Thats about $400canadian. Doesn’t matter if your ATM limit at home is 2 grand, in india its four hundred. So if you need more, you have to make several trips over consecutive days. Fun hey.
So today we are heading out to continue our search of ayurvedic doctors. We interviewed two already yesterday. Mom is looking for a good ayurvedic panchakarma program to put herself into. Panchakarma is a series of ayurvedic cleansing techniques to detoxify the body. You can go on a 2 week program, or 3 or 4 or more. Today I will take her out to the other side of town to my doctor. He sees patients out of this dingy, run-down little shack on the side of the road, looks like a bombed out bomb shelter, but he is a superb doctor. I was seeing him last time i was here, my Reiki teacher introduced me to him. He is really good. He takes your pulse and then tells you all about yourself. All about your ailments and tendencies and weaknesses. Some things you know already and he hits it bang on, and other things are sometimes new information that you might not have known, then he gives you herbs or lifestyle recommendations based on your condition and disposition. And in the case of my mother, he will put her on a full cleansing program that will involve massages, herbs, different concoctions, not to mention enemas and other delightful techniques i won’t get into here. So that is where we are off to today. He has a squeakier cleaner clinic where he actually does the panchakarma treatments so don’t worry. I’m not sending my mom off to some quack doctor in a dingy bomb shelter. haha
The weather is fine, the music is sweet. Its a totally different experience travelling with someone. I like it. Its not better or worse, just different. There are many many perks and delights, but it does insulate you more. When you travel alone, you are out there, on your own, interacting with all that you meet, talking, making friends and out there. When you travel with someone you know, you can get all of your social needs met with that one person, you don’t need anyone else so much, and you tend you kind of just hang out with yourselves more, its easy and familiar.
The morning yoga classes at 6am are just amazing. So much breath, so much prana. It brightens you from the inside out. And clears out the cobwebs. With so much more focus on the overall practice of yoga, not just this emphasis on asanas that we have in the west. In the west we are obsessed with asanas, as if performing a perfect triangle pose will bring us enlightment on the spot. No, here, it is so much more holistic in approach. You can see those who just want asana, asana, asana in the class are a little impatient and hungry.
There is another class at 4pm but it is an optional class to take, not a mandatory class. The food is amazingly good. Veg, rice, dahl and chapati but its a different dahl everyday, and a different veg too of course, and so healthy. Made with lots of love.
Alright well, i better get off this thing so we can hit the road.
Love to one and all of you.
And peace.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
bad bloggers
Sorry, i have been a bad blogger. There just hasn’t been much to write. Not much is going on. Just getting mom acclimatized and showing her around. Waiting for my jetlag to wear off and just meeting up with some old friends.
We are all snuggled up here at the ashram, and there is just not a lot to say about it. Just eating, sleeping and doing yoga and going for walks. It IS nice to be back. I had forgotten how the wind blows up the valley here in the Himalayan foothills. The air is rich with prana, lifeforce. Each breath is alive.
Diwali, festival of lights (and fireworks and homemade bombs) is wrapping up here. Yesterday was a cacophony of explosions well into the night. It has mostly subsided now, but there are a few who are still using up what they have leftover, so there is an occasional “BOOM!!!” every few minutes. This morning in the yoga hall in our final relaxing savasana there were explosions, so our teacher had us do brahmeri pranayam, honey bee breath, to balance the disturbance. Pretty cool. There is a 500hr teacher training going on here now, so there are teachers from all over the world staying at the ashram.
It was nice to be back in the yoga hall... breathing. The breathwork is very effective and deep and valuable, but i gotta say, i missed the alignment, and Katrina, if you are reading this, i have been thinking about you and incorporating all my anusara alignment techniques for a happy body. That, combined with all the breathwork, is crazy powerful.
I finally have gotten my laptop up and running. I had discovered when i got here that my adaptor didn’t work, so i bought another one here for 20rupees, which is about 50cents. And it works charmingly. So i am sitting on my balcony after a yummy sattvic dinner of dahl, vegetables, rice, chapatti with ghee and kheer (MY FAVE!!) with Sanskrit chanting playing, clacking away on the keyboard and enjoying the warm breeze blowing up from the Ganga. I know, sounds great right? It is, and it is lovely, but don’t think it doesn’t come with a lot of inconveniences, dirtiness and general chaos, because it is India and so it does... come with all that. Hats off to my mom for taking this on.
I lost a day. I lost a day and i just found it today. Ever since we left Kamloops on Monday, it has been a blur. I know that Monday was November the 1st, but with the days all running together and travelling so far, i completely lost track. I thought today must be Friday and the 5th, ... turns out it is already Saturday and the 6th. Wow.
Washed my clothes today by hand for the first time again. forgot how time consuming that is, on the bathroom floor, but i have nothing but time now, so what else am i gonna do.
Oh, i really wanted to say a big thank you to Elizabeth, Stephanie, Rosi, Lucille, Shirley, Katrina and Leanne who put together that fabulous dinner we had before i left. That was pretty special. You guys are amazing. I love you.
