Perspective

It has been more than 3 months since this blog saw an entry! There are no particular reasons for it. We did go on a bunch of hikes, but mostly to places already visited. Then our hikes came to an end as our group leader had an injury and is recovering slowly but surely.

There were two hectic work trips to India in a space of two months. There was some sporadic singing. Some illness, etc.. basically the usual for this household. Somehow didn't get to put fingers to keyboard in 3 months!

Well, now that there is a break for the next ten days, all those unfinished blog posts will hopefully see the publish button!

This one though, is a fresh post. In early September, my yoga guru Michelle watched me look longingly at my usual spot in the hot yoga room.. her mat was already in that spot! She saw me and said "you can have your spot. I can move!". I should have known then and there that there was a catch.. Michelle makes sure I don't miss my mom when she does things like this.

At the end of the class we are walking out and she goes "you know what will be good for you? try a challenge where you practice in all 48 spots in the room! It will give you a much needed perspective. I recently just finished taking class in every spot in the room and it taught me a lot about my practice and myself!"

I mumbled "okay, sure!".. and got a look that said "mean it!". Was even told that the website for the studio had a pdf of the room layout with all the spots marked! 

Came home and printed that out and started on 9th September to do this "Do yoga in every one of the 48 spots in the room" challenge. Called it the "studio tour". Finally finished this challenge on Sunday 18th December. It took me 100 days to cover 48 spots! There were many challenges. If I didn't get to class early enough, all the spots I needed were already taken and I didn't want to ask anyone to move. This went on too long and finally my wife asked my friend to move spots on the last day just so I could be done with this!

Now, for the perspective.. all of you know about my spreadsheet that has my attendance, teacher, time, weight after class etc.  for 12 years. Have finished 2642 classes as of this evening. I am guessing 9/10 classes have been in the three corner spots in the right side of the yoga room over all these years! 

The corner has more clear views in the front and side mirrors and you have less nearest neighbors! Also I cannot hear well on the other side of the room maybe because my one ear has an issue. Whatever the reasons, I am a creature of habbit and have stuck to that corner.

This was a real challenge for me to go off my comfort zone and try different locations in the room. Now that I am back home.. ie. back my usual spot in the last few days, it is actually the best spot in the room for me. My best practice is when I am close to the front and side mirrors and can hear the teacher clearly. There is no doubt about it. That was my learning. Folks who saw me walk into class everyday with a map wanted me to share the experience.. so here is a summary

Are there other spots in the room I liked? Yes. The ones right in front of the teacher, which no one wants. Those are actually great spots if the teacher doesn't move around the podium during the balancing series. 

Are there spots I really did not like? Yes. There are spots where the door or window was behind me. I could not balance well at all in those spots. There are spots where you lie down on the floor and can see the sparrows in the trees outside. Too distracting. I don't know how the yogis used to mediate on one leg in a forest.. with all those damn birds flying around from branch to branch. I love birds and watch them for long times at home drinking tea.. but when you are hanging on for dear life and trying to recover your heartrate after an asana, the birds don't help.. at all!  

Then there are spots which are directly in line with the mirror ends. The yoga room has wall mirrors.. when you hit the seam of the mirrors and you try to do asanas in front of the seam, you get split into two parts in the mirror. It is as though I have multiple personalities in front of me. A calm me vs. an irate me. 

Did I open my mind to new possibilities with this challenge? Yes and No. Sometimes you have to try things that make you uncomfortable.. at least once.. or say in this case 40 times out of 48. Was hoping to become more tolerant to the other locations. When you have three rows of people in front of you and most of them don't think of the people behind them and fidget around, start the pose too early or too late or lie down, it is good that they are doing what is best for them.. but it is not what is best for me. This made me realized the tremendous impact I have in the first row on the folks behind me. Now I think a lot before sitting down for any pose and try to minimize fidgeting. 

Did I gain anything by trying out all those spots? Yes. Made some new friends who were suprised to see me in the other part of the room. This room has as much spread as the world. Turns out there are folks who practice for years on either side of this room and they just nod to each other and say hi on the way in and out but never have conversations with folks from the "dark side".. and to each side the other is the dark side! There are front row people and last row people and there are tempraments, reasons, preferences. 

Over the 48 spots, I learned a lot about the folks who call those their "usual spot", and why! That was an interesting social study in itself. 

Here is the other weird thing. People thought I was sick or recovering from either flu or covid or was having a tough day to show up in the last row.. or I had to leave early right after class, when I took spots near the door. During the early days of the challenge my teachers would call me and say "there is an open spot in the front for you ?".. then I had to go tell them about this personal challenge!

