Another year of yoga

2014 saw me do three (or two depending on who you ask) things

1. Travel a lot for work and figure out ways to cope with that schedule wise

2. Do yoga whenever possible while home and figure out ways to adjust that into the schedule

3. Do the usual things at home when possible (San would give me a D- for that this year.. the kids might give me a B- given they are partial to me)

Travel for work is not a topic for this blog till I start my next gig whenever that might be. The usual things at home do get a blog post or two with a lot less frequency.. that leaves Yoga!

This is an engineer trying to summarize yoga stats. So this post has to have some graphs and charts!

As usual the goal was to try and do Bikram Yoga at least 200 times this calendar year and yet again, I fell short of that goal. Yoga is a process and one gets the benefit as long as one tries in all sincerity. So from that standpoint, will give myself an A+

Can honestly tell myself that I went to the Yoga room at every possible opportunity this year. Given my travel days, the 50% attendance this year is like a 80+ % attendance. It was better than last year.. (just realized that the graph for last year was overwritten by mistake).

For those math geeks, the reason for the double lines is that on some days I did two classes and that messes up the graph.. 

This year it was 181 classes since Jan 5th.  Last year it was 194.. Next year.. again the goal is to go 200 times.. It may be time to find hotels close to Bikram Yoga studios in my travel locations. 

Now for the weight tracking..

Started off flat. After the India trip the weight that was added on seems to have stayed permanently! Either that or the weighing machine had some midway calibration issue when we came back from India and we replaced the battery. It is now holding steady at 149+/-1 lbs when last year it was 143+/-1 lbs for the most part. 

Going to keep collecting this data. Someday someone who decides to do research in Bikram Yoga and weight stability might use this data! 

This year, there was one special "posture clinic" class that I got to attend in October. When I walked into the studio that say and saw that there were only five people who had shown up for that special 2 hour class with the head teacher at BYSJ, was expecting to have the class cancelled. Michelle showed up inspite of her busy schedule organizing the California Yoga Championship and spent more than the alloted 2 hours teaching the five of us little things to remember that improved our postures. 

Something she said that day stuck with me. She said "look at yourself in the mirror. You might not like everything you see there. Some of you look conflicted all the time. It is time to let go of things that you don't like and improve on the things you like when you stare at yourself!"

Today I went for the last class of 2014. Looked at myself in the mirror and saw two people. There is a nice do-gooder spiritual guy on the one side fighting a vice presidential asshole on the other. One of them has to go or a better compromise has to be reached. 

There is also the guy who is happy to just be in the room giving his 110% who has to reconcile with the guy who is perpetually unhappy with falling down, losing the breath or have a symetry mismatch.

Sharing two pictures taken by Jr. this year. (It is good to take pictures of yourself every now and then to see little details)

This is my favorite pose. It takes me all my will power to do this pose knowing that within a few seconds we are all going to be flat on the floor. Can only raise by body clear off my right toe. On the left toe, it is not perceptible. 

The other pose that has frustrated me this year is the Camel pose. Have fallen forward and almost hit the ground more than 10 times this year. Something has to be fixed somewhere. 

Jr. snapped three photos of me doing Camel pose from three different angles. This is a collage of those three shots. The symmetry is off. Something that you cannot realize while doing the pose because you think you are doing it right when reality is far off..

The good thing is that there is no deadline to get any of this to perfection as it is a moving target. It is a "process" and "eventually" this body will find the right balance. 

My FIL asked me last week "Sundar, you are going on all these hikes. Has the yoga helped make things easier? Are you feeling younger?"

My sincere answer was "I am growing older and my body is dealing with that. Yoga is maintaining a status quo! It is not helping me get younger.. but it is helping me not feel older. It is relative!"

Not saying this will work for everyone or this is easy. It has worked and continues to work for me. Maybe it is a good match for my personality and somehow improving on the same routine day after day is something that I can accept as a challenge while others cannot. Maybe the SPC charting guy in me with a manufacturing quality mindset is a perfect match for Bikram Yoga. It is possible.. 

but work, it did! 

Thankful that there is a Yoga studio within 10 minutes from home which stays true to the original Bikram Yoga where a guy like me can still get continued encouragement from teachers and fellow students!

Here's to 2015 and the continuation of the "process"!

Wishing all of you a wonderful 2015. May the next year bring you all that you desire that you know in your heart is actually good for you!

The yoga front..

When we first started going to Yoga, 80% of the classes we(MIL and me) attended were 5:30 AM classes.

