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! 

Why? Why? Why?

Yours truly is back in the US of A. That also means back at BYSJ. 

I did the 60 day Challenge and after that, have gone there a mere 10 times in the last 40 days, thanks to travel and United airlines flying. 

Flying United is like whipping yourself, thinking it is going to somehow absolve you of all your sins. No good comes out of it and all you are left with are scars.. seriously, I have scars now. Given my friends have requested me politely and not so politely to stop sharing rashfies or Xelfies as someone called it, there will be no pictures. 

Flying United.. what can I say?! It is like watching Sigourney Weaver and crew flying around in the alien movie series. You think you came out alright.. you wait for 48 hours and something is tearing your stomach and crawling out! You never know if those damn aliens, sorry co-passengers have infected you. 

Definitely did not start writing this post about "Why? I still fly United". Somehow I ended up there. 

Earlier this week, went to a Yoga class after a long time. There was a LOT on my mind, thinking about work and Jr.'s persistant requests for downloading a Snapchat app. Thirty minutes into the class, finally got to stop thinking about all that and was only worried about surviving the next 60 minutes and being able to stand on one leg. It was a hard fought battle, going from bullshit thoughts that would not stop, to breath and balance. 

Then the floor series exercises started.

It so happened that an ant (that looked like a Pulliar Erumbu, I cannot be sure) had decided to check out my mat and more specifically my hand. 

The next 25 minutes was spent in trying to avoid killing that ant with my hands or shoulders and I did everything humanly yogically possible to avoid killing it. Was blowing it away and it came back. Flicked it gently with my fingers and it came back. It was like the ant had a death wish! Having come into the room to find peace, was definitely not going to go on the war path with said ant. 

The teacher was looking at me funny when we did the "airplane" pose. My plane did a weird nosedive to the left, trying to avoid an imminent crash with the ant.  As soon as this happened, the lady on my left saw what was going on, and promptly squished the ant! 

If a speaker was connected directly to my brain and my thoughts made audible, the emotional outburst in my head would have broken all the mirrors in the room! 

Shed a tear. Maybe it was for the ant. Maybe my spine was still recovering from that almost crash landed airplane. We will never know. 

Now for the last Why?

Knowing that the whole idea of staying in a Yoga room for 90 minutes was to kill all thought and distractions from the mind, how is a teensy weensy ant able to distract me for a good 25 mintues?!

Why?!

Yeah Yeah, it is another Yoga post...

The 60 day challenge is still on and right now I am 6 behind. There are days when even going to that one class per day becomes quite a challenge and surprise, I get to do a double. 

Then there are days where I go with two sets of towels and a bottle of gatorade to drink between classes, all planned for a double and the plan is abandoned after the first class. 

They say planning is three fourths done.. not in a Bikram yoga class. Plan all you want, every class is a surprise. Have made three sincere attempts to do a double and every time, have had to abandon it at the end of the first class.

Have you ever driven on a road, knowing that it has synchronized traffic lights, but you still get stuck at every damn light, because your speed is just slightly out of sync? That is how this one class was! "If only, if only the teacher gave me an extra two seconds to get my breath back to normal before the next pose" was the recurring thought through 50 minutes of a 90 minute class.

There are folks who show up in the Yoga room after running a full marathon in the morning and they breeze through the class. There is a lady who showed up there till the day before her baby was born and was again there in the hot room one week after delivery! I look at them with awe and use them for inspiration.

There is a big irony that keeps hitting me on a day to day basis. We say the world is shrinking and the internet has brought us closer and we live in a more "social" world. However the "social media" world that we live in seems to separate us more than unite us. It seems to be superficial. People project a life in social media. Not share their life. Everyone on Facebook seems to be living THE life. They have selectively chosen to share their joys, likes and upbeat status reports. That might be seen as a positive thing, but it is only one side of the story. 

