art of the breath blog

During this year's Valentine's Day special class, I read an excerpt from Tina Fey's genius new book Bossypants. It struck me as relevant, given the horrendous list of expectations we (and especially we: women) place on ourselves in relation to our looks and the role (we think) they play in luring, charming and retaining a mate. 

Please note that I've modified a couple of words for the sake of flow. You can make this awesome book your own here.

***

The standard of beauty was set. Cheryl Tiegs, Farrah Fawcett, Christie Brinkley. Small eyes, toothy smile, boobies, no buttocks, yellow hair [...] Can you remember a time when pop culture was so white that Jaclyn Smith was the chocolate?! By the eighties, we started to see some real chocolate: Halle Berry and Naomi Campbell. “Downtown” Julie Brown and Tyra Banks.

But I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style.

That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired.

And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful.

Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyoncé and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful.

Now every girl is expected to have:

Caucasian blue eyes

full Spanish lips

a classic button nose

hairless Asian skin with a California tan

a Jamaican dance hall ass

long Swedish legs

small Japanese feet

the abs of a lesbian gym owner

the hips of a nine-year-old boy

the arms of Michelle Obama

and doll tits

The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes. Everyone else is struggling. Even the skinny blondes who were once on top can now be found squatting to a Rihanna song in a class called Gary’s Glutes Camp in an attempt to reverse-engineer a butt.

These are dark times. Back in my days, you were either blessed with a beautiful body or not. And if you were not, you could just chill out and learn a trade. Now if you’re not “hot,” you are expected to work on it until you are. It’s like when you renovate a house and you’re legally required to leave just one of the original walls standing. If you don’t have a good body, you’d better starve the body you have down to a neutral shape, then bolt on some breast implants, replace your teeth, dye your skin orange, inject your lips, sew on some hair, and call yourself the Playmate of the Year.

How do we survive this?

How do we teach our daughters and our gay sons that they are good enough the way they are?

***

The moral of the story is that you can come to yoga just to get a really nice butt and you probably will get one. However this alone will fail to bring you any closer to happiness. 

The good news is that any yoga class is also an open invitation to become curious about yourself and the present moment. 

The choice to invest yourself in the quality of the movement or pose rather than just ticking another pose off a checklist. 

A challenge to search for the right balance: to be gentle but not lazy, and to be fearless without causing harm. 

To practice this discernment despite the energy of the group, the instructions of the teacher, the cast of characters in your head, your emotional feeling tone or your own history. Notice and respect these factors but do not let them dictate!

One of my favorite quotes by Desikachar is that "to see if your yoga is working, look at the quality of your relationships." This doesn't necessarily imply your romantic relationships. All your relationships, and especially your closest ones, will become more meaningful if you take this invitation. This will not happen overnight, so by the time you can actually register a genuine shift, you may also have yourself a pair of glorious butt cheeks as bonus.

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Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation: Week 3 of 4 (Emotions and Thoughts)

by Kim Allen

Adapted from Gil Fronsdal

In mindfulness practice we keep our attention on the breath, unless some other experience is so strong as to pull us away from the breath; then we turn our attention to that other experience. One kind of experience that can pull us away is physical sensations, which we talked about last week; two others are emotions and thoughts.

Emotions: No emotion is inappropriate within the field of mindfulness practice. We are not trying to avoid emotions, or to have some kinds of emotions and not others. We are trying to allow them to exist as they arise, without the additional complications of judgment, evaluation, preferences, aversion, desires, clinging, resistance or other reactions. An important part of mindfulness practice is investigating our relationships to our emotions. Do we cling to them? Do we hate them? Are we ashamed of them? Do we tense around them? Are we afraid of how we are feeling? Do we measure our self-worth by the presence or absence of an emotion? Can we simply leave an emotion alone? Emotional maturity comes not from the absence of emotions, but from seeing them clearly.                  

Thoughts: Sometimes people think that the point of meditation is to stop thinking — to have a silent mind. This does happen occasionally, but it is not necessarily the point of meditation. Thoughts are an important part of life, and mindfulness practice is not supposed to be a struggle against them. It’s more useful to be friends with our thoughts than thinking them unfortunate distractions. In mindfulness, we are not stopping thoughts as much as overcoming any preoccupation we have with them. Thoughts can come and go as they wish, and the meditator does not need to become involved with them. We are not interested in engaging in the content of our thoughts; mindfulness of thinking is simply recognizing we are thinking.

In meditation, when thoughts are subtle and in the background, or when random thoughts pull you away from awareness of the present, it is enough to resume mindfulness of breathing. However, when your preoccupation with thoughts is stronger than your ability to easily let go of them, then direct your mindfulness to being clearly aware that thinking is occurring.

Strong bouts of thinking are fuelled largely by identification and preoccupation with thoughts. By clearly observing our thinking, we step outside the field of identification. Thinking will usually then soften to a calm and unobtrusive stream.

Sometimes thinking can be strong and compulsive even while we are aware of it. When this happens, it can be useful to notice how such thinking is affecting your body, physically and energetically. It may cause pressure in the head, tension in the forehead, tightness of the shoulders, or a buzzing as if the head were filled with thousands of bumblebees. Let your mindfulness feel the sensations of tightness, pressure, or whatever you discover. It is easy to be caught up in the story of these preoccupying thoughts, but if you feel the physical sensation of thinking, then you are bringing attention to the present moment rather than the story line of the thoughts.

Link between Emotions and Thoughts: When a particular theme keeps reappearing in our thinking, it is likely that it is being triggered by a strong emotion. If the associated emotion isn’t recognized, the concern is liable to keep reappearing. For example, people who plan a lot often find that planning thoughts arise out of apprehension. If they do not acknowledge the fear, the fear will be a factory of new planning thoughts. If there is a repetitive thought pattern, see if you can discover an emotion associated with it, and then practice mindfulness of the emotion. Ground yourself in the present moment in the emotion itself. When you acknowledge the emotion, often it will cease generating those particular thoughts.

How to Attend to Emotions

Generally, during meditation, keep yourself centered on the breath. If there are emotions in the background, leave them there; keep the breath in the foreground of awareness as if it were the fulcrum for your experience. When an emotion becomes compelling enough to make it difficult to stay with the breath, then bring it into the focus of meditative awareness.

There are four aspects to the mindfulness of emotions. You don’t have to practice all four each time you focus on an emotion. At different times, each is appropriate. Experiment to see how each can help in developing a non-reactive attention to emotions. The four are:

Recognition: A basic principle of mindfulness is that you cannot experience freedom and spaciousness unless you recognize what is happening. The more you learn to recognize the range of your emotions, including the most subtle, the more you will become familiar and comfortable with them, and the less you will be in their thrall.

Naming: A steady and relaxed labeling of the emotion of the moment, e.g., “joy,” “anger,” “frustration,” “happiness”, “boredom,” “contentment”, “desire,” and the like, encourages us to stay present with what is central in our experience. Naming can also help us become calm and less entangled with the emotion, less identified with it or reactive to its presence.

Acceptance: This does not mean condoning or justifying certain feelings. It means simply allowing emotions to be present, whatever they may be. Many people frequently judge and censure their feelings. Formal meditation practice offers us the extraordinary opportunity to practice unconditional acceptance of our emotions. This does not mean expressing emotion, but letting emotions move through you without any inhibitions, resistance, or encouragement.

Investigation: This entails dropping any fixed ideas we have about an emotion and looking at it afresh. Emotions are composite events, made up of bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings, motivations, and attitudes. Investigation is not analysis, but more a sensory awareness exercise of feeling our way into the present moment experience of the emotions. It is particularly useful to investigate the bodily sensations of an emotion, letting the body be the container for the emotion. In a sense, the body is a bigger container than the thinking mind which is easily exhausted, and which tends to spin off into stories, analysis, and attempts to fix the situation – away from acceptance of the present moment experience.

Mindfulness Exercises for the Third Week

1. Lengthen your daily meditation session to 25 minutes. When you first sit down, notice the main concerns, feelings, physical sensations that may be pre-occupying you. Acknowledge them and remain attentive to any tendency to become lost in your thoughts concerning these experiences. Meditation proceeds easiest when we are willing to suspend – for the duration of the meditation – the need to think about anything.
2. At least once during the week “ride out an emotion.” Sometime during the week when you are feeling a strong desire, aversion, fear, or other emotion, don’t act on the feeling. Rather, bring your mindfulness to the feeling and observe the changes it undergoes while you are watching it. You might choose to sit, stand or walk around quietly while you do this study. Things to notice are the various body sensations and tensions, the changes in the feeling’s intensity, the various attitudes and beliefs that you have concerning the presence of the emotion, and perhaps any more primary emotion triggering the feeling. If after a time the emotion goes away, spend some time noticing what its absence feels like.
3. Once during the next week, spend a two-hour period tracking the kinds of things you think about. Find some way to remind yourself every few minutes to notice what you are thinking. Are the thoughts primarily self-referential or primarily about others? Do they tend to be critical or judgmental? What is the frequency of thoughts of “should” or “ought”? Are the thoughts mostly directed to the future, to the past, or toward fantasy? Do you tend more toward optimistic thoughts or pessimistic ones? Do your thoughts tend to be apprehensive or peaceful? Contented or dissatisfied? This is not an exercise in judging what you notice, but in simply noticing. Most people live in their thoughts. This is a two-hour exercise in regularly and frequently stepping outside of the thought-stream to take up residence, albeit briefly, in a mindful awareness that is bigger than the thinking mind.
4. Spend part of a day making a concentrated effort to notice feelings of happiness, contentment, well-being, joy, pleasure, and ease. Even if your day is primarily characterized by the opposite of these, see if you can identify even subtle and seemingly insignificant moments of these positive states. It can be as simple as appreciating the texture of a doorknob or a flash of ease in your eyes as you notice the blue sky after the fog has burned off. This is not an exercise for manufacturing positive states but rather discovering that these may be much more a part of your life than your preoccupations allow you to notice.

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Here is the handout from Kim's Session on Sunday, Jan 22, 2012

Join us for our weekly Meditation and Dharma Talk on Sundays at 10:15am.

Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation: Week 2 of 4 (Body)

Adapted from Gil Fronsdal

Mindfulness of breathing is a wonderful beginning to cultivating awareness. It strengthens our ability to concentrate and steadies the attention on our present moment experience. It also weakens our tendency to get lost in reactive emotions and mental preoccupations. With time, attention to the breath helps us to develop a clear, non-reactive awareness that can then be turned to the full range of our human experience. As mindfulness develops, we begin to bring this awareness to other areas of our lives.

Mindfulness is an embodied practice. By practicing mindfulness, we learn to live in and through our bodies. Learning to be mindful of bodily experiences is one of the most useful aspects of mindfulness. It is much easier have a balanced, healthy awareness of the rest of our lives when we are in touch with our immediate physical experience.

During this week we expand the practice to include the body. Many people ignore their bodies. The busier a person’s life, the easier it is to discount the importance of staying in touch with how the body feels. Many people may be attentive to their body, but it is from the outside in; that is, they are concerned about body image and appearance. Mindfulness of the body is attention from the inside out. We notice what the body is feeling, in and of itself. We give a generous amount to time to be with the felt sense of the body. Not only does this help the body relax, remaining mindful of the body is a safeguard from getting wound up with mental preoccupations.

Benefits of Mindfulness of the Body

Mindfulness of the body has several benefits. First, cultivating mindfulness of the body increases our familiarity with our bodies and with how the body responds to our inner and outer lives, to our thoughts and emotions, and to events around us. The Buddha saw the human mind and body as unified. When we suppress or ignore aspects of our emotional, cognitive, and volitional lives, we tend also to disconnect from the body, from the physical manifestations of our experience. Conversely, when we distance ourselves from our physical experience, we lose touch with our inner life of emotions and thoughts. The awakening of the body from within that comes with mindfulness can help us to discover, not only our repressed emotions, but also, more importantly, a greater capacity to respond to the world with healthy emotions and motivations.

Second, in cultivating mindfulness we are developing non-reactivity, including the ability to be present for our experience without turning away, habitually seeking or resisting change, or clinging to pleasant and avoiding unpleasant experience. All too often, our automatic desires, aversions, preferences, and judgments interfere with our ability to know what is actually happening. Learning to not respond automatically and unconsciously makes possible a deeper understanding of the present moment and our reaction to it, and gives us more freedom to choose our response. Being non-reactively present for our physical experience goes a long way in learning to do so with the rest of our lives.

Last, but not least, mindfulness of physical sensations helps us both to relax tension and to understand its causes.

Mindfulness Exercises for the Second Week

1. Continue your daily twenty-minute meditation session.
2. In the midst of your regular activities, devote two one-hour periods during the week to being mindful of your body. During this time, perhaps using a timer or some other cue to remind yourself, periodically check in with your body, maybe every five minutes or so. Notice, in particular, your shoulders, stomach, face, and hands. If you find tension in any of these places, relax.
3. Devote one meal to eating slowly and mindfully, paying attention to the tastes, textures, temperature, and other qualities of your food, and to the experience of your body eating. (When does your body tell you that have had enough?) If possible, take the meal in silence, with no other activities to distract you. You might want to put down your spoon or fork between bites. Whenever your mind wanders, or whenever you get caught up in reactions to what is happening, relax and come back to the simplicity of eating mindfully.
4. Start noticing when, how and by what, your attention becomes distracted or fragmented. Are there any common themes or patterns in the kinds of thoughts, feelings, activities, or pre-occupations where your mindfulness disappears? If you discover any, discuss what you find with somebody: a friend, relative, or colleague.

Meditation Instruction: Mindfulness of the Body

During meditation, center your awareness primarily on the physical sensations of breathing. With dedication, but without strain, keep the breath in the foreground of attention. The idea is to be relaxed and receptive while alert and attentive. As long as other experiences such as bodily sensations, sounds, thoughts, or feelings are in the background of your awareness, allow them to remain there while you rest your attention with the sensations of breathing.

When a strong physical sensation makes it difficult for you to stay with the breath, simply switch your awareness to this new predominant experience. The art of mindfulness is recognizing what is predominant and then sustaining an intimate mindfulness on whatever that is. When the mind wanders and you lose the mindful connection with the sensation, gently and without judgment return your attention to the physical sensation.

