When you go to Mysore, India to study at the shala you have your morning asana practice, chanting some afternoons, and the rest of your day free to fill as you see fit. On my last trip I took yoga philosophy classes (my usual MO) a few days per week. A group of yoga students climb the stairs in the women's dressing room, grab a carpet square, and sit cross-legged on the floor in an amorphous semicircle facing our teacher. It is usually fairly hot and humid with mosquitoes flying around and my legs fall asleep and my hips ache and I'm fairly certain all of these things only really happen to me but I don't mind one bit. I love sitting there with atrophied feet listening to my teacher walk through yoga philosophy from an Indian perspective punctuated by the birds outside, honking and laughing in the street, and the perplexed faces of students trying to make out his accent or English in general (because some of the students don't speak English at all) and whether or not the explanations he makes and stories he tells are real.
But this one is an easy one. Our teacher is talking to us about a monastery in the north of India and how things are done there. How we kind of don't understand what it is like to be a student and how maybe this illustration will give us a little bit of insight. Maybe. At this monastery students go and they wash the floors and clean the toilets and do all sorts of manual labor. They do this for the "first few years" he says. Once they complete this stage, that's when the yoga teaching begins. "How many years is a few years?" Someone asks. "Ten or eleven."
Last year I had to get a new Visa to travel to India. Incredibly, my ten year Visa had expired. I thought I had too. Washed up maybe. Too something. But when I heard that simple story in the women's locker room in philosophy class, I realized that the yoga was just beginning.
Me, in the thick of practice (dwi pada shirshasana which is a posture in the intermediate series), photo taken in my last apartment in New York somewhere between 2008 and 2011.
Exit: "Million Dollar Bill" Middle Brother
But this one is an easy one. Our teacher is talking to us about a monastery in the north of India and how things are done there. How we kind of don't understand what it is like to be a student and how maybe this illustration will give us a little bit of insight. Maybe. At this monastery students go and they wash the floors and clean the toilets and do all sorts of manual labor. They do this for the "first few years" he says. Once they complete this stage, that's when the yoga teaching begins. "How many years is a few years?" Someone asks. "Ten or eleven."
Last year I had to get a new Visa to travel to India. Incredibly, my ten year Visa had expired. I thought I had too. Washed up maybe. Too something. But when I heard that simple story in the women's locker room in philosophy class, I realized that the yoga was just beginning.
Me, in the thick of practice (dwi pada shirshasana which is a posture in the intermediate series), photo taken in my last apartment in New York somewhere between 2008 and 2011.
व्याधिस्त्यानसंशयप्रमादालस्याविरतिभ्रान्तिदर्शनालब्धभूमिकत्वानवस्थितत्वानि चित्तविक्षेपास्तेऽन्तरायाः॥३०॥
vyadhi styana samshaya pramada alasya avirati bhranti-darshana alabdha-bhumikatva anavasthitatva chitta vikshepa te antarayah
“Disease, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, sensuality, false perception, failure to reach firm ground and slipping from the ground gained- these distractions of the mind-stuff are the obstacles.”
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1.30 translation by Swami Satchidananda
Exit: "Million Dollar Bill" Middle Brother
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