Guru

The word Guru means "remover of darkness", someone who lights you up with knowledge. The darkness in this case does not mean literal darkness but the lack of knowledge!

If you go to Wiki, you see that Westerners manage to take a very important word and associate a negative connotation to it. That is really sad!

In days when word of mouth was the only way knowledge was transmitted from teacher to student for generations, a guru was everything to a student. We are taught at an early age in India "Maata, Pitha, Guru, Deivam" or  "Mother, Father, Guru, God" to put things in perspective for kids. We are also taught

Guru Brahma, Gurur Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwaraha

Guru Shakshat para Bramha Thasmaye Shri Gurave Namaha

which means "I salute my guru who is the embodiment of the Trinity of Creater, preserver and destroyer (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva)"

Most kids in India that I grew up with would treat our teachers with deference. Teachers word was gods word. That helped a lot till the Ph.D started, at which point my thesis advisor promptly said "I am not always right. You seem to agree with everything I say. Your job is to question me and come up with answers on your own!" 

That was enlightening in its own way. Be your own guru?! Was that the message?

Once that phase was over and a new balance was achieved in taking your teachers word as gods word with an amendment  that said "the guru is always right except when the guru says otherwise"!

My teachers appreciate me obeying them implicitly when they give instructions that are to be followed as part of the learning process. Be it my Guitar teacher or a teacher in any training class or Yoga class!

Bikram yoga works using a dialogue. It is called a dialogue because the teacher talks and your body does what the teacher asks you to do with your body. It is a dialogue between the teachers voice and your body. So if there is one thing that is still pretty much following an oral tradition of teaching, it is Yoga. 

This weekend some of us got an amazing treat. A chance to spend the entire day with Jim Kallett, a senior Bikram Yoga practitioner and teacher who actually does the Teacher training. 

This is like meeting your thesis advisors advisors advisor! It was an amazing experience as he shared his experiences of learning Yoga from Bikram, his wisdom and "trusting the process". 

He took apart every posture in the series with clinical precision and helped those in the room  one by one! After doing Yoga for almost two years, I finally learned what the dialogue "relax your shoulders" meant. 

One thing with the oral tradition is that the teacher says something, your ear hears it, your brain processes it based on the sum total of its vocabulary and experience and different people will still "interpret" the dialog. 

Jim pushed, pulled and stood on people (yes, at one point he stood on my back to prove that my body could do a pose with external help and it was up to my mind to get there on my own.. wish I had a picture of that) to make folks realize one very important thing..

Your body is capable of doing things that you cannot realize are possible. Everything is in your mind!

Now there are pages of notes from the all day yoga session, little reminders that go a long way in improving the practice. Based on what Jim said, in another 4-5 years, things should be a lot better! 

The whole day was truly enlightening, a series of light bulb moments. For many of the questions his answer was " I am not here to give you permission to take the easy way out. If that is why you are asking the question, do not even bother! You do what it says in the dialogue, no more, no less and that is the only way!"

At the end of the day, after talking and demonstrating non stop, he got up and taught a class! Do not know how he has that kind of energy. He said after a few years of practice I will also have that energy and that is good to know.

Jim Kallett is a Guru in the true sense of the word. 

He did an awkward pose where he stood on the tips of his toes. I can stand on my toe and was proud of the accomplishment till I saw him stand on the tips of his toes.

Apparently that is what the dialogue says! Nothing more, nothing less.. 

When we were done for the day, I instinctively touched his feet to take his blessing. He smiled and said "Good luck to you and your family!". That made my day!

Now Jim has piqued my interest in meeting his thesis advisor, Bikram Choudhury! Who knows, that also happen one day..

The art of letting go...

That by the way is...

what goes by the name of "Camel Pose" or "Ustrasana" in the Bikram Yoga class. Granted I photoshopped it way past my normal limits but the fact that Jr took the HDR snaps and my dad volunteered to hold a white Dhoti behind me to take this photograph meant that yours truly should put in at least a little more effor tinto making this photo memorable for the family!

What has all this to do with the "letting go"?

Anyone who knows me (even through the blog) probably can figure out by now that once my mind is set on doing something, I will keep trying till I figure it out to my satisfaction. Maybe I am obsessive compulsive to a greater degree than a normal person but not enough to be called OCD?! Do not know but it is not easy for me to let go of things. A shortcoming that has helped and hurt me in my personal and professional life. A trait that I consciously work on to match the situation at hand.