I go to drop a happy birthday wish in the Facebook email, aka messenger and see that the only messages I have sent that person on FB is a happy birthday message, year after year! It is not that I don't exchange other emails with that person on gmail or meet that person one or twice a year, but our exchanges and interactions have been reduced to what seems to be, preprinted TELEGRAM messages (if you are not from India and are under 20 you may not get this reference). Next thing you know, Facebook will have an option to select a number and #2 will be Happy Birthday #3 will be "heartfelt condolences" etc.  It is almost getting there.

At the anniversary day at BYSJ, practically every class is packed. I decided to go to the 4:30 PM class and there was more than a 100 people in the room! At least it felt like it. Literally mat to mat! Before the class started the instructor said something nice. He wanted us to say hi to all our nearest neighbors. I had not met or spoken to any of my five nearest neighbors and it was nice to introduce myself to a bunch of "strangers".

It was a great class taught by a very funny guy. Some things stuck with me. He said "stretch your hands up, palm to palm grip, and if you see there is a gap between your palms in the mirror, ask yourself.... WHY?"  We were in another pose and he said "you might have just lost the will to live, but the class must go on.. so push your stomach forward" . We all laughed. Laughing is sometimes the best way to get your breath back. So these days I have a perpetual stupid grin on my face, and it seems to be helping!

There are also some other funnies that seem to stick in my head. One teacher shouts out "grab your elbows each other! If you cannot grab your elbows, GRAB YOUR ELBOWS!".

Another one says "let's get ready for Cobra pose. place your hands on the mat, five fingers together. Align your thumbs with your nipples and press down". This was by far the best and shortest description of the set up that actually clicked for me! It was so simple. No mention of the deltoids, shoulders, etc. etc. where you keep what, figuring out if your hands are too far in or out, etc.  Was wondering why other teachers didn't say that! Then again, what works for my brain, might be a distraction to someone else, who knows?!

There is another teacher who is new this year. This guy does something unique. When the class is about to end and we are in the last breathing exercise, he progressively dims the light and turns off the lights altogether while we still have 10-15 breaths to go. There is a magical effect that happens (at least to me) in the following sequence:

1. I see a shillouette of me and all the folks immediately around me in the mirror. Just the outlines, kind of like when you adjust the highlights and shadows to the extreme slider bar on Photoshop! 

2. Then I can slowly see the details in the shadows. The faces are now recognizable. 

3. This then gives way to seeing only the people and the background goes dark.

4. There is a bright glow around the people. It is like seeing a Thermal image of the folks in the room and they give off a heat signature

5. If I try to focus on the mirror instead of "my reflection in the mirror", I can see a HALO around my head and some of the others.. just like you see in pictures of any god in India! (examples here, here and here and here yes, if Charlie Hebdo was in India, chances are they will draw Mohammad with a halo as well..) 

First I was thinking it is just the natural process of your dehydrated eyes going through a highlights/shadows adjustment.. but that did not explain the halo, only the outlines.

Maybe your eyes get to see near infrared after the yoga class and we all get some x-men type powers, was the alternate thought. In the five classes he has taught me so far, five for five he has done this light dimming and in all those classes, have seen the halo! Not sure if others go through the same experience, but it would be interesting to find out. 

These days I do go a few minutes early before class and talk to people, encourage them, get encouraged in turn and that helps. Every person has a story and they are happy to share their stories. Yoga has now become some kind of therapy when it comes to being social! 

In a world where we are all supposed to be closer, it takes very little to say hi to a stranger and strike up a conversation. My kids might not even have that ability the way they are going. Two kids in the same room texting each other. Their ability to smile only in emojis makes it tragic. 

On the bright side, a Facebook friend started a movement of sorts asking everyone to pick up the phone and call or go meet someone they have wanted to talk to for a long time, but never made it. That made me think..

Why are you so happy about talking to strangers, when you don't have time to call or meet your friends over the years?! 

That will be the focus for the rest of February, as the Yoga continues!

The yoga front..

When we first started going to Yoga, 80% of the classes we(MIL and me) attended were 5:30 AM classes.

