Bali : The island of Gods

For most months this year, I have something or the other planned. And in a way, that keeps me going. March was this awesome, life changing, baking course in London and April, was a visit to the Philippines. May was my BIG month! I was going for my first ever yoga retreat and then back to Hyderabad, for a very dear friend’s wedding and then home to Jaipur and then finally to the city that has my dil : Dilli.

Like most things in life, you are extremely excited when something you’ve been looking forward to is approaching. My best example for this is my birthday. I look forward to it. BIG TIME. And then it quietly comes and goes. And then suddenly, this whole excitement that filled you up for so long, suddenly disappears. Leaving you a little empty. The feeling is almost akin to the ending of a beautiful book. When it’s over, you’re left feeling as though people you had dearly loved and lived so long with and shared a journey with, have suddenly left you for an unknown destination. That’s how i feel after these milestones that I’ve planned for my year, pass one by one. But the yoga retreat was a different experience. This year is about life changing stories and experiences. And my trip to Ubud, Bali is definitely one of the biggest of the year, I reckon. And we’re not even half way through 2014.

Two of my most favorite yoga teachers, Daphne and Anton, were hosting this retreat in Bali, Indonesia. I’ve always wanted to go to Bali. And I hadn’t travelled there in my time so far in Singapore for a million reasons. Anyhow, the labor day long weekend on May 1st was the perfect opportunity for a getaway and Daphne and Anton’s Routes of Yoga retreat in Ubud, fit in perfectly.

I packed my yoga clothes (everything I owned - who knows how much yoga we would do!) in a duffel bag and a few other random items and my sunscreen lotion. I was all set and ready for yoga and Bali! My flight was unfortunately late and the immigration queues at the airport in Bali was insane! It took me an additional 1 hour to get through that and then finally I was on my way to the resort in Ubud, which was about 2 hours away. It took us 3 hours to get to Abing Terrace. And I was superbly late. The retreat agenda started at 2 PM and I reached at around 4:30 PM. But just in time for the evening practice. I had missed a lecture and the introduction round, but was fortunate enough to make it to the mat. I rushed to my room, changed into my yoga clothes and rushed to the shala where we would be practicing for the next 5 days.

The drive from the airport to Ubud, was  beautiful, except the traffic of course. The minute we hit the rice fields area in Ubud, I was in love. There's this weird peace that you can feel in that area, the laid back and casual lifestyle, the green rice fields, the immense art that you get to see on both sides of the road, from paintings to pottery to woodwork! Abing Terrace was about 30 minutes from Ubud town and was off the main road. You could literally not hear anything but nature around you. That was just pure bliss. Made me feel like i was in Coorg. I knew instantly that I am going to come back to Ubud and Bali for sure. I just knew it.

So anyway, I rushed to the Shala and started flowing with vinyasas. It was an intense 90 minute vinyasa practice guided by Anton and I felt great at the end of it. After a whole day of : sitting in the cab to the airport - waiting at the airport - the 4 hour plane ride - the 1 hour wait at immigration - the 3 hour drive to Abing: I was finally glad to be moving my body and bending and stretching and pulling and kicking! By the end of it, I was drenched in sweat. But my body felt great.

After the practice, Daphne spoke to us about the history of yoga and what it encompasses and how yoga is so much more than just your asana practice. She spoke to us about Patanjali’s 8 limbs (Ashtanga) of yoga:

1. Yama
2. Niyama
3. Asana
4. Pranayama
5. Pratyahara
6. Dharana
7. Dhyana
8. Samaddhi

And what each of that includes. We spoke more about the 5 moral values that falls under Yama (self control and discipline) :

1) Ahimsa : Non violence

2) Aparigraha: Non Hoarding

3) Satya : Speaking the Truth

4) Brahmacharya

5) Asteya : non-stealing

The rest of the limbs would be explained over the course of the next few days.

