A tough 60 day days of Yoga

This summer was going to be busy. Family and friends knew that all too well. There was going to be a graduation trip to Indiana, a hiking trip my wife was part of and a lot of other weekend social commitments, not to mention a severe work load from August 1st. 

There is the usual BYSJ summer 60 day challenge that one can start between 1st to 14th of July and do 60 classes in 60 days. No one forced me to sign up.  I was going to yoga almost every day since 3rd of July and one day I simply could not make it to the usual class because of being held up at work. San went at the usual time and I went by myself 2 hours later. The folks at the front desk said "you look tired and pissed off.. maybe you should put up a few stars on the challenge board and you will feel better?!". That was interesting. I was doing the challenge without advertising it and it has already been 9 days of not missing a day. So put my name on the board and put 9 stars at one go. 

The next day my wife was shocked to see my name on the board with all the stars. She smiled and didn't say anything. When this was announced to the kids at home, they just rolled their eyes. Good yoga for the eyes is what I was thinking. If I can make them do that everyday, maybe their eyesight will be good for a long time! Who knows?

Knowing there was travel, did do 5 doubles (mostly back to back doubles). For some stats, this is the 16th time signing up for a 60 day challenge in 13 years and the 14th successful attempt. Both times I could not make 60/60 were summer challenges. Going to class or showing up is not a challenge. Adjusting logistics also is not an issue, thanks to a very supportive family, friends and co-workers.

The biggest challenge are doubles and trying to drink water in the 30 minutes between two back to back classes. It has been years since I took a water bottle to class. My water is left in the car and I drink water 30 minutes before class and 15 minutes after class. However, doing back to back doubles means that between the two classes I need to drink water with a packet of vitamins and that just sits in my stomach at the beginning of the second class. That was the hardest thing in this challenge.

Have taken 2829 Bikram Yoga classes so far, according to the excel spreadsheet that is still being maintained. 10,000 hours of practice on any skill is required to become a subcounsious expert or so say some books on skill building and expertise. This is still only 4200 hours. If I need the equivalent of a pilots license for my own body and mind, lets just say I am not even halfway there. Maybe before the end of this lifetime will realize something deeper within. Yoga is a slow and steady process. Accepting that there are no shortcuts has already been a worthy experience. 

Over the last few challenges, have realized that after day 30, when you come repeatedly, the mind is not fighting the teachers words anymore. I call it zombie mode.. but not in an auto pilot kind of way.. more in a "I am so beat that I am just going to submit myself to the instruction and do what is being asked". At that moment in class you cannot think much about it. It just happens. After class you realize that you did things that are surprising! Fixed postures with corrections, have light bulb moments and then you get to try it out the very next day and the day after that till it can become a new habit. 

Most of us have the capacity to remember 3 or 5 things tops after a lecture or any lesson. I am part of that majority group. So to learn those 3 things and make them a regular habit is possible only because of pushing myself to do a challenge. You come every alternate day, you just go back to old ways quickly. You have to remember the correction before the posture starts. Once you are in it, it is already too late. You might correct yourself in the second set.. but that doesn't help you make it the default!

Thoroughly enjoyed this challenge for the learning, the chats outside the room before class with my fellow regular yogis, the chance to encourage other folks to have a regular practice and my teachers encouraging me to "let it go!" everytime I walked into class after being on the phone till 2 minutes before class. 

On a side note, BYSJ finally brought back T-shirts as a souvenir for folks who finish! My wardrobe which is 80% BYSJ 60 day challenge T-shirts badly needed a replacement. This years T-shirt is just beautiful. Now I just need to collect a few more over the coming years? (this blog post alone is going to give my family more yoga for their eyes after they roll it non stop!) 

The best thing that ever happened to me in hindsight was that damn accident. If it wasn't for being broken with physiotherapy being able to get me back only to a certain point, would have never found Bikram yoga! What a blessing in disguise that accident turned out to be? There is always fate, destiny, the butterfly effect, whatever you want to call it.. but forever grateful to all powers and unknown probabilities that made me walk through those doors all those years ago!

For all my friends and family, I hope that my doing yoga inspires you to try it, even if for a few days and my sincere wish is for you to find yourself by doing yoga! It is a slow process which might even involve getting lost many times while trying to find yourself..but if you stay the course, magic happens!

Missed getting a close up photo with the ageless Michelle Vennard. There are so many pictures over the years that I made a collage of some of the pics. She is a true inspiration when it comes to walking the walk after talking the talk! .. or in Yogi speak.. she can be as still as she can be silent, during a yoga class! (just realized, that it is literally the opposite of walking and talking!)

One more challenge done. Hopefully many more to come!

