I could write several blogs on India, and probably will. The teacher training was hard, and fabulous, and exhausting and I loved almost every minute of it. It was challenging to say the least, with 5 am risings and meditation classes and the self practice in a yoga shala full of people from all over the world who all managed to gather in one little spot for the love of yoga. Then we did observations and assisting in the public class (a loooot of dirty hippies with grimy feet, I didn't leave a class without dousing my hands and feet in heavy duty sanitizer gel!) and usually by then it was noon and time for breakfast and a coffee!
My observation/assisting, peeing in the dark before meditation partner, Vicky Harkin. Once I peed on a frog in the toilet and didnt notice, but Vicky did and razzed me about it for days. I tried to get a photo for the blog but the poor thing had dove into the pipes before I could get a picture.
Afternoons were filled with Ayurveda, anatomy, ice breakers, teaching techniques and adjustments. Truthfully, the first time we got up to teach I was throughly annoyed with having to teach anything to anybody on my vacation. I admit I'm just fed up with the classroom. Strange though, even teaching something I love was tremendously agitating. But I think it was because as an English teacher, there is very little you can throw at me that I don't understand, but in yoga, there is so much more I need to know I am not entirely confident in passing on the info if I can't back it up. But of course, all of that comes with experience.
Yogis and Yoginis! Top left to bottom Right: Satsanga adopted strays Nicky and Johnny (who I think later was renamed Toffee or Toughy), Mandi (Australian/Bali), Catherine (Engish/India), Marianne (Danish/ travelling the world), Alla,(Latvian/India) Linda (Swedish/London) Rachel, (Australian/Bali/Italy) with Jen (Australian/London) (Vicky Irish/Ireland), our marigold star with special items inside (you can see my yoga journal) Georgie (Irish/Ireland), Scott (American/travelling the world teaching acrobatic partner yoga), Maurice, Rachel's husband, (American, Italy/Bali), Inna, (French/England), Me! (Canadian/UAE), Sue (Canadian/London) and Veronica from Santa Monica (American). The girl with her worked at Satsanga and thanks to a few of the women from our group, she may already be the owner of a new glass eye, which improves her chances of getting married to a better guy tremendously. (What is her name again? It's totally slipped me!)
The women (and one man) on the course were fabulous. Everyone was completely unique and united in a common task. I spent most of my time with the elder ladies of the group, Sue, a Canadian from London and Vicky an Irish woman living in Ireland. We spent lots of time shopping, eating meals between classes and helping each other through the course when things got tight. Both women were strong, and realistic and open to so many things. Generally I consider myself a strong person but during a course like this there are times you get weak and it was wonderful to be around people that you could expose your vulnerabilities to and get a smile and a supportive chuckle in return. I don't know what the course would have looked like for me without Sue and Vicky and the other wonderful people who completed our baker's dozen.
Sue (left) Vicky (right). Sue and Vicky in a double downward dog. You go, girls!
We had several different classes through out the week. Rachel’s classes where intense but quality. We followed along in the manual she wrote for the course and made notes as much as we could as we went along. I drew and took pictures of as many adjustments as I could and tried to remember exactly how Rachel told us to do things the next day in the public self practice class.
Om Shanti Rachel!
Rachel and I had similar body types in the sense that we were both short with bendy lower backs that give us trouble from time to time. I learned a lot from Rachel as any strangeness felt with my body she seemed to understand from her own experience.
In adjustment class, it wasn’t unusual for me to hear Rachel shout from across the room, “Where are your boobs, Mel? Make sure you aren’t crushing them into her back!” You gotta admire straightforwardness!
Jodi, co-owner of Satsanga and Rachel, Rachel and Inna in a double forward bend.
Yoga technique classes were shared by Nathan and Rachel. Nathan a tall, freakishly bendy sweetheart with a wonderfully quirky personality and humour to match, was the true love of our yoga training. Sadly, Nathan's class was always the last class on Fridays where we were totally burnt out, hot, sore and grumpy, but Nathan managed to pull us through it with giggles and laughter. We mostly learned proper alignment and adjustments from Nathan, and often laughed at the absurdity of some of the positions of the poses. Thank you Nathan!
Nathan! Too cute for words!
