I'm coming home...Pt I

I never thought that being comfortable in socks and sandals would be a sign I'm on a spiritual path but it is.  

I've spent the last three weeks listening to Gurus about self realisation and sitting on the beach by the Ganges (Lady Ganga :) ) every sunset chanting.  Unlike the guilty pleasure of taking the wheelie bin out in socks and Burks back in Dublin, Rishikesh is all about Sandals and socks (with a special focus on camel toe effects); that's me now and I'm loving it.  

Right now I'm squeezed into the train from Rishikesh to Delhi watching the sunrise whilst breathing through my nose (the alternative is eau de piss) and in 24 hours I'll be on a flight to Europe.  Let me fill in the blanks:

• First steps to self realisation and I get certified
• Confessions of a guy addicted to girls
• I get brainwashed
• Naked men, massage oil and pillow talk 
• A very brief hello to Europe 
• The importance of sugar cubes
• I want a cow for a pet  

Sunset in Rishikesh last night with one of my fav cows....

As mentioned in my last post the yoga teacher training was intense.  There I was with my dream that I was to be in a room with 30 hot girls for a month with us all toning our bodies to perfection then going for a dip in the local river like a scene from 'Oh Brother Where art Though'.  My goals were to learn more but I also wanted to conquer the tough poses like Scorpion.  It didn't work out quite like that.

I've now got a Yoga Alliance certificate and after +12 hour days, 2 theory exams and 2 practical tests cannot wait to teach but my learning was more about just the course.  Turns out I'd broken my ankl back in December.  After pushing through the yoga teacher training feeling sick with pain I finally gave in to my pride and got it X-Rayed (at 1 Euro per xray - I tried to get my whole body done but they weren't impressed) and there was a itle hairline fracture.  It looks alot prettier with palm trees in the background :)

I spent alot of time on the sideines where I started to get to know the real me.  This time the specialist told me as I'd not rested the ankl I'd also done cartilage damage and might need an op later in the year. Finally it sinks in I need to slow down. No more running competitively, no more lindy hop dancing and no more rushing to meet a hot girl in Goa on a moped whilst under the influence (= ankl issue....eejit).

The week after getting my X-ray I also discovered that due to an administration blip I would have to return to Euroland to sort out a visa issue (not one I can resolve in a neighbouring country).  This is where I started to listen to the lectures we'd been having on the YTT course.  I won't bore you with the detail but my ego which thought I'd storm through the course, stay in India till the end of the year, get a facebook profile picture of me doing scorpion on the top of a mountain and get cosy with lots of hot yogitas realised that non of the above were going to happen.  Anger management crept in and I found solace in the river and good friends.

A number of things put things into perspective, mainly people in far worse situations and then I was washing my clothes and had a centipede run up my arm (the ones that have a sting like a scorpion) and it stopped half way up my arm and curled up and looked at me I thought it was gonna sting but it had the expression of "would you just cop on sunshine".  So I blingged up my crutches and got on with it.  

Me with one of the local ladiez

To add to the mix I'd come out of a relationship before I came to India which hit me way harder than I expected and I'd started to delve into a lot of self realisation reading.  The combination of that and the spiritual studies shocked my little naive self and I even starting to see the benefits of open relationships or being a monk and in Part Deux of this post I'll tell you more.

Instead of me doing a scorpion maybe this should be my FB profile pic (the physio band - my akle's best friend right now :) ):

After the YTT a gang of us headed to Kochi for some respite/excess of all the goodies we'd missed.  I behaved myself relatively well mainly owing to the fact that I struck lucky with my homestay and decided to properly rest my akle.   I pushed out the boat a bit and paid 10 euros/night but I got a room with a Memory matress (a mattress  not made of straw would have been a treat but this was my best sleep in India) and the mammy was a trained chef so the meals were seriously good.

The nights that followed the pure and healthy land of Yoga Teacher Training.  Good Friends :)

Last night of YTT - classic night in my cottage

After YTT - access to full Indian Menus and a nice reminder of Indian service - 2 hours wait for a lemon ginger tea!

Cochin - PLEASE open a decent restaurant with food AND booze - we needed it!

 

Me and Veena the Diva

My last night with the YTT gang - a bit of self reflection ;)

I'm now nearly in Delhi and as my neighbours on the train seem to all be glued reading this on my ipad I'll leave all the juicy stuff till Pt II when I'm back in Euroland.  

Namaste.

