The day after...

This year saw another 60 day challenge at BYSJ and I did finish it. There was a time when odds of finishing the challenge looked bleak. There was an international business trip for a week, then San went to India and was gone for 10 days and there were days with meetings in the morning, noon and night that made it very difficult to wake up before 5AM and go to class. 

There were a lot of doubles over weekends that enabled the count. A nerd has to do his nerduty! So here is a typical 60 day challenge in our house.. (you have to click to see the comment clouds)

It almost always has the same highlights as far as our reactions. This year started with me picking an "angel card" at BYSJ. It said ..

Harmony gave me some thought. The idea is to remember this word and try to think of this word when you are in tricky situations, before walking into the yoga room, and keep it in your mind for the entire year and see if it makes a difference in your life. 

A few days after picking the card, made it a minute before class started. I always make sure that people behind me can see at least a sliver of themselves in the mirror. This time given I was going in front of folks, looked back at the lady in the last row and she gave me a thumbs up. A yoga mat is still 2 feet wide and one can move within the mat to accomodate and I was constantly making an effort to be on mat's edge. At the end of the class another woman comes up to me and says "you should not do that. even if she says she is okay with it, you need to give her more room".. or something to that effect. For a second, I was going to tell her all about my mat edge exercise and how the woman got a lot more than a sliver etc. etc. Then I remembered "Harmony"! So I said "thank you" and came out with a win-win feeling. The harmony thing works at home in a lot more situations with the wife, but not with the kids and it definitely does wonders at work. I have significantly curbed my urge to do bad things to some of my colleagues. 

There are many things I learned during this challenge, thanks to my teachers and friends who pushed me and taught me things that go beyond the poses. During my "I am not sure if I can keep going through with this phase", one of my teachers comes up to me while I am breathing and touched the place where my stomach starts and says "tuck your tummy in". After class I tried to correct him by saying "this... is my tummy!" and he laughed. He said "no my friend. you need to tuck here!".  

A picture is worth a 1000 words.. this one is worth a 1000 classes.

Yes. After making it into that hot room for more than a 1000 classes, I was working hard and sucking up my gut.. but not in the right place! The next 10 days was a real struggle to "undo things in Live mode" in every class. It is incredibly hard to breathe when you pull that part in, once you figure out how to do it in the first place!

My best poses became non-existant and some other poses became a revelation. A lot of my teachers were wondering "what is up with this guy. He is in the first row and struggling". I wanted to move back to the last row just like in my beginner days and slowly move back up to the front, but my teacher said "No. That would be a bad move. Stay in front of the mirror and do your best!". So stay I did and watched in agony as I failed and failed for almost two weeks. Then I got it!  Maybe I did not have certain muscles to do it earlier and they developed in two weeks.. who knows! That was the big revelation over this challenge.

There were many things that kept me going during that phase in the hot room. A 74 year old wheel chair bound grandma with Parkinsons, started coming to class. At first she was outside the room, then she was wheeled inside the room for the first half of class, soon she made it 90 minutes in the chair, then she started bending her hands down while in the chair, and after 30 days she was able to stand up and hold the wall and try poses.. now she walks! The support she got from her son, family and teachers was incredible. There were so many times the entire class clapped and cheered when she did what we all thought was impossible!

Yet another miracle, right in front of our eyes. Every day I see that grandma, I wish my grandma or my mom could have come to the hot room instead of undergoing surgery after surgery for replacing joints! If DNA that I have inherited is any indication, chances are my knees and hips are going to give out a lot earlier than the average person and I might get the shakes like my dad. My sincere hope is that doing yoga will postpone the inevitable.. 

The last thing about any challenge is to go do Yoga outside the room. When I packed my mat on day 61, my wife and kids were saying "What?! we just let you go 60 days and accomodated you a lot and cheered you. Can you take a break now. Why do you want to go today?"

My response was "do you see the guy who runs the 5000 meter race in the Olympics? after he wins and crosses the finish line, someone hands him a flag and he keeps running another two laps with the flag, all happy and smiling! he is not going as fast, but he is still going strong and keeps running! Today is my victory lap. I can go in without worrying about finishing the challenge and smile through the class, have a great time!"

They actually understood that. I also had a great 61st class.. and 62nd and 63rd class, and will keep going till travel catches up again. 

They always tell you "the real yoga begins when you walk out of that door". Both our girls went on one week trips as part of science camp on different weeks. 

Jr. went to Yosemite and the litte one went to Santa Cruz. We were really worried and thinking about the kid that was away a lot.. They both came back exhausted but happy and it was wonderful listening to them talk about their trips. The little one picked up knitting and is now making everyone scarves and beanies. 

Here is the arabian beanie meanie.. 

and yes.. I tried growing a beard over 20 days during the challenge, in an attempt to get the girls to get grades in return for shaving it off. The blackmail exercise did not work as they showed me that they are better at blackmailing me! It was three girls against the beard and they won!

The yoga does begin after we step out. Harmony is all about wearing your kids pink blankie and the beanie she just made for you and feeling on top of the world that there is so much love in your life!