Somehow between her going to India and me taking up a new job, switched to doing Yoga in the evening. 

Now, I have officially become an evening Yogi.. even on weekends! 

We start off with 100+ % attendance with the 60 day challenge, work very hard to keep it going till about the 100th day and then watch it taper off to a steady 75%. 

Then summer comes, other outdoor activities, travel will compete for time and before you know it, the end of the year will see the graph repeat itself. 

Well, not this year, or so I tell myself. 

So far though, the data I track shows that it is almost one for one compared to last year. 

and here is the interesting part.. my weight after coming home after class (or at 6PM if I miss class) over time.

Looks like the weight over time tracks too. Given I am a creature of habit, maybe the factors that all go towards the weight (food, exericse, travel, etc. ???) change for me over time in a very systematic way? Do not know. Will track it for a few more years and we will see if that is true. 

One would think though that in winter months the weight will increase because of less outdoor activity and in summer it would decrease. This says the opposite. I am wondering if there are others out there who have tracked their weight with a fixed exercise regimen and seen similar trends. If you know of someone or such data, do let me know!

For now, the Yoga continues when it can!

Passing the right torches

It was thirty years ago when my parents decided that their two boys should go through the "Upanayanam" ceremony. For those western folks reading this in the US, it is like a "bar-mitzvah" for Hindu brahmin boys. A ceremony which involves getting a thread around their shoulders, that symbolizes their commitment to higher learning. 

Said "higher learning" involved the following :

1. Sitting in front of a fire for hours and offering things into it and getting used to the heat

2. Learning the "Gayathri Mantra" which was to be used as a repetitive prayer

3. Learning to do "Sandhya vandanam" , a prayer done three times a day where we take water and throw it back in water and say different prayers as part of the 15-30 minute routine. 

4. Learn to get blessings from elders the formal way by mentioning our "lineage" and understanding what that means

5. Understanding the relationship between doing certain rituals and its correlation to getting really yummy food in a Pavlovian way

6. Understanding that you are not a kid anymore and people look up to you all of a sudden to be more responsible because you understand 1 through 5! 

7. Joining your grandfather or father in an evening prayer and making them proud without understanding what all the big fuss was about

8. Figuring out that the memory you have inherited comes in very handy when it comes to impressing your elders

9. This is something I forgot on the original list. The "Pranayaama" that was taught as part of Sandhyavandhanam. We were taught how to take in a breath with one nostril, hold it and release it through the other. On any given day we did this around 50 times. 

There may have been many more but the one thing that I deliberately did not list was doing the "Sooryanamaskaaram" which is the Sun Salutation. After the main ceremony finished and just before we went of to lunch, after sitting in front of a fire for 3 hours, the priest took the two newly "poonal"ed kids to see the sun. He asked us to cross our fingers in a grid and look through the sun and said "as part of your daily Sandhyavandhanam, you kids look at the sun for a few second every day like this! This is the soorya namaskaaram". 

Years and years later, I learned that the Sun Salutation in reality involved a series of forward and back bends which are combination of the Half Moon pose and Triangle pose in Hatha Yoga. It is not fair for me to criticize my parents, grandparents or the priest, who had not seen his own bellybutton directly, crossed fingers or not , over god knows how many moons. There was no way that dude was teaching me the real Sun Salutation. 

Somewhere down the line, a ritual in a village setting that would have taught young kids to stand waist deep in water and do forward and back bends, lunges etc. with the spirit of teaching them "as water goes to water" so do you back to this earth, "here, sit and meditate and find some inner peace and while you are at it", and strengthen your body while doing all this changed to fit a context and lost a lot in the translation . I am guessing the running water must have done wonders for one's circulation and bowel movement. 

My parents spent a lot of their savings on this very important ceremony. It was done like a wedding and the feast that followed made my brother and me feel like rock stars.

I still change my thread every year and commit to learning. Maybe just like the ceremony evolved from teaching lifes lessons to fit a modern day context and lost something in the evolutionary process, my commitment also changed.

I commit to watching at least one TED talk a week, reading one book or magazine a week and meditating for at least 10 minutes a day. In a way keeping up with my field of study and sticking to "Materials Science" after most of my classmates have found success in finance or software is my self delusional way of dedication to the "sacred thread".

The Pranayaama must have helped me for sure as I kept up with it for a good 10 years after the Poonal. Somehow I stopped doing it a year after coming to the US. Still don't know why. 

