chennai to dubai: 4 hours; dubai to seattle: 15.5 hours; seattle to victoria: 40 minutes.
see you march 8th, victoria!
(mark is in the background shouting, “ROUND THE WORLD ROUND THE WORLD ROUND THE WORLD.”)
officially certified yoga teachers!
(if anyone is interested in classes with either/both of us when we return in april, feel free to send an e-mail to afra@uvic.ca or a message on facebook!)
our certification exam is tomorrow!
here is our study outline:
1. the chakras (functions and locations)
2. the bandhas
3. mechanics of breathing
4. yamas and niyamas (english and sanskrit)
5. musculoskeletal system (including five spinal movements and five types of joints)
6. differences between standard exercise and yoga
7. types of pranayama
8. 8 limbs of yoga (english and sanskrit, details)
9. 3 gunas
10. yogic diet
11. physical benefits of the asanas in our sequence
12. surya namasakara (sanskrit and english, details, benefits)
13. pranic bodies
14. our yoga sequence
15. 4 sutras relating to asana and pranayama (sanskrit and english)
16. concept of abhyasa and vairagya.
ooooof. wish us luck!
no power? no problem!
a little guide to mysore.
yoga schools
we have visited all three of these and were very impressed with them.
hatha yoga mysore / ashtanga yoga mysore — our school. it’s amazing. our teachers are beautiful people who are so excited about education. they’re really good at marrying traditional yogic philosophy with western anatomy and physiology, and they’re very patient. they spend loads of their free time reading and researching yoga, yoga therapy, ayurveda, and meditation, too. any one of the students who have been sick have been taken care of, and all of our needs have been met. the accommodation is wonderful. they’re so helpful. i can’t recommend mahesh and his school highly enough.
mystic school — one of the things which drew me to mystic was noah mckenna, the australian teacher who works there. he has a background in chiropractics and acupuncture and worked for years as a therapist of yoga injuries. he is friendly and kind, i’d love the opportunity to learn from him. also, the facilities are beautiful.
yoga india — bharath is sweet with a beautiful smile. the shala is gorgeous. neither mystic nor yoga india offer accommodation but they will help students to find it, and there are lots of options in gokulam (the ‘yoga neighbourhood’) which we have driven by.
ayurvedic pharmacies
Patanjali Chikitsalayas
Sh. G. Madhusudan, Door 864, 2nd Stage, Vinay Marg, Siddhartha Nagar
mobile: 09342182468
patanjali is part of the patanjali yogpeeth (yoga trust) which is all across india. the ayurvedic doctor who does free consultations is lovely. she’s tiny and cute and speaks perfect english. from there, you take your prescription to the pharmacy two doors down and they provide you with wonderful herbal products for an absolute song.
ashwini clinic —
285/F-6 Ramanuja Rd. (Near JSS Hospital)
e-mail: dr_mahesh99@yahoo.co.in
cell: 94482 47747 / office: 0821 4250399
we didn’t go into the clinic, but the pharmacy is enormous and the man who runs it has a great smile. all of the employees were helpful and the selection of products is huge. we discovered it through our teacher who is studying ayurveda in mysore and we even managed to find spirulina there!
tailor
perfection boutique —
Mrs. Archana Sharma
No. 31, Paachi Complex, T. Narasipura Rd. (Near Gopala Gowda Hospital)
mobile: 9845281924 / phone: 0821 2441241
this tailor was suggested to us by fardoz, our philosophy teacher and a mysore local. we have yet to go — it’s on our list of things to do this week — so i’ll let you know how it goes.
shopping
rashinkar’s emporium, silks, and book house —
Near Olympia Talkies, Shivarampet
rrashinkar@yahoo.com
mobile: 98451 35328 / phone: 4260622, 22422622
rashinkar’s sells yoga mats; gorgeous mat bags (we each bought a silk one for a total of 800 INR); pants, shirts, and bags; silk and cotton; yoga, meditation, ayurveda, philosophy, homeopathy books (including bihar school books)… and they will also pack it up and ship it home for you at a really good rate.
yogic supplies/k.v.v. press -
Nagarathna R. Rao
#844, K.V.V. Press, Chamundeshwari Rd. (Near Siddappa Square), Lakshmipuram
mrvinay@vsnl.com
mobile: 98451 16350 / phone: 91 821 2333876, 2333969
the man who runs k.v.v. wasn’t there but his wife was, and she was such a treat. her english is spectacular and she loves to have a chat. the store, yogic supplies, has high-quality mat bags, yoga rugs, props/bolsters, incense, yoga videos, CDs, and a fantastic stock of books. there were loads of bihar school books when we went, which are beautiful — easy to follow, well written, great diagrams, very informative — and hard to find. also, much cheaper in india than online. we bought two for 570 INR and found one on the internet for $123. HAH. our teacher buys most of his books there.
yam herbal body shop —
ali spent years in the gulf studying and working. his english is impeccable and his knowledge of oils is incredibly vast. he spent a long time educating us on the difference between poor-quality incense and good-quality incense, during which we realised the awful, mysterious allergic reactions we had at home before we left were due to cheap stuff we bought in china town, which is quite toxic apparently. i even got to try rolling my own incense sticks… and was quickly laughed out of the shop by the tiny, wrinkled old woman who rolls 17,000 a day. a day.
my favourite part were the oils, though. ali’s family was the first essential oil company in mysore and the quality of their products is incredible. ali took no less than half an hour going over the benefits of all of the oils they offer while allowing us to test them and explaining how they are pressed. we came away educated and smelling delicious. note: ask to see the special oil.
i don’t know the address and there’s no website, but you could ask nearly any rickshaw driver and they would know what you meant.