The unruly teacher

It is 60 day challenge time at Bikram Yoga. So I go whenever I can. My timetable is all over the place. Started a day with Yoga at 5:30AM, so I could come home just in time to wake up the little one and drop Jr. in school. After what was a very very long day at work, thought I would end the day with yoga as well by going to the 8:30 PM class. My plan was flawed as I ended up working till midnight. But that is not the topic of the post. 

Got to the hot room and was pleasantly surprised to see the noise level in the room being high, a good ten minutes before class. Usually folks are very quiet in the room and if they have to talk to someone, they talk in hushed tones. 

Turned out that someone had invited a whole bunch of their unsuspecting friends to come do Bikram Yoga for the first time. There were group pictures prior to the class and a lot of smiling and giggling and I was thinking "these people have no idea what they have signed up for!  this is going to be an interesting class". 

Five minutes into class, a few more folks rolled in and they were all first timers. It was definitely going to be an interesting class.

The group was not particularly receptive to the teachers instructions. Refusal to give up chewing gum, taking pictures with cell phone when the teacher was not looking, talking, random walking around the mat, drinking water while others were trying to balance on one leg, and the list goes on. It was like they were checking off an endless list of "don'ts" on the Yoga etiquette printout that we used to get as beginner students. Then a few people started leaving the room, 30 minutes into class.The teacher did her best to stop them and make them just stay on the mat, but they did not listen to her.

Something snapped and I got mad for a few seconds. Then I looked at the teacher who came back to the podium from the back of the class. She had a very determined look on her face, to make sure the rest of the students gave it everything they got. It was like watching world class management in action. It is easy to have a bunch of students who are all responding to your dialogue. It is not easy when there is a walkout of sorts going on. With amazing grace, she kept the class going and pushed everyone to do their best. 

When I saw her take her two deep breaths and go "this is very unusual for a Bikram Yoga class. You guys, focus on yourself in the mirror", something changed. I went into "look only at yourself, look only at yourself" mode. Got  tunnel vision at my reflection and that changed the class entirely!

It was like I was alone with myself and everything else disappeared. This was a very unusual experience. My eyes went "bokeh" on the background ! Didn't think that was even possible. 

Usually I am beat at 8:30 in the evening after a long day that started before 5AM, but there was a steely determination to do my best, lead by example, not let down a teacher who was giving it everything, and most of all, do the right thing by myself and work as hard as I could after having made it into the room.

After class, I told the teacher "you really inspired me today, the way you handled the class and kept going" and she smiled and said

"well, they were all your teachers Sundar. they taught you the importance of focusing on yourself". 

and that was so true!

Every day we learn things, in the most unexpected ways.

Resistance is futile

Recently, one of my favorite yoga teachers told the class "what are you resisting right now? find out and let it go. it is like driving. you see the red light. you want it to be green, but it is not. it is red. you are all tense. if you accept it is red and relax till it becomes green you are much better off. I used to tense up at red signals.. now I acccept. whatever it is you are resisting, be it the fact that your water bottle is almost empty, something at work, some local tension in your body.. let it go!" 

At first I was worried for the teacher because this dude is very happy go lucky and for a few seconds I saw a side of him that I have not seen before... a very philosophical deeply introspective person. There was a seriousness in his eyes when he said it that was a "I have been here, done that and I am not saying this to be taken lightly"

The very next day, another favorite teacher of mine comes back to the hot room. Have missed him the last three months because every day when I start doing the standing bow, I will start wrong and correct myself and would think of this guy. The last two three weeks, there is no correcting, but that tells you that any changes to the practice over the last many years has a 2 month plus time to take permanence. It is not easy to break habits. 

So "El Fuego" shows up and is watching me.. he even remembers what he told me before leaving and at that moment I get "teacheritis". It is a condition where the fact that the teacher is watching you makes you conscious, and you try to do the best you can be, over do it, and fall off in a small heap on your mat.

After a few attempts I pulled off what was the best standing bow to date and he comes and pulls my leg and hand "up" and says "you have fixed the hand to chin and the kick, but now you are too down and you push your hip out in the last moment.. start working on that"

It is going to be another two months to get that one down!

As for resistance, that part is absolutely true. You can go from San Jose to San Francisco in the same car and spend different amounts of gas depending on how you drive. If you drive without constant braking, you get better gas mileage and don't wear off your brake pads. If you speed up and slow down with minimal use of the brakes, it is a much more comfortable ride.

My recent experiences in the yoga room are all about the brakes. I can do the poses. Have significantly improved over the last year. Can also do the class without sighing or any heavy breathing. So the breathing is getting better. The real issue is to focus and be in the room instead of having the mind wander.

Takes me 20 minutes sometimes to forget work, home, the guy who tailgated me for no reason etc. before the class. Then when we get down on the floor and are lying on the mat looking at the glass or ceiling, it is the little corrosion behind the mirror, the one tile that is slightly off on the ceiling, or an ant that is about to die when my 747 lands on it (we fly like planes in the yoga room at one point). 

Have been working consciously to reduce this 20 minutes down. So far it is ~5 minutes.

If that 5 minutes can come down to a few seconds, that would be awesome!