Today in class: they gave me a surpise party

(Students from different batches, comfortable together.  Pallavi, Amrita, Jit, Sai, Mini, Bharat)

(Evening batch sticks together, watching the more garrulous morning group: Prachi, Naomi, and Murthy)

(Naina, Amrita, Jit, Sai)

Bharat, Kavita, Mayank, Sonia with their yoga teacher)

(Petros, Zara, Naina)

(The amazing Yoga cake!)

Okay, the whole story tomorrow. But these are the images of a suprise party my students threw (organised by Sonia Samtani) for me. The bottom one is the cake. Today, still overwhelmed with khara biscuits and samosas from last night!

Thanks guys. As I toasted last nite, may your practice better that of your teacher's.  Om!!

Yesterday's answer, today's query

The answer, dear all, is LIFE FORCE.

Today's question:
Shiva and Krishna both have yoga names too. One is called Maha Yogi, the other called Yogeshwara. Which name belongs to whom?

Controlling or learning a pose: a lesson from Brahma

When Brahma was created out of Vishnu's navel, he becomes aware of himself. To break his loneliness, he creates forms.  He generates Ushas, a beautiful woman.  Then, though she is his daughter, he falls in love with her, chasing her, becoming the male form of every female form she takes  to evade him. His need to control her is so intense, he even sprouts foru heads, then a  fifth , to catch sight of her. It is Shiva who chops off that head, which represents the ego in us. I read this in Devdutta Pattanaik's book From Shiva to Shankara, decoding the Phallic Lingam. I liked this story's interpretation very much. The shock value of this story, Pattanaik says, tries to teach us something. That the incestous craving of Brahma is the disgusting way the ego turns upon itself, seeking to control where it should have tried to learn.

Lets take how a pose can be a learnt: by controlling (ego) by feeling it, knowing the muscles involved (awareness/chitta).

(Top the right way, holding the crane with awareness. Bottom the wrong way, holding the crane with ego and lack of awareness!)

For instance, if I teach this pose which is the tougher version of the standing crane, with opp hand to opp foot (here left foot, right hand), and other limbs up, the final part is where you turn your head to look at the uplifted hand. But if I even suggest this final stage, very competive students will sacrifice form and immediately turn their head.

Then they will hold the pose in the wrong fashion, some cramped crooked way of which they are completely unaware, because the ego is now blinding their discrimination to subtle things. The back leg will be bent, as well as the standing leg, because these parts of the body are preparing for a fall because the body is aware that subtle balance is involved. Since to `control' the pose becomes paramount, the subtle awareness in the pose is lost. Ego has been chosen over chitta, or pure awareness.

But if you move through this pose in stages, your awareness will become subtle and you will reach the pose from an inner fineness of awareness, which I believe is what yoga is supposed to create. I also believe that yoga is to be used to drop the ego... Instead, that ego has been allowed a subtle backentry and become something even more dangerous sukshma ahamkara (subtle ego) which is the most difficult to dislodge. I worry when I see student go this way...  But each to his/her karma.. I am done with pondering over these difficulties ahead in the spiritual space of that student. In a pose, too, the ego...

(First stage of the pose.)

(Second stage).

(Final stage, to turn to look at the uplifted hand).

The ego has no patience to transit stages. Mostly, the ego has no patience with awareness. It enjoys effort because it then gets itself a great platform from which to shine.
There is nothing in a pose unless it can help u destroy ego..Only pure awareness can do that.  Everything else, just gymastics:)

Quizztime: old question in a new form:)

None of you answer my queries.. so I wonder why I bother. Nevertheless, the teacher's ego in me won't rest, so here I go, once more, trying to jog your interest with an old question asked by me hunderd times and more..

Pranayama means expansion of prana. What does prana mean? Below some options:
1) Blood
2) Breath
3) Life Force
4) Vitality

And if you are an instructor and don't know the meaning, jump off a cliff pronto:)
Answer tomorrow!