Would I suggest this challenge to others? Yes. You might be a better person than me when it comes to being a lot more open minded or selfless when it comes to the yoga practice. So please give it a shot. This was harder logistics wise than doing a 60 day challenge. You can't always get the spot you want if you don't come early enough. Some folks show up 30 minutes before class to get their spots! You have to come at a different time to even get those spots. 

A big thanks to Michelle for pushing me out of that spot for 3 months, my wife for patiently putting up with my requests to go early to yoga class just to get a certain spot .. on multiple days, especially towards the end and to my friend Natalie for giving up a spot on the last day of the challenge! 

Somehow I feel free to be in any spot in the room, after this tour! However, my gut tells me that you will most likely find me in my usual corner. 

A dozen 60 day challenges

This year yet again, the following sequence of events happened..

1. BYSJ announced the 60 day yoga challenge to start Jan 1st-Jan 14th (start within that window and finish 60 classes in 60 days)

2. Started on Jan 1st, and having gone to class everyday till 6th, signed up 

3. Wife and resident kid protested at first

4. Then realized that once I sign up for something, it is not easy to unsign me for anything

5. Negotiations were done as part of letting me go through the challenge

Go through this routine the first week of January as though it is some kind of WTO or Davos type event, without the private helicopters and fancy locations..

An agreement was reached. I was not to skip any of the all day hikes planned for Jan/Feb and will do doubles to make up, but it will kept to a minimum number of days.

The questions this year were :

You have done this so many times already. you are doing yoga practically every day, so why bother with this challenge?

It is not like you are going to learn anything new after all these years? You better know everything if you have been doing it this long, so just go reguarly but skip this challenge!

First question sounds logical. the second one, oh... that gave me an opening to launch into Sundar's yoga memorial lecture. On any day, I learn something new in yoga class, either about myself on a general basis, myself specific to that day, yoga in general, or something specific about a particular asana. It is a never endiing, continous process. 

Finished the challenge with 4 doubles. There were 4 all day hikes and some of them 10-12 miles with a lot of elevation gain. If there were 6:30 PM classes on Saturday, would have still dragged my ass to Yoga class after those hikes and avoided the doubles.  It was more of a time thing than a capability issue. It was a great feeling to finish. 

The 60 day challenge helps me take any new learning and make a habit out of it. When you learn something new about a part of your body, or a pose or how to adjust to do the pose better, it is important to keep repeating that, at least 10-12 days in a row, for it to stick to your brain so you do it without thinking about it as a "correction".  

It is like remembering Chennai phone numbers when they suddenly added an extra number in front of the 7 digit numbers. You have to think of the original number, add the extra number in front before dialing.. that takes mental bandwidth and slows you down.. it takes a few years of dialing before you don't have to process through those steps and the 7 digit numbers have been overwritten in the head directly with 8 digit numbers. There is no quick "Find all" , "replace all" for my brain! Maybe I am alone in this..

Yoga is like that for me. Have gone to class 2500+ times. Most of the poses are two sets per class. So if you have tried something 5000+ times over 11+ years and they have all gone through multiple sets of corrections, there has to be a faster way to make these updates stick. 

A friend and teacher, Matt told me recently when I quoted "Practice makes perfect!", with "Sundar, you get good at whatever you practice! You practice something that makes it better, you will get better. You practice something  that makes it worse, you WILL get better at making it worse!"

I just was zapped thinking about it. Bad habits are as easy to form, if you work hard! We should scrap that stupid proverb and replace it with "You perfect what you practice!". 

The 60 day challenge is the perfect opportunity to make process improvements (yoga is a process) into habits. Made 4 improvements in this challenge. Two were just undoing bad things that had crept up over time (this happens, don't know why!) and two were new learnings. 

San also signed up for the challenge with me, just to see how far she goes. She did 45/60 and was happy for her. There were two days where the little one was not well or wanted company and they both let me go to yoga. For that and for all the support, silent eye rolling instead of open rebellion, I am grateful to both of them!

Ironically, we had to wear a mask till the last day of the challenge and the very next day, the county declared masks were optional! Did all the 60 classes in the studio, in full heat and humidity, with a mask and without a water bottle.

If you are one of those folks who think it is difficult to do the hot yoga with a mask, do it back to back every day, have worries about having to remove masks to drink water etc.. all of those can be overcome.  That WAS going to be my message.. but now that the mask mandate is gone, just come do yoga!