Ok, that’s all the blabbing from me right now.
Be love.
We are all snuggled up here at the ashram, and there is just not a lot to say about it. Just eating, sleeping and doing yoga and going for walks. It IS nice to be back. I had forgotten how the wind blows up the valley here in the Himalayan foothills. The air is rich with prana, lifeforce. Each breath is alive.
Diwali, festival of lights (and fireworks and homemade bombs) is wrapping up here. Yesterday was a cacophony of explosions well into the night. It has mostly subsided now, but there are a few who are still using up what they have leftover, so there is an occasional “BOOM!!!” every few minutes. This morning in the yoga hall in our final relaxing savasana there were explosions, so our teacher had us do brahmeri pranayam, honey bee breath, to balance the disturbance. Pretty cool. There is a 500hr teacher training going on here now, so there are teachers from all over the world staying at the ashram.
It was nice to be back in the yoga hall... breathing. The breathwork is very effective and deep and valuable, but i gotta say, i missed the alignment, and Katrina, if you are reading this, i have been thinking about you and incorporating all my anusara alignment techniques for a happy body. That, combined with all the breathwork, is crazy powerful.
I finally have gotten my laptop up and running. I had discovered when i got here that my adaptor didn’t work, so i bought another one here for 20rupees, which is about 50cents. And it works charmingly. So i am sitting on my balcony after a yummy sattvic dinner of dahl, vegetables, rice, chapatti with ghee and kheer (MY FAVE!!) with Sanskrit chanting playing, clacking away on the keyboard and enjoying the warm breeze blowing up from the Ganga. I know, sounds great right? It is, and it is lovely, but don’t think it doesn’t come with a lot of inconveniences, dirtiness and general chaos, because it is India and so it does... come with all that. Hats off to my mom for taking this on.
I lost a day. I lost a day and i just found it today. Ever since we left Kamloops on Monday, it has been a blur. I know that Monday was November the 1st, but with the days all running together and travelling so far, i completely lost track. I thought today must be Friday and the 5th, ... turns out it is already Saturday and the 6th. Wow.
Washed my clothes today by hand for the first time again. forgot how time consuming that is, on the bathroom floor, but i have nothing but time now, so what else am i gonna do.
Oh, i really wanted to say a big thank you to Elizabeth, Stephanie, Rosi, Lucille, Shirley, Katrina and Leanne who put together that fabulous dinner we had before i left. That was pretty special. You guys are amazing. I love you.
Ok, that’s all the blabbing from me right now.
Be love.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
quickblog
quickblog.
my power adapter and my power cord for my computer are not compatible. silly me. i didn't check that before i left. oh well, will have to buy another one in rishikesh.
so we've arrived on the ground in delhi. can't chat long cause i can't recharge my computer or plug it in once the battery goes dead. Flight was good. Long, as always. Mom did great. for such a long journey. we are showered and breakfasted and went for a short walk, hand in hand, to see the street bustle. now its 9am and we have the whole day ahead. it was so good to eat indian food again for breakfast... alu parantha with achar, my favourite, potato stuffed flatbread with indian pickles, and chai.
Our flight got in about hours late, but our pickup at the airport went smooth anyways.
beijing transfer was a GONG show with a capital "G".
tomorrow we'll get picked up for the 4hr car ride to rishikesh, then we will truly relax.
anyhow, lots of love.
talk soon
ang
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
latest update
hahaha,
yvr. vancouver airport.
you guys are gonna shoot me but.... i couldn't find my camera, so didn't bring it.
mom has hers, so we can use hers. mine is MIA.
so we're still in yvr. our flight was delayed 5hrs due to weather, so they say. so we have been enjoying a leisurely afternoon lolling around the airport.
in about an hour they will board us on our plane. Then we begin a 12hr marathon.
there won't be much of a layover in beijing now, since they will just hold our connecting flight long enough for all of us delhi-bound to transfer, then we'll be up in the air again for another 6.
should be good and tired when we arrive. will need to rest up before heading to rishikesh.
so that is our update.
rather fun to have my laptop in the airport and to be able to plug in and access internet anywhere. very cool. the airport is very very quiet today. its nice. no crowds, no line-ups, peaceful.
i didn't write about how i finally got my visa, but i tell ya, it could hardly have been more down to the wire than it was. yesterday i went to the office at 1pm and lined up. waited for over an hour until my number was called to the counter. left mom down at the waterfront center, a couple of blocks away, with out luggage and a newspaper. then once i got to the counter they couldn't find it at first! I waited another 15 minutes while they hunted high and low. wow, that was tense. They were nervous too. Finally they located it, in its express post envelope, waiting to be mailed out! We were this close to missing it and having it mailed back to kamloops. it should have never been in that post envelope as i had requested on friday that they hold in the office for pick up and not to, under any circumstances, mail the little sucker.
phew!
ok, so we are lining up at the gate now.
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