She spoke about how the goal of yoga was to unite the self with the higher self. Of how each of us has this higher self, the best self we can be. And how in daily life we are mostly far from that self. The practice of yoga brings you closer to that self. Many even view yoga as a way to unite your mind, body and soul with the divine. The last limb of Patanjali’s Ashtanga is Samaddhi : the state of bliss or pure consciousness. Where you are one with either the divine or your higher self, a state of realisation of who you really are.

She also spoke about how the best text one could read on yoga was actually the Bhagwat Gita. And how it teaches you about an ideal life and includes concept like karma and dharma. This discourse between Arjun and Krishna during the Mahabharata war, sets the tone for how a human being should conduct himself, the yogic ideals of liberation. It deals with the ethical and moral struggles in the human life. The revealing part about Daphne’s lecture was that yoga as we know it today, literally did not exist and is not spoken about AT all in the Bhagwat Gita or even stressed upon in the Patanjali’s Ashtanga. Asana practice evolved much later and even then, was just a part of this whole journey toward self realisation or Samaddhi. ‘Yoga’ is that journey and not just the asana practice that we now know of in the western world. It’s not as if I didn’t know that there was so much more to this ancient science, but just that how what we stress on the most today, is actually not really that important, made me realise, that I am such a novice and just a beginner in this journey - which may take a lifetime, if not lifetimes, to complete.

My asana practice also tends to do this to me though. It puts in perspective, how tiny and small I really am. And how I, me, and my problems, are just one of the millions that exist in this universe. And how there is so much more to learn and experience.

This was also the session where we first spoke about vegetarianism. Daphne or Anton didn’t bring it up, I asked them how what we ate fit into Patanjali’s limbs of yoga and Yama, in particular and if being vegetarian was a virtue we should aspire to. Anton answered that question for me and spoke very briefly about why most yogis are vegetarian. Apart from the apparent : Ahimsa towards animals angle, there is another theory or philosophy around being vegetarian. And that is about Prana : of this life force energy that sustains all consciousness in this world. Every being on this earth has prana in them, that keep them going. This prana, is quite essentially the reason for life on this planet. And dead things : meat : have no prana in them. So why would you waste space in you by eating and filling yourself up with things that do not add to the reserve of Prana you have? Fresh fruits and vegetables have the most prana and that is why the traditional yogic diet includes raw food and vegetables and milk. Fresh Milk is known to be one of the best sources of prana.

[ I promise to write more about my recent obsession with Prana in later posts]

We all rushed back to our rooms to get fresh. After a nice shower, I walked towards the dining area. Abing is a beautiful property overlooking the rice fields. It’s small and built for yoga retreats and such. We were occupying the whole resort and had the entire place to ourselves. I think that was what made it so nice as well. We would always have tea (ginger and lemon) and coffee pots boiling on the stove. The meals were minimal but sufficient. It was vegetarian (eggs were included) and only on the last day did they cook chicken and fish for us. I followed a vegetarian diet while I was there, including the last day, and it did my body a lot of good. I was trying to detox after returning from London and Cebu, but wasn’t being too successful at it. And the retreat did exactly what my body needed - by the end of 5 days, it was back to feeling light and nice. The dining space was three wooden tables and that became the center of all banter during our stay at Abing. After our morning practice we would all rush to attack the breakfast, after our evening practice we would gather around, sipping tea and talking about life, work, and yoga. The group was 18 people. Most folks were from Singapore. Loads of people from the studio that I practice at. Even though I had seen them around, I hadn’t really spoken to any of them. This retreat was a great way to get to know new people. I think it’s also the first time I’ve done something like that. Going away with a bunch of strangers. It was a good experience and quite refreshing actually to talk to people you don’t know at all.

I mean, I love my luxury holidays, but maybe i now get why people stay at hostels and love that experience as well.

The schedule for the next few days was something like this :

7:30 - 10:00 AM : Morning Practice

10:00 - 11:00 AM : Breakfast

11:30 AM - 3:00 PM : Free time

3:00 - 7:30 PM : Lectures and evening practice.

