Mysore: Two Worlds

This month, after much anticipation, I hosted my first guest in my new home!  My friend and former roommate Stacy made the 24 hour journey to visit Mysore, and study yoga for 3-weeks.  So this month, I have my first guest blog! Enjoy 🙂

Near the beginning of every yoga practice, we hold a straddle forward fold in four different variations. Every time I come up from the fold, I have to take a breath to steady myself because the rush of blood and energy to the head and hips can be intense and overwhelming.

When I shared this experience with Sarayu, she could not relate. Now I realize that perhaps this is because she is the master of straddling her two worlds.  The Indian world of family, work, and daily life and the physical, social, and philosophical world of yoga.

The Practice

I started my Mysore journey, with a master of hatha yoga, Bharath Shetty. I took Mysore style hatha yoga classes twice a day, six days a week. In class you follow a specific series of poses at your own pace, and the teacher acts as a mentor, meeting you where you are on your yoga journey.

Bharath promotes a balanced environment of safety and challenge.  He often asks “Are you breathing?” with a huge grin on his face, when you are upside down and unable to communicate and “Are you smiling?” while your third boat pose is turning your mat into a puddle. Though some of the goals I set at the beginning of my study led me to master some fancy yoga tricks, what I most appreciate is that my “minimize lower back pain” goal slowly became superfluous with Bharath’s attention to my practice.

Beyond the Practice

Between classes, Sarayu directed me to Gokulam, where yogi hippies from all over the world abound. In the cafes there I met some yoga teachers from Mallorca.  Within minutes one of them was jamming on guitar and I was singing along in English and Spanish. Encounters happen easily and effortlessly because everyone hangs out in the same places, so much so that I kept running into the same yoga teacher from Boston and got to share experiences with her.

I also took a “yoga nidra” class, which, if you are familiar, was not a half-sleeping meditation, but rather, a deep and scary dive into the emotional patterns we have built up over the course of our lives.

Full Immersion

It turns out that I was the luckiest yogi hippie in the land because my India experience went far beyond the borders of Gokulam. Sarayu, her parents, her aunt and uncle, her coworkers, and her friends immersed me in local customs.

I shared a sad and special time with Sarayu’s family, as her grandmother passed while I was there.  I hope I could be a friendly support for Sarayu during this difficult time and I was honored to be part of the after-death rituals. Experiencing the chanting to raise of the spirit of the dead brought new meaning to the Sanskrit chanting we begin and end yoga classes with. There were so many tiny but poignant moments, like Sarayu smirking across the temple at me when I insisted I did not need a spoon and could eat a meal on a leaf Indian style with my hands, to when I forgot the Indian word for yogurt, “curd.”

The Special Moments

I will leave you all with a list of my most immersive moments, and I hope this list will encourage you to visit Mysore’s #1 host!

• A sari salesman at a silk exhibition told Sarayu’s aunt she reminded him of his mother. Her response: “If I remind you of your mother then you should give it to me for FREE!”
• By taking yoga nidra class with Sarayu’s mom, I learned about the recent developments in Gokulam, and how twenty years ago there was nothing there at all. She wandered the neighborhood struck by its growth and feeling like a tourist in her own home city.
• I visited the school where Sarayu teaches full time and it was their Independence Day Celebration! They put on a performance with adorably nervous presentations and enthusiastic dance numbers.
• Sarayu and her family and friends know where to get all of what I call “non-street street food.” So I could respect the doctor’s warnings and eat delicious chaats and gobi manchurian in clean and delicious restaurants.
• Did you know that at an Indian wedding the bride and groom have to take a picture with every single guest?? We attended a wedding with at least 1000 guests and they were still taking pictures when we left. I hope someone gifted them a post-wedding jaw massage! For the guests, on the other hand, attending a wedding seems so stress-free. Everyone arrives when they can get there, people are milling around even during the speeches, the guests eat while the bride and groom are still taking pictures.  Of course the best part, all of the women wear beautiful glittery saris and dresses.

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In time, as I gained more stability in my straddle poses, I found that straddling two sides of life can be exhilarating and a once in a lifetime opportunity.