As if your entire body were a sensing organ, sense or feel the physical experience. Simply allow it to be there. Drop whatever commentary or evaluations you may have about the experience in favor of seeing and sensing the experience directly in and of itself. Carefully explore the particular sensations that make it up – hardness or softness, warmth or coolness, tingling, tenseness, pressure, burning, throbbing, lightness, and so on. Let your awareness become as intimate with the experience as you can. Notice what happens to the sensations as you are mindful of them. Do they become stronger or weaker, larger or smaller, or do they stay the same?

As an aid to both acknowledging the physical experience and sustaining your focus, you can ever so softly label the experience. The labeling is a gentle, ongoing whisper in the mind that keeps the attention steady on the object of mindfulness. You should primarily sense directly the experience and what happens to it as you are present for it.

Be alert for when the focus of your attention moves from the physical sensations to your reactions to the sensations and your thoughts about them. If this happens move your attention back to the felt-sense of the sensations. Try to keep yourself independent of whatever thoughts and reactions you have. Relax.

Once a physical sensation has disappeared or is no longer compelling, you can return to mindfulness of breathing until some other sensation calls your attention.

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Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation: Week 1 of 4

Adapted from Gil Fronsdal

Insight meditation, or Vipassana, is one of the central teachings of the Buddha. It has continued as a living practice for 2600 years. At the heart of insight meditation is the practice of mindfulness, the cultivation of clear, stable and non-judgmental awareness. While mindfulness practice can be highly effective in helping bring calm and clarity to the pressures of daily life, it is also a spiritual path that gradually dissolves the barriers to the full development of our wisdom and compassion.

During the introductory course, the basic instructions in insight meditation are given sequentially, each week building on the previous one. The first week focuses on the basics of meditation and on mindfulness of breathing. The second week discusses mindfulness of the body and expands the area of attention to include all our physical experiences. The third week introduces mindfulness of emotions and thoughts, and the fourth week mindfulness of heart/mind and the role of mindfulness in daily life.

Insight meditation is nothing more mysterious than developing our ability to pay attention to our immediate experience. We are often pre-occupied with thoughts about the past or the future or with fantasies. While sometimes such pre-occupations may be innocent and harmless, more often they contribute to stress, fear and suffering. Mindfulness practice is learning how to overcome pre-occupation so that we can see clearly what is happening in our lived experience of the present. In doing so, we find greater clarity, trust, and integrity.

Mindfulness relies on an important characteristic of awareness: awareness by itself does not judge, resist, or cling to anything. By focusing on simply being aware, we learn to disentangle ourselves from our habitual reactions and begin to have a friendlier and more compassionate relationship with our experience, with ourselves and with others.

Mindfulness is the practice of being attentively present. It is called a practice in the same way that we say that people practice the piano. Being attentive is a skill that grows with practice. It develops best if we set aside any self-conscious judgements or expectations of how our meditation is developing. The practice is simply to relax and bring forth an awareness of what is happening in the present.

In order both to develop the skill and experience the joys of non-reactive presence, a daily meditation practice is helpful.

Mindfulness of Breathing

Insight Meditation usually begins with awareness of breathing. This is an awareness practice, not an exercise in breathing; there is no need to adjust the breathing in any way. We simply attend to the breath, getting to know it as it is: shallow or deep, long or short, slow or fast, smooth or rough, coarse or refined, constricted or loose. When we get distracted by thoughts or emotions, we simply return to the physical sensations of the breath.

Because of the mind’s tendency to be scattered and easily distracted, we use the breath as a kind of anchor to the present. When we rest in the breath, we are countering the strong forces of distraction. We train the mind, heart, and body to become settled and unified on one thing, at one place, at one time. If you are sitting in meditation and your mind is on what you did at work today, then your mind and body are not in the same place at the same time. Fragmented this way, we all too easily lose touch with a holistic sense of ourselves.

Mindfulness of breathing is a powerful ally in our lives. With steady awareness of our inhalations and exhalations, the breath can become an equanimous constant through the ups and downs of our daily life. Resting with, even enjoying, the cycles of breathing, we are less likely to be caught up in the emotional and mental events that pass through us. Repeatedly returning to the breath can be a highly effective training in letting go of the identification and holding which freeze the mind and heart. It also develops concentration.

Mindfulness Exercises for the First Week

You will get the most benefit from this course if you engage yourself with the practice during the week between our class meetings. During the first week please try the following three practices:

1. Sit one twenty-minute session of meditation each day. For this first week, focus on staying aware of your breath as described in the next section of the handout. Begin and end each sitting with, a minute of conscious reflection: At the start, clearly remind yourself that you are about to devote yourself to being mindful and present. Consciously let go of any concerns, remembering that you will have plenty of time to take them up again later. At the end, reflect on what happened during your meditation session. There is no need to judge what happened; you just want to strengthen your mindfulness through a brief exercise in recollection.
2. Choose one routine physical activity that you perform most days and experiment with doing it mindfully. This means doing just this one activity while you are doing the exercise – not listening to the radio at the same time, for example. It is also best to let go of any concern about the results or in finishing quickly. Remain in the present as best you can. When the mind wanders, simply come back to the activity. Activities you might choose include brushing your teeth, washing the dishes, or some routine act of driving or walking.
3. For one half-hour period during the week, maintain some regular attention of your posture as you go about with some normal activity. Without straining, assume a posture that is alert and upright. Notice what happens to your mood, thoughts, feelings, presence, and degree of mindfulness as you do this exercise.

Meditation Instruction: Mindfulness of Breathing

Sit in a comfortable but alert posture. Gently close your eyes. Take a couple of deep breaths, and, as you exhale, settle into your body, relaxing any obvious tension or holding. Then, breathing normally, bring your awareness to your body, sensing for a short while how the body presents itself to you. There is no particular way to be; just notice how you are at this moment.

Then, from within the body, as part of the body, become aware of your breathing, however it happens to appear. There is no right or wrong way to breathe while doing mindfulness practice; the key is to simply notice how it actually is right now. Let the breath breathe itself, allowing it to be received in awareness. Notice where in your body you feel the breath most clearly. This may be the abdomen rising and falling, the chest expanding and contracting, or the tactile sensations of the air passing through the nostrils or over the upper lip. Wherever the breath tends to appear most clearly, allow that area to be the home, the center of your attention.

Keep your attention connected with the inhalations and exhalations, sensing the physical sensations that characterize them. Let go of the surface concerns of the mind. Whenever the mind wanders away, gently come back to the breath. There is no need to judge the wandering mind; when you notice that the mind has wandered, simply return to the breath without evaluation.

To help maintain contact between awareness and the breath, you may use a label or mental note. Softly, like a whisper in the mind, label the in-breath and out-breath, encouraging the awareness to stay present with the breath. You can label the inhalations and exhalations as “in” and “out,” or perhaps use “rising” and “falling” for the movement of the abdomen or the chest. Don’t worry about finding the right word, just use something that will help you stay connected.

There is no need to force the attention on the breath; to strengthen your ability to become mindful and present, use the gentle power of repeatedly, nonjudgmentally returning and resting with the breath.

Postures for meditation. This helpful guide includes photos:

http://insightmeditationcenter.org/articles/posturesformeditation.pdf

From the Tao te Ching:

I have just three things to teach:

simplicity, patience, compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures.

Simple in actions and in thoughts,

you return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies,

you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate toward yourself,

you reconcile all beings in the world.

