...I got a little distracted

To those who thought I'd been swept away, I'm sorry. I'm alive and well and have no excuse other than the title above. Now I'm in Massachusetts again, writing from my comfy computer desk. Since I will want to remember and write and share pictures with everyone I'll continue to chart the rest of my trip... I'll just imagine I'm wearing the same travel clothes and writing from some dark little internet hole in SEAsia.

Where was I when I left everyone hanging? Bangkok. Now that's the city which never sleeps. I spent a couple of days before a long train/bus/ferry to Koh Samui shopping, eating, and treating myself to all the girly pleasures I didn't get in India. Sure, the wats (temples) were great...actually I just lied. The 'wat' was great. Wat Pho was my only one...but I chose the oldest and since all the rest were modeled after this one, I figured you've seen one wat...well, you know the rest. Also from my touristic lens, the river taxis were fun and new and a great way to navigate the city, the sky train..clean but only a few lines running so not feasible for some journeys, the markets, the markets, the markets, the wide array of designer knockoffs...and I'm talking this season too (as if I know what 'this season' is;)

Thais are wonderful. Friendly, helpful, and compared to India I found them much less interested. No long stares, no endless questions. Actually, the questions I could deal with as I liked to dispel the myth that all women at 25 (or 32 as the case may be) don't have to be married off. It's perfectly acceptable to be single and childless in America no matter what your age. In India for many women this is still unheard of, but the tide is changing.

Before I rush into Thailand, I'll post some shots of Delhi and Varanasi.

I could be anywhere...

After my sunrise descent into Bangkok, I got lazy. Rather than hitting the pavement to get out of 'backpackers central' I've landed instead on Khao San Rd, where every other Westerner in Bangkok seems to be staying. I'll blame it on my lack of sleep, or the hot steamy air creating a sweat suction between my back and my pack, but something told me to take the easy route today and go with the rest of the sheep. So here I am...surrounded by foreigners in what could be any country. Shortly I'll explore, sans pack, showered and rested and try to get a Thai feel of Bangkok..not the McThailand which is Khao San Rd.

Initial thoughts after my first three hours: YAY! It's just so easy here..and a whole lot cleaner. Traveling in India in some places was like putting on a blindfold and hoping you get on the right train...here it seems they'd take your hand and walk you to your seat.

Even as I write I'm feeling somewhat nostalgic for India. Varanasi, the holiest city had a pulse and an energy I can't quite explain. Even though the Ganges in appearance was not too far removed from an open sewage pipe people still came to wash their clothes, their cows, their bodies, their sins, to die, be burned and tossed into the river. The ghats, the alleys, the people, the sadus, the music. A magical place.

More on Varanasi, Delhi, and hopefully some pics to come.

Three or four days in Bangkok then headed to Ko Samui

Pressing my luck

I'd been warned a hundred times. Don't eat street food. No salads. No fruit you haven't peeled sliced or washed yourself. For the first month here I've been fine and after the first two weeks I threw some of the rules above out the window. What's traveling really if you don't just try street food! I seemed to find a nice balance of caution and dare which served my belly well...until Wednesday when my luck ran out. A hot day. A cool watermellon cart. A pair of dirty fingers. No water to rinse with. Two hours later was the start of the next two days of blood sweat and tears.

48 hours later and my body has purged itself of anything remotely resembling food, some bile, and every last bit of trace mineral it had left. I'm back in the land of the living now without seeing the inside of the hospital down the street. All in all...just another Indian experience.

The Joys of Mysore

Here's a list, in no particular order, of the things I love here:

• Cycling to class at 5:00am. The air is the coolest, the sun not yet risen, and the cows and dogs are feasting happily without horns, flies, and fumes.
• Sitting with the people from my course after our pranayama at our favorite chai stop and talking about yoga, breath, life, plans. Not the usual water cooler chat.
• Enjoying a nice shower (even hot water sometimes) and feeling a layer of sweat and dirt fall to the floor.
• My bicycle: 1970? one gear, cruiser style. It's great for slow meandering through the streets of Mysore. I'm totally comfortable now with what initially seemed like dangerous riding territory. Stay to the left, and move when you have an inch to move into. Cautiously assertive riding.
• Waving to my favorite fruit and veg man as I ride by if I'm not shopping that day.
• Buying fresh fruit and veg for less money than a cup of coffee in the states.
• Walking through the Deveraja Market early in the day, taking in all the smells of spices, fruit, veg, oils, and incense.
• Photographing children and watching the smiles take over their faces as I show them their picture.
• Standing still near KR circle in the City Center, it's packed with vendors, bikes, cars, everyone seems to be shouting but it's just business as usual. I could watch this for hours.
• Walking around the lake I just discovered at sunset. It's full of egrets and other birds I have yet to look up. If I set off at 5:30, I catch the sunset just as I'm rounding the last turn of the gravel trail.
• Catching a bit of air from the fan in the other room while I'm drifting off to sleep. If things keep getting hotter I'll need to buy another fan...or just drag my mat into the common room.
• Singing at Bhajans, our teacher leads them and once I familiarized myself with the words, it became very liberating.
• Creating random dishes at home with unfamiliar spices and more types of dal than I can count.
• Jumping in a rickshaw in the heat of the afternoon and catching a breeze. Even if it's a dirty breeze, it still feels damn good.
• Getting lost in the side streets of city center.
• Overcoming fear in backbending asanas.
• Hanging on the roof at night and catching the stars. I should get myself a mosquito net and start sleeping outside.

And then there were five

I had many more shots on this post, and then it crashed. Just like that! in an instant my bakers' dozen reduced to less than half. Alas, these will have to do for now. All of these are from the center of the city.

Breathe your way across the finish line

The Galapagos Land Tortoise has an average life span of 193 years. The rabbit has an average life span of five to eight years. A tortoise respirates about three breaths per minute. A rabbit respirates at 50 to 60 breaths per minute. See the correlation?

During our pranayama talk today we were assured that with sustained, focused practice of prana(breath) yama(control), we will extend our life expectancies. Gauranteed.

Acharya: Sit. Breathe. Slow the mind. Feel the breaths. When you are rushed and out of control you put stress on the heart. Slow the pace. Fix the focus. When we learn how to slow and deepen the breath with practice, our everyday breathings will change. We will begin to find a peace of mind. But it is not easy. You must practice. Everday without fluctuation.

I'm thinking Aesop was a yogi? and Tortoise and the Hare wasn't about a road race at all.

On Pain

Student: I am having extreme pain and discomfort in the knees in lotus when I sit for pranayama, can I change the position?
Acharya: Life is pain. If you cannot deal with the pain here, in seated pranayama how will you ever tolerate the pain in the world? What you must do is train the mind. Discipline the fluctuations of the mind and with practice you will easily detach from your pain. You do not adjust your body to satisfy the mind.

A broad sweeping yet mostly accurate generalization: In the West, we value comfort, autonomy, freedom, and choice. Choice to have a practice free from pain. I have heard countless teachers, myself included speak on the value of pain in practice. Listen to it. This is your body telling you to back off, this is your body telling you you've gone too far. Relax. Breathe.

(The perspective and teaching style which follows is built on the assumption that you are working with awareness and alignment.)

Here, we are taught to work through pain. To breathe through it, with a soft gaze, a relaxed face, and firm foundation. The shala is a concrete floor with no windows. Eight students fit comfortably. During practice we do not speak. We do not look around. We do not come out of postures until he directs us, sometimes holding postures for 10 minutes at a time. His eye for alignment is meticulous. He never physically adjusts. He wants us to get there on our own by listening so that the body and mind will remember. We do it the hard way. His sequence is quite similar to the primary series of Ashtanga with a few from the second series thrown in for flavor. It is hard. I am trusting this process through five minute backbends and it is working. I am releasing more than I ever have. My sense of meditation and stillness in class is unparalleled and he's right. There came a point today nearing the end of my seated pranayama that I detached from the painful opening of my hips. What I imagined as torque in my knees disappeared and I felt truly grounded. For those few moments I was able to talk myself out of discomfort and breathe myself to another place, I got a glimpse and began to scratch the surface of the truly amazing powers lying mostly dormant my mind.

Is it our litigious society which keeps us as teachers on our toes when it comes to painful asanas? Or are we so steeped with richness that comfort for many seems a birthright, making suffering unnecessary and therefore a non-option.

What we we lose by not pushing ourselves harder: the opportunity to build more determination, focus, concentration, faith, will-power (sound familiar Bikramers?) and the opportunity to begin to realize the power of our own minds.