Finally locked that damn knee!

Have been sick since my last trip back from Asia. Still managed to go on and off to the hot room as the Kaiser advice nurse told me "you are doing all the right things. electrolyes, rest.. you still have a lot of phlegm and mucous. so put on a humidifier.".. I knew which humidifier was going to be used over the weekend. 

Went to the hot room and stayed put. It did bring out a lot of the mucous. Also felt better by Sunday evening. Did a full days work today and was happy that there was no sudden urge to go curl up into a fetal position and sleep. Being tired physically and mentally doesn't help.

This evening I show up for a class by Mr. Fire, who gives me the most grief in any class, knowing I love him for it. 

Did my best locking of the knee and he picked on me right away. Then he starts giving me readings from his lockometer on the podium.. it is 99.5% , 99.8%.. 

I thought it was at 110% going to 120% and was honestly disappointed to know it was still at 99 something %. Pushed my knee back and was just about to fall forwards as usual, when the teacher looked elsewhere at another student and said "look at your own eyes" and for some strange reason I looked up to see my eyes in the mirror instead of my knee that was 99.8% and like magic, didn't fall forward.

You see, my biggest problem (my perception, not my teachers evaluation) is that I am bow legged. That means, when I do lock that knee (okay it has been only once..) or get close to it, my feet, knees and waist will NOT be on one straight line, like other folks. Maybe, eventually yoga changes bone structure and one can come out of bow leggedness, but that eventually doesnt seem like tomorrow for me.. So I always grappled with this "counter weight" concept.

If you push your knees back and they stick out on the line made by your butt and feet, you have to have a counter weight to balance that when kicking forward.. The minute I lean forward, it is game over. 

Thanks to hearing "look up" I pushed my back, up and towards the back wall ceiling and there was the "counter" to the forward force. 

It takes years to figure out something. Hopefully this gives me a starting point to get from step 1 to step 2 on this pose. 

It is heartening because 99.8% is an F for this pose. There is only two grades on this pose for part 1.

100% locked knee = D, anything less is F! 

Those five seconds were priceless! Will try to repeat this tomorrow and if sucessful  post a video of what I used to do before and what changed. 

Who knows, there may be many of my brothers and sisters out there with bow legs who might take something from my experience!

Yoga competition - No it is not nonsense

In a funny twist of fate, I ended up in a Yoga competition. There is no other way to describe it.  Bikram Yoga San Jose, where I pretty much live outside of the house, turned 14 over the weekend. To celebrate the anniversary, the teachers were asking some of the regular students who kill themselves trying to outdo their reflection in the front mirror to do a demonstration of their good poses. Raised my hand and said "I will do it".. 

Think Revathi in Mouna Ragam movie saying "I will identify the guys" without realizing the consequences... (not all of you will get that one, sorry). 

Last Saturday there was a "practice session" to co-ordinate the demonstration. So I stay back after class to see that there are a lot of teachers and two or three students and they are all practicing a 6 poses in 3 minute routine. My turn came to demonstrate and I did 4 poses from the usual sequence we do every day and then there was a blank stare. The coaches looked at me and I looked back at them going "what?"

They said "do you know any poses other than the ones we practice?" and I said "no. I have been doing the same thing over and over again for 6 years now and havent really tried to do more". They said "no problem. can you sit in lotus pose?". Answer was yes. Their eyes lit up. Can you now do a peacock pose in lotus position? 

Being a good sport (I have not tried a peacock pose since college days when we would do that pose on the edge of of writing desks in the lecture halls) did try that and failed. Finally after a few other options were tried, I also had 6 poses to show. We practiced that 3 times over 2 hours and just before I was about to go home, the teachers tell me "by the way, there is a competition in the afternoon, same day as the anniversary party. the same three minute routine, but in front of some experienced judges and an audience. why don't you do it there as well? it will be quite an experience!"

I said "will think about it. I have a Asia trip the day after the anniversary party. so it is going to be a hectic week.". What I didnt tell them was that Pongal festival was this weekend and I really wanted to eat a lot of pongal, and one cannot do demonstrations, leave alone compete with a stomach full of pongal (rice, lentiles, jaggery and clarified butter are the main ingredients.. the key ingredient being the ghee). 

Did try that routine every day after class was over and was not doing very well on the special poses. They had to be held for 5 seconds minimum and was able to do only 2-3 seconds. Had also bruised my knee in the process of trying the options during the coaching session and it was not making things any easier. 

Thursday rolls in. I am at the yoga class at 8:30 in the night. One of my coaches asks me "are you ready for the competition" and I give him the spiel about the bruised knee and not wanting to embarras myself in front of a large crowd and esteemed judges when I cannot hold things for more than 2-3 seconds. He goes "See, I see this all the time. On that day, you go up on stage and the adrenalin kicks in and you go an amazing job. You will have to try it for the experience. Why don't you try it in front of your classmates tonight?"

It is close to 10PM and teacher told the class at the end "please give Sundar 3 minutes of your time. He is going to do a bunch of poses in a competition over the weekend and he could get used to an audience!". 

After an exhausting day at work and having done yoga for 90 minutes, gave it a shot in front of 30 odd people and surprisingly my coach was right. He is usually right, and is even more correct when he doesn't make any sense. Somehow was holding things a lot longer in front of a crowd. Guess the human body is very good at making chemicals that help you in certain situations! I did it in 2 minutes and 40 seconds and the teacher said "you have time. you should hold poses longer, but ok job!"

So went home and signed up for the competition. Initially was thinking "who am I competing with?", what does this even mean? etc. etc. To me the only competition is with yesterdays Sundar, when it comes to yoga. Still, this promised to be an interesting experience. 