7:30 - 9:00 PM : Dinner

So we were always done with dinner by 9:30 and ready to go to bed by 10! I would crash by 10:00/10:30 on most days. I switched off my phone and even though there was wifi, I didn’t want to connect to the internet and that was quite liberating as well. Absolute social media detox. So yea, I would sleep from 10 to 6:30 the next morning and then go grab tea and some fruits before the morning practice.

At 11:00, we used to all take the shuttle to go to town. Ubud town, is just something else. I was already in love with the place, but the drive to the town and just the vacation-y atmosphere in the town itself was so nice. And lazy, maybe that’s what I liked about it, the laid back lifestyle that Bali boasts of and that Ubud triumphs in! I went to town on all the days! Didn’t eat lunch on most days because I would’ve hogged at breakfast, like I’d never seen toast and butter and jam, and so would invariably be too full to eat anything for lunch. But I did try out a lot of coffee places and was quite impressed with the coffee culture of Ubud. The coffee in all the places, was nice and creamy and thick and so full of flavour. Maybe that’s another reason I never had space for lunch, because I stuffed my face with Lattes. Haha.

I shopped. A lot. Need to do something about this addiction! But I am a really well behaved person when it comes to shopping in Singapore. Partly also because it’s just too expensive! So when I am out (India mostly) I go berserk! Exactly what I did in Ubud. Haha. My purchases includes loads of yoga clothes (they are all made of bamboo cotton and you just feel like living in them), aroma essences, incense sticks, oil burners, and even a cake stand. Haha. So yea, Thankfully Bali is not expensive and it didn’t burn a hole in my already tattered wallet ( I blame it all on London)

We would slather ourselves with a lot of sunscreen and step out to go to the city and would usually come back sweating and exhausted. But still ready for our evening schedule. I always took a shower before the evening practice and lectures. Would've died with that heat otherwise. The evening lectures dealt with the other limbs of yoga followed by our evening practice.

We then spoke about Niyama. While Yama was to do with how we behave in relation to the world and others, Niyama speaks about how we relate to ourselves. The five observances are :

1. Shaucha : cleanliness of body and mind
2. Santhosha : to be happy with what one has.
3. Tapas : austerity and mental control
4. Svadhyaya : Studying the vedic scriptures to know more about the divine and the self
5. Ishwarapranidhana : surrendering yourself to God.

Of these we spoke at length about Shaucha : cleansing your body (Anton’s lecture) and the methods to do it. Some very doable, some that looked tough, but achievable, and some that I wouldn't even attempt. But the basic ones are awesome to include in your daily life. We especially, as a group, tried to learn how to do the Nauli. Nauli is a method to cleanse your abdominal region by circular movement of the abdominal muscles. Google it.

When Anton demonstrated it to us, our mouths were wide open ! We were like, OMG, is this even real, how is this man, making his stomach disappear. But, he assured us that we could do it. And so we all tried. And only one achieved the feat. Imagine, pushing up your stomach, creating a hollow where your belly used to be. It’s not merely holding your breath and sucking in your stomach, but it’s really making-your-stomach-disappear. Literally.

Now if this wasn't shocking, he showed us how to then, bring back a portion of your stomach and then use your breath to churn your stomach using that portion as your churner thereby massaging the body. Imagine. Just imagine that. This one we didn't really practice, because, well you have to pull your stomach up before you bring a portion of it down, and most of us were gagging with step number 1, as if someone is pushing a bunch of seaweed down our throats.

But Niyama was an interesting bit to talk about. Very entertaining. And Antons lectures always involve light banter and have unbelievable stories (‘Ripley’s Believe It Or Not’ kinds) weaved into them. Daphnes lectures are more earthy. They make you feel like you are in a different universe altogether, listening to everything that makes life go on. When she speaks you feel as though you are in a trance, and you can’t but help listen to her beautiful voice, explaining how things in this world works. I have often thought of her as the perfect Krishna, with a patient calming voice explaining to Arjuna the laws of nature and human life.

Our Asana practices were intense, pretty hardcore, except two beautiful yin classes that we had on two evenings. Oh how I miss Anton’s Saturday and Sunday Yin classes. When he started teaching yin one evening, I could feel my body go like “finally, I feel at home”. As he instructed us from asana to asana in Yin at the retreat, I could feel myself relax more and more into the mat and into the ground beneath us. 