It has been 4 years since I drank water during a yoga class. One of those things that has become a habit. Has definitely helped minimize stomach bloating during class and compress my stomach a lot more during forward bends. The first 3 days was hard.. then you count day 10, day 100, a year, two years and after some time, just get used to it and when you cross that day on calendar, smile and keep moving. This year I didn't even notice my "no water anniversary" till a few days later. That is when I know, it is time to stop counting for that one!

Have another thing to share that was funny and profound that happened during this challenge. Before a class, we were chatting with a few newcomers. They tell me "You do a great job in the front row. You must be naturally flexible!". Both me and San were smiling after hearing that.  

When I was new to Yoga, used to think that everyone else in that room was naturally flexible and was born with some genes that I lacked for sure. My first class I bent down to try touch my toes and my hands went an inch past my knees. Fast forward 12 years, someone thinks that I am naturally flexible!  

That shows, practiced skill can give the same perception as natural talent. It takes a long long time, but eventually you can get to a certain level of skill with practice. I am planning to do that with music. It doesn't matter if I have any music genes or not.. just going to keep at it and see after a dozen years, what happens. Music and yoga are different.. and I don't know the relative time scales, but going to give it a shot! When the family reads this, their eyes might just roll off the socket.. oh well!

Got another T-shirt this year at the challenge party, to replace the one that is almost dropping off my shoulder from all that washing. Very happy with it.  

Made a lot of new friends this year as well. While I was not fortunate to become a yoga teacher, definitely happy to be a longtime student. If you are one of those people who is curious about trying hot yoga, do reach out. There is plenty of posts in this blog that have explained my journey and experiences over the years and will be glad to share it in person. 

Now, we have until next Jan to negotiate a challenge! You have to keep the benchmarks going.. told my family, it would be good to do a 1000 classes, just in 60 day challenges (that is 17 challenges). So if that goal is accepted, the next 5 are spoken for!

See, simple!

A special 60 day yoga challenge

Folks who read this blog and know me or even randomly see me on the street (pretty much all of Cupertino) know:

- There is a Bikram Yoga San Jose

- There is something called a 60 day challenge at BYSJ

- and "I did it!"

They might also have concluded that I have only one shirt in my entire wardrobe and wear it all the time, possibly due to some psychological disorder where I have to wear the same shirt.

A more astute observer might have noticed that the blue T-shirt has different levels of fading due to repeated washing over years and therefore, cannot be the same shirt.

This fact has been reinforced over last year, now that there are two additional colors added to the collection. 

Why do I keep wearing this shirt? 

1. It was a T-shirt not bought, but hard earned by doing 60 hot yoga classes in 60 days (miss one and you do two on another day to compensate). A 90 minute yoga class is just that, no matter how many times you have done it before (2390 to date for me, given I have a tracker) and every class is different. You go in with a different levels of physical and emotional baggage and you hopefully come out without it after the class, if you give it your all.

2. It is a really nice shirt. Great fabric. Absorbs sweat after yoga class so the car seat doesn't get the sweat and it fits me nicely. 

3. Navy blue is my favorite color. Most of my clothes are blue!

Over the years, have done 10 of these 60 day challenges. The first few years, BYSJ used to give out little Oscar like trophies. So as of now, have 4 tropies and 6 T-shirts. Have requested the Yoga studio for an exchange program so we can turn in the old trophies for T-shirts, given it is practically the only thing I wear all the time and it is good publicity for the studio and Yoga!

This was my 11th Challenge and it was very very special. My wife signed up for it!!! Why? She was trying to heal her ankle injury and was trying all kinds of things. So I told her to try to do yoga with me as it is a definitely good thing. She came for a few days, saw an improvement and decided to sign up for the 60 day challenge. She was okay with me signing up as well. We were going through a lot of stuff at home and doing any activity with my wife on a regular basis usually ends up being challenging. So I was hesitant at first.

Then I got used to doing Yoga with my wife. Initially I would always try to look back at her in the second row to see if she is overdoing some poses or she is messing up Vajrasana which is great for ankles but only if done right. Then my teachers would all go help her do it right in the first 10 days. We would also plan and try to schedule classes together and it ended up being fun.

We both finished the challenge on the same day and put stickers up. Given my OCD, my teachers saved me a stash of purple stickers in the last week, so I could have the joy of putting up stickers. My teachers and the Karma Yoga helpers at BYSJ keep laughing at me for my sticker anxiety. I had 6 stickers left to place and they were running out of purple stickers. So I went and told them, "this is like doing a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle to find out that you are missing the last piece".  They understood. Next year I have been asked to change colors for stickers every 5 classes or so, try to be in different spots in the yoga room, etc.. in other words, break the routine. That might be the real challenge. As you can clearly tell, wife seems to have no such issues. Puts whatever color is available. We are very different creatures.