Yesteray afternoon, went in front of a knowledgeble yoga crowd and some big name judges and gave it a shot. It was an interesting experince. I had zero expectations of winning anything. All I wanted to see was :

1. Not fall down

2. Hold the poses for the minimum required time

3. Manage the time so that I don't rush and finish too fast or go over the 3 minute time

4. Smile through it all and have fun

Did accomplish all 4! Did it in 2 minutes 59 seconds. Used every bit of time and held poses for more than 5 seconds on all poses. They were not my best poses. Sometimes I do a better job in class, but it is interesting what happens when you are put on a spot. Your brain and body, mostly brain start doing tricks on your confidence. Muscles that usually don't shake during the poses start acting up.. 

It was the longest 3 minutes of my life. It was like that guy in the Wanted movie who has his heart beat slow down to the point where he can start seeing the wings of the fly and he can shoot their wings down.. 

For a few seconds I could not hear anything, see anything. It was just me and a point on the judges table in front of me. Everything else faded away! 

Once the three minutes was over, I felt the same thing that we feel at the end of a 90 minute class. Your body is in bits and pieces and your mind is a blank. The reset button was hit! 

Yes, why a Yoga competition? is a good question. Why not? is a good answer. If you are a regular yoga student, you should try this competition thing. It is a new "rush" and a new "high"! 

and if I can do it, anyone can do it! 

ps. I did not have my cell phone with me in the room, but BYSJ has pictures and videos on their FB page.. you can check it out there. 

Healing fast ?

It has been a week since I burned my hand with steam from the kettle. Over the last week, I have made it to the Hot Yoga room at BYSJ five times. Had to take a break twice because the boil broke and there was just intense pain anytime I tried to stretch my hand for a day and two days ago the scab came off right in the middle of the class. So I had to take a break the next day.

(that is day7, day 5, day 3, day 2 from left to right.. it was flat on day 1 and nothing was noticeable)

Contrary to advice from folks near and dear to me that going to the hot room may not be an open idea with an exposure like that, it seems to be going fine. Not sure what the normal time is for something like this to heal. It has been a long time since I had a burn injury, so not sure. So far it does not seem to be infected although I let sweat run all over it in yoga class. It stings a lot during class and I have to make a real concerted effort in some poses and I have skipped doing the Volleyball position for the half locust pose. (give my teacher a heads up so they know ahead of time that I am going to watch others during that pose). 

It has been okay so far. My teachers did not have anything to say about this one way or another. They said "if you can do it, go for it" or "make sure you always clean it nicely after class". 

In case you are wondering if it is okay to go do Hot Yoga with a burn.. there is one data point for you on the internet.. It was okay for me. 

Bad designs

Electric kettles seem to have one fundamental flaw! The cords are too short. Be it the one in the Chinese hotel or the ones you get at the local Target here, they all seem to have a cord that is at the most 18 inches long. 

This means the kettle has to be practically close to the wall or the thing doesn't sit on the base well. That also means that if someone has recently used it or if you are trying to unplug it before removing the vessel, the probability of getting burnt by the hot vessel or steam puffs still coming out every now and then is high!

My MIL has already gone through heat boils many times.. for me this is happening after a long time. 

This happened bright and early yesterday morning. So I skipped Yoga yesterday. Thought I would give it a shot today and by the time the class ended, the thing went from being flat and wrinkly to almost popping. Think by tomorrow's class it will pop and will get this over with. 

The body is amazing in the way it directs the recovery crew to a specific site and the hot room accelerates the process is my guess. 

and on a side note, given my recent realization that my bald spot is no longer a spot but more like a bald field, went for a new look. All the ladies in the house unanimously hate it. Have never managed to unite them like this on anything before! 

Life is full of little quirks.. for now I am happy to be blogging again! If any of you know why these kettles have such short power cords, let me know! 

Enna Vechchu comedy kemedy pannaliye ?! (Not making me a comedy piece right?!)

That is a popular punch line of Tamil comedian Vadivelu (one of my favorites).  That seems to have already happened to me.. have become a comedy piece, literally!

Many of my friends and family who watch Vijay TV, have told me that they have a program called Comedy Starz where they used my picture as a "prop".. 

Got the whole thing on video here..

There is some good and lot of bad in this.

Good : Yoga gets some more popularity

Bad : Yoga is still seen as some kind of magic, illusion or rope trick (you see the way the compere ends it? that is the way illusions and rope tricks are presented by street performers).

Also, there is a way to get in and out of a yoga pose. When Jim Kallet was at BYSJ to teach a special class he told the teachers "never get into the pose in the beginner class using an advanced way. I saw this teacher do it in the front row. A football player was behind her in the second row. He was new. He copied her and we literally heard his knees go pop .. pop. He permanently damaged his knee. You can mess with the gods, but you can never mess with your knees".  People do things the wrong way and Yoga gets a bad name. 

Someday will post a video of doing this toe stand, or if BYSJ has one, will link it here. 

There is another bad side to this. Everytime a photo from the blog gets used somewhere (remember 80 feet cut outs of Junior bursting fire crackers in Chennai?), the family is up in arms and wants to shut down all my social media accounts from Facebook, to the blog to twitter, etc. Some will comment and say "get some money out of those guys" to which my response is "the day Indian media companies actually pay anything to take stuff.. that day will never come". Others just go to all out fear mongering "now every terrorist knows about you and your family" to which my reponse is "so the terrorists are all going to start doing yoga? That would actually be a good thing because there won't be any terrorism after they start yoga and do it for a few months!".

If anything, Yoga helps you let go and move on.. so AaaaaUuuuuuuuMmmmmmmmm ! 

This too shall pass!