Portola Redwoods Park.. after Mount Hamilton

On hot summer days, (this was again a month and a half ago) when bay area was ready for "karudam weather" as some south Indians call it.. we wanted to hike as a group in the shade. 

There were reasons for it. We had made an attempt to go to Mt. Hamilton summit but aborted the attempt as multiple people got dehydrated before we reached the 3 mile mark. Our plan was to leave late afternoon and hike given the trail had no shade. Hindsight being 20/20 this was a bad idea. The last time we had successfully done this was in December in much cooler foggier conditions. So we turned back, drove to the observatory in hopes that we can at least take pictures. The Lick observatory had just closed before we drove up. So we sat near the gate, ate the snacks and tea that would have marked a successful hike and drove back all the way. The few pictures from the failed attempt..

The hikers did want to make up for that by doing another hike right away but in the shade. After some debate on the "most shaded trails" in bay area, we picked this Portola redwoods as none of us had been on this trail before.

Good news? Total shade. Amazing redwoods. Cool throughout when it is reaching 95F outside

Bad news? no views of any kind. No summit. Uniform views throughout. 

the only thing changing in the "bench photos" that are now part of every hike.. is the increasing size of my bald spot.. you can literally track it across bench photos.

We did have a lot of fun with the conversation and as an added bonus some of the kids joined us! 

This is not an easy trail. Would definitnely ask folks with knee or ankle issues to avoid this! 

We did see some interesting things on the way..

Then the ever present redwoods on the trail..

there was a decent flow of water in the creeks, which was an added treat!

A video of the creek and trail.. you can see how serene this place is!

We had a sense of accomplishment after going through this trail to the extent we went. This more than made up for the aborted attempt in Mount Hamilton. Something tells me that we will make another attempt to go around Hamilton in winter. 

One more nice set of trails within a 30 minute driving distance!

Sweeney Ridge trail and Mori point in Pacifica

After a three week hiatus on hiking, we had a chance to join a large group of folks on a hike to Sweeney ridge. 

A group of 14, some of them I met for the first time. Enjoyed it thoroughly. The trailhead is a 35-45 minute drive from home depending on traffic and given the insane temperatures in Cupertino, this was a morning well spent in the fog and mountains. 

We also get to cross Highway 1 and go see the beach at Mori point  in the end. The ridge is part of the last piece of the hike. Started from home at 6:15 and came back home at 1:45. Hiked for 5 hours with a bunch of photo stops and a small break for tea and snacks at the vista point on top. There was nothing to see as there was a heavy fog and mist in the air. It did feel like walking through Jurassic park.

The parking lot for the trailhead is shared with an Orchid greenhouse. It makes for an interesting last mile climb back from the freeway to get to the car. 

By the time we made it to the top with the 1600 foot climb, was completely drenched! Good thing I had a change of clothes in the backpack for the rest of the descent and beach!

The morning dew made for some great pics with flowers, bees and spider webs.. 

When coming back to the car, noticed that my pants had a yellow layer of pollen on them! Luckily this time there was no severe post hike allergies to report!

sometimes you walk past a small flower that looks near perfect to the naked eye at 3 feet.. then you go take a macro shot of it and realize it is not that perfect.. still this small flower was irresistable!

The rest of the landscapes are in this slideshow..

A short video clip of the hike. Took a lot more slow motion videos of the waves crashing in.. you have a small sample within this clip.

It was time really well spent with a fun bunch! The last part of the trail where you come down to the freeway is very loose with gravel and if you don't have hiking shoes with grip and poles (for folks with bad knees) it is dangerous. We have been doing this for sometime now and managed it.. but first time hikers with improper shoes.....not recommended!  

The trail starts with a steep climb as well and keeps going almost a 1000 plus feet in one go. Warm up beore you start climbing!

Strongly recommend this as an early morning hike for a hot summer day!

A small Tamil New Year celebration

We are in June.. it has been a month and a half since the Tamil New Year rolled in. After that trip to SLO and the knee getting all inflamed, it took me a few weeks to just get back to walking.

So the Tamil New year was a muted celebration. However we did have two potluck parties to attend and had fun chatting with friends. For once I had company from my friend and guru, when it came to wearing a dhothi. 

When not in dhothi.. it was this..

Now that the number of folks coming to Tamil New Year party in a Dhothi has increased by 100% , there is a plan to double that coming April !! 

Wishing one and all a belated Tamil New Year! This years name is Sobakiruthu (google says Dhunmukhi which was I think the year in 2016). Apparently a good year for me.. time will tell.. 

We can always check the blog post next year same time!

A very different 60 day challenge

Most of you who know me, have seen this once a year post around the end of March about the 60 day yoga challenge. 

