The art of letting go...

That by the way is...

what goes by the name of "Camel Pose" or "Ustrasana" in the Bikram Yoga class. Granted I photoshopped it way past my normal limits but the fact that Jr took the HDR snaps and my dad volunteered to hold a white Dhoti behind me to take this photograph meant that yours truly should put in at least a little more effor tinto making this photo memorable for the family!

What has all this to do with the "letting go"?

Anyone who knows me (even through the blog) probably can figure out by now that once my mind is set on doing something, I will keep trying till I figure it out to my satisfaction. Maybe I am obsessive compulsive to a greater degree than a normal person but not enough to be called OCD?! Do not know but it is not easy for me to let go of things. A shortcoming that has helped and hurt me in my personal and professional life. A trait that I consciously work on to match the situation at hand.

Yoga is one of the places where this helped and hurt me. Again this is "me" that has to do with the helping and hurting part and not the "yoga". It is very fashionable these days to bash or trash Bikram Yoga or Bikram Choudury but if I ever get to see that man in person, will prostrate myself at his feet for giving me a second chance in life. That said...

The day we went for our first yoga class, we did not know that we would get hooked to this thing the way we did. It has been a year and a half and my MIL and me still go attend at least 4 classes a week. She attends 5 or 6! Again, see what I mean by letting go?

Why would your attendance matter? What if you went there every day and just sat there most of the time? What if you had 50% attendance but you gave it your 100% every one of those 90 minutes in that hot room? What if..  ? What if..  ?

Well, I did go 250+ days in the first year and thought it was something to be proud of. I also knew that exactly one year into this practice my waist sized dropped an obvious 4+ inches, my weight went down by 17+ pounds and my average sick days came down from 10 a month to less than 3 a month and overall felt happy or at least had the ability to feel less sad in situations where my formal self would have gone into a depression of sorts.

The last six months have seen a drop in attendance. Best I have managed is 5 times  a week and that was 3 weeks out of the last 20 or so weeks. The rest of the weeks have seen 3 or 4 days attendance on a regular basis. This was mainly because of trips to Austin, adjusting to eating times (you don't want to eat anything 2 hours before a yoga class), sickness picked up from sharing the air with a bunch of people in the confines of airplanes and hanging out in airports which should probably rate at the top for the worlds most unhygeinic places.

Still give it my very best in every class and do watch for my limitations. These days I do sit down every now and then to get my breathing back under control, even if I am in the first row. A yogi's got to do what a yogi's got to do, right?  If you cannot breathe right, no point in doing the pose. There is NO benefit.

In the process of adjusting to the reduced attendance (which people tell me doesn't matter) and being a more tamed and timid self than the hardcore type A personality who would push himself just past his limits on every pose, there has been a new found realization.

Yoga is not about being flexible or strong or balancing the two. Yoga is not just about marrying your heart and your lungs. Yoga is not just about having your body one with your mind and breathing.

Yoga is about being comforable with where you are.

If you can blank out your mind between poses to catch your breath in the dead body pose when the instructor says in a soothing voice "Relax your body, relax your mind, let your body settle down into the ground with the help of gravity, let your spine touch the floor from your neck to your tailbone so you can recharge your body for the next pose", then it should be possible to do this with your mind everytime you are unhappy with yourself for not pushing yourself past your limits!

For the longest time tried to "focus" on something while doing the poses and found it to be incredibly difficult. Now there is a new trick. Try to completely defocus everything. Squint your eyes a little bit like you are trying to find the hidden picture in a "steregraphic image" and having everything around you become dull, including the teachers voice to a bare minimum and that seems to help a lot.

Yoga is about "letting go"!

Letting go of the inhibition to wipe your sweat, letting go of everything in your mind so you can completely defocus from everything, letting go of your worst fears (which mostly involve falling down to the ground in those moments). . .

Actually went and talked to one of the teachers who has been teaching for 10+ years and told her "I used to ace these poses and now I seem to have gone backward and at the same time there are poses which were so difficult for me where there has definitely been an improvement. Also seem to have less energy these days so don't know if it is my work or the yoga".

She looked at me for a few seconds, paused and said "Happens to all of us. We all have our good days and our bad days. Also different parts of our bodies adjust over time. Your muscles that were once weak are now strong and that means relatively the strongest muscles that you used to get by class so far are not the strongest anymore. They need to improve new. Just keep doing what you can and you will find out what you can do with your body and mind!"

The simplicity of her logic and her sincerity made me realize that Yoga's greatest benefit is learning to accept your limitations and work with them!

These days I go into the room with no expectations, do what I can, sit down when I cannot and try my best the next day without any misgivings from the past experience.

Do not know if mentality will translate to a more peaceful personal and professional life, time will tell...

ps. Reposting this because all the formating in the previous version of this post was messed up on the WYSIWYG editor. Couldn't let go! As you can tell.. I still have issues with letting go!

A year of Yoga...

It was this week, last year that the MIL and myself entered the Bikram Yoga studio in San Jose to sign up for a "10 days for $20" trial deal.

The logic?

We either survive the first 10 days in which case we continue or we spent 20 bucks to find out that this stuff is not for us!

5 days in and we were hooked for not one or two, but a whole host of reasons to the point where we were thinking "Why did we not try this before?"

A year has rolled by and

- I weigh close to 140 lbs now. A weight that was last recorded in early 2002 when I was still exercising, could do a Cha-Cha-Cha on a dance floor with effortless ease and had a stomach like a wolf! Cutting back from 157 lbs, this is a welcome change.

