The Yoga journey is still on

If you have been reading this blog, it has been going all over the place.. to July 2024, then finally to other things.. There are a few things that don’t get mentioned which are reasons for all the anachronistic posts.

Last summer San and me knew there was a 9 day anniversary trip. Still we had signed up for a 60 day challenge. T-shirts make you do things I guess! For me it was a no brainer. The earlier two week trip in February had made me skip signing up for the Winter 2024 challenge. I haven’t missed a winter challenge in years! So the family knew I will sign up for the summer challenge. Given a 10 day miss for travel, we started doing doubles every day in the hot July summer. The first 22 days saw us do 44 classes.. mostly back to back. San had never done doubles before, so I was really impressed and proud of her effort. Then we went on the trip and came back to finish the challenge ahead of time. It was good we finished it ahead.

Just two days before the challenge end date, my mother called me to show my dad in Apollo ICU in Chennai. The prognosis was that he would’t make it by the time I left here and reached him. It was a timely call as I was booked for a business trip first thing the next morning. Cancelled that trip and flew to India.

By some miracle, my dad went from ICU to general ward and back home in the week I spent there. The doctor’s told me that at this point, his condition is expected to be the same for weeks or months. He was home though. My mom was relieved that he was home. Even though the room became a hospital room, he had pulled through. So with happy tears I flew back. Right after coming back we did attend the 60 day challenge party. It was a great way for me to take my mind off everything. Went right back to the regular yoga routine. I was even more determined and sure that if I did this yoga regularly, there might be a quick and painless death instead of a prolonged debilitating disease. No one knows what is going to happen or when, but one can always do some preventive maintenance.

There was no blog posts .. not just about yoga.. There was simply no mood to write anything for the rest of September and most of October till my dad stabilzed to a new routine. Then we had a planned trip to the grand canyon to hike the south rim and that brought me back to Facebook , blogging and a social routine.

Went back searching for the videos of my speech from that challenge but could only find these two pics.. (one done before my dad ended up in hospital) and another from the challenge party. That was my 15th successful challenge out of 17 attempts.

Then it was January again before we knew it. This time my MIL had informed me that she will visit us from Jan to March just to join me for the 60 day challenge. She wanted to do another challenge (having done it once). The two of us had signed up and I signed up San, given she joins me most days. Initially she was hesitant and did not want to do it. She did not even do the stickers to keep track (I was keeping track for her). When there were only 10 days left and she had to do just a few doubles, she got enticed by Michele to complete. The T-shirts were back! They had the right size too apparently! All three of us finished this challenge.

My goal for this challenge was to do a 1000 classes in trying 60 day challenges. Had already done 900 in the 15 good attempts and in the two failed attempts there was another 93. So by class 7, the goal was done. Still the challenge teaches us something about how to carry on when your brain goes on strike and how to overcome adversity.

We did go to the challenge party this time and got to share the experience. You can see the video highlights reel..

One more T-shirt got added to replace the worn out ones..

After three weeks of not being able to go do Yoga much because of nosebleeds, finally made it last two days. Plan to get back to going everyday. Yoga makes me happy and peaceful. It is a reflective time and a meditative time to let go of things that don’t serve me right. It is a great way to reset.

That said, every day, learn something new. Even this morning in class Michelle tells me “Sundar, nothing should happen with the standing leg. just move the hands and the other leg!”. This was while doing a balancing stick pose where I was instinctively rolling forward on my ankle to compensate for the imbalance. Not doing that made all the difference in the second set. Have to remember that in tomorrows class. As we form good habits, bad habits have a way of creeping up as well. Constant attention to detail with a watchful set of teachers helps me fix them over and over again. To all my teachers at BYSJ, especially Michele, Matt and Sarah, who by now know my every move and even pre-emptively correct me , a heartfelt and sincere thank you!

Thank god for teachers!

The best part of this challenge was doing it with my wife and MIL. Hopefully someday, the kids will do a 60 day challenge. One can always hope.. and screw Parkinson’s disease.. Hope they find a cure for this shit so in case I do end up with it, there is some relief. Even if I cannot avoid the physical eventuality, the Yoga practice will definitely help me handle anything mentally down the road. That much I am sure of!

Revisiting Alamere falls after three years

Alamere falls near Point Reyes is an amazing waterfall that goes straight into the beach. Our first visit to this place was in 2021 in the middle of COVID. There was minimal socializing and we made the most of it.

In March we got a chance to go again. It is a long drive followed by a long hike. When you go with a group, both of those don’t seem long enough.

Given I have already described everything about this place, an updated set of photos and a video highlight reel!

Last time we went in November. This time we went in March.. the landscape on the hike was a lot greener, there were wildflowers that started coming out.. but it was windy and chilly both times.

It is now blog policy to open posts with a bench photo. Got a lot of yoga pose photos as well on this visit!

Had fun playing with the long exposure options in iPhone. Carrying the SLR up a 14 mile hike would have been an additional challenge.

went close to the falls and put the iPhone upside down on the sand to get this one.. had to crop it to a square shot. Water drops blurred part of the image.

When all surfaces are vibrant, had to stop and take pictures of small plants, lichens, buds… was slowing the group down a lot this time with the pictures..

The video highlights reel..

If all goes well, we will visit this place again in a few more years. The walk on the beach to the falls and the race against time is always interesting!

30 pages a day

Since the beginning of this year, have been reading 30 pages a day before bedtime or first thing after waking up while making and drinking morning tea. It has become a good habit.

On days this is not possible, just going with the flow. Most of the days manage more than 30 pages. Then there are long flights and airport waits. Always have the book handy to just read when possible. 