Here is one of the few photos I happen to have from that ceremony where my friend and his dad are congratulating me and my dad shortly after the thing was over. 

These days I am not religious. I think of myself as more of a spiritual person who believes in the goodness in all people. I am also trying to look inward in trying to find goodness in myself first before expecting goodness from ohters. Guess it is yet another change that the years and experiences bring to a person. Or maybe it is all the yoga on a daily basis that tries to work overtime outside the yoga room and search for context in everything. 

This ceremony happens to be only for boys and we see the other kids in my family go through this ritual over time. I still remember one of my cousins pleading with my uncle and aunt to skip the ceremony, have a quiet thing in the house without all the expense and give the saved money to go towards a motorbike he really wanted. He was way ahead of his time. I was not old enough to support him in his noble and thoughtful quest. 

These days the best I can do is to make sure the kids who are getting the "poonal" learn to do the Sun Salutation the right way, be it through the priest or some other person in the audience who knows how to do it. 

Always used to wonder what kind of rite of passage do I give to my two little darlings.  If I can teach them how to improve their physical and mental well being, what could we possibly teach them? This question had a big gaping hole for an answer till Bikram Yoga became a part of my life three years ago. Now there is no doubt in my mind on what I would like to hand over as a "torch" of sorts.

If we can get the kids to do yoga regularly and meditate regularly, they would be far better off than we are. To that end, Jr. is now coming with me to Bikram Yoga once a week. Granted it is not daily, but the fact that she kept this once a week commitment with some reluctance is still a big deal. 

Today the room was a 110 F and she pretty much sat down most of the class, but she stayed in the room. So many people came out and said "You make your dad very proud for hanging in there and trying". Guess she was beaming with a smile, the same way when her young daddy was being congratulated for throwing things in front of a hot fire for 3 hours straight, after managing to repeat a bunch of things in Sanskrit with a perfect pronunciation and a complete lack of understanding. 

Bikram yoga to Jr. may be the same thing as the Sandhya vandhanam was to daddy, but somehow deep down I feel that she is going to be a lot better off then me, in thirty years if she sticks to this routine. She does get to do 20 minutes of Pranayaama as part of the routine in class and this method will help her improve her lung capacity. 

It will be the little one's turn in three years!

One man's wisdom is another man's gibberish!

There has been a noticeable silence on the blog. Work was hectic. So was Yoga.

Did the "60 day challenge" again at BYSJ. 60 classes in 60 days. It was a lot easier than last year and I did all the classes without missing a single pose. Also learned a lot during this challenge as the teachers picked on me in class knowing that I appreciated their feedback!

On one of those classes the studio owner/ teacher who knew of my dancing days mentioned something in the middle of the triangle pose. This pose is called a "master pose" because it an all body workout on its own. Used to do the pose like the one below.. (that was my best attempt at understanding the dialogue for the pose)

In the middle of it she looked at me and said "stretch the crown of your head towards the wall, like you strech your head while ballroom dancing" . I knew she was talking to me and stretched my head! Then she went "keep going, keep going, tilt your head some more so it is perpendicular to your shoulders again" and in a magical moment, my body nicely aligned itself in one straight line from shoulder to toe.

It also sent my heart racing at a ridiculous speed and it felt like my lungs just could not cope with the sudden demand from the heart. Have never felt a rush like that before.  Tried to capture the change with some help with the Little one who took both the pictures.

This is still not perfect. The idea is to get the profile of your face visible in the front mirror, which means I should tilt even more and also lock my knee a lot more. This is a decent change though to the original way I used to do this pose.

For the last three weeks, have been doing it the right way or close to the right way.

When that miracle class was over and we were all walking out, this lady comes to the teacher and goes "What was that gibberish about the dancing?" and the teacher looks at me and goes "See Sundar, you got it. It changed your pose 300%.. but only because you knew what I was talking about. To anyone else the concept of stretching the crown of your head perpendicular to your shoulders to look taller would not make any sense! This is why the dialogue is generic enough for everyone.”

My original thought was "I have been doing this wrong for 3 years!" ... Actually it used to be worse as my hip would rise up and I would do a Pentagon instead of a triangle for almost a year. Then Jim Kallet fixed it and made it more like a trianlge in an all day special class. By the time I drove home the thought was different.. "I can do it right for the next 30 years!". Yoga is definitely helping me see the positive side of things!

