A lot of difference, a letter does make

Master Yoda : Do. Or do not. There is no try.

Master Yoga : Try, not do. There is only try

For someone who is a fan of Yo(d,g)a this is like being in the twilight zone.

One is dealing with the willingness to start something and the other deals with a continous process where it takes a long long time to see results. 

As most of you know, I had signed up for another 60 day challenge at BYSJ three months ago. No one at home really wanted me to sign up during summer as they knew our social calendar was busy and they told me upfront... "no doubles". They were also trying to give me a reality check saying "you are going to miss three weeks to  three different international trips. what are you thinking?"

It was not that they thought doing two classes in one day was tough for me. They could not spare close to 4 hours a day of my time on the weekends I was here. 

Having signed up, used sticker time and conversations with friends to do the best I could. Would do yoga in the morning and catch international flights, would come back after being awake for 36 hours to do yoga, go anytime possible during days I was here.. there is a long list. But in the last 10 days, it became clear, that no amount of doubles could play catch up. So it was 46/60 this time. 

We went to the Challenge party to listen to inspirational stories of those who finished. Folks dealing with early alzhimers, brain surgery recovery, doing it as a birthday present for their spouse, signing up to encourage friends, covering the challenge over 7 different studios and last but not least, a teacher who has been doing Bikram yoga once a day for the last 6 years without a break! It was a truly humbling experience for me and the kids listening to these stories.  

Jr. came home and said "I would like to write a guest post on your blog about how the 60 day challenge is actually stressfull for the persons who live with the person who does the challenge.. it is like you are one of those guys who drinks alcohol and they cannot stop drinking.. you go to one class, then you have to keep going.. and we have to see you spend more time at yoga on weekends". 

I promised my kids that the best lesson from this Challenge and the party was different from the previous ones.

- learned to accept that sometimes you finish challenges and sometimes you do not. Trying makes all the difference. if you can look in that mirror and say "I gave it all I got" and can accept yourself, that is a big deal. the person in the mirror is the most unforgiving of the lot.

- there is always another challenge coming

- did spend time with the kids on the last two weekends doing only one class a day instead of trying doubles. It was a conscious choice and the right one. 

The challenge from my own family has been to do at least 200 classes a year. Have 33 more to go this year. The last 90 days of this year has many more trips, holidays, festivals, school events etc. in the offing. We will see if the 200/year challenge is a success.

One other thing to mention. After coming back from those long flights, I used to walk into the yoga room feeling like the Ra character in Stargate who keeps getting younger after going into a special chamber, or those assasins in the "Wanted" movie who would be all shot up, go lie in a bath of molten waxy stuff and magically wake up with all their wounds healed.

Hot yoga is like soaking in a bath of Iodex (we used to use it for pain relief as kids in India.. it is Bengay and Voltaren all mixed in one) for 90 minutes. Came out feeling a lot better than when going into the room on every occasion.

That has been the one constant in an otherwise varying educational journey. Every day is different, but always felt better after class than before!

A heartfelt congratulations to everyone who finished the Challenge! Will see you at sticker time on the next one. 

Eventually, there will come a time where I can stick to a schedule and do Yoga everyday. Eventually....

Same Same but Different

Every year, Bikram Yoga San Jose has a 60 day Challenge that starts in January. This year, I got into the Challenge reluctantly, knowing that there were three possible Asia trips in those 60 days. 

The teachers said "sign up and see how far you go. you never know". Well, they know me, alright! Once they put my name on that board (twice), it was not going to be easy to give up on the challenge. 

It was a torment. I would come back from a trip and look at my star stickers trailing behind the rest of the stars and "sigh" audibly before entering the class. My biggest challenge was accepting the possibility that I might not do 60 classes in 60 days. 

With a lot of encouragement from San and the kids as well as the teachers, and a lot of doubles (do two classes in one day, sometimes back to back) the stars all added up to 60! Finished the challenge and was off to catch a 12 hour flight. 

