N sided polygons

A pentagon that slowly moved to a Triangle..

One of my teachers was saying "we should all take pictures of us doing Yoga from angles that we don't see in the mirror. It will tell you a lot about what you think you are doing vs. what you are actually doing!"

"Be careful, you might not like what you see" was the message.

Photography and Yoga.. two things close to the heart.. coming together for a greater good?

Why not?

Was showing kids how "pentagon" and "triangle" are not the same thing. I used to do the Triangle pose like a pentagon till three years ago. Then Jim Kallet came and showed me how to sit down properly in this pose.

Later Michelle made a dancing reference and it got better.

Three months back Fire taught me a few things about locking legs.. as well as how to tilt my head before moving my arms and how to twist my head to get my profile to the mirror in the Triangle pose. The idea was to get my chin to the shoulder (I was doing cheek to shoulder).

This is a lot better than the version from 4 years ago but... 

 

I used to think in class that the profile of my face was visible to the mirror.. It is not! Still have to turn my face further up and to my left. 

My right thumb sticks out. It is supposed to be touching the rest of the fingers. 

Shoulders are supposed to be in one line and I thought they were in one line. They are not.

This is a real lifelong process of course correction. Will use this as a reference picture and see how it changes next year same time.

The little one took a video of my balancing stick. My knee is at 150 degrees. Definitely not even close to 180! My body is like a table top, but with a bent leg. Have to get it at least a little closer before posting a picture or video. 

By the way THE TRIANGLE ? it is the space between my thighs, forearm and body.. That gap should be a BIG triangle, preferably a right angled one... 

There is a lot of time to get there.

The "Vrath"

The last 7 days was a self imposed ban on all news feeds. Don't want to say "internet" because I still had to work. There was no listening to the radio, no watching TV programs, no facebook, twitter, amazon, youtube.. nothing. 

Started is last Thursday and went back to the internet this afternoon. It was an interesting experience for so many reasons.

First, did not know I was this addicted to my phone. How it got to this point over time is beyond me. The first two days, there were severe withdrawal symptoms. You see the damn icons on the phone and you have to resist the temptation to click it. It was a lot more difficult than originally anticipated.

Second, I have been shutting out the outside world thanks to this addiction without even realizing it. On Friday morning drove to work without turning on the radio. It was so intense to sit in the silence of the car and hearing the occasional sound that would reach through the closed windows. It was eerie because it was not the "usual".

At lunchtime, I had to look at the food, savor it and eat it. It got to me. So I went and sat with a bunch of colleagues and ate lunch with them for a change. Usually I eat lunch in my office and read the news and the food doesn't go in well as most of the news is negative. Enjoy my lunches now as the smiles of coworkers! For someone who was a very social person, this is a shock.

Later in the week, got to watch Jr. practice saxophone and the little one practice her violin. Instead of listening to them while simultaneously fiddling with my phone, it was an interactive practice. They were amazed that I was actually noticing things all this time inspite of fiddling with the phone. I was surprised by that too.

Every night we watch either "baby photos" or two 5 minute clips of  "How its made"  where the kids pick the item being made. We skipped it because of the Vrath (Vratham as it is referred to in Tamil.. aka Fasting). The one week without internet-news thing was given the name Vrath.. as daddy was "fasting" from the internet of sorts. The kids thought I could have made an exception there, but I didn't want to do it. One minute you are watching "how its made" and next thing you know.. there is something about Syria and the congress clowns that takes your blood pressure through the roof. So stayed clear to maintain the promise.

Finally, when I got back to the news today, it was like nothing had changed. India still looks like it is turning into Sierra Leone from the blood diamond days with a rise in child warriors, politics is still the same, people still talking and arguing about guns, abortions, gay rights, expensive medicines, etc. etc. Given all that, the last week of abstaining from news somehow made me numb to this today. Looked at it for a second and just closed it. Now that there is a realization that none of this matters, just simply closed it and moved on. It sounds simple but it is not easy. I could not do this before. Maybe something was or is still wrong with me, but it took this trial to let things go, news wise. 

The FB feed and twitter feed were a similar story. I did watch a few clips from the daily show in the last hour and laughed.. but that is twisted in its own way. Initially you laugh and later it gets to you. The daily show is like eating my grandma's vaththa kozhambu. When you mix it with rice and taste it, it is divine, but once it reaches your intestines, no amount of buttermilk is going to calm your ass for what is to come. Once in a while she has tricked me with that. Yet again, I digress. 