- Have had 4 sick days in the last year since starting Yoga. Mostly due to extraneous causes like inhaling strong chemicals, getting things stuck in my teeth etc.. The body's resistance to germs that the kids or sick co-workers bring has improved significantly. There were almost a dozen sickness events per year in the previous 6 years (specially since the little one was born)

- My ability to stay calm at work in situations where yours truly used to turn red in the ears and openly express instant displeasure at the state of affairs and earned a nickname "The General" has also improved significantly. Can control my head much better these days. Can be the voice of reason and calm now. Also listen more and talk less. Something that every manager has to work hard to do.. which happens to be a side effect of doing yoga. That is a "Win Win", no?!

Last but not least, wife has a "headache" and that means no hanky panky? No big deal. Go sit in the lotus pose, meditate and sleep like a baby! This used to bother me as well, but not anymore. There is a willingness in the head, across the day, to work with the cards you are dealt with and make the most of it.

The kids came to the "Kids Yoga Class" yesterday and Jr. did very well. The little one just lay on the mat and watched others for the last half hour but given her age and attention span, it will take some time for her to get used to this (don't want to force anything on an opinionated girl!). Today both of them were more than wiling to click a few pictures of me doing poses from the floor series.

So.. here they are..

San refuses to acknowledge the six pack in "Six Pack Sundar" but the kids definitely do.

Jr. even knew what a six pack was (apparently "The dairy of a Wimpy Kid" book has a chapter where kids draw six packs on their abdomens with their mother's mascara!) and said "Yes, I can see it!"..

Thanks to Bikram Choudhury, Michelle Vennard and BYSJ! You have given me quite a comeback!

The Yoga journey continues!

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2012 - A great start !!!

It is no secret that the biggest change in this household is that Daddy is now doing okay when it comes to being healthy!

When my MIL and myself started doing Yoga we set ourselves many personal goals. My personal challenge was to do the standing head to knee pose before March 10th, exactly within a year after starting yoga. Teachers told me that some folks take two or three years to do this and some who are strong and flexible to start with, can pull it off a few weeks or months after starting Yoga.

We had an emotional farewell class to the old yoga studio at BYSJ yesterday evening. It was an event we will not forget! 70 people came to celebrate the closing of the old studio which enables starting 2012 in a huge new studio right next door! It was an emotional farewell as this place is a temple of sorts, where people make their dreams come true and push themselves to bring out the best in them. Michelle, the owner of BYSJ was the one teaching the class and she coaxed, cajoled and blackmailed in her sweet voice, the 70 people in that class, to do every pose without sitting down. She even managed to tell us old stories of the creation of this studio during the breathing breaks! Somehow in the middle of all this, managed to do the pose that has been eluding me all this time..and once you know how to do it once, voila, you can do it again for a photo session in your backyard!

2012 is indeed being ushered in with a sense of accomplishment!

While showing the kids the pose they also wanted me to show them the other two standing poses as the little one clicked the snaps! Seriously, she is turning into one fine photographer..

The best gift to oneself is a sound body and a sound mind. The family is now convinced about the sound body part. They have not yet confirmed the sound mind part. In fact they think Daddy Narayanan is seriously getting unsound. More on that later..

For now, this is a happy blogger and a happy blog!

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Lock the knee among other things...

This week was an up and down week thanks to the stomach bug. When you make an all out attempt to fight it, sometimes you take two steps forward and one step back.

Friday was again a wash, but with enough sleep and some determination got back to normal today.

We did go do our daily exercise and to add to it, we did some photographing / demos in the backyard to show the kids a few poses.

Toe Stand (Padangustasana)

Standing Bow pose (Dandayamana dhanurasana)

Eagle pose (Garudasana / Garurasana)

You have all seen my stomach from the past. Note that except for the little flabs on the bottom at the hip the rest of the fat is gone. Do see that most male teachers have this little flab just above the waistline even if they have a 6 pack abdomen. Maybe it is harder to get rid of or it is not a bad thing? Don't know. For now, not complaining because it is possible to "suck the belly in" when the teacher shouts "stomach, stomach, stomach, suck it in!" and the stomach actually reacts to the command from the brain!

Awkward pose (Utkatasana)

This is one challenging pose and again it was not easy to keep the hands straight. Then one of favorite morning teachers taught us to push the hands out and then bring them back to "lock the triceps"! Another new concept.. We used to wonder "How to lock it? What do they mean lock it?" We were going through the motion but the triceps were not "locking". It appears that for a lot of the instructions to kick in, certain parts of the body have to get to a minimum shape and certain muscles require a minimum strength. At least that is my personal experience.

The kids actually did the photographing this morning. Originally wanted to come back just after yoga and do this, but we decided to do this after breakfast and an hours break.

The little one has the intensity and the focus, but she is not a perfectionist. If anything, she is going to come to Yoga class with me when she grows up! That is for sure.

And now for "Lock the knee"..

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Hope that helps those who are still learning how to lock the knee. A teacher confirmed that I am now doing it right!

Good luck to all those budding yogis out there..

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Bring your kids to Yoga day!

Why not?

BYSJ had a special event today to introduce the little ones to Yoga and to have them see what their parents do in the Yoga room..

Both Jr. and the little one were good sports. They said "if it is hot and sweaty and I cannot do it, will sit down okay?"

Told them that is exactly what daddy also does in the room when it gets to be difficult.

They did great!

We have only one out of focus picture (thanks to San who needs a photography lesson even for an iPhone) but the studio took a lot more pictures. Hopefully we get to see them in some of the pictures.

It was a fun experience to show them the exercises in a not so hot room with one set of exercises, but kept them going.

Hope they make it a regular event..

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