I tried Universal Mandala cross mats practice for the first time and it was quite interesting. We rotated on crossed mats and it was very exciting and dynamic. I felt like i was in a playground. And weirdly even though the practice was physically demanding, with crazy lunges and veerabhadrasanas and painful plank and side planks, it left me with a Yin like feeling. I was still energised and raring to go after the practice (Yin usually puts you in a “want to go to sleep” mood), but my mental state of mind was calm and peaceful like Yin.  

I am a vinyasa fan anyway, so I thought the asana practice at the retreat were perfect for me. I would have cried if you made me do Hatha in such a beautiful place I think. We also did Ashtanga, (also Anton!) and this time we did the full primary series. The one I do at Hom in Singapore, is an abridged version of the primary series and this was my first time doing the whole sequence. It is pretty intense. But lovely nevertheless.

In fact one day, Daphne led us through her regular vinyasa practice (not universal mandala), 90 mins, and it killed us. Really. And I used to love going to Daphne’s flow classes at 7 AM on Mondays at Hom, and was very excited about doing an early morning practice with her, so was everyone else in the group. But 15 minutes into it and we were already groaning. I think a few of us literally groaned loudly and Daphne chuckled and said “So, now do you miss me and my Monday morning flows?” Haha.

On one of the nights, after dinner, we watched a movie called ‘Enlighten Up!’. It’s about this journalist called Nick, who goes on a 6 month journey discovering yoga. The director of the movie, herself a yogini, wanted to see if yoga is something that can change a person and his view on life. So she started this project with Nick, where he would be introduced to different styles of yoga and different philosophies around it, meeting various teachers in the US and also travel to Mysore, Pune and Vrindavan in India to explore not only the land where ashtanga and hatha yoga was born, but also to dig deeper into the divinity aspect of yoga.


It was an interesting watch. I, personally, was not expecting a life changing experience. And that is what happened. It did bring about a physical change in his life, he finally achieved the headstand, after 6 months, and in a way it did also bring about an emotional change, he realised and appreciated (i guess) the importance of his mother and his family in general. But there were no “self realisation” or “I’ve learnt the secret of life” or “I have found a path to the divine” moments. He in fact was grappling with why his asana practice should lead to a life changing experience anyway. What if he was a normal guy, living in a modern world and didn’t want to let go of his materialistic way of life and he did find peace and calm in his practice, and he was happy with just that much. Why did this journey necessarily have to end at this Samadhi that Patanjali’s yoga sutras described.

Fair enough I guess. Sometimes my point of view about my asana practice as well. It keeps me happy, sane, peaceful and calm. And I am satisfied with just that. Also keeps my body in shape, what else do i need right? But there are a few moments when I want to be in control of my senses and extend this peace to all aspects of my life. Sometimes I just want to be and not do. And be fine with that nothingness. The toughest asana in yoga they say is the ones that requires you sit still. It’s not the ones that require your body to be all tangled up, but the ones where you simply have to sit straight without moving. Dandasana is one such pose. Not being fidgety and having that patience and calmness of mind to just be, without doing, is what I want to achieve from my practice of yoga. It is when you want to achieve that, you need to extend yoga to beyond the mat and that’s where dharana and dhyana kicks in.

I drift again. So the movie was pretty interesting. And like everything else in life, a thousand people have thousand different interpretations of what yoga should be. Good watch.

So in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, the first four limbs are to do with the external body (Bahiranga) and the 5th one is where the transition from external to internal starts taking place. The last three limbs are to do with the internal subtle body (Antaranga)

Pranayama, the last of the external or gross body parts of Patanjali’s ashtanga. Pranayama traditionally means extending your breath. But the subtle meaning is to extend this life force energy that keeps us going : Prana. The apparent form of this Prana is the breath. The Bhagwat Gita talks about Pranayama as two words : Pran and Ayam : meaning the stopping breath to go into a trance. There are many many methods of Pranayama, the most famous one, thanks to it’s use by Hatha yoga, is Kapalbhati : which literally means ‘shining of the skull’.

