a skip season

Guruji's portrait in the shala. 

I would not have thought it possible. Towards the end of my first trip, so certain was I, so gung-ho, so totally obsessed with Mysore, that I was sure I would spend a portion of every year of my life in Mysore, India to practice at the shala--at least until my brittle bones would prevent me from doing so!

And now... as friends and, yes, my yoga family converge in India, I sit during spare in-between-teaching moments reading updates on facebook, viewing photos on instagram, and breathing--I breathe into the space in my heart that tightens because I long for it so: India, the shala, the energy and the practice there, the grace of the teacher, the community in and around Gokulam, the yoga folks, the chocolate, the random livestock wandering around the streets. Oh my goodness, I miss it all!

I've been in Cairo over three weeks now, my coming here has allowed another, my friend and fellow ashtangi Iman Elsherbiny, to go and study with Sharath in KPJAYI. The last three months has been this way, me holding space for others. Before this I was in Japan, subbing for a mysore program in Osaka. After this, I will be doing the same in Barcelona. And the current Mysore season will have come and gone by the time I am done with the commitments that I have made.

I have chosen to skip a season, I have to remind myself. I am the architect of this anomaly.

This was not so methodically planned. I do have a ticket leaving London in the end of December going to back to Asia. My intention was to be in India by the new year, in keeping with my "tradition" of spending the eve at the Shiva temple in Chamundi Hill, giving puja, burning old karmas, making new intentions. But so much has changed since I left South East Asia in early June. And life has challenged me to be flexible off the mat as well.

As the year ends, my puja, my offering is my life. Burning old patterns writ on paper isn't enough anymore. I simply need to stop cycling into them. And the intentions, well, my plate is still full there as I toil over the ones from previous years.

Ultimately, I know it doesn't matter where I celebrate the new year. It doesn't matter where I practice, or where I bow to the teachings of my teacher.

Still, I am missing practice at the shala and Sharath's stealthy hawk-eyed gaze. I can feel my body miss the deep down soreness, the depth of self-discovery, the intensity of moving amongst the breath of 70 some odd students, that indescribable push to the edge. But this time, choosing to teach, rather than to study, also seems right.

While studying regularly with Sharath is important to me as a human being and as a student, I can't help but feel his hand in my learning now, that it is because of his blessing that I am out here. That this is my "off-campus" self-study; it is also a part of my expanding education. And when it's time to return to the mother ship, Mysore will still be there. It will still be the same crazy, pressure cooking home away from home.

Life, I try to remember, is an extension of this practice. That "realizing mysore" is not exclusive to being physically in Mysore the Karnatakan city in Southern India. It is a state of being, a process and a tool for living. We go to Mysore to experience it and when we leave, we don't forget its lessons, which have seeped into our muscle memory, into our bones and into our cellular beings. When we leave, that energy goes with us.

And even though I am missing Mysore very much at the moment, I also know that like the practice, Mysore is always with me. 

new shala registration process

The buzz word continues to be change. And even with Sharath on tour this summer, the world continues to turn. Mysore is no exception. Saraswathi started to teach in July or June. And now she too is conducting weekly conference for her students. And the shala, well, the shala rules on registration is as fluid as ever.

For some of us on the ride, it feels a little like a raging rapid what with the ever changing rules in registration for the next season: trips starting only at the 6th of every month, registration changed to the first of every month, and a glut of applicants filling up an entire month all in two days.

December was full by August 3. And the fall months which are usually considered quieter months filled up quickly too. And the question "Do I go to Mysore?" has been edited by the new circumstances into "Can I go to Mysore?" Will Mysore accept me, will I even be able to register? We'll see once September rolls around.

Non-attachment. I've not been going to Mysore so long that I have old-school expectations. I'm actually pretty new school. Still, change is unrelenting. And I am fighting the reaction to have any resistance to it. Relax, I remind myself. Be steady but relax also.

With ashtanga growing so rapidly, with more and more people wanting to come and study with Sharath in India, we must be prepared that the Mysore experience will continue to change, evolve, grow, this is yoga in action, isn't it?--and if we are really practicing, how we too must also expand with it.

Some useful tips for first timers: 

1) Make sure your photo is sized properly and is in the right format

2) Applications sent before the 4 month mark of the month you are applying for will most likely not be counted

3) After registration you should receive an automated response that the shala has received your application. This is not your acceptance letter into the program. But it is important that you receive this 

4) You will receive an acceptance letter from the shala. This may take a little, sometimes a lot of time. Also important, if you do not receive this, I suggest you follow it up

For updated rules on registration process, see www.kpjayi.org.

the classroom shala, adventures in assisting

(Just got back to this article now. It's been four months since I started to write this and six months since actually assisting at the shala. I guess at this point, it's just better late then never...)


If you've spent any time studying at the KPJAYI shala in Mysore, you know what it's like: the crowded room supported by Sharath's unobtrusively sparse teaching style, which amounts to very minimal adjustments, and very little verbal instruction. If you really strip it down, it seems nearly obscene, the craze to practice in a hot, sweaty, too-full room, with little guidance--yet we pay dearly for this experience. Why do we do this?

The shala is a subtle classroom, maintaining a strange balance between the independent study that happens within the boundaries of one's mat space and the room at large, a heaving beautiful mess of collective energy tuned into breath. The teacher, Sharath, holds the space intuitively. In that room, his presence is pervasive. He practically has eyes on the back of his head. He sees so much, yet keeps his distance.

When I was assisting (last February and March), people would ask: How was Sharath teaching me to assist? or even Was Sharath teaching me how to assist? People want to know what he's like in that context. Truth: Sharath is the same at all times. There's no magic shift. No sudden deluge of instruction and technique. Maybe a few more jokes here and there, because he doesn't seem to want to take it all too seriously--we practitioners do enough of that! He once called me in the office to admire his up-close-and-personal photo of a tiger (and quite an impressive photograph it was), but there's no palling around at the end of class. 

I remember my first day at the shala, getting called in with "one more..." There's no time to dilly dally, once you're called into that room, regardless of whether it's your first time or not, you're basically being thrown into the deep end, sinking or swimming is up to you.

Assisting is like that too. There's no orientation. You come and you do. You bring in what you know, and within the shala workspace, you practice, you refine, you learn. Just like daily practice.

The moment you need guidance, however, Sharath is there. For me, day one of assisting, it was doing  supta kurmasana assists. He must have observed my "technique"--a mix-match of different influences from various teachers I've studied and worked with. Then he appeared, stepping in to demonstrate how he does it, which is so smooth and gentle, there was no cranking and little force, instead lots of integrity and strength. His style of teaching is more show then tell, which then gets to be ingrained into muscle memory as the assistance is repeated morning after morning.

He was particular with maricasana D assists and stopped me a couple of times from helping tight or once-injured yet earnest newcomers, saying that they need a little bit of time before being helped into a bind. And despite the tales of harsh adjustments, he's very conscious of when gentleness needs to be applied. Also reminding me that I needed to keep my own earnestness to assist in check.

Sharath would, of course, answer questions when asked, demonstrate when needed. But there's no coddling in his school. He gives you the time and space to figure things out independently. That's how we learn in ashtanga, through our own body of experience. That somehow part of the lesson of assisting is how we must take responsibility for our own personal survival as we hold a mysore space. How, through daily contact with practitioners, we learn to read people and to feel energy, understand when someone needs help, intuit when someone needs space as they go through their own process, walk away without taking anything personally, be gentle when it's appropriate and be boss when someone just needs get on with it.

Then, there was just being in the shala, taking part in the magic, watching Sharath so totally in his element. It was learning by osmosis. It was transference of energy. For me, this is what it means to be a part of the lineage, that there is a line, so subtle yet nearly tangible that connects the student to teacher, that teacher to the teacher before him and so on. For me, it's not really important how far back this line goes, what matters is that this line is real and that it connects people to the power of practice, to themselves and to each other.

slipper karma

Have you seen these brown slippers?

Are these your black flip flops?
Any chance you're wearing brown ones today?

Today, I walked out of the shala after a lengthy savasana following the second led class of today. My slippers, your basic brown Havianas, are nowhere in sight. Nearby there was a lonely pair of black flip flops, also Havianas but more worn in, looser round the thongs--all I could think of after my post-led haziness was, "Seriously?! Not again!"

Last year, my own slippers went missing and in its place were a pair quite nearly similar except for the thickness in the thong. Also after a led class. And despite sending out the word, blogging about it, leaving a note on the replacement pair at conference, my original pair did not make its way back to me--and I ended up wearing the ones left behind for another 4 months.

When I shared my latest slipper slip up saga at the coco stand, two friends separately pointed out that I must have some serious slipper karma. Was I a slipper thief in a past life? What injustice had I committed against rubber flip flops that I should slip up twice now.

Perhaps I just didn't learn my lesson: don't bring a nondescript pair of flip flops to the shala. Or perhaps I should have followed my instincts and written my name on the pair -- which I resisted just on the grounds of the pure dorkiness of the act. I should be more assertive and simply stand by my own compulsive quirks.

Or maybe its another one of those not so heavily veiled messages from the universe. Let go, do not be attached. Maybe, its yet another metaphor for life at the shala. I stepped in today sure footed, stepped out in another person's footwear altogether.

So here's to change! To adapting! Still, I would be eternally grateful if my original pair , which fits so much better, does reappear. Fingers crossed!