Yoga is one of the places where this helped and hurt me. Again this is "me" that has to do with the helping and hurting part and not the "yoga". It is very fashionable these days to bash or trash Bikram Yoga or Bikram Choudury but if I ever get to see that man in person, will prostrate myself at his feet for giving me a second chance in life. That said...

The day we went for our first yoga class, we did not know that we would get hooked to this thing the way we did. It has been a year and a half and my MIL and me still go attend at least 4 classes a week. She attends 5 or 6! Again, see what I mean by letting go?

Why would your attendance matter? What if you went there every day and just sat there most of the time? What if you had 50% attendance but you gave it your 100% every one of those 90 minutes in that hot room? What if..  ? What if..  ?

Well, I did go 250+ days in the first year and thought it was something to be proud of. I also knew that exactly one year into this practice my waist sized dropped an obvious 4+ inches, my weight went down by 17+ pounds and my average sick days came down from 10 a month to less than 3 a month and overall felt happy or at least had the ability to feel less sad in situations where my formal self would have gone into a depression of sorts.

The last six months have seen a drop in attendance. Best I have managed is 5 times  a week and that was 3 weeks out of the last 20 or so weeks. The rest of the weeks have seen 3 or 4 days attendance on a regular basis. This was mainly because of trips to Austin, adjusting to eating times (you don't want to eat anything 2 hours before a yoga class), sickness picked up from sharing the air with a bunch of people in the confines of airplanes and hanging out in airports which should probably rate at the top for the worlds most unhygeinic places.

Still give it my very best in every class and do watch for my limitations. These days I do sit down every now and then to get my breathing back under control, even if I am in the first row. A yogi's got to do what a yogi's got to do, right?  If you cannot breathe right, no point in doing the pose. There is NO benefit.

In the process of adjusting to the reduced attendance (which people tell me doesn't matter) and being a more tamed and timid self than the hardcore type A personality who would push himself just past his limits on every pose, there has been a new found realization.

Yoga is not about being flexible or strong or balancing the two. Yoga is not just about marrying your heart and your lungs. Yoga is not just about having your body one with your mind and breathing.

Yoga is about being comforable with where you are.

If you can blank out your mind between poses to catch your breath in the dead body pose when the instructor says in a soothing voice "Relax your body, relax your mind, let your body settle down into the ground with the help of gravity, let your spine touch the floor from your neck to your tailbone so you can recharge your body for the next pose", then it should be possible to do this with your mind everytime you are unhappy with yourself for not pushing yourself past your limits!

For the longest time tried to "focus" on something while doing the poses and found it to be incredibly difficult. Now there is a new trick. Try to completely defocus everything. Squint your eyes a little bit like you are trying to find the hidden picture in a "steregraphic image" and having everything around you become dull, including the teachers voice to a bare minimum and that seems to help a lot.

Yoga is about "letting go"!

Letting go of the inhibition to wipe your sweat, letting go of everything in your mind so you can completely defocus from everything, letting go of your worst fears (which mostly involve falling down to the ground in those moments). . .

Actually went and talked to one of the teachers who has been teaching for 10+ years and told her "I used to ace these poses and now I seem to have gone backward and at the same time there are poses which were so difficult for me where there has definitely been an improvement. Also seem to have less energy these days so don't know if it is my work or the yoga".

She looked at me for a few seconds, paused and said "Happens to all of us. We all have our good days and our bad days. Also different parts of our bodies adjust over time. Your muscles that were once weak are now strong and that means relatively the strongest muscles that you used to get by class so far are not the strongest anymore. They need to improve new. Just keep doing what you can and you will find out what you can do with your body and mind!"

The simplicity of her logic and her sincerity made me realize that Yoga's greatest benefit is learning to accept your limitations and work with them!

These days I go into the room with no expectations, do what I can, sit down when I cannot and try my best the next day without any misgivings from the past experience.

Do not know if mentality will translate to a more peaceful personal and professional life, time will tell...

ps. Reposting this because all the formating in the previous version of this post was messed up on the WYSIWYG editor. Couldn't let go! As you can tell.. I still have issues with letting go!