Somehow between her going to India and me taking up a new job, switched to doing Yoga in the evening. 

Now, I have officially become an evening Yogi.. even on weekends! 

We start off with 100+ % attendance with the 60 day challenge, work very hard to keep it going till about the 100th day and then watch it taper off to a steady 75%. 

Then summer comes, other outdoor activities, travel will compete for time and before you know it, the end of the year will see the graph repeat itself. 

Well, not this year, or so I tell myself. 

So far though, the data I track shows that it is almost one for one compared to last year. 

and here is the interesting part.. my weight after coming home after class (or at 6PM if I miss class) over time.

Looks like the weight over time tracks too. Given I am a creature of habit, maybe the factors that all go towards the weight (food, exericse, travel, etc. ???) change for me over time in a very systematic way? Do not know. Will track it for a few more years and we will see if that is true. 

One would think though that in winter months the weight will increase because of less outdoor activity and in summer it would decrease. This says the opposite. I am wondering if there are others out there who have tracked their weight with a fixed exercise regimen and seen similar trends. If you know of someone or such data, do let me know!

For now, the Yoga continues when it can!

Knowledge is power.. looks like it!

This post may not make sense without a preview.

Almost two years ago, after realizing that the whole object of the physical aspect of Yoga, was to condition the mind to do better things, had tried a few meditation experiments which had weird side effects!

You can read about them here..

This blog is not new to my thoughts on Knowledge, higher learning and how it links to the way I was raised etc.

Recently, in an attempt to know more about the meditative aspect of Yoga, yours truly stumbled on a video link on Youtube, where Sadhguru a self realized mystic, talks about meditation, spirituality etc. It was an hour long talk recorded at Dartmouth.

Since watching that video, there was a wish to meet Sadhguru in person. Last month, we saw a booth at a local Indian festival where Sadhguru's organization "Isha" gave us a flyer that anounced his bay area visit will include a three day lecture on Inner engineering and also teach the "Shambhavi Mahamudhra" for all the attendees who make it to the last day.

This happened to be on the weekend of the Navarathri festival. After a lot of negotiating with Sangeetha and the kids, they agreed that I should go, because it had been a wish for quite a few months at that point. So off I went to meet Sadhguru and missed Saraswati pooja and Vijayadasami.

Sadhguru was as charming in person, as he was in the Youtube videos. He mostly spoke of common sense things, which we all know deep down but refuse to see head on! At least, that was my take on it.

The 2 1/2 day event was from Friday 5PM-9PM, Saturday 8AM to 7PM and Sunday 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM. Friday was a long talk by the mystic. Most of Saturday was spent on teaching folks preparatory exercises to get the spine in some shape, as well as the breathing to some sense of control before the Mahamudra was to be attempted. He taught the Shambhavi Mahamudra as the grand finale on Sunday. 

There were lot of breaks, good music and some dancing to keep the participants engaged on Saturday and Sunday, so that the food they ate made it past their stomach, before more exercise could be tried. It was a relaxing weekend for a lot of selfish reasons. For some strange reason I got visions of staring at snow out of a Days Inn window in Bloomington, Minnesotta after sitting in the same spot for a good hour listenting to Sadhguru talk.

Here was my take from the whole event.  I am going to review this, the way any "event" or "movie" has been reviewed in this blog. It was exactly that, if you looked at it as a participant in a self help workshop that my former employers have sent me to in the past. Be it a speed reading course, precision questioning and answering course or an interpersonal skills training management workshop, or for that matter a Hatha Yoga all day workshop aka Posture clinic, at the end of the day, you come out with some critical takeaways on how to do something and know what works and what doesn't!

First, the good part!

All those side effects I had experienced when trying to do something along the lines of Shambhavi, by following other Online Yogis, was to be expected! The white lights, the blinding flashes in the point 1/2 inch above the spot between my eyes on the forehead, body going through froglike convulsions, tears flowing on their own etc. wer okay and nothing to be scared of! My body experienced happiness and clam and these were initial physical manifestations of that and nothing more.

