2012 - A great start !!!

It is no secret that the biggest change in this household is that Daddy is now doing okay when it comes to being healthy!

When my MIL and myself started doing Yoga we set ourselves many personal goals. My personal challenge was to do the standing head to knee pose before March 10th, exactly within a year after starting yoga. Teachers told me that some folks take two or three years to do this and some who are strong and flexible to start with, can pull it off a few weeks or months after starting Yoga.

We had an emotional farewell class to the old yoga studio at BYSJ yesterday evening. It was an event we will not forget! 70 people came to celebrate the closing of the old studio which enables starting 2012 in a huge new studio right next door! It was an emotional farewell as this place is a temple of sorts, where people make their dreams come true and push themselves to bring out the best in them. Michelle, the owner of BYSJ was the one teaching the class and she coaxed, cajoled and blackmailed in her sweet voice, the 70 people in that class, to do every pose without sitting down. She even managed to tell us old stories of the creation of this studio during the breathing breaks! Somehow in the middle of all this, managed to do the pose that has been eluding me all this time..and once you know how to do it once, voila, you can do it again for a photo session in your backyard!

2012 is indeed being ushered in with a sense of accomplishment!

While showing the kids the pose they also wanted me to show them the other two standing poses as the little one clicked the snaps! Seriously, she is turning into one fine photographer..

The best gift to oneself is a sound body and a sound mind. The family is now convinced about the sound body part. They have not yet confirmed the sound mind part. In fact they think Daddy Narayanan is seriously getting unsound. More on that later..

For now, this is a happy blogger and a happy blog!

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A note to those budding yogis and yoginis out there..

So far at least 13 people have shown up at Bikram Yoga San Jose after either seeing my changes or having read the blog. This is 13 we know of who have come and introduced themselves and said "came here through your blog", and that always makes my day when it happens!

Having someone do something this wonderful for themselves is the best gift anyone can give to themselves.

A few tips/ Observations on top of the ones mentioned here and here..

a. In your first few classes get ice cold water or a water bottle with crushed ice and water. In a room set to 105 F, regular water will become warm before the end of the 90 minute practice.

b. Read Bikram's book if possible. It gives you hints (keys) that help you do the poses better (if you can remember the keys). So memorize one hint at a time and do it in the next days class.

c. Your strongest part might become your weakest. Apparently this is normal. The poses I used to love and wait for are now an ordeal. Simply cannot do forward bends with my knee locked. My hamstrings just won't move. Feels like my legs are so weak at times that I worry about collapsing. One of the instructors told me that this is normal. As the body is using different muscles to do different things, some get over worked and some do not get used at all. Now that we are using muscles never used before this often, the body is adapting.

d. If you do have a sprain or feel sore but do not feel pain, try going back into the hot room the next day and chances are you will be fine. Has happened to me three times in the last 98 days. (it is still your call, but try standing in a hot shower and if that gives you relief, chances are going back into the hot room definitely will improve things).

e. Get an extra towel if your car/van has cloth seats instead of leather and put it on the seat before driving after Yoga. If you don't shower at the Yoga place before driving home, your van will start smelling and your kids will simply refuse to share a ride with you. They might not tell you to your face and you might have to figure out why they suddenly prefer to go with Mommy everywhere.

f. get some gatorade or "emergen-c" and drink a packet every day at least the first few days when you start because your body loses salts and electrolytes. You need to replenish those or you will get more dizzy or nauseous and might even get headaches. The Emergen-C is available in most local grocery stores and Target

g. There is this one pose you will do called "Triangle pose". Learn to do it on a wet or slippery surface! Do not rely on a towel to grip your feet to the ground. If you do it on the carpet one fine day, chances are your foot will slip and your hamstrings will take a beating and you will miss a day or two of yoga and the most important one..

h. When in doubt, talk to the instructors, who wait outside the class and answer questions!

So far we have 90% attendance and are still going regularly.

Someday, someday, will be able to stand on one leg and touch my head to the other knee..

still working on that one!

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Experiments with self

Now we have 25 sickness free days (an all time record for the month of March especially since this Blog is a living record).

Facebook has not been touched.

Blogger has been visited twice in 20 days.

The average sleeping time has increased from 5 hours per weekday to 7 hours per weekday.

There has been at least one fruit included in the daily diet. No coffee for the last 25 days. Maximum one glass of tea per day (1/2 cup in morning and evening.. sometimes switched to Horlicks). Fried stuff has been knocked down to a minimum in the daily diet.

There has been at least one shower a day (yes.. shocking as it may seem there was no time for showers or shave on some hectic days in the past)

Now, there is one other addition.

