On the ferry to Koh Phagnan I met two separate people who knew of Agama, the yoga retreat I was headed to on the paradise island Koh Phagnan nearly a month ago. They both warned of it's cultist and promiscuous nature. I'd heard similar before and thought nothing of it.
I spent the last month doing a lot of the below. To be fair, there was a group of us doing it, and it did look pretty damn strange but it was not sexy........so cult maybe but promiscuous nah. And THAT is the last I remember ;)
The above is a yoga kriya called
Uddiyana Bandha, and some days I did 216 over a period of nearly 4 hours.
Known side effects are causing positive energy movement in the body and complete blog neglect for up to 30 days. So
let me summarise the last month:
- A lucky arrival in Thailand
- I get ants in my pants at Tantra camp
- I make yoga and get karma
- The mile high club and jedis
- Zoolander Yoga
- Solving world sanitation issues while improving your pelvic muscles
Even after the flight was delayed by an hour I was still feeling confident. Unlike, most of the other passengers who it appeared had never flown before. 90% of the passengers were Nepalese and they sat anywhere, paying no attention to the seat numbers whilst putting their big bags in the aisle causing the Thai Airways staff to have a breakdown. My neighbour for the flight appeared to be someone who had never even left his village. There is an element of home comforts when flying international but not on this flight. My neighbour had seriously bad hygiene and did not appreciate that my seat was my space and that my iPad was for my eyes not his (by leaning in front of me.....I can put up with that in an internet cafe in Delhi but not on a plane). One hour into the flight I started to feel sorry for him as he didn't know how to work the inflight entertainment and the staff spoke no Nepali so I got him sorted with a good bollywood flic with Nepalese subtitles. 5 minutes later he was asleep.
The rest of the flight went without incident apart from a trip to the toilet in which I went to the business class loo by mistake. Jaysus, the space in there. Padded walls and a choice of aftershave. I'd always thought that the mile high club would be just like having sex in a chemical toilet but now I get why people fly business class. The closest I've ever come to the mile high club is a fumble at 4000 feet somewhere above Africa. I gotta start saving my air miles ;)
As soon as the plane touched down all the Nepalese got up and bolted towards the door (I'm talking split seconds after the rubber hit the tarmac). The flight staff panicked and started to wave their hands and shout "sit down" which meant there was a mexican wave of Nepalese people bobbing up and down. Some misunderstood the signage and lay down on the floor. It was hilarious.
I then showed my lack of travel skills at Bangkok airport. I knew I had little time to make my bus so needed a slick transit through the airport. I had done my research on the entry visa and asked several people who'd been to Thailand recently. I was all prepared at the application desk when the guy said "you from UK you no need visa application". It was at that point that I remembered only 11 months ago I was in Phi Phi myself and got a visa at immigration without the need for an application. 20 precious minutes wasted. Eejit. After the most painful immigration queue of my life, I arrived at baggage only to find it was delayed. Breathe. My bag was #3 off the conveyor belt. I did a little celebration dance when my bag popped through those flaps and within 5 minutes was in a taxi on the way to my bus. It was then that the ease of travelling in Thailand hit me. I've been to Thailand a few times before but having since spent time in India and Nepal was amazed at the cleanliness and organisation of the place. I was also impressed with this sign in my taxi......sexy ladies (sat in vajrasana) who say "OK" and three suits of cards allowed in the cab. Game on.
Despite the comfort of the AC, smooth tarmac and leather seats I was a little concerned about the calm nature of the driver after 15 minutes of not being able to find the bus station. Unlike Indian taxi drivers who would have veins pumping out of their heads and their fists pumping the horn my Thai driver appeared quite happy to let the crowds of Koh San Road block his way. It's rare I'd prefer an India taxi driver but at that moment I needed one. I arrived at the bus station 10 minutes before the bus arrived.