There are different teachers who have their own methodology for getting you to do this. Some folks ask you to lock your breath in after doing a series of breathing exercises (called Pranayaamas which literally means "to elongate the breath"), some make you do it while attempting to disengage all sensory organs and some folks expect you to just jump up like frogs to get you kick started into a "state of happiness".  Think of the last one as starting a car and then giving it some gas vs. pushing a car down a ramp and sparking the enginer. As long as the sparking and the movement overlap within a short time, you get to go places! 

The good news is that now I know one safe and tested way to do this meditation. So far it is working, as far as calming me down. It works especially if you do it after a 90 minute Bikram Yoga session, where your body is literally in pieces and your breath is clam after the class. Sadhguru referred to this as "Accumulating Ojas" or "Stealing from the earth". Have been doing this "garnering Ojas" exericse once a day and will continue to do it on a regular basis whenever I finish a Bikram Yoga class, travel permitting.

To express it in my own nerdy way, it is like formatting a section of my hard drive which has a lot of garbage files in it. The breathing and meditative part of the 21 minute routine (which is like a 11 mintue sub-routine) cleans up the head nicely of thoughts, positive or negative. It is a brain reboot of sorts. I am reasonably sure that western science will catch up to this and find out eventually which part of the brain gets a flood of oxygen and is subsequently starved of oxygen to get this whitewash effect. I will volunteer to be a subject on this study as well. 

Also learned a few interesting tidbits of information from Sadhguru during his two hour long informal talks to keep the audience engaged. Facts do not make knowledge but intellgience does, and Sadhguru seems to follow that. Nevertheless, there were lot of facts.  Some of those were :

- The three primary sounds are Aaa Oooo and Mmmm which are the only sounds you can make without a tongue. All other sounds are made of combining these three sounds just like all colors are made of primary colors. This is why AUM has a symbolic representation and is chanted in India as part or meditative practice. It is distored to OM in South India and that makes us forget the significance of Aaaoooommm!

- There is a reason why the number 108 is used in counting repetitive manthras and chants. The ratio of the distance from the Sun to the diameter of the Sun, ratio of distance from Moon to diameter of Moon are both 108! I did verify this to be a true fact and surprisingly it was never mentioned in any of my science or math classes. Still do not know if the 108 was to remind us of some astronomical facts or there was more to it but it was interesting. I tried to do a spreadsheet with distances of planets to the earth and their diameters to see other patterns and did not find any. So this was all the more of an interesting coincidence that people 4000 years ago had figured this out without modern day telescopes.

- There are certain foods that help you when you meditate and some that deter you. Now this part I could figure out by myself while doing Bikram Yoga. Having food allergies and doing my own tests to instinctively avoid foods that caused my breathing to deteriorate, had helped figure this out. Most of what he said in this part of the talk had already been put in place at home. 

So that was the good part. 

Now for the sad part!

With every person who achieves something special in his/her field, be it a movie star, a world famous scientist, a religious or spiritual guru, certain things seem to be inevitable!

First, the person ends up becoming a public figure, if he/she proliferates a message to a wider audience.

Next, they cannot do this alone. The thing doesn't scale without a pyramid scheme of sorts.

This is usually followed by an organization that is built around the person or the message.

Finally this organization then takes on a life of its own.

The seed that grew into a banyan tree is now taken over by many creatures and at some point what seemed to be a nice small tree that miraculously sprung forth from the seed, is now spanning hundreds of square meters and has rotting branches in places, that coexists with birds, critters and people who come to enjoy the shade. 

Be it a rabid SRK fan club, a bunch of scientists who hang on to some all time great's papers and research even if it violates the very principle of what true scientific enquiry is all about, the Crusaders, Jihadists or Hindu militia, they have a similar issue.  

When anyone who gets enlightenment (you can even take this down a notch and say accomplishes something extraordinary) wants to show you the light by holding it up, there are three types of interactions with that light. There are those who want to see the path the light illuminates and use it to go places. There are those who do not want the light and they go hide in darker places.  Last but not least, there are the moths! They are fatally attracted to the light and don't get anywhere. 