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Here are the Holiday hookups from three of my favorite home decorating stores. 

Love, and Happy Nesting!

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Expires: December 1, 2011

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Linda's Chicken Spinach Soup

I make this soup at the first sign of chill in the air. It is especially good for weeks of high stress, because you can make a big pot, and put leftover portions in the fridge / freezer for a complete lunch or dinner which will nourish you into well-being within minutes. The lemon + chicken combo is reminiscent of the Greek favorite avgolomeno but the mountain of spinach and the wild rice add the healthy goodness. The yogurt gives it that creaminess and the fresh parsley brings the freshness. I can't think of anything better in this weather!

Note: My husband hates yogurt but can't get enough of this soup so don't let that hold you back. 

Ingredients, all available in one short stop at any Whole Foods:

2 Cartons of Free Range Organic Chicken Broth

1 Yellow Onion - chopped. I save my tears for my Bollywood movies and buy them pre-chopped as long as they're fresh enough 

4 Organic F-R Chicken Thighs because I like my poultry dark but you can go with a whole chicken or 4 breasts

1 pack of brown and wild rice mix

1 extra large box of pre-washed baby spinach

Straus organic yogurt - plain

1 Lemon

Fresh Parsley - chopped

Saute onions for a few minutes in olive oil. Season chicken with rock salt and pepper. Add chicken to pot until skin is crisp to caramelize. Add stock and rice.

SImmer 1 hour. Chicken should be falling off the bone but careful not to overcook it! Rice will be on the softer side.

Add spinach and parsley for only a few minutes.

Let it cool a bit and fold in about a cup of Yogurt. Drizzle with arbequina olive oil and add salt and pepper to your liking.

The best!

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Day Ten: Dawn of the Dead Cockroaches

Several times during my stay, I had witnessed 4-inch long insects zooming into some corner of the room but I firmly decided to believe they were just gigantic beetles on speed. The fantasy came to an end that evening when I just about stepped on one getting into the shower. This thing made its Mexican cousin look like a ladybug: it was huge; and judging by the fact it was on its back, it looked like it had seen better days. I was starving and I hadn't showered all day but I went into the room and called housekeeping:

“Hi, I'm calling from room 407 and there is a dying cockroach in my bathroom.”

“Yes, madam?”

“Yes, there is cockroach in my bathroom.”

“Yes, madam?”

“Can you please send someone to clean it up?”

“Oh! (Like the thought just occurred to him) Yes madam, I will send someone…”

30 minutes later, a 15 year old boy showed up at my door carrying a broom that looked twice his age and a big spray can with pictures of a cockroach and a mouse, both comfortingly depicted on their backs (this chemical is FDA approved, surely) … I didn't particularly want to witness the killing, so I sat on the bed and listened. I heard the sound of a spray for about 10 seconds. This first attempt must have been unsuccessful because the spray came on again for another 10 seconds. When that didn't work, he diligently finished the entire can and finally emerged through the cloud of fumes coming from the door. He carefully swept the dead body across the entire room, leaving a long trail of liquid cockroach poison behind him. Once he got to the front door, he propelled the intruder onto the steps with one victorious sweep and turned to me with a big smile:

“All done, madam!”

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I told him to wait and called his boss. I explained that somebody should probably clean up the poison and replace the towels. I handed the phone to the boy and went to dinner, smelling like a truck driver who mistook the roach poison for his deodorant.

I came back to the room an hour later, almost running at the thought of a nice long shower. The room still smelled like poison but it looked like someone had done their best to clean up and two fresh towels were laid on the bed. I ecstatically grabbed one and went for the shower when I abruptly froze in my footsteps: there were 3 new bodies, wiggling in agony.

I called housekeeping 3 times that night. You know how they say that for every cockroach you see, there are a hundred that you don't see… well the air in the pipes must have grown heavy from all the poison, so the entire colony, desperate for some fresh air, decided to crawl up that night to tragically die at the foot of my toilet. I called housekeeping one last time in the morning and had a quick shower before any new ones showed up. I grabbed my bags, all packed from not sleeping, and went to breakfast, never happier to check out of a room at 7 in the morning.

Mumbai's blue tarps

Day Eleven: Mumbai

As we were landing, I tried to steal a peek of the city over the shoulder of my neighbors. All I could see was an impressive sprawl of various shades of gray spotted by thousands of blue dots. We got closer and I realized the blue dots were tarps. Apparently somebody has a monopoly on the Indian tarp industry and for the sake of efficiency only produces them in royal blue. And this someone is very well off because they are used for everything: roof, side wall, garage, you name it, every household has one.

I had splurged and booked my next few nights at the Taj Mahal, “India 's finest hotel”. When I told that to a friend before I left, he asked: “They named a hotel after a beer?” Oddly enough, on my way to the hotel, I saw several billboards advertising Kingfisher airlines, but that's just to confuse you, so back to the hotel. I was shown around the room and after a $5.95 one minute phone call to the US, I hung up and jumped up and down a few times. Minibar, fluffy bathrobe, slippers and most importantly a sparkling bathroom without a roach in sight. Heaven! I took a long bubble bath and went exploring. I think air conditioning in India may be a bit of a status symbol and this being the Taj, the lobby was absolutely freezing. Despite this being the low season, it was bustling with IT and film executives (Bombay is the Indian capital for both industries). I felt a bit out of place and for the millionth time this trip wished my husband was with me. The first 2 floors of the Taj host half of the stores recommended in Frommer's but one look at the price tags and I quickly realized we won't be buying anything here. Before I got myself more depressed, I went to the cheapest restaurant in the hotel and had the most wonderful fresh spinach ravioli with a creamy tomato and fresh basil sauce and a beautiful glass of shiraz then went up to my room and curled up under the Scandia Down duvet (I don't know for sure that it was Scandia Down but this is my story) and watched the West Wing until I fell asleep.

Day Twelve: Lunch at the Jaswas

The next day, I had been kindly invited to have lunch with Raj's parents in their home in a suburb of Mumbai. Raj was the voice of reason who warned me to take Cipro with me and after my return, he became our studio's very own India travel advisor. Whenever I travel, I can make do without seeing the famous sites but what I am really interested in is seeing how people live. I had been looking forward to this lunch since the beginning of the trip because I felt that it would help fill the puzzle from me: I was finally going to see India from the inside.

I referred to my travel guides for advice on what to bring them and both sources were categorical: pastries or sweets are the can't-go-wrong gift for any host. It just so happened that the Taj hotel has the nicest bakery in Mumbai so I went there on my way to the appointment with the driver and bought a sampler of every pastry they had. My heavy box in hand, I went to the lobby to meet my ride at 10 o'clock . I got in the back seat and off we were. Raj had told me this was going to be a full day's trip but there was no way for me to find out just how long getting there was going to take because neither I or the driver spoke the other's language. We swerved in and out and around the other cars, passed the Flora fountain and headed out of the main downtown area towards Chowpatty beach. It was a beautiful day, the sun was glistening on top of the ocean and I noticed my driver was strangely conservative in the distance he kept to other moving objects, so I though: great! I won't have to pull my nails out of the back of his seat at the end of this. I can just relax and enjoy the nice excursion.