Given my sanity is constantly tested by a workload that fluctuates by the hour, working across multiple timezones to a point where I am constantly awake, the yoga has definitely helped me from going postal. 

This is not my first challenge. It is my third (fourth if you count the fact that MIL and me did 91 classses in our first 100 days of starting Bikram Yoga in 2011.. back then we did not know much about this Challenge).

Have written about this experience in 2013 and 2014. Went back to the blog and was missing the 2015 post. Looks like I did the usual graphs and charts, wrote about it and never hit the Publish button, thanks to fighting strange rashes that come with frequent travel?! right after the Challenge.

People call me a "technologist".. I am turning into a "technoyogist". What kind of technoyogi does a post on Yoga that involves counting to 60, without graphs and charts?! 

That kind of sums up the whole challenge. It was not steady progress like the previous two years. It was stop and go. Practiced 6 times between leaving work on Friday to coming back on Monday. My original thought was that I would be dead before Monday morning, but reality was something else. Went to work and felt great. So the number of classes you do over a weekend doesn't matter, as long as you hydrate and rest properly. Zico coconut water was and is my best friend now. If some day, I put a bar in the house for some strange reason, it will only have Zico on tap. 

Then came the surprise after the Challenge. Picked up some strange rash and most of March was a wash with work, with family and Yoga. My extended family often challenged me with things like "you do all this yoga and still get sick. maybe it is the yoga!" .. friends were talking about "yoga overdose".. and once the jokes and jibes start, the hits just keep on coming.

Doing yoga does not make you invincible. It helps you optimize your strength vs. flexibilty, makes sure your hormone glands are all firing right, and helps with your immunity so your body can fight things better. My auto immune disorder and allergies are known to everyone close to me. You bring me close to a range of things like dogs,  cats, sesame seeds, peanuts, chinese juniper, shellfish (and a long list of things) and I can go from normal to strugling in a few seconds. My body probably did a better job fighting the rash, thanks to Yoga. 

Can I prove it? No. Can I disprove it? again, No.  The Yogis in the Himalayas had a much better deal than me, because they didn't have to share recirculated air in a tin can with 400 people for 12-14 hours on a regular basis.  This was like wearing a bullet proof vest and walking into a war zone. Chances are you still get shot in the face. 

The same thing applies to the sudden outburst of emotion when I am on a call and one of my kids screams in the background. Just because you do Yoga, doesn't mean you become a stoic overnight or you become a stoic ever. There is nothing wrong with going from zero to angry in 4 seconds. What is important is how long does it take you to come from Angry to zero? if you can do it in three deep breaths with 6 seconds in and 6 seconds out (24 seconds) you got me beat. That is my bench mark today. It takes me 24 seconds (20 sometimes) to calm down from anything. That is all thanks to Yoga.

The weight tracking after every yoga class is still on. Somehow I have either put on a good 10 pounds between July to December of 2014 or the battery change in the weighing scale has reset the calibration! Will post this graph at the end of 2015 and see what it shows. Right now the weight is more or less steady at 145 +/- 2 lbs. 

Why do this Challenge at all?

Is it to feed the type A personality trait?

Is it some kind of death wish?

Is there any difference that I noticed after the 2nd and 3rd challenge ?

What did I gain by doing this?  

Did I even enjoy doing this?

Those were the most common questions I got in water cooler conversations or at kids birthday parties when the guys or ladies are talking about my Yoga experience.

So here are some answers.

The first time I did the challenge, it was purely a "type A" thing. No shame in admitting it. Everyone at the studio was going "ooh" and "aah" about how great this experience was and someone mentioned that this is "not easy" and "not everyone can do it". Well, "I am not everyone" was the theme in my life at that time.. (okay, it is a repeating theme) and we went. (we = me and my mother in law, who is a type A+ personality, who encouraged me to do it. As my only "local parent", she did the right thing and I am forever grateful to her for doing that).