Starting today, excluding Netflix watching, there will be 1 hour maximum of internet a day and this will not be at lunch time either. It will be after kids go to bed. Deleting all social network apps on the phone as well. 

For someone who does Yoga every chance he gets, I have been feeding my mind crap all this time, outside the yoga room. It is not okay to eat healthy and do yoga and go back to feeding the head with all the negativity, thanks to the phone and internet. Need more positive things in life.. 

Wish me luck!

The many degrees of "relaxation"

Today was a very special yoga day. Bikram Yoga San Jose had a special class at 10AM with Rajashree Choudhury teaching the class.

We have heard so much about her teaching style and how special her class is from the teachers. So it was a not to miss experience. A lot of times I end up missing classes taught by visiting teachers because of the travel schedule. Was fortunate to be in town to attend this class.

The dialogue in every Bikram yoga class is the same. The time for every class is the same 90 minutes but the teachers are a broad spectrum. On one side we have the high energy fire breathing dragon drill seargents and on the other side we have the hypnotic horse whisperers. Then there are varying mixes of the two combinations. The end result after the class is more or less the same. You are completely drained of thought and you are happy to go out into the world, all zoned out! 

Once in a while you get someone on either extreme who can make you feel more zoned out than you think was possible. Not talking about doing a pose deeper or more correct to the form during class here...

It is about a certain silence in your head that is just quieter than the usual. We should have a scale to quantify silence, that is exponential like the Decibel scale or the Richter scale.

Maybe "silence" is the wrong word here as this is not the opposite of noise. It is more than just the absence of sound. It the absence of any sensory data going into your brain to disturb you. 

We had a great class today where Rajashree took us through the usual 90 minute routine with some tidbits of information thrown in. Most of them were about why we do what we do in class and encouraging us to persevere.  

Then when the poses and final breathing was over and we were all stretched out on the mats, she started talking softly, telling us how to relax. There are one or two teachers who try this by saying "relax your neck, your shoulders, your hips... " and they make you consciously relax your body head to toe. What we heard today was different. It was advice, technique and hypnotism at work. 

After a few minutes of listening to her talk, I had no idea what she was even saying! It was almost a whisper. It was like being submerged in a tank of water or what the astronauts decribe as part of their space walk experience. You know there is a tether connecting you to the world but it seems to be getting more and more distant as time passes.

Got a tingling sensation in the left side of my head after a few minutes into this "whispering shavasana". Usually tingles in the hot room means that blood is flowing to that part of your body for the first time in a long time. Within a few minutes there were tingling sensations all over my brain and at that point the whisper became very faint.

Then everyone clapped for some reason and was back to staring at the light on the ceiling. It was like coming back out of anesthesia after a surgery and staring at the lights or that is the closest I can explain what happened after being "so far out there".

Had been in shavasana for more than 15 minutes. For a person who runs out at the end of 90 minutes on any given day because of a conference call to attend or a kid to pick up from some class on the way home, the extra 15 minutes is a luxury. Today it was a real lesson. Now I know why the teachers say "missing the 2 minute shavasana at the end of class is like working very hard, then forgetting to collect your paycheck". 

Going to stay on the mat after class for longer times, at least on weekend classes or Friday evenings going forward. 

Todays class was like a power surge that forcibly reset the hardware in my head. Now the trick is to relive this experience after every yoga class!

After class we got to talk to Rajashree for a few minutes.  Jr. had come to BYSJ so she could see what this was all about and also clicked a picture.

Wanted to tell her so many things. Wanted to show her how my broken hand is now normal again. How Bikram Yoga has given me a second chance and made me believe in the concept of second chances, but before I said anything she mentions her son wears a Janau and asks me if I do Sandhya Vandhanam every day. Told her that I do it most days but only once a day.

My Bikram Yoga attendance is better than my Sandhya Vandhanam frequency. She says "do that as well! it is good for you"

Jr. was all smiles when she said "your daughter is beautiful". Today Jr. saw almost a 100 people come out all smiling after class and line up to talk to Rajashree. It is my sincere hope she does yoga again soon. Given how busy she is with 8th grade, she could really use it. 

It was truly a "special experience" like the teachers at BYSJ told us over the last few days.

Hats off.. we should really say "Mats off" to Rajashree Choudhury, the "horse whisperer extraordinaire"!