Taking off with your body and mind..

In a sense, we are all airplanes in different shapes, sizes and colors. We are all more or less trying to use the equipment we have, to do the best we can, before the equipment (body and mind) need some major upgrades or outright fail. 

Flying airplanes needs a license. Flying your "self" doesn't.

Those piloting licenses have varying degrees of difficulty and requirements. 

Anything from 20 hours of solo flying and 15 hours of flying with a certified instructor for a small Cessna to 1500 hours of solo flying and more hours with experienced pilots to fly a Jumbo jet.

Where am I going with all this comparison?

When I started doing yoga, we were not sure if I will survive the first dozen classes. That was 100 minutes of Yoga. 

That went by fast.

The next milestone was ~ 1000 minutes of yoga or ~ 112 classes.. that also went by fast within four months. 

The next one is longer. 10,000 minutes of yoga, lets approximate to a 1000 classes. As a person who meticulously does graphs and charts and keeps track of things to get a nerds eye view of yoga, there is another 85 classes to go for the 1000'th Yoga class and a little more to go after that for 10,000 minutes in the hot room. At the rate at which I am attending, before year end, that milestone will come and go.

Then there is one more possible milestone to go, in this lifetime. 

100,000 minutes of yoga. Let's call it 10,000 classes. That should take another 37 years judging by current extrapolation, give or take. 

There are folks we know who have been doing yoga twice a day, almost every day for a decade. For them, seeing that milestone is almost a given. For the rest of us who are happy to do yoga once a day, at every chance we get, a 40 year timeframe to get there sounds about right. 

Not sure if there will be a lot of counting after a 1000 classes. Maybe there will be some lifestyle change at some point? Maybe there will be more yoga? Maybe age will catch up and there will be less? There is no predicting. 

One thing that keeps me going is that somehow, somewhere deep within, there is a realization that doing yoga is going to help me get there and the more yoga I do, the higher the chances of getting through those 37 years!

We can check back in 20 years and see a progress report. 

Dialogues with Yoga teachers

We have a new teacher at BYSJ who can only be described as "cross between a fire breathing dragon and a horse whisperer!"

In my third or fourth class with him, he jumps down from the teachers podium all concerned and in a flash he is standing next to me.

Fire breathing horse whispering dragon (lets abbeviate to Fire for short) : "Boss, something wrong with you?"

Me: blank stare that suggests "why would something be wrong with me? I am in the freaking first row busting my ass giving it a 110%" but I am unable to open my mouth and say anything because of the surprise factor.

Fire : "do you have a back injury or hip injury or something?"

Me : worried look on my face and thinking "do I have a back or hip injury that I am not aware of? maybe he knows something I don't.. these yoga teachers always seem to know more about my body and mind than I do myself" .. then I mutter a feeble "No"

Fire : Then why are you not kicking your leg out? I see you are never kicking your leg out. (His drill sergeant tone actually suggested "why the hell are you not kicking your leg out? what is wrong with you boy?") 

Me : (my head was going.. now come on.. "never" is a strong statement. you are saying never based on just one week of observation.. again all this is in my head) and I say out loud  "That is because I am not sure if I am locking my leg!

Fire : How long have you been standing like this?

Me : little over 4 years.

I was thinking the dude was actually going to be proud of me, for staying in stage 1 of standing head to knee pose for four years, patiently trying to lock my legs for all of 60 seconds, before graduating to stage 2. The next stage was to kick the leg out. After all, this is a life long practice and some folks apparently take months or years to lock their leg! Turns out, I was off on that logic, by a wide margin.

Fire : Your legs seem locked enough for me! Try it. I am going to stand here till you kick it forward a little bit. 

So he stayed next to me, literally pushed my hip to one side and pushed my knees back and breathed fire, till I kicked forward. 

Then he tells the class "If you keep doing the same thing to the same extent every day and come back and say, nothing is improving, you are not being fair to yourselves and the yoga. You have to take a chance and try the next step every now and then"

He brought out the bad bengal tiger in me.. I started getting flashbacks. 

There is a back story to my love hate relationship with this pose. There was a time, when I actually managed to do this pose.. nine months after starting to do Bikram Yoga. 

Guess I spoke too soon, while writing that post!  

In early 2012, every time I would kick out, my teachers would look at me and go "lock the knee.. your knee is not locked yet".. and they would all say it with concern in their voice like a parent tells a kid "dont touch the stove"! 

Somewhere, I became so unsure of my knee's "lockedness", if there is such a word, that I stopped at stage 1. It was okay in my head. After all, I was perfecting standing on one leg and distributing the weight evenly on one foot. It came in handy to occupy the kids and their friends in "who can stand on one foot the longest without bending the knee" contests. (note the profound lack of the word "locked"!)

It would be nice to have a lockometer strapped to the knee, that rings a bell and goes "Locking confirmed. Please proceed to stage 2"! Maybe I should come up with such a meter, because there is always the question in my head of "how locked is locked?" and Fire is not going to be there in every class for a confirmation.

The last few days have seen me go from stage 1 to stage 1 1/2 with some consistency. At this rate, I might even get to stage 2 and beyond very soon! 

At the end of the day, he was right. Every now and then the T-rex in me should test the fences. Who knows what might happen?

Worse case, you get a sequel to  "standing head to knee" post!

A side note: It is great to see teachers walk around and fix poses during the class.

In one class, Fire handed the microphone to another teacher in the room and was walking around fixing everyones pose. It was surreal to have that kind of attention in a class.

It is also funny, when a teacher comes to you and says "can I adjust your pose?" It is like they are asking permission to touch you, be it male or female teacher, asking a male or female student. See it happen so many times in class and I really don't get it.  

This is a physical class. It is like your doctor or physiotherapist asking for permission to touch you, before doing a treatment! If the teacher is not going to adjust your pose, who do you expect to adjust it? Shaquille O'Neil?

A very special day

Last year, the kids made me choose between spending time with them for "Father's day" or going to the usual yoga class. 

This year, thanks to the UN and Narendra Modi and a billion other folks, today is International Yoga day. So the rest of the world called me to wish a happy father's day, my MIL called me to wish me a "happy Yoga day" and we knew that there was no skipping yoga.

After class the dads get roses! First kid to hug me (after I showered of course) was going to get the rose.. but they were both very quiet. Apparently they had just made the cards and the cards were still wet!

Loved the cards. They are both doing great in the arts department.

Then we had lunch and we saw a note from the yoga studio that said "post pictures of dads doing yoga with their kids". San lined up the camera and initially the kids were reluctant and conscious of their poses.. but then they opened up nicely and were all smiles!

We have many pictures of these two trying yoga poses from years ago.. 

They decided to try the Triangle pose 

 Yes.. we have a few pentagons there.. but they can be fixed in time. The little one has had a growth spurt of sorts. Even after explaining the difference between a triangle and a pentagon, the little one goes "I am doing exactly what you are doing! so stop correcting me!". 

If there is one thing I have to teach her in life, it is "how to learn".

Step 1: Listen to your teacher

Step 2: Don't say "I already know!"

Step 3: Follow instructions to the best of your ability and understanding

After many an aborted takeoff...

We finally flew together. San did a great job and kept clicking in hopes that there will be at least one photo of these poses that will have all three of us doing the same thing. The girls kept joking, laughing and giggling throughout 

Their smiles made my day!

Finally Jr. suggested we try to sit in lotus pose and lift our bodies off the ground. Have been trying to get them to sit in lotus pose, even if for a few seconds to a minute, few times a week. 

They did it with a smile! 

Wishing everyone out there a very happy Father's day and Yoga day!