100% Pureflackattack

Post originally published 12th Feb.  Republished with working links and a completely different attitude to below.  It's been a very insightful last month, I'm now a qualified yoga instructor :)  The below is how a summary of the course for me.........new blog post in the next week!

Original Post:
>>
I've been doing a lot of hip openers so get ready for some very honest stories in this post. I'm supposed to be on a strict diet of yoga, life learning and no drugs, drink,sex for a month so let me see what gossip I can whip up from a quiet cottage next to a sublimely picturesque river in Kerala:

+ Yoga in a hot and sweaty room with Monica Belluci, Cameron Diaz and Katie Melua
+ I let you know what Yoga teacher training in India is really all about..... A very strict regime inc. Sleep, Eating and The Matrix
+ How to pronounce VJJ
+ I enjoy the silence
+ I get to swim in paradise everyday with snakes as companions
+ The self discovery of Mister Kris away from Facebook
+ My angry ankl returns and I have to finally face the fact that it ain't getting better
+ I break the news to my mum that I'm staying in India for at least a year

In my last few days at Varkala the Hindu festival of Thaipusam was being celebrated. India festivals are non-stop but I'd heard this involved hooks going into people's backs and them being hung up as a form of cleansing/liberation. I had to see this. Although being treated like VIPs as we were the only foreigners there I was not a fan of the festival; the pain was evident in everyone's face who was taking part and upon removal of the hooks there was a lot of blood and people fainting. Here's a taster of the firewalking:

In my last few days I met a nice little gang including one of them West Cork accents and then two rather lovely girls from Sydney who forced me to consume large amounts of rum and dance to tunes from quality artists like The Spice Girls till sunrise the night before I started my Yoga TT. The perfect warm up!

The leaving party the night before the night before I left. Funnily enough the girl with the best suntan is the one from Kinsale!



Two very funny Ozzie girls - Hazel and Reena....my last night of madness before YTT :)

After a short 5 hour train journey I arrived at Yoga Vidya, 20 minutes from Cochin and my new home for 4 weeks of Yoga teacher training.  

Kerala really is stunning; despite the clogged up tourist resorts such as Cochin and parts of Varkala it's description as 'Gods own Country' it's where most of the Indian Billionaires have their holiday home so a kinda tropical Shanti Shanti Dalkey.

I've been to a lot of yoga retreats and they have many similarities. When you arrive everyone is talking slower with a big smile and glowing faces. Sometimes it's a marketing ploy to relax you but this little gem is the real deal. Owing to the 30-35 degree weather it has just knocked Clare Island Yoga retreat off my top spot.

There was no lineup of students doing exotic poses, instead people were relaxing in their hammocks and soaking up the sun. The quiet before the storm eh. During a quick tour I was shown the place to cool down when the 35 degrees got too much. A stunning local river, 30 seconds away from my cottage. Emma and Lotte from de Nederlands were there; or as I like to refer to them Monica Belluci and Cameron Diaz. I was seriously going to be doing yoga with girls like this everyday for a month? Game on ;)
The river outside........BLISS




The 6 day/week schedule is pretty tough. Up at 0530 and pretty much non-stop Meditation, Asanas (the postures on a mat which most people in the West see as yoga), Theory (ayuveda, anatomy, sutras) mantras and philosophy until 2000. We are silent until 1000 every morning which is a concept I've only dabbled in before but I love. With the tropical bird song and endless amount of temple bells and chanting piercing the silence your mind slows down and takes in so much more. Every sense is tickled; I love hearing my pencil carve into the pages when I write my diary. It also means when you can speak you are speaking so much more sense which for my fellow students is a good thing!

I break the rules every morning when I go for a swim in the river in the break at 0930. The cook at the retreat cannot swim so I am teaching him. Seeing him progress every day and gradually move away from the edges (where you have to keep an eye out for reptile eyes above the water as it's a favoured place for the local serpents to come down and chill out) has been special. I swim 1-2km a day to keep my body awake as despite the yoga asanas being physically challenging the 35 degrees heat is a killer especially when every time you come up in a cobra pose (see below) you a presented with a hot girl sweating rising up in front of you.
So what really happens on a Yoga teacher training course? Some involve 24x7 silence from the students and have 10 meter high walls which can only be left 1 day every two weeks. Others are on a beach and allow you to escape whenever you want. This course is somewhere in between there is no sex, drugs or booze allowed here, and to give you an example of the rules I was told not to play any western music through speakers in my room. The teachings are a lot more philosophical than my little 21st century consumer mind has ever dipped into but it's refreshing.