Bikram Yoga for the last 25 days. We (the MIL and me) have been attending a 90 minute hot yoga class every morning from 5:30 to 7:00 for 25 of the last 26 days!

That means we get up at 4:45 and take off. Neither of us were sure if we will continue after the first ten classes but the changes in the body and mind after ten days in the torture chamber were obvious.

People at work who first saw me after 4 days said things like :

Are you wearing makeup? your face is very clear and fair now!
You are very calm instead of your usual trigger happy self. What is going on?
You seem to be very stoic and are quiet in meetings? Are you quitting?
Looking very happy? What is going on? and it was anyone who had not met me in days or weeks.

Had lunch with an old colleague last week (we met after a year) and he said "you somehow look younger this year than last year in-spite of wearing glasses!"

The change was noticeable on the inside as well. There was a feeling of lightness all around, a freshness that hasn't been felt since sitting in that hot spring in Manali last year and a self check mechanism every time the mind was about to launch into an expletive or two be it work related or with the wife and kids at home.

The question that is being asked by some close folks is "Are all these changes because of the Yoga or because of all the other changes like good food, more sleep etc.?"

The answer is definitely "Bikram Yoga". All the other changes and the discipline to make those changes are a direct result of the Yoga class.

Initially there was skepticism about the Hot Hatha Yoga because of what we read on the internet about Bikram Choudhury and the Hot Yoga. For every 10 positive articles there is some gripe about how this is not proven by western medicine etc. etc. After a friend successfully checked this out in Seattle, we went to check out the local studio and see for ourselves.

This is an amazing treat that one can give to ones body and mind.

Have lost 9 lbs in the last 25 days, have a much smoother softer skin. Have had one knee sprain last week (because of overdoing a stretch.. all my doing not the Yoga's) which has since healed by going back into the hot room.

Jr. and the little one cannot stop smelling me. Apparently daddy smells real nice after a shower post Yoga sweating! Even the kids in Tamil school complimented me on how nice Teacher is smelling!

Planning to do this at least 7 times a week from now on. This is the best thing that happened to me since the little one's birth...

A big thanks for this new found happiness goes to the MIL. She joined with me to help her broken ankle mend (while my broken hand builds strength) and even if I felt down on day 2 and 3 and was about to call it a day, she dragged me to class and made sure that I don't quit.

Long live Bikram Choudhury. He has definitely given me a new look at my body, mind and spirit and a second chance at living a contented life.

ps. Do not be intimidated by the fact that you have a big round belly and everyone in the class looks like a cross between Zeus and Urvashi. Just keep trying to do the routine in class and everything else fades away.. including your belly!

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Ever buy something without knowing the price?

In August, some kind unknown soul decided to give me a little nudge to make me literally fly off the handle (of my bicycle) and my hand was broken.

After the cast ritual and eventual cast removal, was asked to go to physiotherapy by the hospital.

All we got was a piece of paper with 11 clinics which were supposedly on the same insurance umbrella!

So we selected 2/11 based on proximity, called the insurance company, confirmed that they were both good for our coverage and chose one because they mentioned rates that were slightly lower than the other place.

Now, no actual exact $ commitment was made by either place because they said "we don't know what we will charge you till we evaluate you, etc. etc."

Based on what they actually did, which was a finite time spent, (looking at the others in the room with hand problems)and there was no real variety to the treatment. Just a rotation of toys to play with for all hand folks.

They did do a great job and did all the wax stuff and eventually got my hand to a point where I decided that no more physio sessions were required. So, not faulting the actual physio doctors.

Never paid anything for the visits, because it was supposed to be covered for 30 visits post surgery and went only for 12 or so between October end to December.

Life goes on and the whole thing is forgotten and bang, we got a bill for ~ 600 bucks mid march!

We are still wading through phone calls trying to explain and get explanations from people. San is doing a much better job of getting answers than me simply because I am deflated by this whole episode. My faith in humanity (or the insuring fraction of it) is shaken to the core!

It was not easy to :

a. get the insurance guys to tell me what would be covered before the physio started

b. get the physio folks to tell me what the cost would be

c. find out what I would end up having to pay before starting the sessions (using all my years of mathematics training this would imply the answer to be b-a where both b and a are quoted in US dollars)

That is as crazy as it gets. Imagine walking into a barber shop, sitting down on the chair and you say "haircut", he "nods" and he starts cutting your hair. Then you walk to the counter and he charges you $128.97 when you expect it to be 10 bucks! Heck, he could charge you anything he wants!

Now the insurance company lady is telling me on the phone "Sir, you are responsible for your payment! It is your responsibility to know what you have to pay from your pocket !"