And then we took a right. We had to, in order to go inland and apparently so did half of Bombay. The traffic almost immediately came to a halt. We were headed towards a left turn corner that redefined the word “chaos”: they were trying to turn what in the US would be a small one way street into a 3-lane-both-ways-boulevard and in true Indian queuing fashion (no such thing as “your turn” here), cars, rickshaws, rusty bicycles balancing two huge bags each carrying the equivalent of 5 dead bodies on either side… all these vehicles were going for the corner. There seemed to be a process to it though: whenever a driver saw a 5 inch opportunity, he'd speed up, then abruptly stop, honk his horn and yell until 5 minutes later, he negotiated his turn again. At first, my driver was the image of calm until we almost got hit and then he too rolled his window down and gave the other guy a piece of his mind. 

He kept the window down and that was when I was first introduced to the local custom of hacking. The first time you hear it, you think they're dying. When perfected by a long practice, it's a loud sound that engages the deep abdominals to generate the liquid from deep within the lungs and accumulates more volume and momentum as it travels up the larynx until the product is finally expelled with a heavy splash on the ground. It seemed that this skill brings great pride upon its master so for about fifteen minutes, we were stuck there, hacking and yelling until the corner finally gave birth to a bus and the route cleared enough to get us out of there. The traffic halted at every single intersection before we left town and every time we did, some kid came to sell us something different: a (pirated?) copy of the DaVinci code (forget the Pulitzer prize, you know you've made it as a writer if you're on the streets of Bombay), a map of the state of Maharashtra or a giant yellow penis-shaped balloon (you read that right – this is one of the symbols of Shiva). At first, I politely declined their offers from the inside of the car and tried to joke with them but from that point on, the scenery became more and more depressing. The old apartment buildings of Kemp's Corner turned into shacks and the kids were now trying to sell me a single sock, or a key from a 1967 typewriter or a house brick and I just remained silent, clutching at my prized box of pastries so they don't end up on the windshield. 

And then we hit the slums and everything came to a halt. Picture on both sides of the highway, tens of thousands of housing attempts (because I wouldn't know what else to call them) made of rubble and tarps and trash. I read somewhere that every week, another 5,000 people arrive in Mumbai and this is where they go. The kids weren't selling anything anymore. They just came to me and glued their dirty little faces against the window and waited until the driver shushed them away. Every kind of invalid you can imagine came to the window to beg with their professionally perfected cries. At first, the discomfort made me look away, and I thought, this is just a bad patch of the city; we'll be out of here soon. But this went on for miles and miles and miles and then I realized: this is the city! It was almost as if the traffic slowed down right here just before the international airport to give foreigners a good look at reality. It was Mumbai's cry of outrage, in my face, and it really got to me. I don't know how it wouldn't. It's impossible to grasp unless you go and see the vastness and the extent of poverty with your own eyes but the feeling when you are there is this overwhelming guilt and sadness that makes you want to sell everything you own and do something, anything, to make things even just a little better.

After that, I don't know if it was the traffic or the introversion of my thoughts, but we arrived soon therafter. At noon, we pulled up to a beautiful old house that stood as the only one of its style in the neighborhood. Chinubhai, Raj's dad walked outside to greet me. He was 80 years old but the clarity and depth of his conversation would never have given him out. We walked inside and he introduced me to his wife, Alakben. She was a few years younger but she too looked great in a beautifully embroidered white saree. She was still finishing up the lunch preparations, so she left us to it. I noticed Chinubhai was walking irregularly and he told me he had an accident a year ago. He was climbing the ladder to reach the top of the well in the backyard. He insisted it was the top step that gave out and that's why he fell down, hurting his neck. The injury caused an isolated paralysis but he ignored the surgeons' advice for a risky operation and instead listened to another doctor who believed he could restore most of his motion over time. I told him he looked great but inside my heart went out to Raj. All of us children who decide to make our lives away from our parents, we carry this guilt, for not being there. If you're one of us, you know what I'm talking about. And I could imagine Raj’s helplessness when receiving the news at the other end of the world.

There was still some time before lunch so I offered to show Chinubhai some yoga poses and he was very eager. We did cobra to strengthen his back and happy baby to stretch out the back of the body and single legged balancing to work his weaker side and learn to stabilize the hips. We could have gone longer but lunch was ready and we sat down to a traditional thali meal. They were both Jainists, which is a stricter form of Buddhism, and when I confessed I didn't know much more than that, they were both pleased to educate me. One of the fundamental principles they live by is “ahimsa”, which translated means “non-violence”. Every food they eat is either a fruit or a seed or something that can be collected from the plant or animal without destroying it. So no meat, no roots, and of course no eggs. I asked what about my precious pastries they had just put in the fridge, and they both just smiled and shook their head. Apart from Chinubhai's accident, they both looked great though, so I thought they must be onto something. They also told me that their saddhus, their holy men take it even a step further: they do not stay in any one city for more than a few months at a time so that they do not get attached. Like Buddhists, they view the world as a transient, ever-changing place and therefore attachment to any one person or object or circumstance is a source of suffering. So these saddhus go from city to city and check this out, they go on foot, because if they used any vehicle, they wouldn't be able to ensure they don't kill an insect on the ground. Fascinating!

After lunch, Chinubhai retreated for his nap. Alakben and I laid down on the daybeds in the living room and kept talking. I asked her if they go out much. They go to the temple and to the market, but not much further. The traffic, she warned me, can be “not good”. Especially in the afternoons, as you get closer to 3, it can take up to 3 hours to get to Mumbai. I looked at my watch: it was close to 2. She sensed my alarm and asked me if I wanted to head back soon and I told her that if it meant it would save me an hour of looking at miserable children, then yes, please at their driver's convenience. We parted our goodbyes and they asked me to take the pastries and eat them all myself. I told them that would be a very bad idea so could they please give them to somebody else?

The ride back did take 3 hours and by the time we arrived, I felt like I had come back from war. I wanted to kneel on the ground and kiss the steps of the Taj hotel. I went to the beautiful poolside café and had high tea served to me from sterling silver teapots. I ate all the scones and cucumber sandwiches and I just stared into the distance for an hour without saying a word. India is the most confusing place I've been to. It challenges us Westerners on every single level. The cows in the middle of the street. The poverty, everywhere. Our natural instinct is to react “how can people live like that?” but then you start to see the smiles. Some of the poorest kids on that highway seemed happier than most of the people you see on 101 at peak hour. The warmth of the people is like nowhere else, and the beauty of the place and the richness of their culture makes your jaw drop. And so to my Indian friends from home who have read this and have put up with my misspellings and ignorance through all these pages, I want you to know that I can see why you live here in America. But I can also see why you go back. 

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Day Four

This time at lunch I made friends with Mary, a girl from Ojai. After discussing how tight-packed our schedule has been, we decided we must go check out the stores around the resort, today, while we still had the energy. Everywhere I went for the last 4 days, people asked me “where you from?”, and after that, “this, vacation?” To which I always replied I was here on a yoga training and jumped at the opportunity to ask if they practiced. It always went something like this:
“Yes, yoga, very very good”, shaking their head.
“Yes, it's very good, but do YOU do yoga?”
“Me”, they'd laugh, “no, me no yoga.”
“Why not?” I'd ask. They'd keep laughing.
“Me, very very busy”, they'd say, continuing to pick their feet. Let me tell you about “busy”. My ignorant belief is that at some point, the Indian government must have decided to solve the overpopulation problem by creating the most mind boggling bureaucracy and incenting private businesses to themselves create the most surprising job positions in order to absorb the masses of people that keep flowing in from the countryside. This has resulted in the most delightful effect in that everybody accomplishes very little and even that is done at the most leisurely of pace and lightness of spirit.

