Kicking my asana

It’s hard to believe that it has already been two weeks since my last post and three since my course started.  As my title suggests, my time in Dharmshala has been intense!

I’m studying to become a certified Vinyasa Flow teacher.  This means that for six days a week, between the hours of 7am and 7pm I am engaged in some form of yoga practice: breathing (pranayama), posture classes like the Ashtanga Primary Series (asana), anatomy, chanting and philosophy.  During the breaks in between classes I’m usually either eating something with too high a sugar content (sigh) or attempting to organize my notes in a pretty blue tome that I’ve purchased for that purpose.  Then it’s dinner, a little more note review and bed.

As a consequence I have had little time to explore McLeod Ganj and the neighbouring cities in the valley.  For the most part, my understanding of the city revolves around where my next meal will take place.   Hopefully when the course finishes I’ll be able to fill in some of the many gaps, and maybe even write about it.

In the meantime, let me share with you a bit about what I have been experiencing: yoga and people.  I start my philosophy class on Tuesday, but as a preliminary, beyond some supple bodies in spandex, yoga is a way of life.  An eightfold path, the asana classes that are punishing my body are only one part of a series of practices that are aimed at controlling and stilling one’s mind.  In fact, asana is only stage three on this path, so it’s fitting that the other concept that I can relate my current experiences to is an aspect of the second step, niyama, which sets out certain disciplines to govern our actions and our attitude towards ourselves.

Much of my free time is spent either with others in my class or with people who are attending our morning Ashtanga or evening Hatha classes.  We talk about our lives, relationships and work experiences and through that I’ve been exposed to more alternative ways of living than at any other point in my life.  How so? Well first of all, I’m one of the easiest people to characterize: “former lawyer”.  That can be said in a sentence and well understood.  Most people knew ‘my deal’ in the first week.  But what everyone else does ‘for a living’ has tended to come out more slowly, over the course of many conversations.  Why? because very few of the people are doing things that fit easily into a category.  In fact, I would say that most of them are mainly occupied with ‘living’, as opposed to ‘doing’.

Let me explain.  Almost everyone I’ve met and spent time with ‘works’ between four and six months of a year.  They build stadium roofs, herd cows and make cheese, do farm labour and so on.  Then they take the rest of the year to follow their own pursuits: yoga, travel, religious study, you name it.  Those that ‘work’ full time do many things – create art, design hats, coach others through transitions and practice alternative healing.  Most of these combinations of pursuits have never occurred to me.   But for those who have undertaken them, they work.  The freedom they’ve chosen in exchange for a category is a trade they are happy to have made, and in that happiness they reflect contentment with their lives and where they are at.

Reading one of my books today, I came across santosha, the second of the niyamas that I refer to above, and my encounters with these new friends came to mind.  From my limited understanding, santosha means something along the lines of being satisfied with what one has, or put another way, not requiring more than one has to achieve contentment.  I have been striving for this for a long time.  My exposure to so many alternative ways of being reminded me that this is part of what underlies my impulse to try on new lives and experiences – to learn of the ways that others arrive at this point of contentment and apply this knowledge to my personal quest.  As we move beyond breathing and postures this week and learn about the deeper philosophy of yoga, I know that I will necessarily begin to shift my attention inward.  But I am glad that in the weeks that preceded this, I have once again had my eyes opened. 

Dar to Dharamshala

A couple of months ago I sat down at my favourite coffee shop and thought, what next?  Absentmindedly I started looking up yoga teaching training programs, thinking ‘wouldn’t it be great if one day…’  And then it struck me, why not now?  And so began another journey, one that has found me sitting in the absolute centre of a wonderful coffee shop overlooking the hills and valleys of Himachal Pradesh.  A journey from Dar to Dharamshala.

Returning to India is a homecoming of sorts.  It is where I set out for in 2010, when I decided to finally see the land of my dreams.  In a happy twist of fate, that trip led me to a land I had never dreamt of but whose colours and landscapes now make up the shape and texture of my dreams.  My parting thought in the Dar airport was ‘not yet’.  Luckily, as I will be returning in June, it isn’t. 

After a five hour layover and a fitful night’s sleep, I landed in a steamy Delhi.  At thirty-seven degrees it felt like Dar, absent the relief of the smooth beaches of the Indian Ocean.  Not ready to engage with the madness of the city, I escaped to an afternoon at my hotel.  The hotel was right next to a mall – so while I mulled over whether to see Titanic 3-D, I slathered body shop products on my already well hydrated skin – affirming that no matter where you go, many realities await you.  Back in the mall for dinner, I ate at a small coffee shop, watching the middle class enjoy their Saturday evening.  Skimming the extensive menu, I came across poutine.  Poutine! Of all things! The description went something like this ‘A Canadian specialty of cheese and gravy on chips, pronounced Fou-tan’.  Foutan, noted.  As much as I miss home, I decided not to have a meal that would leave me both disappointed and with clogged arteries.