Usually there is a topic or a recommendation from a friend. If the topic interests me, then one book leads to another, a series of books sometimes. Have become a "chain booker", for lack of a better term. One book finishes and the next one gets picked up. The latest topic is books on mental aspects of yoga, concentration, and Tantra. A lot of my friends have branded me "nuts" for even trying to read up on a topic that is considered "taboo" or "humbug" or a range of other words. 

One thing was certain as I am going through this topic. It is misunderstood. A lot of patience and persistence is required to try and even scratch the surface of this subject. A lot of basic terminology has to be learned in a step by step fashion. Picking up books in the wrong sequence can significantly slow you down with constant references to other books. 

The first books I read are the ones by Robert Svoboda. The first book made me want to throw up at the halfway point. Kept ploughing through it 10 pages a day at times and managed to finish it. Then there was a lot of youtube video watching, research articles etc. while reading the second and third books. 

My first thought while going through these books was a sense of deja vu while reading select paragraphs which reminded me of recent books by Sadhguru that I read during the pandemic. Good thing is I still have those books. Sadhguru (or his ghost writers) literally dumbed down Svobodas books 30 years later. That is my perception. Sadhguru did do a great job of summarizing the 1980's books in nicer easily readable fonts, in simpler language with smaller sidebar stories and analogies. My thought was "the audience for books has probably reduced in IQ over 30 years that he is dumbing down so much".  

While reading through Svoboda's books, there were references to another set of books 60 years older! This was fascinating. Sir John Woodroffe aka Arthur Avalon stumbles upon Tantra and becomes an expert in the early 1900's. If you have not read about him, please do. He had access to Sanskrit texts which most fokls did not have and translated them to the best of his ability word by word. While reading two of his three books, felt that Indian's have had a lot of greatness lost over the years. My Sanskrit is not that great so I am being patient and read the transliterated texts. The third book is in a ridiculous font. Thinking of returning it to Amazon and asking for a reprint in a larger font! 

Reading Arthur Avalon's books gave me yet another sense of deja vu from the previous month. A lot of the Svoboda books are literally 1980's dumb down versions of the 1919 books! 

To think that the 1919 books are a translated, interpreted versions of original Sanskrit texts from ~600 AD is interesting in itself. Those texts are said to be the first written down versions (writing them was supposed to be blashpemous and given the nature of some of what I read, it makes sense that this was taught by oral tradition from teacher to student with the teacher overseeing the student closely as they did the practical exams!). 

While posting snippets of these books on FB with friends, a classmate recommended I read Shri M's autobiography. It was an easy and intersting read and it was easy because of all the other books that had been read recently. Terminology and vocubulary was already there. No need to keep going to other references or googling! Then another friend recommended a series of books by another later day "mystic" called Om Swami. Read his bio book in a day. The other two books are intersting and slow. Alternating between them. The 2014 books seem to be over simplifications of all earlier books. 

At this rate in 5 years I can write "Tantra for dummies" and chances are it will be a best seller. Still there are points being crystallized to bullets that are reinforcing certain ideas from more complex reads and that is "refreshing" quite literally.

A few thoughts after reading these books..

1. We know so little of our own bodies, our minds and what we can do with this equipment we have been given.

2. There are ways to fast track certain performance aspects of the body and mind

3. there are things beyond the body and the mind that have been consistantly observed by multiple folks and they try to explain it to people like me who simply cannot comprehend it. Why they have to try and explain these things to the general populace instead of fokls who are willing to put in the time and effort seriously, baffles me. Glad though that there are some markers these folks are leaving for aspirants. At least you know you are not nuts.

4. Our body is electro mechannical. Doing yoga over the years has taught me that things within the body are connected in ways that I did not know. It is a question of time before western scientists figure out exactly how to stretch a body, hold it still and put electrodes in the right places and turn on the voltage just right to make your physical and mental facutlies increase exponentially.  

5. Given we are also full of materials and materials are just molecules and atoms and those are vibrations with mass, it should not be a surprise that external vibrations have an impact on us. Be it light of different colors or waves of radiation across the spectrum. It is possible to recite certain sounds and press certain nerve endings to help the body do things using sound engineering. Somehow folks had figured this out a long time ago. How much experimentation went into it, is difficult to comprehend. This is also transferred word of mouth and taught teacher to student. This can be tricky as the side effects of doing this wrong are pretty bad. It is like jumping across the rooftops of two close sky scrapers. Know how to train and do it right, you land. Fall and you are dead. 

6. It is important to have a good teacher. If anything, reading books is fine. Do not try to replicate things mentioned in these books.. results vary! Reading them and moving on for now. No practical tests. 

There are a few other books that are still incomplete. One of them is to read sheet music in 30 says. It is stuck in Day 19 (when I went to India). Have to get back to it next month. 

Have not been feeling well since evening. Feeling randomly hot and cold. Dozed off in the evening and wide awake now. Disappointed and surprised my music teacher as I was off tune today. Will figure it out tomorrow morning. Have this weird uneasiness that I haven't felt in recent times. 

Books are amazing. You get to learn something new every day. The news and most of TV watching on the other hand, seems to be a waste of time. 

Wrote this post so people can start from 1920's and come to the 2017 books instead of going back and forth. All these books are good in their own way. They are targeting different audiences over different times. 

On a side note, if you are a newly minted self proclaimed "mystic" and would like a ghost writer for your biography, look no further. Can LCM and GCF all these biographies and write one for you. 

At this point ChatGPT should be able to write a generic mystic's memoir! 

There are somethings that I really want to learn. The Sri Yantra and tantra have definitely piqued my interest. If I am destined to find a teacher in this lifetime, would definitely pursue it. 

Good night!