As we start moving inwards, we talk about Pratyahara : or withdrawing your sense from the external world. At this stage, the sense : touch, smell, sight, taste and hearing : are controlled by the yogi and they don’t affect his behaviour. A huge part of Pratyahara is controlling your breath or Pranayama, by controlling its flow and harmonizing it, we can then gradually severe any connection from external senses and stimuli. Pratyahara is again coined from two sanskrit words : Prati and Ahara. Prati means food or anything we take from the outside and Ahara means “against” or “away”. When combined the two words mean, drifting from away or against anything we take from the outside (our senses).

We then move to Dharana and Dhyana. These are to do with concentration and meditation, respectively. Dharana is concentrating your mind or chitta on a physical object or the divine. And Dhyana is undisturbed flow of thought towards the object of meditation. One of the main goals of yoga, according to Patanjali’s yoga sutra, is “Chitta Vritti Nirodhah” : controlling the mind or mastering the activities of the mind. In the traditional sense, the practitioner, concentrates his mind and sight between his eyebrows in Dharana. The mind concentrated between the eyebrows begins to lose all location and focuses on the watching itself.

Dhyana, some say, is an awareness of oneself and all your surroundings, body, mind and senses, while remaining aloof from it. In Dhyana, unlike in Dharana, the meditator is unaware of and not conscious of the act of meditation. She/he is only aware of their existence and the object of meditation : in other words, they are detached from the material world. In the final stages of dhyana, the meditator becomes one with the object of meditation: thereby attaining samadhi. In Samadhi, you are conscious, but your mind is still and concentrated.

Some say it is the stage of enlightenment. I don’t know of anyone who has attained it and Anton and Daphne said they are a little far from it as well. Haha. So no first person accounts of how that feels.

I realised while I was writing, that i began talking about the lectures more than the practice itself. But that is exactly how the retreat was, there was so much more than just our asana practice. By the end of it, I was feeling absolutely beautiful. The chinese massage I went for at Tai Ji Wellness Center, helped soothe the aching bones and nerves after an intense practice. We spoke about a lot of other things in our lectures: from Chakras to Nadis to Gunas. About how food affects our behaviours. We learnt how to regulate our breath using different breathing techniques : nadi shodana or alternate breathing, surya and chandra bhedana (Single Nostril breathing).

In our meditation session, 10 minutes, I  was somehow chanting the gayatri mantra and weirdly thinking about Krishna talking to Arjuna on a chariot in the middle of the war. Daphne later told me that I was swaying in a rhythmic movement during those 10 minutes. Loads of folks slept off, there were times when my mind drifted away to thinking random thoughts and I had to consciously pull it back.

Did I mention my immense improvement with getting into a headstand? I am very close to doing it on my own, without the support of the wall. At the retreat we did it everyday. Although Daphne and Anton were there to help support me, that fact that i didn't have to scissor my legs against a wall and had to use my core to life my legs yup, was a huge deal for me.

We also had an intense backbends session led by Anton. Where he taught us the basics about backbends and how to get into them safely. I, did a dropback back bend. With Daphne's standing in front of me, but i did it on my own! And then came back up! I'm just mighty thrilled about it. Need to keep practicing it to be able to do it more and without the assurance of a teacher standing in front of you to hold you in case you fall!

On the last day we finished off with Daphne’s Yin. It was a 90 minutes class and just a few asanas, but we had to hold them for a lot longer, definitely 5 minutes, if not more. In this session, we were blindfolded. I usually have my eyes closed during Yin, so I thought this wouldn’t be too different. But the difference was this : when the teacher asks you to get into an asana, and you don’t understand the instruction right away, your immediate impulse is to look around and see what the others in the class are doing. But with being blindfolded, you had no option but to figure things out for yourself. By the end of the class, I was in a trance. I love yin, but this was just an absolutely new experience. When we started the session, it was daylight, and after 90 minutes of being blindfolded, we opened our eyes to see darkness all around us, the night had fallen completely and it was a surreal moment. 