This phenomena is not restricted to godmen or spiritual leaders. Have seen this happen to athesists. A former TamilNadu Chief Minister and long time poet, scholar, screen writer and politician has my respect because he talked about believing in oneself and not in god. His ardent followers decided to call him "a god" at which point I shook my head and said "they will never learn"! It is not a problem with the concept or the person. It is a problem of scalability of any message and all the issues that come with it.

The crowd at the event, seemed to be low on IQ. There was a lot of "ooh"ing and "aah"ing at things that were not exactly "ooh" and "aah" worthy! Maybe I am not used to moving in such a crowd that is so bereft of any knowledge, that little things seem like a big deal to them. 

There was also another aspect of the event that was a little annoying. There were two messages that were repeated multiple times over the event. First,  "you are all not smart enough to know beyond this.. so just do as I say and you will be happy" followed by, "this is top secret stuff and in the wrong hands it will be devastating. This method has been dumbed down to reach folks like you so beware and behold.. " , talk that was simply insulting. Then again, maybe it was a good thing, given that the crowd was actually soaking that in! 

There is only one thing that is worse than organized religion and that is organized spirituality!

Spirituality transcends religion. We all have a body that is give or take the same and a mind that is capable of doing similar things. If this was an exercise in achieving one's full potential with this body and mind, there are many ways to get there with the end result being the same. This is one other map to the same destination with its milemarkers clearly defined and that is all there is to it!

Sadhguru is genuine when he talks about the body, mind and spirit. He has a higher intelligence which on a personal basis he is able to apply. 

There are places where he does blur concepts from Hinduism into spirituality which was okay by me, because Hinduism is not defined the way other religions are. It is open ended to the point I have created a god for "first silicon" and I pray to it in my own way. At some point I plan to get enough money to build a temple for the supreme godess "Siliconeshwari" somewhere in Silicon Valley with an idol made of pure undoped Silicon. Devotees need not worry, as there will be brances in Austin, Portland, New York, Dresden, Shanghai, Taiwan, Singapore and Beijing, just to cover the prominent locations.

Any guru, self realized or otherwise, shoud not mock the people who come to learn something from him or her. I am told by many folks that Bikram Choudhury apparently does it in the teacher training sessions. So did Sadhguru. Maybe this is to appeal to the masochistic in the student to want to punish himself by going through a "tough" learning process? Maybe it is their way of playing to the inferiority complex in the "students"? I do not know. It did not feel good. 

Then again, there were too many moths that are attacted to Sadhguru's light. There are too many people who simply did not get the message. They were trying to buy spirituality at 100$ / hour and trying to transform themselves into spiritlandia by wearing bindis, chanting things they did not understand and wearing Rudhraksh garlands without understanding its significance.  Same things happen at Bikram Yoga class where I see folks on 40$ Yoga mats, paying 300$ for a three month membership and sitting in the last row on their mats watching others sweat it out over most of the 90 minute class. It takes a lot of hard work and sincere determination to effect any change in the body or mind, a fact in itself that is not something most folks realize or accept!

That was the bad part.

The whole thing could have been done in a day, but given the audience and the fact that he was trying to cover +/- 3 sigma in the distribution it was a tall order.  

It was a weekend well spent as I did do a lot of reflecting and focussing. Got to realize that there was no need to have been scared with those "side effects" in the past. If done right and regularly, this type of meditation works wonders for calming the mind. It was also good in another way.

I kept thinking "Are these people for real? These folks live around me? How could a person be in such a helpless state? Wow, these folks are really ignorant and they have no idea what they are talking about or gettin into!" etc. etc. There are lot of people around us who need help both physical and psychological and it is no easy task to help them.

How we help them is up to us, but help we must or looking the other way will come back and bite us. That part of Sadhguru's message was right on.  

On a final note... be aware of the moths!