Be Present.

(Saturday sky in Singapore as i write this post, it's just.... perfect) 

I knew sometime in January this year that I wanted to gift myself a yoga teacher training. Take a month off to go learn about  yoga. I wanted to do it just for the love of yoga. I have no intentions of becoming a teacher anytime soon, if ever. I spoke to few of my teachers, read extensively on the style of yoga I'd like to practice, where I'd like to spend 30 days, how expensive is it.. I read a lot, spent hours looking up schools and eventually settled on a school called High Vibe Yoga. They're located in Ubud in Bali and the lead teacher is Emily Kuser. One of my all-time favourite yoga teachers, Leigh, trained with Emily and had only great things to say. I wasn't looking for a Bikram style practice and wanted to select a school that didn't treat yoga as a business and High Vibe was exactly that. Leigh spoke highly of Emily and her philosophy around yoga and I just knew. Like with all matters of the heart, when you know, you know. and I knew with High Vibe. But I continued the search. And the reason was mostly because I wanted to do it in India. How could I, being Indian, not do a teacher training in India, the land of yoga?

Trust me, I searched and searched and did not connect with anything that came up. And somehow everything was just so expensive and i wondered if it was too westernised. The most compelling reason for me to do a teacher training in India would have been the authenticity, but everything I read just didn't make the cut. Something didn't seem right about all those hundred thousand schools and teachers. And I found myself going back to the High Vibe website everyday. Like I said before, i knew, but then I also wanted to be doubly sure. So then finally after talking to Leigh one last time, I submitted the application. When they got back to me saying I was accepted and had to pay the deposit to secure my space in the training, i couldn't stop smiling the whole day. And ever since then, everything, all my plans, ideas, goals etc have been categorised into two buckets :  "before the training" and "after the training".

And now, I'm two weeks away and my excitement knows no bounds. But, I'm also freaking out. Majorly. I doubled up on my physical practice, I've been meditating and I've been reading about yoga and meditation, being a teacher, signing up for a training and loads of other stuff. Maybe, I'm overdoing it. Maybe. So I've decided to take it slow in the next weeks and rest my body a bit so it's not exhausted before I even get to Bali. I've finally started making a list of stuff that I should be ready with : the mundane stuff that is : clothes, mats, books, notebooks/journals and all that. I'm spending time with my teachers, learning about what to expect, if anything, how to keep myself nourished and healthy while I'm there. Everyone says it will be physically and emotionally exhausting. But spiritually extremely fulfilling. One of my teachers, told me to keep a journal and write (without interruptions or  proof-reading) everything I feel and everything I'm thinking about. I love to write, everything that I can't say, I write. So I'm looking forward to doing it.

I delayed asking my boss for leave. For a long time. But when I did, it was a lovely and easy conversation and he was thrilled for me! All of my yogi friends are super-excited, all of my non-yogi friends think I'm going to renounce all material pleasures and live in a cave after this, so they're very skeptical. All of my Indian friends/acquaintances shake their heads with disapproval when I say "I'm doing it in Bali" because according to them, I should've ideally done it in India!

Now, 30 days in Ubud. I won't lie. That was 5%.... ok 10% of the reason I selected High Vibe. I think I've written about Ubud in this blog when I spoke about the Routes of Yoga retreat I went for in May this year. I love Ubud. The minute I was there, I connected with it, so much that i wanted to live there. Forever. If I ever end up opening a bakery, one of my branches will be Ubud for sure. That's a given. I've lived in so many houses and in so many towns in India growing up, that sometimes I feel disconnected with the idea of a "permanent home" or "one place/home" that I grew up in. But when I was in Ubud, i felt like I'd come home. There is just something about that place. And  frankly, it's not just me, all of my yogi (and a few non-yogi) friends and teachers love Ubud. There is immense goodness in that place. It makes you feel light and as if something inside you has lit up, and makes you so much more giving as a person, as if you want to share everything you learn about life with everyone. That happens to me when I meet beautiful people, good people, it makes me want to do good in the world, say only good things, and feel good forever. As if, very little (if not nothing) will bother me and take that peace away. Imagine spending 30 days in that state of bliss.

This post is called 'Be Present' for various reasons. In the last year as I've grown as a yogi and as a person, the one thing I tried doing was living in the present. And as cliched as it sounds, it is not an easy thing to do. I've slowly learnt to to let go of what has happened, because I can't change it. And to not think about what's going to come, because I can't control it. And when I started doing that, i had nothing to worry about. I just had to live in the now. And realising that I'm a new me every second, that I will never be what i was the previous minute, because that time is never going to come back. It's like a river or a stream where the same water never flows twice. Even if say, that water travels the whole world and comes back to exactly that spot in 10 years, you will not be the same person anymore, you would have changed. So enjoy the now, because it's never going to come back. One of my teachers at Pure yoga, William Wong, introduced me to this beautiful way of thinking about Shavasana, the dead man's pose. Shavasana is something we end a class with:  so that your body, when lying in stillness can benefit from your physical asana-practice. And usually after Shavasana we turn onto our right side and curl up, like how a baby would inside it's mother's womb. And then you push yourself up to a seated position. Your eyes remain closed throughout this transition. So William said to us, "think of Shavasana as leaving behind everything that has happened, all your judgement about the past; and think of turning to your side and assuming the embryo position as rebirth, where you treat everything that is about to happen as a new experience, with no prejudices". And that is such a powerful thought. I'm dying and being reborn everyday, after every practice, so why should I carry around all this baggage from the past and expectations for the future?

Yesterday I spoke to a colleague at work, who is also a yoga teacher. I wanted to learn about how I should be preparing, and share my fears, and doubts and anxieties basically just talk to someone who had been through what I was going to experience and not sound like a complete idiot when I say "i'm scared about a), b), c)..." and she left me with one very powerful way of looking at things. She said in every posture you do, always try and remember, even if it's not something you consciously bring up, keep it at the back of your mind, that every pose has two opposing forces acting on the body. If there is lengthening on one side of  the body (and that might be the dominant action you are working towards), it is certain that in some other part of your body, something will be getting compressed. Yoga is like that, it is trying to achieve that balance between those two opposing forces. And that's true about life. And like one of my other teachers says,  if there is an inhale, there will always be an exhale.

So the one thing, I'm definitely going to gift myself this Christmas is a nice notebook that I can journal in. A nice one with a cloth cover, maybe one in pink. I'll definitely post on this blog now and then, maybe everyday, maybe not. But that journal will be an everyday thing and it's going to be just for me. Something I can bring out later in life to read, almost as if it were a book. A book about this girl, who decided to gift herself an experience to start what she thinks will be the year of changes in life and love.

Namaste.