But back to yoga and shopping. On my way to the practice room, I had noticed a man always sitting at the steps of his store. He always wore a loincloth and his muscles while small looked very lean and well developed. He bore the three stripes on his forehead symbolizing worship of Shiva (god of yoga, among his other duties) and his white beard came down to his waist. He always looked very still and content and unlike all the other merchants who came out on the street to talk you into buying junk, he just sat on the steps and smiled. “Now, he”, I thought, “must practice yoga!”

Most of the stores we had seen had diversified into selling a number of completely unrelated articles: “You don't want beautiful sarong? We have the latest pirated Indian pop music. Very good for yoga!” but this store only offered shelves and shelves of stone figurines that our man had carved himself. Mary was in awe and was chatting him up. Eventually she told him we were here for the yoga retreat and my ears perked up to hear if he'd say anything:
“Oh, yoga, yes, me doing yoga too.”
“REALLY?” I jumped in. “Do you practice every day?”
“Every day, yes. Me wake up at 4 and do some yoga, sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes more, then me start working.”
“How long have you practiced?” I wanted to know more.
“Oh, very very long time: when me was small” he placed his hand by his hip to show me his height when he started. “56 now.” Wow! Apart from the beard, he had the body of a 20 year-old. I could totally see him doing sixth series (the most advanced class in Ashtanga). We went outside to see the rest of his stuff. I saw a statue of Devi, the divine mother laying propped on one arm, the essence of cool. I asked him how much.
“This, 300 dollar. Very big work…” and he showed me his hands. They were all shriveled in from arthritis and when he saw my face, he smiled and demonstrated almost proudly that he couldn't lay them flat on the ground. Maybe I'm being naïve but a simple padahastasana (stepping your feet on top of your palms) would have helped preserve his range of motion over the years. I showed him the pose and told him to be very careful and he was genuinely appreciative. He thanked me and told me he'd give me the Devi for 200. I said I would think about it and left, happy to have been of help but quite puzzled. How can someone practice yoga for 40 years and not do padahastasana?

I never answered this question but in retrospect I can see how much teachers like Iyengar and Bikram have done for yoga, in terms of practicing with a therapeutic purpose and creating intelligent sequences. Iyengar was the first to introduce the West to the hatha, the physical practice and because that was the platform we started from, I was surprised to realize that the quality of instruction in the US is actually very high. Part of it too is that in the US we are quite excited about yoga. It is a necessary balance to our lifestyle and our interest in its health benefits is very strong. That's not the case in India. They certainly pride themselves for having come up with it but probably a much smaller percentage of the population there actually practices the poses and so there are teachers who are absolutely brilliant but they are much fewer than you'd think and their students are mostly westerners. On the other hand, it seems that their sadhana, their seated practice (in other words, their spiritual and mental practice) is very strong, mostly because it is deeply entwined with their religion. That's the thing, in India, they don't separate the two; I even read an article in the local paper ranting about how teachers in the West are “bastardizing the jewel of India” by teaching only the physical part. So I think in the end, if you are interested in exploring a spiritual depth to your practice versed in the Hindu or Buddhist or Jainist traditions, you can learn a lot from a pilgrimage to India. But if you already have a different spiritual identity, or if you can't commit to several months of study with Patthabi or Iyengar, then stay at home because you can learn a lot more here. And you won't get slapped on the head.

Day Five

As part of the Ayurvedic program, all the dishes at every meal were labeled for each dosha. Being a Vata dominant, and also warned about the Delhi belly threat, my diet over the last five days had consisted of: curried banana stew over oatmeal at breakfast, vegetable curry for lunch and sometimes the same vegetable curry for dinner. It was fun the first 3 days but by now I was giving dirty looks to the German guy at the next table who was making love to a juicy chicken thigh, complete with fries and a salad. My friend Irit saw me face:

“I know, just a few more days and you'll be home. It's not worth getting sick over.”
I debated internally for a split second and decided that the positive thinking was more pragmatic:
“That's true, and just look where we are”. Down, in front of us was a stretch of connecting white beaches framed by thousands of coconut palms on the left side and the blue of the surf to the right. No wonder the locals call Kerala “gods' own place”.
“Yeah, well, that beach”, she said “I'm not setting foot in that water!”
“What, why?” I asked. So she told me the story:
That morning she and her husband went for a walk on that same beach. They wanted to check out the village neighboring the resort. They walked past the fishermen and not before long, they could start to see the huts through the dense coconut trees. They detected some bad smell where they were, so they got on a path that ran closer to the village, also hoping to get a better glimse at the locals' way of life. They couldn't see much though through the vegetation so after a while they decided to turn around and walk by the water on their way back. They had been so focused on their anthropological spying that they hadn't noticed a man squatting by to the water line, and then another one, some 50 feet down. “How nice”, they thought at first, “they're meditating!” And then they got closer and noticed that both of them had their skirts pulled up around their hips and the lightbulb went on. There was line of human feces on the sand going out to the horizon, rhythmically being caressed every few seconds by the waves of the ocean. “I don't get it, you know,” she said, “this place can be paradise and they've turned it into a toilet.” This story I think sums up my experience of India. There is so much beauty in India's nature and art and human spirit and some of the people from the training could just isolate that and they had a great time, but for me it was impossible not to notice the poverty and the filth that came very often in the same glimpse and not be affected by it.

THE Beach

Irit felt the same way, so as any spiritual yoga instructor would do in the face of depressing thought, we decided to skip the afternoon Kalari and get a cab to Parthas. Parthas is the 5 story saree and fabric megastore located in the heart of Trivandrum. Thirty minutes and three near-death experiences later, the cab dropped us off and promised to wait an hour. We went to the first floor which was solely dedicated to the silks. I spotted 5 other girls from the training engaged in heated debates in various corners of the department. In terms of the choice that was laid before us, “overwhelming” is an understatement. I felt like someone who's never had ice cream walking into Coldstone Creamery for the first time. I think sarees are the most flattering attire any culture has come up with and they come in the most beautiful colors, embroidered or beaded or woven in with gold. You could be the clutziest and most androgynous woman, put on a saree and you'll look the essence of elegance and femininity. Plus they are huge – at 6 meters of length you can make enough pillows and bolsters to cover Martha Steward's guest bed. So an hour later, knowing that the cab was waiting, I decided that four sarees were going to do and went up to one of the clerks to pay. He led me to a line of about 20 women where they wrote up my order. I was then led up to the third floor where I stood in another line to pay. Then back to the first line to show them my receipt and then, finally, was sent downstairs where a sea of women were elbowing each other to get to the delivery clerk and collect the fruit of their labors. When my turn came some twenty minutes later, he looked at my receipt and went to find my bag. He took all its contents out and stamped each one of them, then systematically checked them off the receipt, put them in a paper bag, stapled that 3 times, put it in a plastic bag with handles and finally handed it to me. I clutched the bag and crawled out of there, grinning at the thought of what my husband would have done by now had he been brought along to this shopping experience.