Outside the yoga technique classes, my favourite was Anatomy. We'd organize ourselves in a circle, propped on bolsters and pillows and blankets around our teacher Chris and our plastic skeleton from China. The skeleton had taken a bad fall early, so it wasn't unusual for it to drop a limb at random during class! Chris was an amazing teacher, and I enjoyed watching him bounce across the classroom when he got excited about telling us how muscle contraction works, or which muscles pull what bone and what happens to our systems if we aren't drinking enough water.
Yoga Nerd Paraphanelia.
Here is where I outshone everyone as a yoga nerd. At any given time, I could produce a pen of the colour of your choice, whip out Sanskrit flashcards and supplementary anatomy books. I had several different notebooks and resource materials going, and often called out the answer before anyone else did, not necessarily because I got it faster than anyone else, but I had the reference in front of me carefully marked on page 119. One day we did a dramatic re-enactment of the chemical reaction it takes to move muscles. Some people were cells, others calcium etc. I was unanimously voted to be “the brain” to my surprise. It's a nickname that I was stuck with for the rest of the course!
Chris and the leper skeleton, Sue and Georgie either soaking it it or on limb patrol.
I even invented a little slap card game I used for teaching ESL for learning Sanskrit words. One day on the balcony Veronica and I got into a rousing game of slap Sanskrit, shouting words like, “Parivritta Parsvokanasana! Uttita Hasta Padangustasana!” If we had more time to play we would have perfected Sanskrit completely together -I am sure of it!
Yoga Nerd. I like to draw and listen at the same time.
Julie Martin, the owner of Brahmani Yoga, was our teaching techniques instructor. Julie was both loved and dreaded for her honesty. dreaded at the beginning of each class, but loved by the end because Julie is the kind of person that says it like it is. And there was very little that Julie said in a class that I disagreed with. Julie was also known for rousing dancy-vinyasa flow class that seemed a little more like funky floor dancing than yoga at times with the sheer creativity of the sequences. Often, those of us observing her madly scribbled notes to try to remember the creative flow but with the pace it was close to impossible. In her class it wasn't unusual to poke your neighbour with your foot, end up on someone else's mat, and sweat up a storm in the Goan heat. It was all wrapped up in a solid soundtrack and for me, a large does of hand sanitizer on the feet and hands afterwards!
Julie!
Sue Pendelbury was our ice breaker teacher, and would deliver a very drama-oriented class for us to get used to each other and feel more at ease. Where others couldn't wait for Sue's classes, I dreaded them. Why? I hate singing. I REALLY hate singing. I don't mind singing with my headphones in, but the group thing holding hands in a circle, well, it's not my thing. Acting is also not my thing. I got several lectures from people telling me to let go and show my creative side, and yet I am a very creative person. Hand me a paper and a pencil and I can keep myself entertained for days. I have no problems getting up on front of a crowd of people and talking to them as I have done it as an English teacher for eleven years now. But get me up and tell me to sing, and well, I'll rather swallow red hot screws soaked in rotten fish juice. (I need to be honest!)
This was a drama game we played. If I remember correctly, This activity reenacted a temple scene. Sue is the angel in white in the middle.
But if I were into all that singing and hand holding and creative dramatic arts, Sue was wonderful. And as a person she was amazing and sweet and energetic and a rainbow explosion in Lululemon yoga pants. Sue has her own company, www.yogaonashoestring.com. She rocks, and anyone thinking of joining a yoga vacation should seriously consider joining one of Sue's around the world. Though Sue was only with us for the beginning of the training, she was sorely missed by everyone after she left to hold a retreat in Rajasthan.
Getting ready for our presentation on meditation. My job was to hold up explanation cards. In the second photo, Mandi the meditator's mobile went off and she had to fish it out of her bra during her "meditation!" Hence the laugh from me!
Meditation with Emil Wendel was our early morning class. I would wake up at 5am and make a cup of tea with powdered milk and jaggery ginger candies in the plastic electric kettle I bought at the market. I would always know when the water had boiled as the faint smell of warm plastic would be detected floating around my little room. I'd eat some peanut butter on crackers (till our Ayurvedic class deemed peanut butter to be toxic- then I switched to Omani dates) and head out to meditation class around twenty to six.
Darling Emil.
Some mornings I would wake up and there would be Uncle Carey, in a singlet and boxer shorts, sans thick black glasses, waiting in the doorway for his storeroom-bedroom. "Good morning, Darling, how are you today? I'm going to Mapusa to drink chiku juice and eat chicken samosa. Are you humpty today? Okay, go to yoga, sha!"
