astanga

Today I woke up at 6:30 to move across town to Gokulam, a section of town in the Northwest of Mysore. It was an easy move and the place where I am staying is only about $100 a month. Pretty sweet deal, but no internet or TV. So I will be spending most of my time out in the local town and in the city.

I practiced after I moved in, at about 9, though I just found out that Shala time is 20 minutes ahead. So I was the last one out of the studio, since I forgot the order of the postures, specifically the side angle poses. Saraswathi made me do them again, it was really testing of my stamina. But I am teaching my body the series, which is necessary for me at this point because I have to think about every posture before I do it. Obviously, I was thinking about the wrong things. It will just take some time.

So it was a tough practice, I always stay a little extra in Savasana, past where I want to get up, because it feels amazing and honestly its pretty easy to just stay for 15-20 minutes. I am working on resetting all of my internal clocks, if that makes sense.

Afterwards, I wanted to find somewhere new for lunch, I spend a lot of my time at the Sri Chakra Yoga house because they have free wi-fi and good food. But I took a little walk around town and found out that Osho’s method has teachers at the Mystic Yoga Shala, which is known as the second best shala around (According to an Ayurvedic oil distributor that I met. Osho died about a year after I was born, but his tradition and meditation practice was so powerful that it continues internationally, even today. I didn’t even realize he was dead because I have watched his YouTube videos and they are so powerful and current that I assumed he must have just made them in the last few years.

I signed a contract yesterday when I signed up with Saraswathi that I would only practice pranayama and asana with her. Osho teachers use meditation, so I am really hoping I can study at both because I won’t be working on pranayama at all. I ate at the Osho shala for lunch and it was one of the most relaxing places I have ever been. It had a nice little pool, a sauna, and of course, a hammock on a rooftop cafe. The Osho teacher comes back in March, so I can practice meditation with him. But I am going to make sure its cool with Saraswathi, I really don’t want to offend her or get kicked out of the shala.

I took a class on the yoga sutras of Patanjali. I got pretty lucky by bringing Iyengar’s ‘Light on the Yoga Sutras’, which has the original sutra texts.

It was a great day even though I didn’t learn new asanas.

I went to sleep around 9 for my 4am practice, staying in my new place. check out the pictures: