International Yoga Day

Wishing all of you some Yoga (or other exercise if you are one of those people who spend more time debating and talking about Yoga, its origins, who started it, who it belongs to today etc. etc. and spends less time doing yoga or exercising) on this day. 

We definitely have more daylight today.. so go use that extra daylight to get exercise.

Sometimes worlds collide and Yoga day and Fathers day are one and the same.. and when the Bifrost opens, I can get to emotionally appeal to the kids to take that photo again.

The darlings did it with a smile!

So

the little one outgrew that shirt and it went to goodwill already.. but Jr. and me still have the same things to wear! 

I was surprised that they could both get into Lotus pose.. thought they would give up! Once they got in the lifting part was not hard.  

Wish they are a lot more active going forward and don't end up having to find Yoga at a much older age.. it is right in front of them now!

Go get some workout done! I for one wish BYSJ opens soon and I can sweat freely for 90 minutes and detox. It has been 99 days of doing yoga alone at home with audio recordings or zoom classes and I made it 90 days out of 99. Given all the craziness that surrounds us, Yoga helps for the 90 minutes and a few hours after class or sometimes an entire day if I just do the yoga and stay away from any electronic devices! 

Based on my personal experience, Yoga works! 

I am not trying to sound like a spokesperson for "alldaysmatter".. but then again, if we treated our parents right, maybe there wouldn't be a "fathers" or "mother" day which seems to be a lowest common denominator and a bare minimum towards parents. We live in a culture where Fathers get a card once a year and that is deemed the right thing to do. Happy there is a day designated for this to bring awareness, but IDY is not the one day you do Yoga and forget about exercise for the rest of the year. I dont want it to end up like another Jan 1st for a lot of folks!

Maybe a day for Yoga is what is needed right now to bring visibility. Eventually, everyday will be yoga day. 

some cool yoga tips

My teachers say some things very casually as corrections and move on during Yoga class.. usually at the studio, we have the opportunity to discuss these lightbulb moments right after class.

I have had so many such moments where a certain word is used by a teacher for the first time by way of a second level explanation to what they are asking us to do and that one word switch clicks in the head.

Now that yoga classes have become isolated affairs, it is not easy to have such live discussions. However, there is a forum where we are still fortunate enough to post comments and photos videos to get clarifications.

Today we had yet another zoom yoga class at BYSJ. While in class, our teacher Michelle casually mentions "Sundar, press your knees closer to each other" and she went on to correct someone else.. she is seeing me as a small thumbnail and gives me a correction that was very profound for me..

it makes it so much easier to lift up in toe stand when you compact the base. it was like my floor was solid and in one piece and I had no worries of my leg unraveling during a perpendicular movement..

If I lost you in the previous sentence... especially if you dont do toe stands, dont worry, you are not alone. That is every yoga class for me!  I get lost easily..

Before class we got to chat with teachers and one of the great tips from the forum was for a stretching pose "pachimottanasana". 

my ankle is off the ground.. it is not visible in the photograph.... and my knee is locked.. I am just bow legged so you see that gap in the floor above the knee. 

Jr. helped shoot these videos of me explaining my lightbulb moments from todays yoga class.. she has inherited the sarasm gene from me, as you can clearly tell from the video. 

She will be missed when she goes to college. No one else in this house is willing to do yoga videos for me. 

I have been a mess mentally thanks to all the recent news and I became the "red chitti" version of myself on social media trying to mock the world for what it is. In the process I trolled myself pretty badly and this class has brought me back to sanity!

It has been a very busy work week and I could not even go out for walks or do yoga many times this week, thanks to the recovering ankle and meetings that have pretty much been round the clock. That did not help my mental state either. 

Tomorrow I plan to do a lot more yoga and walk and even bike a little to make up for last weeks inactivity.

The world definitely becomes a better and bearable place with yoga! Seriously think Yoga should be available as a course for people in law enforcement.. It will also help people who are trying to rehabilitate if made available. 

The Turkish desi..

San was recommended a Turkish watch by one of her friends and she started watching it.  She had just started and I walked past the family room and said "are you watching something in Turkish?" .. she was surprised that I could recognize it was Turkish by just walking past to the kitchen..

It was a cute chick flick called "Her Yerde Sen". After spending 2 hours watching it, I thought it would come to a happy ending and it kind of went to titles abruptly..

Then she sheepishly tells me it is a "serial" and that was the first episode.. There are 22 such episodes 2 hours long. I get migraines if I watch TV for more than 3-4 hours in a row but this was cute and we hardly watch anything together.. 

So I beg her to watch one episode with me every night.. we were okay for two days.. then the long weekend hit and she just went to episode 18 in two days while I was still at 4! She binge watched the damn thing by fast forwarding 2 hour episodes to under an hour. . . she insisted I do the same.. and I gave her a long lecture on why fast forwarding rom coms to a kiss is as bad as fast forwarding Jackie Chan as he makes all the prep moves before he strikes.. you know the action is going to be amazing, but watching him setup the strike is as important as the 15 seconds of action itself.. the whole buildup of the drama is lost if you fast forward.. 

I am going to watch 1 hour a day and maybe finish this in another 16 days without fast forwarding.. so yes, I am spending the long weekend watching a Turkish serial! 

Then came the part where I surprised my wife with some Turkish vocab.. even the kids were surprised.. everytime I show any proficiency in a language the folks at home automatically assume it has to do with a girl.. 

So here is the back story.. One of my close grad school friends Sedat was from Turkey and we used to live in different floors of the same Apartment complex. It was me, a Bengali guy and my Turkish friend taking turns making Tea (Tea bag tea, Turkish tea, Varanasi Chai) in someones apartment every day and we would watch Star Trek and Simpsons back to back for an hour on week days. A lot of great memories.. 

we would also teach each other phrases on what things were called in Tamil, Bengali and Turkish. Sedat thought it would be a good idea to teach me enough Turkish to pass me off as Turkish in one of his get togethers in his apartment. It was an experiement or prank of sorts. He used to give me cheat sheets to practice and I found some of them to show my wife and kids! (in the process I also found a lot of old photos etc. which was a trip down memory lane). 

there were many such sheets..can't find the rest of them. He taught me conversational Turkish and all I had to do was pronounce every word correctly.. think I did him proud by passing off as a Turkish dude.. He always thought I was a good student. Had no idea of the detailed words but could repeat entire sentences from memory.. 

The good thing is that I can always come up with intersting stories that surprise my kids.. 

Yeah kids.. your dad was cool once!