When the challenge was done though, it was a humbling experience, not a power trip. It put a lot of things in perspective. One can accomplish a lot at work and home, but how far can you push your body, within a two feet by six feet space, that we call a yoga mat? Once you do the same thing regularly and continuously, your body kind of starts remembering things and you start seeing changes. I always thought this concept of "muscle memory" was a bunch of bull. I was wrong! My abs never looked better than after that 60 days. 

The second time, I signed up, because January to March is Flu season here. The previous year, I had successfully managed to evade the flu, in spite of everyone in the house having it. Thought of the Challenge as a flu beater and it did help. My work was crazy in 2014 and at the time and the challenge kept me sane.

This time the learning was different. No two challenges are alike. Different year, different set of issues that have to be overcome. Also realized that poses that were not favorites the previous year, became my "look forward to" poses in the next year and vice versa.  It just shows how your body changes over time. At the end of this challenge I really wanted to ask my teacher if she will write me a recommendation for teacher training. My family and collegues nicely reminded me of my commitments, and I put that wish in the "after this job is done" list.

This year, it was probably a type A thing as well. I was fighting with myself and I won. Could not accept the thought of not finishing after signing up. Do not know if that is a good or bad thing. Sometimes I do not like the me, that stares back from the mirror. Do not understand why it is acceptance of that person that I seek, instead of a determined fight to change that person. Maybe that is the first step to eventually changing?

If you have done the challenge multiple times, the biggest changes you will see, are with your breath and your thought process. The poses are not going to magically improve because you do the challenge. Not in depth anyways. Your form will improve but that is something I have learnt to cherish only after many a teacher has knocked it into my pig head that "form is more important than depth". Even today, the teacher told us "going 90 miles per hour into a ditch is not the goal here. Going straight and steady at 35 miles per hour will still get you places".

If you are doing this challenge for the 2nd or 3rd or n-th time, chances are, you are a regular, and every day is a challenge for you. Still, you get to literally see your body change radically over a two month timeframe. Your core strength improves by orders of magnitude!

However, if you have just started on this journey, it is quite a treat to go through this experience. You WILL see changes with your body and your mind. 

The last question always puts a smile on my face. Do you enjoy doing this? That is a tough one. In all honesty, every class, no matter weather the starting state was one of euphoria or depresssion, ends the same way. I come out singing inside my hear in Gloria Gaynor's voice "and I .. I will survive.. and I survived that 90 minutes of fighting, with my body and my mind".

Not sure if anyone in that room actually "enjoys" it while the class is going on. Mostly folks stare at themselves with a frustrated, constipated or angry face except when the teachers crack a joke or remind people to smile. There are three ladies who are an exception to this. They always have a smile on their face. Either they are seasoned pro's, or air hostesses who cannot undo their smiles. Those are my theories.

Every Yoga class is like making mysore pak for me.  It takes forever to make it and you sweat it out in the kitchen, standing in front of a hot stove, but when you taste the sweet after it is done, it was all worth the effort! Walking back to the car after class, looking up at the sky, smelling the cold air (it is usually cold compared to the hot room) and driving back in silence knowing you are better off today than yesterday, always makes the hard work in the class, worth it.

Definitely recommend trying a Challenge. There is a good chance that you will surprise yourself with what you find out about your own abilities! 

An interesting start to travels

It has been an interesting start to the travels of 2015!

First trip of the year.. boarded a plane to Asia. We all sat down and within a few seconds after buckling my seat belts, the lady behind me let out a loud sneeze that sent wind rushing through the gap between my seat and my neighbor. It was gusty enough to compete with the directed air flow from the nozzle thingy above our heads! 

Being the nice courteous dude, I said "Bless you!' and she mumbled a "Thanks!" A few minutes later she did the same thing and we went though the subroutine again that brought back memories of GOSUB and GOTO 10 from high school BASIC class.. 