Daily Health Gyan

Learning something new -- a dance form, some sort of art, a language, music -- anything out of your sphere of life, will release dopamine, the reward neurotransmitter in your brain. It not only makes you feel good about yourself, it also keeps you young physically by working on things biologically -- kinesis (movement and how you move your body), cognitive ability, and prevent nervous system related problems like Schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease. It seems to affect the immune system too, in a round about way researchers are still trying to crack into.

Today's yogic tip

Always hold the shoulderstand the equal lenght of time as you do the headstand. That is important to deal with the devil the headstand may spawn -- your ego. Shoulderstand cools off the ego:) And any Vedantin will tell you, ego is the disease that yoga seeks to eradicate!

Headstand: light and strong of it

(Images: Headstand above, lightly. Below, headstand with force, curving the spine and arching things you should not be arching:)

One day, after my third book (currently on) and the fourth (ruminating and fermenting in my mind:) is done, i will work on the fifth -- which will be entirely devoted to the headstand. I guess I will have maximum fun writing it.. but for me, everything yoga says falls in place with this pose (the other pose, with the potential for reaching the nuance of yoga is the crow). But the message of the headstand comes only when u learn to hold it for long.... not a minute, not even in three minutes -- but when u hit five minutes, and progress to extend the  duration in it...Even then,the message of yoga is only a glimmer. The real message seeps in only when you can hold it with a sense of lightness and effortlessness.

To hold the headstand, for long, you need so many things:

• to get into it you need to become independent of things which u were earlier dependent on (like how we are all used to standing on the feet, and the deep attachment to the earth we have). U need a certain sense of detachment.
• u need to be able to let go of past habits, like your attachment to the earth, a certain way of thinking. It really challenges set notions inside yourself. Even when you slip back into the old rut of a way of thinking, you will find you can come out of it, or at least be open to another viewpoint. It gives you the idea that a same situation can have different perspectives, and for no reason, and that they are just so.
• u need to be fearless (not worry about falling). Even those who get into the headstand for a short time, to hold it long, you need to zone in to the idea that you may fall when you decide to be that long against gravity. So, there must be the childlike state where falling is not an issue any more.
• You need to be pliant. If you accept or have fallen several times in the headstand, you become aware that being pliant is not being weak. It could mean strength, defined in another way, in another language.
• you need to be able to resist the drag of things that were designed to drag you down, like gravity. Gravity draws u down with a force that is rather violent, if you know anything about it -- at 3.5 meters per second drag, it is a powerful force. Our systems are used to it, so we don't feel it. Plus, it is gravity that holds us firmly to the earth(otherwise, as space travellers will tell you, we will all be flying about, without any place we can stay put!). So we are attached to it. Which is good, when it is good. But when you decide to leave it, as in the headstand, it still won't leave us. Nor can we leave it (as we do with relationships, cultural habits, ways of thinking, the reversal of a very subtle ego that comes to even those who practice hardcore yoga, and all of  which cramps us). So, when we get up there, in the headstand, we have to learn to resist   gravity which both holds us (when we are pliant, and on our feet) but will make itself felt if we resist it (as we do with machines in the gym or in the headstand, when on the mat). So, this is gravity we are learning to become intimate it. As well as to resist. All balancers also shake us quite a bit for this reason. Gravity making itself felt. So we are flowing against something that we have not known to resist earlier. We are resisting something we simply don't have any clue how we may resist -- like our ego, for instance. In this, for me, comes through that the great line of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras Yogasch Chitta Vritti Nirodah.. the movement against the movement  of the consciousness.  So, yes, wow -- it is the headstand and the crow which will teach u this line most intimately, reaching it into our being, so it stops being merely an admirable line, this sutra, and becomes a craving and an experience. . Everybody acts like they understand Vedanta -- but in this line, and in this pose, the entire lesson... lifetimes:)

But lot of people hold the headstand, even when they hold it longer, with strength. That is easy. And not what was meant, I believe,  in real yoga. Beyond strength a chilled out place, which is indifferent to everything.  To hold the headstand softly, with comfort, that is where you actually understand that silly thing called the mind, and realise its desperation to recreate itself. When the headstand is held with strength we are still communing with gravity... we need that, because the next jump would be into the void... where you have nothing to hold u or give you a sense of wholeness!