A pool of young sunkissed backpackers were all queued up. It was a bit of a culture shock, I hadn't seen this many travellers in.....well, ages. I've been away for 1 year and seen no-one with the same backpack as me and on that night I saw four. The organisation was easy, it was like being at kindergarden, we were all given stickers and told which bus to go on. The buses were amazing, fully reclining seats (I reclined so far that I ended up with my head next to the lap of Klaus, a 50 year old from Munich who was there with his 20 year old Thai girlfriend - I moved my seat back upright). Everything about travelling in Thailand seemed easy, a big shock after India and to be honest just what I needed.
The 9 hour journey to the ferry was a breeze. I slept most of the way, the only annoyance being the screws on the headrest which made a frankenstein impression in the side of my forehead.
So after meeting some lovely people on the ferry who told me all about the perils of Agama I arrived on the beautiful island of Koh Phangang.
I'm a confident guy, I can walk into any room and talk to strangers but the Agama campus had a strange atmosphere. For some reason I was a little intimidated; everybody was beautiful, most wearing white and there was a lot of hugging with big smiles going on. It looked harmless enough. This was the first notice I read on the noticeboard:
This was my view for yoga every morning...
Here is one of the dogs chilling out after listening to my mantras.
I had come to the island to study tantra and decided to fill the rest of my time with another course at Agama and yoga classes at other schools on the island. I've been to a lot of yoga schools/retreats/workshops and Agama, despite the focus on Tantra appeared to have a lot of knowledge. With centres around the world, a university like syllabus and a goal to build an island utopia for yogis I was curious. One thing that struck me immediately was the Agama addiction, most people I met were long stay students (6-12 months) and were raving about how amazing Agama was and yet hadn't been to any other yoga schools, I had to check this out.
My first course 'Yoga of the purpose' was like nothing I'd seen before. A course using mediation, yoga postures, NLP and more to help you achieve life goals. The first day was like a bootcamp, the teacher being 'Little Miss Discipline' and even coming up with this classic chat when spotting a student drinking a bottle of Coke:
Teach: "Is that Coca Cola you are drinking in my yoga class. And weren't you the person who's purpose it was to lose weight?"
Student:"Yes......but.....it's Coke Zero"
Teach: "EVEN worse.....GOOD LUCK"
My fellow students were a lovely bunch, although on the first day I did wonder if I was actually on a Jedi training course when fellow student Carrie spent the majority of the lecture doing one handed hand stands and scorpion poses. Hardcore!
Despite having an asana class, and some really deep meditation I was totally confused by the Anthony Robbins, Stephen Covney and TED Talk references and videos that made this course feel more like a management training bootcamp than a yoga programme. To top it off our teacher had a very brash style, for example ending each music meditation not with a slow volume change but a quick 'stop' and shouting "That will do". It was like an electric shock at the end of a blissful sleep. We got into trouble if we snuck out to the toilet or were late for class, it was pretty intense. Then it all started to make sense, the discipline was for a very good reason. Our teacher wasn't a bitch she was just being hard on us so that we could focus properly on our purpose (I even told her that I'd gone from a hate to love relationship with her at the end of the course!). Although in the end there was so much NLP I was convinced we'd been hypnotised aka 'Zoolander' and one day all us little yogis would be clicked into starting a new world reform. I was in such a little land of bliss that one day I left my bungalow open the whole day (door facing the beach with iPad and camera on show); my excuse was that I left in a rush due to a crazy monsoon but I returned to the same scene, everything still in place :)
The spiritual highlight of my trip was singing and dancing. I'll be talking about my spiritual journey more in the next few posts but the Bhajans (devotional singing) and dancing (5Rhtyhms - a concept where you just let go and feel the 5 different rhythms - imagine that on a beach for nearly 2 hours of yogis jumping around just feeling the music - it's amazing) were special. The below was the 5Rhythms logo and showed the level of passion pretty well :)
One night after a bhajan where I'd floated off to my little land of bliss I was walking back to my beach bungalow and saw something that reminded me I was actually on a party island. There I was walking along looking like a detergent advert all in white with a dreamy/dizzy (!) smile and a pickup truck went passed with a load of lads on the back all with their trousers around their ankles trying to make noises like lions. Nice one lads.