By the time they made us watch the seat belt video and we were waiting in line to take off the GOTO 10 thingy had been executed more than 6 times at which point I was tempted to change the subroutine from "Bless you!" to "#u%k you!".  If she was that sick and sneezing away, why was she on a plane?! Doesn't she know that I have to deal with critical meetings, watch my food everytime for allergic things in carnivorous countries where even an order of plain rice comes with a few black sesame seeds as garnish! There are enough death traps that one has to watch out for, without having to deal with "flu or flu like symptoms". Does she not care?! 

After take off she fell asleep which was good. Soon the good folks at United cooled the plane down so much that we all went into Cryogenic freeze. I think United is learning too much from Star Trek and other Sci-Fi movies. Pretty soon we will be submerged in some blue fluid and put in capsules before take off. It is only a question of time and you heard it here first!  Their real idea is to probably force everyone (even those 6'4" viking looking guys whose thighs are as thick as my waistline) to sleep by dropping the plane temperature and that way they don't have to serve more folks those pesky drinks and snacks between meal services. 

Things went well till the hotel was reached and after a good nights sleep, woke up to find out... you guessed it.. "flu like symptoms". It was not that bad. A slightly runny nose, spitting some blood into the sink aka sore throat and the best part ? Come back and see blood on my pillow. Was trying to think.. "maybe I was drooling and this blood came from my mouth? or maybe my nose is bleeding because the hotel air is dry?" etc. Later found that the blood was from my ears! 

Three things went through my mind in a split second. In sequence they were:

1. I was in a foreign country

2. Have never had to go through healthcare options in said foreign country

3. Blood from ears invariably means some death sentence thanks to zillions of Sivaji and Kamal movies where blood dripping from various orifices in face is promptly followed by a bald doctor (same doctor in all those zillion movies) checking patient with just his stetoscope, rummaging from his medical bag for some other thing and promptly declaring "you have lymposarcoma of the ear/nose/throat and you have only a few months to live!"

Did a "cut cut cut" to the thought process and decided to ask my colleagues for help. One of them came up with some Amoxycililn (we will not go into the details here) which cost by the way the equivalent fo 4 USD for a box of 24 tablets.. except it was twice the dose. Given that 90% of my visits to the doctor over the last 20 years have ended with a prescription for Amoxycillin, decided it was a safe bet to start myself on yet another course in case the ears were infected.

Turned out it was a wise move! Things got better and all symptoms are gone. Now I have my hands on the US dose of Amoxycillin and some antibiotic ear drops and things are getting to feel normal.

They say "when it rains, it pours!". So while all this recovery was being attempted, my SVTC Jacket which has pretty much been like a school uniform for the last 8 years gave in. The zipper broke. Had to trash it and go jacket shopping.

It has been my observation that in East Asia, they have a lot more variety for outdoor winter jackets. The women have really pretty jackets in a multitude of colors and designs that walking through busy streets will be a photographers dream for catching some "color". Even the men seem to have a lot of options when it comes to jackets that actually fit them in various colors! 

Contrast that with Cupertino where the entire populations jacket supply comes from probably 4 sources.

a. Costco Jackets where the guy's position inside the oversized jacket is similar to an electron in a cloud. 

b. Target Jackets that make guys look like they are about to empty their bowels with one wrong sneeze thanks to the tightness in the chest and waist

c. The ubiquitous gray NorthFace fleece or 

d. A Columbia jacket that takes the puny desi or Chinese guy look like a polar bear cub

It is also important to remember that the average Cupertino resident is probably a desi or chinese dude who is 5'4" to 5'8" height and is a size "Medium". The only jackets that will be left on any local stores will be things with  3 or more "X's" in front of them. One would think that given the demographic the local stores would wisen up and stock more medium.. but no!

Where were we? Yes, Jacket shopping!

We went to a local market ten minutes from the hotel and there were a dozen jacket stores all reminding me of Burma bazaar in Madras in the late eighties (not sure if that place is still there!). Every small 8x10 store had sales people literally pulling us into the store. 