We meditated for a bit after that. And I was already in a zone, but after the meditation, I was suddenly overcome with emotion. There was this intense feeling of losing something and letting go. I don’t know what i was letting go off, or who I was losing, but I felt myself say a goodbye in my heart. And as that feeling left my heart along with that person or memory, i cried. The lights were dimmed and there were candles around us, so i don’t think anyone saw. For a full 10 mins, I sat there on my mat, in the silence and darkness and cried silently for whatever it was that I had lost. And then we switched on the lights and tried not to talk to anyone, because I think everyone was in that kind of a mood, so we quietly rolled up our mats, picked up our water bottles and walked towards our rooms from the Shala.

Did I mention the stars in Ubud? The night sky is filled with stars. It literally lights up the sky, tiny millions of stars scattered all over. I got reminded of the sight from Leh, when i’d visited there, the sky was similar to what I saw herein Ubud, a little more clearer that Ubud even! For a long time, on the last night, I just stared at these stars with a cup of ginger lemon tea in my hands. I won’t say I have not experienced such peace before, i have, but that night was just another one of those surreal peaceful, “I am here, this is me, and this is now” moments. One of the things Daphne and Anton spoke about throughout the retreat, was to focus on the Now. Not the future or the past, but now. Most of the times, in fact always, our minds are too busy concentrating on what was and what will be, how many times have we caught ourselves thinking about where we are at present and what we are doing. That, they said is the cause of man’s misery. To not be living in the moment.  I had that “This is the moment” feeling as I sat down for dinner that last night at the retreat.

But that was the last of the peaceful-ness i encountered that evening. After that was fun, laughter and gaiety. I’d mentioned earlier that the resort staff prepared chicken and fish for the group on the last night, to celebrate. So folks were very happy. Some blamed the non-veg for the excitement that followed. But I think (considering I didn’t even eat the meat) it was just a feeling of pure bliss and happiness around the table. We all were just pulling each others legs, narrating stories, talking about crazy experiences, giving each other nicknames (the one who achieved the Nauli, was rechristened ‘Nauli’). So yea, basically madness like that. We laughed, slapped the table hard and laughed more, until tears flowed down our faces and we were left gasping for breath. I hadn’t laughed like that in a long time, with a random bunch of people, talking about even randomer things, I found my joy. Pure unadulterated joy in just being there, in the now.

The next day was a three hour universal mandala cross mats practice. Very very very tiring, But it had meditation and pranayama built into it, so it was well rounded like that, but still that doesn't take away the fact that the practice was still very asana heavy and crazy tough. One crazy group picture later, people started leaving for the airport. My flight was at 7 in the evening, so I could chill. I had another massage booked in my room. After a leisurely breakfast, and a beautiful massage and shower, I boarded the cab that took me to the airport. I had another one of those, ‘I am definitely going to come back to Ubud’ moments as we crossed the rice fields.

I am usually very upset when a trip ends, because it means going back to regular life and work. But for the first time, I was ok with being back. Maybe it was because I had the trip to India planned for later that week, or maybe it was just because i had learned and realised and experienced so many things at this retreat. My mind and heart were literally at peace. I know that is true, because loads of folks walked up to me in office the next day and said ‘you look very calm and in a zen mode’. Must have been true, because i was feeling it for sure.

My asana practice continues, so does my learning about life, the mind, body and soul. I have started a new experiment with being vegetarian and weirdly, haven’t craved meat at all. I am reading up more about how fresh fruits and vegetables have more prana than meat and if I am convinced and it makes complete sense to me, I might even give up meat for a long period of time. I love my meat and this is extremely difficult for me but like I said, I haven’t craved it at all. But then, I also haven’t been enticed with my mother’s mutton cutlets or biryani.

I can’t believe I am ending a post about a yoga retreat with “Mutton Cutlets and Biryani”. Haha.

I am glad i signed up for this retreat. It hasn’t changed me completely, neither did I expect it to, but it’s made me understand myself a little more and hopefully, I am now one small step closer to being that higher self.