Carey and the flowers I cut for him for his birthday, and Carey and I after he stuffed chocolate cake in my mouth. Cheeky Naughty!
Then I'd warm up the scooter and open the big gate to the highway, and coast down to the road. Since there was no traffic and the air was a little cool, I would whip along the highway, enjoying the fresh air, which always smelled of freshness, intermingled with smoke. Every morning I'd pass a man pushing his bicycle along the road. If he was past the big white church, I knew I was late. I always wondered why he pushed his bicycle and never rode it. If it didn't work, why didn’t he leave it home?
The bicycle Inna rented and rode up the big hill to Satsanga. It was rented from Carey, who brought it over from England thirty years before on a passenger ship which he worked on as a butcher. Carey's niece, Ida, rode this bicylce around Goa as a young girl and was the only one to have such a bike. She was the envy of the town!
Meditation classes with Emil switched between Satsanga Yoga Retreat and Brahmani Yoga. Brahmani Yoga was an outdoor shala covered in a mosquito net, and was situated next to a busy Indian road. As the fourteen of us sat in silence, again propped up on pillows and blankets in a cross legged position, trying to empty our minds and ignore the pain of our sleeping limbs, we eventually got used to the sounds of the traffic whipping by, honking and swerving around each other like an Indian square dance.
A casual moment in the shala at Brahmani.
Satsanga was different. A tranquil little spot in between mountains and away from the town of Anjuna, I found I was equally distracted with the birds and their dawn conversations, the king fishers that would dive into the pool for a cool little dip, and the sweet melodies that came from the crack of dawn loudspeaker from the ashram up the road.
A slightly strange angle of the pool and shala at Satsanga. a few of the rooms for rent are above the shala. We all loved having classes at Satsanga- the magic place!
My co-yogis later would describe their experiences. Some cried, some saw flowers blooming over and over at their third eye. Some felt like they were falling. I felt nothing for the most part, except a sore back near the end of sitting cross legged on a pillow for over an hour. Though I was awake, I often felt like my body wanted to sleep and I'd slump down and jerk back up, like I have done on many occasion travelling in a car or bus- but I wasn’t asleep. I asked Emil about it one day and he said it was prana (life energy) redistributing itself in my body. He said it would happen less and less overtime, and he was right.
Scott, Emil, Rachel, Linda, Sue, Marianne, a fuzzy ghostly Jen above Marianne, Georgie, Mandi and Veronica.
Some mornings, as I tried to withdraw from my senses one by one to reach the point where I would feel some new experience, I would be drawn back out by my senses, or the Satsanga kitten who would curl up in my lap for a minute or two before back flipping out of my lap, giving me a swipe with her little claws as she took off to the meditating body next to me.
One morning, I gave up meditating completely and decided I didn’t need to go inward to find myself as I was quite content with experiencing everything this world had to offer me at that moment. And I let go of trying to reach that higher plane. I indulged the senses and appreciated each one fully: The beautiful sights of the shala and surrounding nature, the sounds of the birds and the ashram radio wafting old hindi devotional songs our way, the faint taste of tea and ginger still in my mouth, the morning air as it wafted across and freshened my exposed skin, the smell of morning flowers, incense and smoke. Then it was time to pack our pillows away and stretch out on the mats, and I felt content and refreshed, and was thankful for the opportunity to be a part of this group, at dawn in a special place and witness all that the world had to offer me that morning.
One night I went to a Goan Wedding with the family who owned Astoria. Left is me and Edwin (far right) with the Chief Minister of Goa. Edwin and I had watched him a few days previously on the news because he was involved in some big scandal and his cabinet had quit on him. The right, Edwin and I on the far left, and Ida and Aaron on the far right, with the wedding party.
As the weeks went on, I sometimes needed out of the yoga life. Sometimes on a break, instead of studying or completing one of the few tests we had to write, I would jump on my scooter and go down the coast to Candolim, my sewn together helmet perched on my head. I'd head to FabIndia and check out the textiles and home decorating stuff. I loved my visits to FabIndia because it was a clean place with hardwood floors and luscious textures all around me- sewn and printed into beautiful clothes and textiles, elaborately carved wooden frames or punched out metal goodies. Mmmm!
