Yoga with Guru Ganesh

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There are many things during our trip which have been deemed 'blog-worthy' and this experience is most definately one of them!

We have truely fallen in love with Pondicherry and as we have a few weeks to kills between now and our return to Chennai... that's right folks, we will be returning to the city of sewerage for one final bow, word spread like wildfire and we have secured 2 cash in hand communication skills workshops with the World Bank and some other equally posh software corporation... we have resided to put our feet up and chill out for a while.

After visiting the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and its various departments, we have come to the conclusion that not only is it a conspiracy and a cult, but everyone we have encountered who is in anyway related to the ashram is just plain rude! We're trying to reserve judgement as we have still not got round to visiting Auroville, what is dubbed as an 'Equal International Community', however we feel that as everyone there also bows down to The (dead) Mother and her mate Sri Aurobindo we may find the brainwashing there equally disturbing.

So, having decided that actually its all a load of bollocks we thought we'd find a better use of our time in this lovely sleepy little town...

If you cast your minds back, way way back to the very first blog- you may remember it said- and I quote:

Two girls from liverpool on a jaunt to India and Sri Lanka, to work, get skinny and see the world

so we decided, with 2 months remaining we had to reduce the curry intake and exercise in a desperate bid to get thin!

1) First came the bicycles- Sophia has now passed her cycling proficiency test and is quite the 'madame' on her 1 gear, french style bicyclette avec basket!

2) Second came YOGA we decided in the nation of yoga and all thing flexible that we should give it a go. So we signed up for an intensive course, not quite aware of exactly what our 1000rps had bought us, we trotted along in our best 'sports wear' get up to a seedy little place called Prana Narural Cure where we were met by a short balding sahdu with long hair and an equally long beard who goes by the name Dr. Guru Ganesh (no joke)!! We followed him upstairs to a room with mats on the floor where he began the process of human origami!

3) So I am writing now at the end of our 4th session, we have to report to Guru Ganesh twice daily for morning and evening pain- where he makes us rock back and forth on our backs inducing the need to fart followed by stomach pummelling to eradicate excess air and EXTREME stretching! So our jelly legs wobbled us down the stairs this morning where Guru Ganesh gave us breakfast and set us some homework...

4) Anyone with a nervous disposition should look away now...! The intensity of the course kicked in when Guru Ganesh produced 3 pieces of apparatus- the first being an eye bath- fairly self explanitory. The second a mini jug with a long spout, he gave us a piece of paper and told us to come back tomorrow and show him how do it. This delightful called process is called Jalaneti: one must pour slightly salted water into ones nostril and out of the other without gagging, choking or otherwise. The final piece of apparatus was a plastic pint glass with a pipe coming out from the base- this my friends and loved ones... is a self enema kit!!

5) The Self Enema kit, as it says on the leaflet, 'is simple and easy to use', and we are required to use it daily, although we think we might be able to get away with only doing it once- mind you, Guru Ganesh knows EVERYTHING and he might cast down bad mantras on us if we don't!

So we shall now hobble home, have a power nap before our next session this evening- each class is a new experience, so who knows what will happen next?

I shall close this blog in the same way as we close our sessions:

Kneel on the floor with your hands raised in a prayer position above your head, inhale deeply through your nose and whilst slowly bringing your hands down into your lap go:

OOOOOOOHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

BIG love
ej + s xxxxx

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Comments

[Boo]

OH MY GOSH! I laughed SO hard reading this blog! You do get yourselves in some situations don't you!! It's a good job you're at least quite flexible, otherwise you would have fallen apart by now, by the sounds of it! Just keep farting at him and he might back off... Lovely to hear you're having fun, despite the pain. HOWGE love, Boo x

[ellie]

yoga
i wet my pants laughing

[Tina Ireland]

Cleansed body and soul!
I came in from school the other night and heard dad laughing-yes he'd just picked up the yoga blog! Just about enough information to 'get the picture'! Keep them coming! james was home for his bday-showed us the email of the shi........ forecast. Hope you get all that out of your system befor you get home. Love and hugs to you both Mum Ireland

[Joelle Lili]

Totally agree!
Everybody I have come across at the Sri Aurobindo ashram is just like you describe. Suspicious and cliquey. Apparently, if you put your head on the tomb, you can feel it vibrate, there's so much energy in it. Said French William. But with the kind of zombie devotee they put there to guard it, I wasn't going to risk it. My no-guru is better politics. Signed: Suspicious Cliquey Lili