Then we went into a discussion of what is the best brand in this part of the world that is a "copy" of the Nike's of the western world?

My friends were obviously shocked by the US dude who wanted to go bargain shopping for local brands. Explained to them that most of my cloth shopping was done during India trips and the brand name shirt that I am wearing is purchased from a dude who is allowed to sell "rejects" from an export only unit that makes it in India for 8$ when the shirt costs 44$ in the US. They asked me what was the "reject" in the shirt and my response was "it failed a quality inspection from the US inspector. Instead of two spare buttons stitched on the inside bottom of the shirt, there was only one! The discussion turned to "quality" and we went back to more store hopping.

After watching me haggle with the local store keepers they said "Li-Ning" is  like the Nike here to which my counter was "then what is the New Balance here?" and the response was "361 degrees".

We found a nice jacket made by this wonderful company! 

This jacket will give all the above jackets in sections a through d, a run for their money. For that material, stitching quality, attention to detail and price point, it simply cannot be beat!

So from that stand point, this has been a good trip so far. The guys I work with are very thoughtful and understanding. They let me have enough rest between antibiotics to survive the week!

One more week to go in Jan and we will see if Feb turns out to be better!

With all this going on, my dream of finishing a 60 day Bikram Yoga challenge was pretty much dashed. So this year, I get to watch everyone else finish it and that is not an easy thing for me to do. Watching people put up their stars and cheering them on knowing I won't will be my yoga challenge for this year. 

One has to learn to let go, no?!

From Pranayama to Kapalbhati - A nerds eye view

March 5th 2013 was a special day. If my life were to flash past my eyes that day will definitely be on that flashback!

The San Jose Bikram Yoga center had a challenge. Do Yoga 60 times in 60 days. The idea was to come every day. But if you had to miss a day for travel or other reasons, you take a class in that location or do a makeup class the same week. I had originally misinterpreted the Challenge to be 60 days in 10 weeks. That meant one rest day a week. Later found out that it was 60 days 60 classes. No rest day!

Given my once a week trip for work, was doubting my ability to go take up this challenge. With a lot of encouragement from San and the kids as well as my co-workers and the entire BYSJ community, signed up on Jan 5th. March 5th was day 60! March 5th was also class 60!

It was a roller coaster ride where the body and mind went through more than a few challenges. Hot Yoga is not a new thing in this family now. On March 11th, it will be two years since the day MIL and myself attended our very first Bikram Yoga class. Even in our best stretch of 91 days attendance in our first 100 days, we took breaks every now and then. There was the day or two where we said "let's not push it. we can go tomorrow". That determination to go to class when you are slightly sore from an outing with the wife and kids or when you ate dinner at some restaurant with co-workers and it doesn't agree with your stomach or you just drove past Sacramento and back between 6AM and 5PM with one long meeting thrown in and came in to a Yoga class at 6:30 PM so you don't miss a day.. was simply not there in any previous streches of doing Yoga.

When we first started Bikram Yoga, our weight was dropping every day, we were becoming stronger and more flexible, our skin was glowing.. the benefits were visible and measurable and obvious to everyone around us. So just the fact that people around you notice positive changes keeps you going. After you go for a few years, the changes are incremental. Every few weeks or so, you manage to reach a new level in one of the poses or your body and mind work together to realize that you have been interpreting the teachers words slightly off and correct for it. In short, slow and steady progress. Fortunately being a Six Sigma person and having run a Fab, yours truly understands the value of Continuous Improvement and that helps a lot!

It is more of a metal challenge to do 60 classes in 60 days. Once you manage to get up at 4:45, get ready, drive to the Yoga studio, spread that mat and lie down to savor the heat, you realize that you will have a great class.  Making it to the room is the hard part. Doing the Yoga after that is like hot fudge! (Not a big fan of icing on cakes if you can't tell by now).