Distractions on the Yoga Mat:

+ Spiders - Once in a while in class there will be a shriek and a tsunami of girls will spill into the middle of the room as a spidie has taken a stroll across the wrong mat. To be fair they are the size of a hand here.
+ Mosquitos - This place is like a dinner buffet for mossies. A big hall full of sweaty foreigners not wearing many clothes and not allowed to use Deet (Shanti Shanti!). Our Yoga master tells us that they are biting the body and we can ignore it as it's not the self. I disagree.
+ Digestion - Being in India you soon get used to conversations involving your daily output but as this is a strict diet which is pretty much raw and our poor little bods are still getting use to it and there is often an echo against a yoga mat during a deep twist. Just to let the world know - Girls fart more than boys.
+ Boobs. As Mr Tim Minchin says "We are just monkeys in shoes"
+ Sleep deprivation. This course is hard. Most days people are reading their theory books even during lunch so come relaxing in Savasana you'll often hear people snoring.......
Cobra time in today's class :)





Despite the course being with 30 very hot girls (and 5 cool guys!) 90% have boyfriends and rush to the WiFi spot in every break like crack addicts to then den to check their emails and get 5 minutes of Facetime with their loved ones. There is, based on sex being one of the fountains of life in yoga a lot of discussion and despite our lecturer having perfect English there are two words he has trouble with and as a result says 1) Evacuation and 2)Vizina (reminds me of vuvuzela....classic). The yoga philosophy content is a mix of history, definitions of Sanskrit and how we can apply it all in the modern world. To keep it simple, it's a bit like The Matrix but in Sanskrit.

Environments like this where there is a lot of silence and self reflection tend to get people emotical with a lot of tears. One girl has cried so much I'm surprised she hasn't become dehydrated. As for my emotions, they have risen up and not that it's all about decisions but I've now decided to leave Ireland behind for a while and stay here. It's a big decision for me as I miss my friends and home dearly. I've travelled a lot before but India has really got to me.  This simply crazy country offers a cocktail of both energy and serenity and I cannot get enough of it. I've extended the lease on my house and told my ma so it's official - if you want to come to India this summer come see me!

For my friends back home in Dubs you'll know my least favourite word is "ankl". After fractures and torn tendons mountain running and snowboarding my left ankl is like that of a 90 year old. Without boring you I resurrected the akle issue in Jan and and even had an X-Ray Indian style (the machine broke 1/2 way though using it so they took it apart with me in the room).




The issues is tendon so it's a slow healer and despite resting it in Jan six hours of exercise/day is just not happening right now. As the yoga master here says it's the course of the universe but I think it's just me not chilling out enough. As I've had everything western medicine can throw at an akle (rest being the main one and I'm still having difficulty with that one) I'm trying Ayuveda medicine; the oldest life science in the world. I had a typical Indian experience on the way to the doctor for my check up. There were no rickshaw drivers available so the CEO of the group of clinics just happened to be there and as I'm a foreigner he gave me a lift back on his Royal Enfield Bullet (the bike legends are made of here) whilst wearing his ice hockey helmet for protection. One of the most amazing buzzes in India is being in the countryside on a bike during sunset...asombroso. I went to the ATM in the local village and it wasn't working but a local guy on a scooter saw me and said he was going to another one which turned out to be 10km away in another town where there was a festival. As the only white boy I was part of the festival dancing whilst I did my banking! That my friends is India, even a simple trip to your doctor turns into a truly amazing night out :)

For now I am still on target to complete this course if I pass the exams despite me not being able to do any standing asanas (my akle really is a mess!). It's a big kick to my pride as this is something I've looked forward to for a long time. However, I remember a doctor telling me in Peru when I had pneumonia and typhoid at altitude that I would never walk the Inca Tail about 10 years ago. He was right and I had to swallow my pride, so three months later I ran it ;)

The lads washing an Elephant at a park on our day off last week.




Monica Belluci and my mate Betty 



My next blog will include profiles of all my fellow yoga students/teachers (big brother style) from the Indian version of Katie Melua to the Yoga Yoda instructor who is always saying "with practice make perfect we will". I'm not on Facebook for the month of February so if you want to catch me I'm on skype at chrisdflack.

For now here is my philosophy on life.

Namaste :)

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