Koh Phangang is indeed a party island. I know, not that long ago I too could have been one of those lads on the back of the truck but right now am enjoying being a yogi. I headed over to Koh Samui one day to meet some friends at the airport and this is the sort of cargo that came back (the ferry was full of the half moon festival crowd)......
Yes, Wayne Rooney was on my ferry. The lookalike had that same 'fk me I'm in paradise' smile for the whole 1 hour duration of the ferry.
As for my second workshop at Agama.....
I was disappointed. I've studied and practiced a lot of Tantra this year and this course to me was a sex camp where we all were told about to how to feel about sex, made to feel really horny, and then told to go do homework which included "find a yoni and explore". There was very little on Bhukti which is the spiritual path from controlling your desire and my personal interest (especially considering my 'purpose' from the previous course was to settle down as opposed to play with more random yonis.....and seriously the course made it sounds like you could go and get a yoni in a shop as opposed to develop a meaningful relationship - quite sad really). The morning after that homework task I picked up my freshly laundered underwear from the terrace where they'd been drying and quickly discovered that a family of fire ants had made a nest for the night. Agama is rife with STDs and that morning despite skipping the homework my pants were on fire ;)
There was, however, some good theory and ceremony practice on the course. Like all Agama workshops it focused on the sexual and ego energy as opposed to the heart/love which is different from other yoga schools I've been to. For example, it made my TTC school (Yoga Vidya) look very humble and loving by comparison; although to be fair they would never run a tantra course as Krish my lovely yoga leader couldn't even say 'ejaculation' and opted for 'evacuation' instead.
There was so much talk of sex at Agama that one morning when having my breakfast when someone asked what it was I said "Fruit platter with yoney" (I meant to say honey and yoghurt) and the girl replied "Aha Yoney for my Yoni"! I won't go into detail on sexual practice in the school other than to mention that a lot of the teachers encouraged tantric practice with them (for the male teachers/female students); in one lecture I even saw a teacher in the audience sat with a group of girls around him and french kissing two of them. I'm pretty liberal but I must have spent too much time at Sunday school as a kid as I had to do a double take on that one! I'll talk more about Tantra in my upcoming posts on why I got into yoga. In the meantime, here's a taster. This was a song we were taught to improve our pelvic muscles ("Do the Kegle"), and according to the website if you buy the song proceeds go to charitywater.org (a wateraid affiliated charity so a good one!) http://www.reverbnation.com/lauradoethechaps. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze!
As a yoga school Agama offers alot. The level of knowledge is unsurpassed from what I've seen albeit focused on sexual and egotistical energies whereas I prefer a bit more love. The asana classes are OK but despite the 500 hours of TTC here they involve no element of breath control and all the teachers are like robots always saying the same lines (if I hear "attention to perceive" one more time.....!). The one thing I loved was the duration of holding postures. In most western yoga classes postures are rushed but at Agama they hold poses for 2-20 minutes and the benefits (attention to perceive ;) ) are amazing. I did meet a few teachers who had also studied elsewhere, upgraded their agama script and were some of the best yoga teachers I've ever come across. One particularly, Celine who taught us Anusara yoga on the beach one morning, a gorgeous class. On that note, I taught a few yoga classes myself and as a result of my Karma (selfless giving) got lots in return :) including Celine's class, a swimming breathing technique class from a semi-pro swimmer and an Acro-Yoga class from a very bendy girl :).
The best thing about Koh Phangnan? The people I met. Some friends who I knew from Dublin, some from my travels in India, some new, and all amazing people :)
I spent most of my time hanging out with these four.
What I looked like after a month of yoga and SPF factor 60!!
And if you are wondering how my muscles became a bit toned. It was as I spent most nights laughing my hole off with the gang. The two girls were sisters from Blackpool and like a female version of Vic and Bobb - too funny. I miss the gang!
Goodnight.