Meena Gupta
#279 7th Cross, 3rd Stage, Gokulam
silvernest2006@yahoo.co.in
mobile: 93421 36763, 96320 01000 / phone: 91 821 4257320
meena is one of the people on this trip that i am happiest to have met. she has the most radiant, kindest soul. she out-earns her husband selling silver jewellery, spirulina, wheatgrass, om symbols, pashminas, singing bowls — whatever her western yoga friends suggest people would buy. and buy they do! she’s doing so well in the little room in her house and i felt so happy to buy from her. i cannot sing her praises enough; she is just beautiful. (and her little son is so cute — he doesn’t want to go to school, he just wants to help his mum sell her jewellery! it was sunday when we went so he was off school, and he was terribly charming and helpful.)
rickshaw drivers
master blaster (mobile: 919880958857) — backstreet boys, the spice girls, akon… master blaster will play it all at top volume while taking you around the best spots in mysore in his decked-out rickshaw. he’s a laugh and a half and always happy to help.
naveed (mobile: 8197424126) — a woman in the training program before our group met naveed and found him helpful and trustworthy. she says he never tried to rip her off, either, and will happily use the meter.
dev (mobile: 9900124784) — our friend darcy has known dev for two years as she’s been coming to mysore to study at pattabhi jois. she wanted to find a specific om symbol and dev spent a full day figuring out the best places to take her before he picked her up. we met him and he was friendly, not at all creepy, and gave me a good gut feeling. since we have a scooter we haven’t used a rickshaw for a while but if we did need one, i’d give dev a call. he also will help you find a car or an apartment to rent.
amusements/food
hotel regalis — the pool is 250 INR per person but it’s got hands-down the best showers in mysore. spotlessly clean, steaming hot, and with enough water pressure to actually get the conditioner out of my hair for the first time in five months, it was totally worth it. oh yeah, the pool’s nice too. (so are the hard-bodied pattabhi jois students who flock to it every afternoon.) (editor’s note: mark wants me to mention that the pool is actually really nice, i was just too busy staring at all of the bronzed, toned flesh around me to notice.)
guru thecoconut dude — in gokulam, at the main cross street, there is an enormous pile of coconuts always surrounded by foreigners. the proprietor, guru, is very friendly and the coconuts are delicious.
caffe pascucci —
No.2713, NR Mathru Mandali Circle, Adi Pampa Road, Jayalakshmipuram
phone: 0821 2511125, 4000505, 9945046306
if you want salad or a brick-oven pizza, go to pascucci. while not the best pizza i’ve ever eaten, it’s certainly the best in india, and it was such a relief to see a caesar salad. honestly, i could have wept: the crust was paper-thin and the cheese all imported. pricy but great for those “i am going to kill someone if they show me a menu full of curries” days.
hotel rrr —
Gandhi Square, near Domino’s Pizza.
the banana-leaf thalis are all-you-can-eat and they’re so delicious that, in order to secure a seat, you have to stand beside a table and stare down whoever is eating while elbowing anyone else out of the way. once the diners get up to wash their hands, you snag their chairs and lay claim to the table, dirty dishes and all. and it’s so worth it. i don’t know what any of the food we’ve eaten there is called, but it’s all veg (with non-veg options on the menu too) and spectacular. bring your eating pants.
little woods —
Chamundi Hill Road.
ask for surya, the sweetest 14-year-old server you’ve ever met. he insists on calling me madame and knows that i always want a fanta before my meal. the food is very cheap, the curries are spicy and yummy, and the coffee is strong. due to its proximity to our apartment, we go every day.
(Source: deuxencore)
our itinerary (or, this one’s for you, mum &mom).
i just woke up from one of those feels-like-you’ve-died naps — apparently we’re a wee bit tired — and figured, with the end of this course in sight, i’d post our itinerary for the next month. it’s all sorted, finally, train tickets in hand after only a brief almost-breakdown which nearly ended in tears at the booking counter.
march 3: mysore to chennai (7 hours, 20 minutes).
march 4: chennai to bhubaneswar (19 hours, 50 minutes).
on to puri by bus for beach time!
march 14: puri to gaya (16 hours, 50 minutes).
on to bodhgaya by bus to see where buddha attained enlightenment.
march 17: gaya to varanasi (5 hours, 20 minutes).
march 23: varanasi to agra (13 hours).
march 24: agra to delhi.
march 29: delhi to taipei.
april 1: taipei to victoria.
end of yoga teacher training, week three.
body: exhausted; brain: full; bed time: 8 p.m.
we were given an extra few hours of freedom (read: study time) today after a test. i decided to use them productively for the most part, but took a break to assemble some of my favourite pictures from the last few weeks. having such an intense routine for this course makes it seem as though our previous adventures were months, not weeks, ago.
(the story behind the yellow cows: for a harvest festival here in mysore, cows and sheep are painted bright yellow and lead through a fire. this is said to purify them and kill any bacteria. they’re STILL yellow and it’s been almost three weeks.)
love, a.
m. taught his first full-length class today!
it was fantastic: an hour and a half, and he was brilliant.
lesson of the day: in the hands of a bass player, even tibetan meditation chimes become weapons. it’s quite the rude awakening from savasana.
monkeys in our kitchen, stealing our bananas.
an entire family!
never a dull moment in mysore.
