Back to Mysore and deep into yoga

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A note about the pictures, which don't match the text in this posting: I haven’t taken pictures since I left Munnar. John from Bangalore, who was on the Tiger Trail with me, sent me his pictures from the trip. To add some color to this otherwise dull entry, and because I'm in few of my own pictures (except the posed self-portraits), I’m posting some of John's pictures with this entry.

On Friday, I caught the 6:30am bus from Munnar in the direction of Mysore, knowing I’d have to change bus stations and make a connection from the mid-point (Coimbatore) to Mysore. I expected both legs to be 4-6 hours. A long story, but after 16 hours of continuous travel, 4 buses, a broken gear-shift requiring the closest passenger to kick the gear-stump into 2nd gear, a superfluous 4-hour mountain ascent/descent, passing through 2 wildlife reserved in the dark on what appeared to be a dirt 2-track for 4 hours, no meals, and a single bathroom break, I finally arrived in Mysore, exhausted and nearly delirious.

After resting, home-cooked western food, laundry, grocery shopping, and a pedicure (my feet never cleaned up properly after the muddy Tiger Trail), I was back on track to start yoga Sunday morning, a 4:30am led practice. To make the 4:30 led class means leaving the apartment at 4, which means getting up at 3am for tea and waking up.

The collective opinion in our house here is that led practice is “harder” than Mysore-style self-practice, although we’re doing the same series of poses. Perhaps it’s because we’re on a meter that moves more quickly than some of us move ourselves, there’s more self-imposed pressure to keep up with your neighbors, there are not opportunities for breaks (like taking your time to get into a pose), and Sharath likes to hold certain really challenging poses for way longer than some of us would like.

Typically, we have led practice only on Friday and Sunday, and the rest of the week (Monday through Thursday) is Mysore self-practice. Guruji is in the hospital (nothing serious, we’ve been assured), and Saraswathi (his daughter, one of the 2 shala instructors) is with him. Sharath cannot run Mysore-style practice alone. So we have 4:30am led practice all week this week.

The shala is extremely crowded now. January is the most popular time to practice here, with lots of returning students, who get to practice in the early 4:30 session, and new students in the 6am session. It’s a bit of an elbowing scramble to get a practice spot in the shala during led practices, where we all start together (as opposed to Mysore self-practice, where you take a prior practioners spot when they're done). The crowd also make it very tight in the shala: we are mat-touching-mat, and there are mats in the foyer and in the bathrooms.

A whole week of crammed-tight 4:30am led classes is intense. Today is Thursday, the 5th day in a row, we just finished practice, and the 3 of us are all exhausted. I managed to get in some practice every day except 2 while I was in Kerala, but my traveling self-practice does not match shala practice, and the break was long. This week's intensity is a good jump-start for my last 6 weeks in Mysore. Sunday is a moon day, which means we have a 2 day break (Saturday & Sunday) coming up. I am tired, but I believe I will survive.

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