Samasthiti

I don't think I have spoken about the anusara invocation on this blog. Since Emily and Nanna, my teachers in Bali, were from the Anusara lineage, we would recite the anusara invocation often during the training and it was Emily's default shavasana song as well. It is a beautiful chant to surrender to. I found myself chanting it on my ride to the airport from Jati homestay. And it has stayed with me since. I was wearing a red maala on the last day and had rubbed the Joy oil that Emily dabs on our palms into the tassels of the maala. Scents are my thing.  guess they are everyone's thing actually. A whiff of a scent can take you back on time to moments, people, places, feelings. So throughout the cab ride and even on the plane, I would pick up the tassels from the maala to get a whiff of the Joy oil and chant the anusara invocation in the back of my head. That's the power of certain mantra, after a point in time, they become a part of you. You don't even have t...

The group browsing through our manuals and schedules on our first day, we had 28 more days to go! Sigh. The lovely walkway from the main reception area to Lotus  Flower Rangoli on our first day Me, doing what i do best, taking a million notes Very delayed this post. Wonder if I'll remember all that goodness at Locavore! Mie and I spent 3 hours eating and talking, the food was exquisite. The restaurant had an open kitchen, so you could see the chefs and their team work. The staff was so attentive and so knowledgeable about the food they served, not as if they were reading out a menu, but literally like they'd prepared it themselves as they told us what each dish had. So lovely the whole experience. My favorite thing was this oxtail dish, that had the exact same flavours as my grandmom's mutton curry and it transported me back in time. Then there was this tomato sorbet dish, with clear tomato soup. I never take pictures of my food, but Mie took load...

The lotus in the pond right outside our shaala. That's the title of the blog, simply because that's the mood I was in the last few days. In some way we all were. It doesn't really make sense since it was exam week and we were supposed to be freaking out. But Emily had refused to call them 'exams', so in our heads we were very relaxed about it as well. On Tuesday, our last day off before we got done, i woke up really late, because i'd slept really late. carried my notes and notebook and handouts and laptop down to the breakfast area. Made myself a lovely cup of chai in my mug and sat down to work. I knew I was doing Yin. But unlike the last time around, my theme wasn't flowing to me. I knew the asanas i wanted to do. I was definitely putting my group through anahatasana, that painful crazy little asana that i makes me winch every time i come into it (still), that was definitely in there. Then there was child's pose, of course, how is any yin clas...

गणेशा  Yes. And I can not believe it. I'm here in Singapore. Sitting on my couch. After a day's work and a yoga class. And I'm dazed. Overwhelmed by all these shiny lights. Still adjusting, it's so hard, only because a huge part of me doesn't want to adjust to this 'reality'. So since I'm at the end, I 'll have to talk about the last week in reverse. My friend Andrea was here for a day. She arrived really late on Friday night, it was Saturday early morning rather. I had class on Saturday, so she went and did an art class (her painting is beautiful) and we had dinner at this beautiful place : Fair Warung Bale , which is a actually run by a youth foundation and the food was lovely, we treated ourselves to two lovely cheesecakes at Anomali after that. And walked back slowly enjoying the streets of Ubud. She left at 8 AM on Sunday and I said bye to her before heading out to class at 6. On Sunday, we did a practice teaching session, where all 30 ...

I love star gazing. If you let me be under the sky, I can stare up at it for a very very very long time. I might start humming if I'm alone. I might start talking about something absolutely random, go off on a tangent most times, or I might just stand and stare. There's that poem right, I can't get the name for some reason, what is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare ; or something like that. Star-gazing, gives you that opportunity to just stand and stare. There's something about that. :) I remember, when we were young, mom, dad, Aiyappa and me went on a road trip through Kashmir - Leh - Ladakh, and we stopped at Dras for the night and the sky from there was such a brilliant sight. I could just watch the sky full of stars the whole night. That image has stayed with me all these years and will be with me for the rest of my life I think. Today was a tough day at class.  We were coming out of an off-day. I was super tired. I didn't realis...

That's the question I asked myself after I finished the second part of my day today. And I didn't really know the answer. So today is New Moon and the people ofBali consider the day to be very sacred. There are all kinds of ceremonies and pujas that are performed in the temples and our teacher Emily suggested that it is a very holy and auspicious day for us to visit the water temples or Tirtha Empul . And I really wanted to do it, not because of today being an auspicious day to visit a temple, but also because it's supposed to be a lovely temple and i wanted to go check it out. I don't remember when, but Emily also spoke about a high priestess in Ubud who works with water to purify people. Her name is Ida Resi Alit and she a Hindu priestess, you can read more about her here . And a couple of us really wanted to go meet her. The group started off with 8 people, then trimmed down to 7, and then finally settled at 6. The 4 of us ( from the pottery workshop) and two of ...

I know, i know, I promised that I would write about Octavio. But I just need to write about today and will write about Octavio and his music classes at some point in this blog. So it's been two weeks (and a little more....) and today was our second day off. We all needed it. To be honest the second week did go by really fast even though it was Andrea and philosophy. Like I've said before, Andrea and his style of teaching philosophy is just absolutely beautiful. Almost like he held us all in one big embrace and slowly introduced us to these concepts. Even though I'm pretty well versed with the Bhagwat Gita and relatively ok with  Patanjali's Sutras it was just lovely to go along with Andrea on that journey and then there is something about sitting with 29 other people and feeling their energies and feeling their confusions at times, and also feeling their "omg wow" moments with these ancient ancient scriptures. His classes ended yesterday and the whole class w...