The next day I waded out into Delhi, in search of my night bus to Dharamshala.  A painless metro ride was followed by an auto rickshaw ride involving several stops to try to find someone who spoke English while my driver careened aimlessly in search of a location he had not understood.  Luckily I had built in an extra hour for this task.  This meant when I finally made it to the Tibetan colony in Delhi, I still had time to spend a couple hours in the ‘Hard Yak Café’, eating chow mein and talking to the proprietor, whose wife was hoping to get a job working in Canada.  He questioned whether life was actually better in the West, with the high cost of living combined with little concept of relaxation or governing one’s own time and I couldn’t give him a conclusive answer.  After a chat about the merits of freedom, community and modest living, he guided me towards the bus stand – a dusty expanse behind a derelict building and beneath an incomplete highway overpass.  I would have had no idea that there was a bus stop there if it weren’t for a couple perplexed looking people with travel bags.  Immediately a svelte Indian boy who looked about sixteen asked to see my ticket and said I was on his bus.  I hoped he wasn’t the one driving it.  When the bus eventually arrived, they began loading the luggage compartments beneath the bus one at a time.  We all got a start when they opened the middle compartment and there was a body in it – after some yelling and swatting, a groggy young man got up from beneath some blankets.  The sixteen year old suddenly looked like a better prospect.  When we departed, I made a point of not checking who ended up at the wheel.

Kil-ing It – A journey to the top of Africa

After a decade of two degrees, 25 countries and a number of professional incarnations, the question of how to celebrate my thirtieth birthday loomed large.  Work and an unanticipated (though much appreciated) holiday trip home conspired against setting foot in my thirtieth country, so when the stars aligned to climb Kilimanjaro by the light of a full moon during the first hours of my thirtieth, I considered myself lucky to have stumbled upon a sufficiently romantic marker of the date that I had once earmarked as the entry-point into my adulthood.

Living on the shores of the Indian Ocean, our journey began at sea level.  For myself and my climbing partner, our actual departure was a welcome relief following weeks of deciding upon logistics, assembling gear and hearing of the experiences of friends who had already made the attempt.  Often these stories began with ‘that’s awesome, you can totally do it’ followed a short breath later by ‘but it was the worst night of my existence’.  This was said often enough for me to relinquish my suspicion that it was just hyperbole.  The Rough Guide provided little by way of solace, urging caution by reminding readers that although Kilimanjaro is the highest free standing non-technical peak in the world, upwards of a dozen people each year surrender their lives to it.

The trip had an inauspicious start.  After a hearty lunch of chicken and chipsi (i.e. fries) with our guide and the company owner (we chose a locally owned company, Kilimanjaro Brothers, who I whole-heartedly recommend), we were instructed to go to our rooms and get our gear ready for inspection.  As I had spent hours wondering whether my Marks Work Wearhouse gloves would result in hypothermia, I was quite pleased to undergo inspection.  As Gillian began to dutifully unpack her compression bags, I began frantically searching pockets as the realization set in that I had lost something I needed – the keys to my locks!  Our guide Robert arrived to Gillian’s gear stacked neatly on her bed and a deflated me, sitting on my duffel bag.  While he got introduced to my absentmindedness, I got an introduction to his resourcefulness when he returned to our room five minutes later with a handsaw.  There is something magical about the fact that while you may not be able to find change for a 5000 THS ($3) note just about anywhere in Tanzania, you can find a handsaw in a matter of minutes.  A couple of precarious looking strokes later, the inspection was carried out and we made our way to the rental shop.

At first, being led down the stairs of a decrepit and seemingly empty building made us relieved that we’d already deposited our money into the hands of the tour operator.  But those concerns gave way to overwhelm as we entered a series of small rooms packed floor to ceiling with outdoor gear, shed by the thousands that had gone before us.   The gear was much what you would expect in a seventies ski chalet: pastel versions of mismatched Marmot, Northface and Patagonia fell over one another in a bid to make another trip to the summit.  Loyalty to the decade of my birth prevailed and I picked out a pair of baggy blue rain pants and a cerulean, black and white jacket that was vaguely clammy and that instinct told me not to smell.

Anticipation is the enemy of sleep and diamox its companion.  This is a truth I became reacquainted with later that evening.  The insurance policy against altitude sickness, diamox is a drug that is widely taken that may alleviate or prevent altitude sickness and whose diuretic effects will ensure that you have to get up multiple times a night.  The prospect of doing this in sub-zero temperatures encouraged us to seek a company that provided portable toilets.  Wimpy? Maybe, but it was an excellent decision (more on that later).  The morning saw the bad omens reversing.  Packing snacks into my daypack waist strap, I found my errant keys.  Despite raining the entire week preceding our arrival, the skies were clear, absent the heavy clouds of the upcoming rainy season.  So clear was the sky that we were treated to a view of the imposing Kilimanjaro snowcap for a good twenty minutes of our drive to the park gates.