There was a lot more learning during this 60 day challenge. There were a lot of new people who came to class at the beginning of the year. New year resolution to try exercise? So the classes were a mix of 60 day challengers and new comers. Some of the new comers have great difficulty in adjusting to the heat and to the learning process. In one class a guy in the last row decided go lie down 10 minutes into the class. The teacher requested he sit kneeling down instead of lying down at that stage of the class and to keep his head above his heart. He burst out shouting "No one tells me what the F to do. No one!" The whole class was frozen for a few seconds. Then the guy suddenly took his mat and bolted out the door.

There were many thoughts going through my mind from teaching, learning, why come to a class if you cannot listen to a teacher, Sandy Hook, the fact that no one had a phone inside the yoga room in case this escalated to something else.. etc. etc. All these thoughts in the middle of the yoga class, where we were supposed to "still the mind". The teacher expertly ignored this and went on with the class and everyone picked up where we left off and finished the class. It turned out to be a great and unforgettable class.  Have no idea what everyone was going through in their mind, but I learned something. My mind races to find the nearest escape route when it thinks there is trouble and I have to work on that. Maybe the sages of yore were standing on ice and fire to do their penance for a reason?!

There are also other lessons learned with respect to encouraging others before and after class and receiving encouragment back from people whose names we do not know! It is truly a touching experience. Sometimes folks inspire you in the class. Was this close to sitting down one day for a pose when the guy next to me gave me a "You better not sit down" look and I pushed myself to keep going. On another instance, I was losing my balance over and over again in the bow pose and was frustrated. Looked at the mirror and saw a lady who had only one leg hold on to the ballet bar and do the pose. After that there was no frustration. I still fell out, but was okay with it.

In another class a couple decided to move their mats perpendicular to everyone else while doing the triangle pose. The teacher politley requested that they do it the same way as the rest of the class. The couple decided to ignore the teacher and rearrange their mats anyways, inconveniencing all the folks around them (it kind of breaks the symmetry in the room and creates a logistics issue for the everyone around them). My first thought at the end of that class was "Yoga is not for everyone".. but then again, it is not a Yoga issue. Maybe learning is not for everyone. If you are closed to what the teacher is saying, you are not going to learn anything. If you want to do things your way, why bother to come to a group class?! So far, I have listened to the instructions from the teachers and have only improved! It is easier said than done in a culture where folks treat teachers as service providers! For my part when someone tells me before or after class that the teachers are too rigid and inflexible, I tell them it is for their own good. Only if you "attempt" to do things the right way, you can improve!

Was also lucky to be able to do this challenge given my travel got postponed multiple times. Originally I had no hopes of finishing it given the travel schedule. San and the kids pushed me this year to go and keep going. They were rooting and cheering for me every day. Reminded me of days when I would push my Muslim friends to keep their Ramadan fast and not give up! Next year's challenge will have new internal goals!

In the meantime, Jr. has agreed to give Bikram Yoga a try. I am thrilled!

ps. The towel in the photos is not in the right direction.. Had to keep the towel that way at home so I didn't drip sweat on the hardwood floor! It was just after a class and was still sweating! Apparently one should be able to do this pose on a block of ice without slipping, if you use your inner thighs properly!

A time that was

Almost two decades ago, yours truly could dance in a competiton from 8AM to 6PM and still go for the formal "social events" that went till midnight. 

It was the best of times and that was it. Then life took a different turn and the dance floor was something that was frequented only in dreams or while day dreaming and choreographing moves for some nice song on the radio. 

Recently, after a long time.. switched on the radio and listened to a few songs. One of them happened to be Justin Timberlake's Mirrors. Loved the song and it brought back so many memories of NSYNC and a group of us dancing to some of those songs that were remixed to select dance beats. 

A thought triggered another and an attempt was made to check out the ballroom clothes that have been packed up since 1999! They did not fit. It was a clear image of a square peg in a round hole when I looked in the mirror. 

So I started focussing on select poses in the hot yoga room that were good to get rid of the handles at the waist. Bikram Choudury's book had details on what pose does what and it was a handy guide. After three months I tried the clothes again two weeks ago and voila!

It is still tight around the lower ribs now, but not bad eh?

Feels good to be able to fit into pants that were stitched in 1996! 

San of course is just shaking her head and so are the kids. Now the next step is to put on some weight in the face without putting the weight back on in the hips. Must be a pose for that! 

ps. Mommy, not to worry! There are no plans to get back on the dance floor. Dancer's pose in the yoga room will be it.