BYSJ organizes two of these challenges a year. The winter challenge where you sign up on any day between Jan 1st to 14th and do 60 classes in 60 days (ideally without missing a day, and if you do miss because of unavoidable reasons, do two classes on another day to make up for it). A similar challenge in Summer with same rules. 

This is my 13th year of doing Yoga and this was my 13th 60 day challenge. My family doesn't try to stop me from doing this challenge anymore. They know I somehow manage to finish it and I am usually happy doing the challenge.

Given my MIL has been a big part of my yoga journey, it was always sad to hear her say "want to try and finish this challenge at least once in this lifetime!". She is usually here only after Pongal which is Jan 14th and leaves for Seattle after two three weeks. I don't sign up in summer because of travel and other commitments.

This year, she came early just for the challenge. Had promised her that someone (me, San or the little one who is not so little anymore) will drive her to class for those 60 days if both me and San decide to skip yoga. Given that assurance, she signed up.

For the most part all three of us would go to class. The folks at the studio were very happy to see a car load of folks come to class. Then we went to Alaska on a whim to take care of my wife's bucket list item. One bucket was larger than the other bucket.. or whatever.. fortunately MIL managed to do a couple of Livestream classes when we were gone. Funny thing is that when we got back and I had to do three doubles over the weekends to make up, she joined me! It was not easy for her, but she did. 

While she makes claims that it is not the same thing doing something at 50 vs 70, my take is that age has nothing to do with it. You do what you can and I think she actually gets more out of the yoga than I do and probably does a better job in most classes given the cards she has been dealt. 

Usually it is just a logistics challenge for me but as fate would have it, banged my knee twice on the same day. The last 10 days of the challenge were really tough with the injured knee. Still went ahead and did everything I posisbly could in the hot room every day.

Finished the challenge on March 1st and my MIL also finished it last week!  San did 54 classes in the 60 days but she refused to do any doubles on a matter of principle. She has done one challenge before and apparently that is enough for her. She was happy to cheer the two of us to finish. How she can let it go is where we see that she is a better yogi than me. 

The knee is not swelling anymore but I cannot do tree pose standing on my left leg and have difficulty doing suptavajrasana and the third part of awkward pose. These involve bending the knee inwards towards the other knee or folding it and rotating it out. Given it is better, my teachers still recomended I get an x-ray or get it checked out. So have an Ortho appointment this week. For almost all things that ail me mentally or physically, have used the yoga to recover over the last 12+ years.  Going to see what the diagonsis is. Just because you do yoga, doesn't mean you should bang your knee against car license plate holders and expect to come out okay!

We did celebrate after the challenge with a dinner at Chaat house! Got to share a few words at the Challenge party in hopes that if we can do it, others who are thinking of giving this a try, will actually go for it.

The one thing folks tell me all the time is this.. "Sundar, you do the same yoga everyday.. day after day, year after year.. you do this 60 day challenge every year.. and say you learn something new.. you must be really inattentive or dumb to learn something new in what you do all the time!" 

While it is true that the class is the same day after day, my body and mind are not. As different parts of my body get stronger or weaker, more or less rigid or flexible over time, and my mind gets better at listening to the instruction and internalizing it instead of being in zombie mode, there is new learning! All the time!

Going regularly back to back for long periods of time gives you a heightened sense of awareness of changes happening in your body and we get a chance to remember how we did what we did differently(better)!

My friend Arash summarized it beautifully. He said in the language of Buddists.. which we all learn as kids. Ther is Buddha, Dharma and Sanga. 

Buddham charanam gachchaami, sangam charanam gachchaami! 

Teachers are our gods here! The Dharma is the fact that they stay true to a hard 90 minute yoga practice and the community that is there at BYSJ is truly what makes us keep coming back.

We heard a lot of folks share their amazing journey and stories at the challenge party. You can check those out on the BYSJ website and other social media. A video of what we shared with folks..

As long as there are not major setbacks, will try to keep going to yoga, try 60 day challenge every year and try to keep this body and mind as optimized as possible to deal with everything the outside world throws at me.

Sangeetha says I am still a work in progress and even today she was trying to "knock some sense into me" with little success. For all that, there is progress. Slow but sure progress.

Strongly recommend you try yoga if you are on the fence. They say "do this for 30 days, it will change your body, do it 60 days in a row and it will change your mind". Can attest to it!

Here's to BYSJ for continuing to improve and transform people's lives, year after year, one challenge after another!

A big congrats to all who signed up and gave it their everything (finishing is a different story, signing up is the hard part!) and a special congrats to my MIL for being a great example and role model for yogis out there.

Very proud of her for finishing the challenge and showing up to class on day 61 !!!