I wanted to strangle her on the phone. How? How does one find out if we keep running in circles between the doctors and the insurance folks with a chicken and egg argument?

Doctor : we don't know what we will charge you till way after we have treated you

Insurance : we wont know what part of the doctors bill will be covered by our insurance till we see the bill

doctor and insurance to patient : You are responsible for covering the balance of what we do not cover on a bill that we cannot determine at the time of treatment!

The best part is the bill we got for 600+ bucks after the original surgery from the anesthesiologist. This dude apparently does not work at the hospital and he came from another hospital in the middle of the night to knock me out.

Really nice of the old chap, except he is not under my umbrella, and it is supposed to be a big umbrella in California!

Now how is a person who is under extreme pain and is hardly conscious expected to ask an anesthesiologist "by the way, are you in my plan? I am at this hospital because this whole building is under the Holy Blue Cross! but are you a Blueman Crossalic?"

Seriously, it would be great as a "responsible person" to know what I am getting into. If an educated person like me who can ask questions and possibly cover this bill over a few months, can be stumped like this, imagine the plight of a lot of people in this country!

Scary!

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Needless needles?

The story starts with a Vaastu expert in Chennai advising the family that the bedrooms should be above the rest of the house and the bathrooms should be below the rest of the house. Hmm, so what is the big deal?

In the USA, you will never get a final permit for any house constuction if a tile is more than 1/8th of an inch higher than another tile. The idea of two different rooms being above or below automatically implies a "brain step" of 8 inches. But these kind of Vastu alterations seem to be a free for all in India. So the guy who was retiling the floor decided to use thicker tiles to meet this "vastu" requirement (which could be part of the official approval process for all I know).

It is 3:50 AM and my brother is driving me to the house after I have just landed in Chennai. Word is that dad is still awake waiting to see me.

Now we have a familiar house with new tiles, except there are these subtle height differences between the rooms which yours truly is not aware of. So, off I go, wheeling the suitcases to a corner and towards the room where my dad is and just as I enter the room, there is a blinding pain in my foot as it strikes tile. My dad thought that the tears running down my eyes were happy tears on seeing him before realizing that stuff like that happens only in Sivaji movies.

The next seven days went on with a lot of Ibuprofen, limited walking, no removing shoes even during a temple festival and only one visit to the inside of the temple on barefoot (which made it much worse) and a trek from terminal 70 to terminal 2 in the Hong Kong airport with carry on luggage, which is like a walk from Mylapore to Adyar!

The foot got so sore and the pain was unbearable. The wife who was already alerted to the situation that hubby might go straight from Airport to Urgent care was not (is not, and will continue not to be for another 3-4 years) thrilled.

After spending close to 200 bucks on co-pays, x-rays, special shoes, inserts, metatarsal pads, etc. etc. the podiatrist said

"look, what you have done is to take a hammer to the softest part of your foot. the nerve endings are contussed. you have to rest that leg for the next ten days and give mother nature a chance to heal this. you can also take these extra strength painkillers"

When this was mentioned to the employer and family, no one was pleased. Some suggested wheelchairs, some crutches, others a trip back to India to spend those ten days in the company of Vastu experts. Let us say that all options seemed to be divorce petitions for mother nature.

While being wheelchaired back to the parking lot in the hospital, the nurse and another kind lady patient in the elevator (who was a friend of the nurse, which implied she visited that department regularly) suggested Acupuncture. Nerve issues get faster resolution, she said, and as added incentive mentioned "it might even be covered by your insurance".

There were many who were trying to scare me from going for Acupuncture saying it is only a placebo, fake, numbs nerves, has side effects etc. etc. but many who also said it really helps.

So took a chance and went to the local Acupuncture clinic.

The expert (who is a Ph.D, MD) put six needles, wires to put a voltage through the needles, a hot lamp around the feet and 40 minutes later the pain was gone! GONE! Just a little soreness around the needle points.

(grainy photo courtesy of cell phone)

There were two more sessions, one two days later and four days later which were for shorter durations with one of the pins moving locations. The pain and soreness were nowhere. I had stopped taking the painkillers as well. As an added bonus, the visits were covered by insurance!

Now that I am walking again, tried to run a little today and it does not hurt.

So much for dismissing a technique just because Western medicine cannot grasp it!

In a way this is weird. We have Vastu (Feng Shui) which is an eastern concept of energy flow which is being abused to create the problem and Accupuncture, which again deals with energy flow bails you out!

If only we can acupuncture the brains of Vastu experts, we might avoid the problem in the first place, no?

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