Because when you hold the headstand with strength and sweat and heave, and cave you spine (second image) you are still groping for a grip on something. Plus, the ego is back in full swing. It needs the effort, the challenge of the pose. But when you hold it gently, swaying lightly, moving in directions from where you may fall (but don't because the awareness is flowing), then you are holding it in the void of experience. Without any need for titillation from that demon ego.  The sense of time stops, You are in some quantum space, where finally your meditation will talk to you of those things the scriptures can only describe in parable, in stories and in esoteric words that has caused enough confusions that separates, sometimes.  So, yes when you hold it with strength, the body is still aware of itself, the effort is very much there, the ego very badly so... So, to hold it gently, then, would be I think what was meant by that classical line about not seeing the mote for the mite in your eye.  That finally, the mite (ego) is off the eye, and you can see the mote (Godhead) 

This then is yoga -- where time stops, space expands, mind is still but flowing, and several things happen simultaneously. But mostly, that is the place where the ego drops off... and you really feel light. That is the lightness the headstand could give:)

Happy sadhana!!

In class

Been having compact classes. Told one student to stop coming -- she was very reluctant person, on the mat, not keen on learning, though she is certified by some local inst which is churning out yoga teachers who can be spotted ten miles off ..  She did not tell me that she was an instructor, tho I am possibly the only one who is not averse to having yoga teachers in my class, and welcome them in fact. So, you already wonder at that. I could make out from the terrible execution which inst she was from too. So, yes, after four weeks and not learning the shoulderstand, blaming the inst, claiming she has done yoga for years, and refusing to do sun salutes claiming some disability or other each time, I had no choice.  It was a hard decision. But I think I am entitled to controlling my space and am quite tired following the rules of the world (which would mean, I should have thot of the money she was bringing in and told her to continue, irrespective of her lethargic manner).  I gave her the money back for pending classes and told her I will def take her back when she changes her attitude and zones in. She was puzzled by what I meant, yoga zone...

My other batches are doing good . Yesterday, tho there were lots of absenteeism each batch did 20 rounds of surya namaskar, in ten mins each. We did it very gently, flowly very comfortably, not breathless or panicky. Amazing thing -- even the new comers zoned in (That is Called The Yoga Zone:)

Amrita's headstand was very good. Mahek is moving into the headstand. Valerie has firmed up her headstand. Mayank and Bharat are getting good hold over the scorpion pose.
Spiritually, I am feeling good teaching, finally, my mistakes and idiocies notwithstanding -- where earlier it is used to make me feel anxious for my students, now I am chilled out and find that they are all growing well, faster than anticipated.

Starting a new evening batch today -- already tentatively, have five people signed up.. But there is always that gap between the cup and lip, what? Any case, those who come and stay, they are the ones I can handle... so just now, I am happy the way this happens where earlier I used to worry if it was something wrong I was doing or projecting that made some drop out:) Karacharana kritam vaa....even our actions and words are dictated by That one, why then worry about other people's actions!

What each dosha should do!

Interesting this, Dr Frawley's book Ayurvedic healing lists herbal smoking for kapha (stimulant), herbal wines for vata, and beautiful wife for Pitta:) Some of other such needs that must be fulfilled, for each dosha, as tweets here

Answers to the queries: at least some people attempted ...

Free MySpace Animations!

to answer the queries :)

Not in any order, these are the answers to my query on twitter:

1. Wobbly poses increase the earth element. They ground and create a deep centering effect on you, build on your balance and reach into your animal brain -- so they calm u down.

2. The breathing practice contraindicated in depression is ujjayi.

3. The pose closest to the headstand, is surprisingly, mayurasana/peacock. It is like an inversion, as well as other arm balancers, because when you hold it well, there is a gush of blood to the face.