There were so many days in the last 60 that either tested my physical strength or resolve where San or the kids or most importantly my MIL (who has been coming with me to Yoga class the last 17 days) would say "Don't you dare give up now!" San even let me go to evening class for a lot of days and said "I will take care of both the kids routines. Just go.. and I am letting you do this only because you are doing the challenge and you have come so far!" and I accepted her offer with tears in my eyes. The challenge did some funny stuff to the head too and I would get all emotional and weepy, especially between day 45 to 60!

The challenge was also well documented in Excel to see if the stats would tell me something or let me share anything with the rest of the world. . .

First things first. If you do take a challenge like this, it might not be a bad idea to take two classes on weekends in same day just to compensate for future misses..

If that strategy had not been adopted, it would have been a good reason for the mind to say "no way to catch up now.. so drop it!"

There was a self imposed goal to track how the classes actually went, just to see if the energy level stayed flat, increased, decreased, tracked the lunar cycle.. just wanted to see what the data showed, especially after hearing from other folks who said that one starts sitting down for a lot of poses towards the middle of the challenge.

Now for the weight tracking. It was more of an afterthought to track weight on a daily basis. One thing I learned over this weighing process is that when you drink two 500mL bottles of water within an hour after you finish class, that is 2.2 lbs. Started to measure exactly an hour after class and that showed good tasty food does correlate to a baseline weight change!

When you track stuff and enter a few things every day on a spreadsheet before going to bed, you can actually have some fun trying to stare at the data..

There was a stretch where the classes in general were intense and there was one weekend where a 10 year anniversary class had a record 100+ people in the room. It was more of a communal event than a class and I did push myself way past my limits and that correlated to the low weight and the 4 missed poses the next day. Other than that there are many factors that are not charted that could be reasons for the red bars.. One good thing? Managed to do the 60 classes without missing more than 26 poses.

Even tracked the count by teacher. The list was 20 strong and the count ranged from 6 to 1. Do have favorites within the 30+ teachers and my favorites are different from the MIL's favorites. MIL and me classify teachers into three groups. The fire breathing dragons who push you past your limits just with their voice, the horsewhisperers who get you into a trance and make you do what they say and teachers who are a combination of both. They push you during the pose and calm you down with their voice when you are in relax mode.  While I love the dragons, the MIL prefers the horsewhisperers. Maybe it is an age or personality thing.. End of the day, have a lot of teachers to thank, for encouraging and watching out for what I do in class and giving me suggestions to improve my practice!

When we ask a lot of folks we meet regularly after class "Did you sign up for the challenge?" the answer is "No. I come 2-3 times a week regularly anyways. So don't see any reason to do this 60 day thing!".  I used to go a lot more "regularly" and still, this was a great eye opener. If you are doing Bikram Yoga and your studio has a 60 day challenge, TAKE IT! Why?

1. There are a lot of poses that I was stuck at with a certain level or step. Have managed to get past those points during this challenge. Do not know if it has something to do with the ability to form muscle memory when you go without a break of more than a day, but the end result is obvious. Maybe you will get past those sticky points.

2. It is not easy to prioritize Yoga over other things. Need a high level of dedication to go pull it off and you get to test your ability to do a good thing for yourself above other things. Kind of makes you realize that the most important thing in your life, is "your life"!

3. Your whole family might cheer for you and support you. San, the kids and the MIL who joined me for the last 15 classes.. which was the most difficult streach, supported me like never before! They have also never openly said "I am proud of you" under any circumstance in recent times and hearing them say that was worth the effort.

4. Finally, you realize that you can actually pull it off and it was not an unrealistic goal as you originally thought! Realizing you are made of tougher stuff (mentally and physically) than you thought is a great reward in itself.

Then again, if you are a nerd you might also have some fun staring at Yoga graphs for a change...

ps. Will post pictures next week of the new and improved Shaolin monk looking me..