This year the Halloween weekend has been a hectic affair with Grandma traveling, an exam week at Tamil school and Jr. having her annual day function at her music school.
Got together with the cousins for a couple of hours as the weekend got to a close and carved a pumpkin.
It has become an annual event since BB started this as a tradition of sorts in 2005!
This years effort..
and the lineup photo!
Work is hectic but interesting and the busy schedules have kept me from doing a lot of things like Blog at least twice a week, call family members on phone more regularly, take more photographs, check out DPS etc. In a few weeks will get used to the new routines and will get back to these missed things more frequently.
One thing though that has changed is that I am not checking facebook status anymore. So much that Facebook sent me an email saying "Hi Sundar, here is some activity you may have missed on facebook"... Guess when you are trying to find time to go take a bio break every now and then, Facebook activity is not going to be on the priority list!
On the bright side, back in the Yoga room. Was sitting out a few poses the first few classes post surgery, but yesterday tried the entire sequence. There is great progress with the hand. Has been one month since the surgery as of today and managed a locust pose today without any pain!
The festival and birthday season is here and things seem to be on the right track. What more can one ask for?
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"..
>br clear="left">
Hope that helps those who are still learning how to lock the knee. A teacher confirmed that I am now doing it right!
Woke up with an upset stomach today and bunked yoga, worked from home.. which is more difficult than working at work.
Somehow the respiratory system has found its immunity with Yoga but the digestive tract is still susceptible to bugs brought home by kids or colleagues.
Maybe this would have been a week long down event but thanks to the diet and exercise we are now down to one day events.
The ban on taking tablets of any kind is in force!
On the bright side, have learned to "Lock the knee" after five months of yoga. Turns out that one has to build enough muscle strength in the upper thighs to do this! Previously when I used to try and imitate the other experienced folks in the room, an attempt at flexing the thigh muscle would not get a response.. now we have a response.
Solid, concrete, one piece, unbroken knee!!!
Very happy. Hope to return to Yoga and work tomorrow.. stomach permitting.
All of you know that Bikram Yoga has become a part of the routine for me and the MIL and we are now regulars to a point where our laundry cycles are synchronized with the number of Yoga clothes we own!
The three week hiatus in Bikram Yoga during the India trip was interesting. My logic was that Chennai temperatures were 98 to 100 F during the time we were there and the lows were in the 88 to 90 F range. Chennai is on the coast and is usually humid and so doing Yoga in the living room should be the same as doing Bikram Yoga in the studio here.
Have never been so wrong. The first day after landing there, tried to do the exercises starting with the breathing. Usually we sweat a lot after the very first breathing exercise. There was no sweating. Forget profuse sweating.. there was simply no sweat. It was a very bad clammy feeling. Still went through the routine in a little over an hour. The timing was a little off but did finish it. The rest of the day was a bad headache. It was possibly accelerated by the Jet lag but after having missed headaches for 100+ days, it was a rude shock!
The next day tried to go through the routine again and no sweating. Then decided to stop the attempts. My body was saying "enough. go back to a hot room" and my skin was clogging up. The rest of the trip saw no yoga, only a careful watching of the diet and before we knew it, we were back home in Cupertino.
Instinct was to go do Yoga on day one, but the body was jet lagged and we decided to wait for two days. The first day of Yoga was stressful. The mind knew how far to push because of previous experience but the body did not respond. A funny thing happened. There was a lot less sweating and felt like peeling off my skin and throwing it out. That same clammy feeling. A feeling you get just before it rains after an extreme bout of heat in Chennai summers! (what we call Puzhukkam in Tamil). Would come home, take a shower and the minute I dried myself with a towel and walked to the kitchen to make tea, my vest, shirt and pants would be drenched in sweat as if I had just finished the yoga session.
Obviously something was wrong with my skin and the pores were clogging up because of the weather change. Do not know if the water change and soap change added to the weather change, but it is a possibility. After the third day of Yoga, things came back to normal.
Did have another small snag with a TdP vaccine giving me side effects that made me miss Yoga for another three days this week, but so far so good.
The kids are having fun watching try hard to get back in track..
They have a lot more flexibility because they are young! Wish they retain this as they grow old.
One thing that has been brought to my attention recently that has to be shared. Doing Bikram Yoga seems to be like a test of the body in itself. If something is wrong or about to fail the Yoga seems to bring it out. The recent health check up showed a severe Vitamin D deficiency which is being corrected. Do not know to what extent this is true but we know of three cases where an underlying health problem has been highlighted by doing Yoga. There is always a question of "did the Yoga cause the problem or help bring the symptoms to the foreground?". Google searches suggest the latter.
If you have any such experience, do share in the comment section.
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.
Sunday, October 30, 2011 at 8:51PM 