It has been 3 1/2 years since I stopped drinking water during class. So the 60 days of doing yoga, in studio with the heat and humidity, without water and with a mask on was interesting, but totally doable. So if any of you reading this are thinking about trying to get back into the hot room, you can do it with the mask. No problem. You will get used to it in two days.(you are allowed to drink water.. I just do this as an additional challenge and it helps me suck in my stomach more during poses)

San and me did yoga together on most days. Sometimes we had to juggle doctor appointments for the kid and would go at different times. Once San's ankle started healing and she started on baby hikes again, we still did yoga after the hikes.

There is something to be said about sweating it out and breathing with single minded focus. My job has not been a cake walk for the last three months. It is more me than the job. Going from being in startups for 15 years to a big company takes some adjusting to. Things that take hours takes weeks, things that take weeks take quarters. All that fire and drive from startup life, hits a concrete wall of layered bureaucracy and quicksand like interactions. It takes some time to recalibrate oneself to the new normal, but I have learned to take enough deep breaths and have fun in the new enviorns. The 60 day challenge definitely helped in this process.

This was taken after finishing 60. Really happy for San as she finished this! For once she gets to talk about the challenge at the 60 day challenge party while I get to cheer her!

My teachers are amazing! They push me, correct me, know exactly when I am about to give up and give me that look that says "how dare you?" at just the right time to keep me going. Forever grateful to them for making me a better person on a daily basis. 

My MIL has wanted to do this challenge with me for 10 years, but never found the time on her travel schedule. Very happy that my wife did yoga with me for a couple of months and thrilled to see her do a 60 day challenge. Hopefully she starts doing Yoga more regularly and comes with me at least a few times a week. It is also my hope that my MIL will also get to finish this challenge in the coming years. 

A very happy Teachers day to all my yoga teachers and all my teachers!! 

BYSJ is a very very special place. It is truly a home away from home. It is a place where you can go in with a lot of issues and come out feeling a lot better than you went in. No other place of exercise, no hospital or temple has beat that for me yet! Watching my wife or kids smile is a close second. A long trip or hike in nature or watching the sunset over the pacifica, is a distant third!

Looking forward to getting a new T-shirt to add to the collection. Now I have one for every day of the week!

A very different Yoga challenge

If you know me or read this blog, one fixture every year is the 60 day Yoga challenge that runs between Jan to March. Every year I have been doing the 60 Yoga classes in 60 days at Bikram Yoga San Jose.

This year it was as challenging as it was in the hot room. We had to do it mostly on Zoom and sometimes go for a parking lot class on weekends. Started on Jan 1st but as usual there were some challenges. Had a double bone graft gum surgery which took me out for 5 days. Had to do doubles on five other days to catch up. 

Even when I came back to doing Yoga, it was not easy to rest my cheeks on the floor for a few days. It is all well and healed now. Think this Zoom yoga class is here to stay. With new variants showing up, it might be some time before the studio opens to capacity. 

My daughter took this picture of me with the new T-shirt (which is our trophy of sorts from BYSJ when finishing the challenge). This time there was a cat as part of the design. I see so many of my yoga buddies try to do yoga at home with me and no matter where they try to hide their pets always find them and come disturb them in the most interesting ways while they are trying to do the poses! It is hilarious to watch. 

Yesterday we were hiking in Mount Tamalpais and after having attended the 60 day challenge party on Zoom the previous night, Yoga was still very much on my mind.. so when we went down to the falls, my wife gave me the idea to do yoga poses in front of the falls. 

at first I tried to do this on the log behind the rock and promptly fell in the water. Luckily only one leg was in the water. walked with a wet leg and shoes for a good 5 miles. So learned my lesson.. check the stability of logs for one leg instead of two before trying such poses.

There was no one around when we started taking pictures and we thought we had the place to our group. Just as I start to try and grab my leg with my hand, a dog comes out of nowhere and starts jumping on me and playing with me! Eventually the owners caught up to the dog and were laughing at how the dog was trying to distract me from doing yoga! The pets are getting really good at it, everywhere!

This was my 10th challenge. I am still a beginner. When talking about Yoga, one has to talk in Yoda timescales.. I am still a beginner with only 10 years of Yoga experience. Long ways to go! Learning new things every day. 

No graphs and charts this year.. doing yoga alone at home has been a humbling experience in its own way and I got to examine some of the asanas with a completely different mindset. 

if you have not yet tried hot yoga, try it at least once in your life. It might be the game changer! Thanks to BYSJ for all the push and a great T-shirt! 