The cab was still there and as soon as he saw us, he turned the engine so we jumped in almost in motion. I wasn't feeling so good but I just atttibuted it to the shopping trauma. Once I got to my room, I decided to lie down a little before the massage. As the time came to get up I wasn't feeling much better but I didn't want to cancel at the last minute and made it to the clinic anyhow. A different doctor was there. I told him I was feeling nauseous. He looked at me and then carried on with the daily ritual: he took my pulse and blood pressure and asked “how is sleep?” and “how is toilet?”.
“Toilet and sleep are great, but I am not feeling well. I feel like I'm going to throw up.”
He took my right hand and applied both his thumbs against two pressure points in the palm. He held on for a minute, looking very serious, then released and looked back at me:
“Headache Ok now?” This wasn't exactly going as I planned.
“My head is fine,” I said pointing to my head and shaking it to say no. “No headache. I feel like throwing up” and I performed my best mimic of food coming up and out.
“Ah, VOMITING!”
“Yes! Vomiting!”
“Ah, very good.”
“Very good?”
“You go massage and I'll send you medicine.”

Alright, I thought, at least he knows what is wrong me. This could be worse. I dragged myself behind my therapist whose smile dropped when she saw me: “you no good?” “No, me no good today”. Halfway through the massage, there was a knock on the door. She answered and after a brief exchange she came back to me holding a cup. I stood up and looked inside it: I could have sworn this was the same medicine they gave me before only this time it wasn't diluted: it was thick and black as Turkish coffee and smelled of really strong spices. I gave my therapist the “do I have to?” look but she was stern so I thought the only way out of this is through and chugged it without even a chocolate to wash it down. I lied back down but I couldn't get the taste out of my mind so we cut our session short. I dragged myself to my room and sat on the bed, holding my head in my hands, trying to ignore the message I was getting from my stomach. You see, I really, really hate throwing up. That's why I never got drunk in college. I think it's the most violating physical experience so I'll do anything to avoid it. Thirty minutes later, I ran to the bathroom. Some 5 hours later, I fell asleep exhausted.

DAY SIX

I woke up with the crows. My tummy felt light and my head was clear. “YES! I am healed!” I thought, and churpily went to breakfast. I devoured twice the oatmeal to make up for my missed dinner and came back to my room. I still had plenty of time so I'll lie down a bit, I thought. Thirty minutes later I tried getting up but I couldn't stand on my feet very well. I'll stay here a little longer, I thought. By nine o'clock the gates of hell had opened back in their full swing, so I decided to crack open my emergency cipro. “Thank God for real drugs; it will only take a few hours now and I'll be fine,” I kept thinking. “I'll be up and running for the teacher training at 2.” I wish I had known cipro takes about 24 hours to kick in. I spent the day in bed, looking out the open door at the same beach/toilet you couldn't swim in and reading the Kite Runner and crying (it's a real tear jerker, if you haven't read it – it's great), feeling sorry for the protagonist and myself at the same time. I was mad at everybody for everything. It was so unfair that I spent the last 5 days eating curry and I still got sick! And my husband was so far away! The phone lines were so bad that you could only hear every third word, which took any charm out of it:
“I miss you, I can't wait to come home”, me sobbing…
“What?”
“I MISS YOU”
“What?”
“Forget it, I'll see you in a week.”
And that was on the odd times that he could get through.

I was mad at the locals for not linking the dots between the quality of the water and their health. Just this morning, the newspaper's headlines proclaimed “108 cases of Malaria and growing” for Trivandrum alone. Maybe if you didn't cook your curry with water from the same river you go to the bathroom in and wash your clothes in and burry grandma in, you'd be in better health. And maybe so would I. I was mad at the doctors who always meant well but just didn't speak the same language, literally and figuratively. The next day when I went to my treatment, I told them I took antibiotics and they looked at me like I had just admitted to abducting a child. To them, if you don't have malaria, you're fine, just rest and be miserable. But I didn't care anymore. The day after, half our group was sick, we're talking 30 people, and I think they started waking up to the reality of the situation. Anyway, I was in the middle of my angry-at-the whole-world breakdown when I noticed the cleaning lady trying to peek in through the open door. She had seen me lying there as she went past several times in the day but she had gone by so as not to disturb me. This time though she hesitantly stepped in and asked:
“You no good?”
“No”, I said. “I am sick”, thinking, “because you washed the towels in the cooking water.”
She didn't pick up on the hostility and came closer.
“Sick?” she asked, making the same nausea describing hand gesture I had used on the doctor yesterday.
“Yes”, I said with a glimmer of hope, thinking “finally somebody understands!”

She disappeared without a word and came back with what she called rice soup, which was a few overcooked rice grains in their own brine. This woman was nobody to me but she stood there until I drank it, slowly. When I was done, she gently caressed my head, like a grandma to a sick child and then picked up the mess around the room. The soup didn't do much but I felt so grateful I was going to cry. It is amazing what just a little human attention can do for you when you're sick.

“Where is your friend?” she asked. I guess they've become used to unmarried couples and she was just trying to be polite.
“No, no friend. My husband, he's in California .”
“Husband?”
“Yes, husband; not here, in California .”
“You, alone?'
“Yes, me alone.” She felt even more sorry for me and petted my hair again.
“Next year, you come and bring him.”
“Yes, maybe… I come and bring him…”

The great thing out of all this though was that once you're on Cipro, you can eat everything, so my last few days were one glorious culinary delight. I had fresh fruit and fresh fish and mango lassis and the best tandoori chicken I've ever tasted! 

Stay tuned for the finale...

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Day One: The Ayurveda Center 

Ayurveda is the thousands of years old Indian holistic science and our resort, Somatheeram is supposed to be THE place in all of India to go study it and get treated. Looking for some time to kill before dinner, I ventured over to the clinic to check it out. A middle-aged man with glasses was filling out some complex table (computers are still in the early adopters phase in Kerala). I introduced myself as a participant in the teacher training group and asked him if anyone would happen to be available to do my initial consultation.“Yes, madam, please sit”

Two more people came over and got involved. I was led to another room, and again, asked to sit. Finally, a lady walked in, took me to a third room and asked me to sit. She introduced herself as one of the 13 doctors and gave me a 10 page booklet with questions I expected on sleep, digestion, eating habits, as well as questions I didn't expect, like “What are your spiritual beliefs?” I'll tell you more about Ayurveda some other time but very basically, the ayurvedic view is that there are 3 “doshas” or groups of elements in the universe (wind and ether, that they call “Vata”, earth and water- “Kapha”, and fire – “Pitha”). Each dosha comes with its unique qualities. They believe that every person is naturally more prone towards one dosha over the other two and that causes our imbalances. For example, some of the qualities of the Vata dosha are dryness and cold, so people with a Vata dosha tend to have dry skin, dry joints and get cold easily. Kapha qualities are mass and sluggishness, so Kapha people are more prone to gaining weight and sleep lots. Pitha qualities are high energy and acidity, so they are prone to heartburn and competitiveness. Anyway, that's just to give you some idea.