Allergies in COVID times

The last four months were really good for my lungs. Stayed at home. Was very careful everytime I went to the Sunnyvale Costco, the Cupertino Trader Jo's / Target or the local Trinethra. Always wear a mask, use hand sanitizer very liberally, shower after I come home (not just wash hands, go straight to shower!)

That was pretty much the list of stores visited over 4 months, sometimes once in 7 days or 14 days. 

Apart from that, have had my daily walk around the block either while calling into meetings where I am not front and center but have to be there for an entire hour (most of you know those meetings... where the one day you are not on call, they take your name in vain) or in the late evenings just when the sun starts to go down. 

Two weeks ago things became very difficult. Runny nose, sore throat, blocked nose, difficulty breathing through the nose during the night and end up waking up with a dry mouth, occasional nose bleeds because of too much sneezing which eventually turned into the usual sinus infection. Called the doctor and they promptly told me that I have nothing to worry as I can breathe very well through my mouth. My lungs are still good.. very good.. to the point that once I manage to do the first two breaths of pranayama as part of the daily yoga class, I can keep going. They didn't even bother to ask me to go get tested. 

There was also another thing I observed. The sneezing went into over drive when I shaved after a week. It looks like the cleft below my nose has become super sensitive and I can now shut down when detecting certain smells at much lower levels. 

If not for the daily walk and the 90 minute yoga class everyday, the rest of the day and night is practically spent sitting on one place. So it is not easy to give up the walk because of the allergies. 

The real question was, how can I get this allergies if I wear a mask thoughout the walking! Are pollen smaller than the virus? 

Apparently the Corona virus is 120nm and the size of Pollen is 15-200 um which is 15000 to 200,000 nm. The mask should have blocked the pollen from getting into my nose.Turns out the blooming Lilacs are to blame and when I am sitting in the backyard calling into meetings without a mask, the pollen got me. 

Muddled thorugh the that week and the earlier part of this week working with watery eyes and nose and sounding miserable. Maybe time to take a few days off just to take mind off things and sleep during the day. Staring at a monitor non stop from 8AM to 9PM is also not a good idea. Have decided to go and bring my external monitor from work and move it home. 

If BYSJ was open we would have been going through a summer 60 day challenge. After recovering from that ankle sprain made it 60 days in a row earlier this week.  This would have been my 10th 60 day challenge. In my mind it still is. 

We now have open air classes in the parking lot at the yoga studio. I got to be part of the first ever parking lot class. It was hot, it was not level ground and the sun was directly above us.. but think there were almost 20 of us and we did the class and enjoyed it simply because of the group experience. You have to learn to breathe hard through a mask though, and that was a curveball for me because my mask was not the right mask for this exercise. it was a mask that had already been used for a week and was too soft. A cloth mask or a more rigid mask with some structural strength would have been better.  I almost swallowed my mask during the final breathing exercise. 

There are more classes per week now and more folks are starting to show up. Have been staying put at home content with doing the classes on Zoom or alone to a recording because I was still sneezing like crazy. I have been told there is no chance this is COVID, but others don't. So didn't want to panic my fellow yogis!

My time to participate came again this morning. There is no more sneezing, no runny nose watery eyes etc.. the allergies have gone as of Friday! 

This time went well prepared for the sun and the asphalt in the parking lot. If you saw a guy among a group of yogis who looked like he had just gotten off his camel and looked like a displaced Moroccan, that was me. One beauty of having a lot more clothes during a yoga class is that you sweat more, which was a plus! Thoroughly enjoyed the class.

don't think many of my yoga buddies even recognized me.. they were probably wondering who is the crazy arab who is waving to them..

The allergies and sneezing though presented a very real challenge when trying to do anything outside the house or being able to show my face in video calls. I was not comfortable seeing my own face in that zoom window, so had to say no to a lot of facetime and zoom calls. People get scared even if you sneeze on zoom! that is how much we react or over react to things now. 

The good news is I am back to my usual self and the yoga continues. Now that I have mastered dressing up for parking lot yoga, will be a regular there. 

Wish this COVID blows over and we end up inside the hot room soon enough. A lot of my fellow yogis share the same sentiment. If we are six feet apart and are wearing masks throughout the class, why not just do this inside the hot room?! if anything the fan pushes everything down to the floor! 

Normally we would go to Chat house and celebrate the finishing of a 60 day challenge with some parathas and baturas.. we are in different times now! Hope things open up soon!