After I was done with the questionnaire, we started going over my answers. About halfway through, a much older man walked in. His pants looked too big and his clear plastic glasses kept sliding down his nose but his smile was comforting and the lady doctor seemed to have a lot of respect for him so I concluded he must be important. She briefed him as he shook his head, looking at me and smiling. He jotted down a few notes and finally announced with a certain grandiosity:
“Vata Pitha!”
I looked at her for explanation:
"Your main dosha is Vata, but very close is Pitha, so Vata Pitha.”
She continued:
“You already get massage every day, yes?” I nodded. “I recommend also you do Njavarakizhi for the knee and Sirodhara to help with sleep.”
“But I'm sleeping fine. It's only if I'm stressed out that I don't.”
She looked at me in disagreement:
“Ok, you try once and maybe you like, then more…”
“Ok”, I said “how much do these treatments cost?”
They looked at each other and exchanged a few sentences.
“80 euro for the Njavarakizhi and 22 euro for Sirodhara.”
“And what exactly is Njavarakizhi?” I asked.
She took a plastic 4x6 photo album (the ones we get for free at home) and showed me a photo of a sturdy Indian woman holding something over the knee of a chubby sunburned white guy whose expression said “next year, I'm going to Thailand.”
Seeing that I was going to try and get out of it, they exchanged a few more sentences.
“If you already do massage, you get discount. 49 euro for 3 treatments.”

I couldn't believe it, we went from 80 each to 49 for 3! You bargain even in a health clinic? It did the job though: I was curious, so I said fine.
“And these are your medicines. This is good for digestions. No constipation. Take 3 tablespoons before food.”
“But my digestion is fine. I am not constipated” I tried to explain.
“Ok, then take 2 tablespoons. Good for knee also.”
Already skeptical that the same (foul tasting) medicine would miraculously work for both, I took it as prescribed. The day after, I found myself running to the bathroom, so I wrapped the poison in newspaper and put it in the trash hoping that the cleaners wouldn't tell on me.

Every morning, millions of these flower pujas are being assembled throughout India. To this day, it's one of my favorite things about this culture - taking full permission to pause and create something beautiful, regardless of its impermanence or practicality.

Day Two: The Ganesh Temple

At the end of the practice, Shiva (our teacher, not the god) told us to meet at 5pm to go to the temple, warning us to dress suitably. Women should have their arms and legs covered. The appropriate attire for Indian men is a loincloth.

I showed up at 4:45 to see if any of the guys would turn up in a loincloth but no luck. We managed to fit 50 people between a minibus, 2 taxis and eventually 2 rickshaws and we were on the way. Somehow, we made it up the hill. The temple wasn't anything grand: two small structures and a yard, enclosed by a gate. One of the shrines was to Shiva and the other one to Ganesh. They looked almost identical. A marble platform covered by a pergola extended out of the front door where people were kneeling in prayer. The door to the Shiva temple was semi-open and I could see a gold statue of the Lord of the Dance which almost looked on fire from the hundreds of flames and lit incense and bright flowers surrounding it.

Shiva gave us each a coconut and a lotus flower. The coconut represents the Self, the symbolism being that the hard shell is the ego and insecurities but inside it is all goodness. We lined up in front of this pit and one by one, we each pitched our coconut very hard into it so that it cracked. This cracking of the ego is done as an offering to Ganesh, the elephant God, remover of obstacles.

By this point, the priests were done at the Shiva temple so they came out with a cloud of incense and sat down on the marble. We lined up there too. When my turn came, I gave the priest the lotus flower and he gave me bananas. We squeezed back into our various modes of transport and went to dinner.

Day Three
My jet lag had me up for most of the night so I skipped the morning meditation to sleep in. Unfortunately, by 6:30 the local fisherman were already lined up, one behind the other, chanting and pulling in the one huge net from the beach. It looks like they're playing tug of war with the sea. I heard it's not very efficient but it's the tradition and it's good for tourists to take pictures of. They were imminently joined in their song by the twenty crows who came looking for food outside my cottage and who for the rest of the trip became my alarm clock, so I gave up and dragged my confused body to breakfast. I had been here for three days and for the tenth meal in a row now, I was greeted by Arun, the same smiley server.
“You again,” I joked, “don't you ever not work?”
“No, Madam”, he said, laughing.
He brought me my tea. Tea in India is no joke. As soon as he set it down I took out all three bags to try and stop the brewing but it was already black as coffee.
“So when is your next day off?” I asked.
He just laughed again.
“Do you get a day off?
”No, madam”, still laughing.
Arun explained to me his family lives in Tamil Nadu, the neighbouring state and that he spends months at a time in Somatheeram and goes back for a week here and there. I thought, here I am, on an exotic retreat martyring about not getting my 8 hours and this man has to live detached from his wife and kids and put up with snooty Westerners for 18 hours a day without a day off and it's 6:30 in the morning and he is standing next to me laughing about it! He was there for every meal of mine and his attitude never changed once.

Through the rest of my stay in Kerala, I noticed that same spirit with everybody I came into contact with. Everybody says hello, every time, from the bellboys to the cleaners to the Chief Superior Managing Director (titles are important in India). At first I was a bit skeptical: “they must want a tip!”, so a few times on my way out, I turned around to try and catch them connivingly rubbing their hands but the smiles always stayed on. The tailors who made my saree were always joking around and once in while one of them would break out in a song. My massage therapist was giggling with her girlfriends every time I arrived to the appointment late from the teacher training. She didn't speak much English but she greeted me with the warmest smile and whistled a tune and picked flowers as she led me to the treatment room. At this late hour, I was probably her tenth massage of the day. Kerala truly has the warmest, nicest people on earth. When I left 10 days later, I walked down to the restaurant to find Arun. I gave him a folded $100 bill and he got all serious and thanked me. I hope he bought himself a styling rickshaw and that he is now flying across the country to see his family with that same big smile on his face.

At lunchtime, I spotted a free chair next to Sophie, the French girl in our training. She had immigrated to India years ago to live in a co-op near Pondicherry and teach yoga. I remembered from the introductions the first day that she was taking our training because she was “seek endeu tirrred of the mail centeurred end dogmatique ticheurs in India”. I wanted to find out more so I chatted her up. She had spent months at a time studying in Mysore and in Pune. I asked her about the comment she had made and after her beating around the bush and me insisting, she told me a story. The first month of her study in India, she took a class from the son of one of the most renowned yoga masters. There were close to 300 people and she couldn't hear the instructions very well. Towards the end of the class, he apparently told people to do a seated open twist but she mistakenly did a closed twist (going the other way) and he came around and slapped her on the head. “Iteu wasn't harrd but stille, I'm not an eight earrr oldeu and even iff I was, that's not dzeu way to teach someone”.

I must admit I was shocked. That afternoon, I studied Kalari (the local martial art) and I noticed the total surrender and respect with which the local students assisted their teacher. Literally, when he said “jump” they asked how high. It is difficult for us gun-slinging, individualism-or-death Americans to understand this, but that's just the way the system is here. Just like college fraternities in the States have some odd ways of bonding, both systems have worked for years because you know that if you stick with it, eventually you'll be the one on top and then, just like we naturally tend to mirror our parents in our relationships with our children, yoga teachers too tend to treat their students the way their guru treated them. So you want to study yoga? Go clean the toilets for a year. If you're a woman, go clean the toilets for 5 years. Slapping you doesn't mean the teacher doesn't care for you; he truly wants your best. That's just the way he knows how to show it. 

Stay tuned for Part 3...

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