A few pictures I took on my wanderings. Thisis a typical looking Goan Church, but atypical in the sense that it was smack in the centre of a two lane road, and the traffic went around it.
Down the street was a cafe that served real Americanos and Shirley Temples where I could grab a times of India, eat a piece of chicken without worrying about where it came from or feeling bad about it in the face of my fellow vegetarian yogis. Upstairs was a stationary store where I could replenish my nerd supplies for class. Down the road were the remnants of an old fort and lighthouse that I explored one Sunday on my own. Life was good for me in Candolim, My guilty pleasure among the overweight British package tourists and away from the dreadlocked dirty hippies of Anjuna, all trying to be different in the same way simultaneously.
Street cows hanging in the hoods of Anjuna in front of the Israeli Falafel House. It's a cow gangster's paradise!
Every night I would come home, sit with Carey in the restaurant of the hotel and watch TV and chat. Some days if I got home late, he’d be drinking and chastise me like a neglected husband: “where are you? I waiting here for you! I so worried I drink this to pass the time. Bloody shak shak Ah! I go Mapusa and bring this Chiku for you.” Then we would chat and watch Bollywood movies on TV. We would talk about the young Bollywood stars and Carey would criticize the skinny girls dancing across the screen “Too thin. No assets! Poor girl what a waste! Sha!”
Naughty and me.
I enjoyed my time with Carey but sometimes his neediness became too much. He would sneak the phone and call me during the day when the relatives weren’t watching him. He would tell me not to talk to the others about my day. He became a little possessive. I tried to spend less time with him but one night, as I tried to extricate myself politely, he brought out a stack of photos he had brought from his sister’s house in Mapusa. He had ridden his crappy old scooter with no working speedometer or lights to the next town, walking stick tied to the handle, to get them for me.
I looked at pictures of a young Carey in various parts of the world, where he travelled as a butcher on a cruise line. When I looked a the photos and listened to his explanations, I saw in his face how much he looked forward to talking to me from day to day and I felt bad for trying to brush him off. I thumbed through all of the photos, admiring pictures of his wife who had passed away five years before, and he shared stories of his life with me with a smile on his face until it was time to turn in.
Scott and I practicing handstand adjustments and assists. Photos taken by Inna!
Near the end of the training, I was ready for it to end as great as it was. The truth is, the schedule and the heat was just exhausting me. I got extremely sick with an intestinal infection and dehydration in the last week and the local Western doctor paid me a visit at the hotel to inject my butt with rehydration serum. Maurice brought me the ayurvedic equivalent of jaggery sugar, and lime juice in water. I laid on my bed and watched ants carry the carcasses of other ants across my white bed sheets and ignored calls from Carey who called, "Melaina! Melaina! Are you sleeping?" from outside his room below.
Vicky brought me rice and we sat one night on the verandah of the hotel and I felt so grateful to have her company, though I wasn’t sure if I could make it back up the hill to my room! At Satsanga, I slept through a few of the classes, drooling on dirty bolsters, drifting in and out of lectures that were meant to bring the yoga training to a neat close, but truthfully I was already gone.
I'm a yoga teacher now! I'm a yoga teacher now!
The last day we gathered in the Satsanga Shala , and began our closing ceremony and graduation. We meditated for over an hour and this time my back didn’t hurt and I managed to empty my brain completely. In my deep state I saw an eye looking back at me, and we watched each other. It glistened with moisture and moved like a real eye. It even blinked. I couldn’t tell you how long we watched each other in the darkness of my mind, but when we came out of the meditation Pink Floyd made so much more sense to me. (Okay, that last sentence was a joke!)
Then we got our certificates. We got Yoga Alliance-certified Shakti Spirit yoga teacher certificates. As a joke we practiced saying, “Hi, I’m So and So, and I’m a yoga instructor!” And laughed at how strange it felt, like we had lost track of the goal- and suddenly the goal had been reached. And then it started to rain, and we danced in the mini monsoon with the Indian girls who worked at Satsanga, and laughed and enjoyed the break from the heat.
Ahhhh, sweet release!
Weeks later after I left India, Goa slowly slipping away from me and slowly aclimatising back to the pace of life in the Emirates, I practiced yoga alone in my room in Abu Dhabi. I was brought out of savasana by my telephone ringing. Not recognizing the number, I answered.
It seemed someone had been left alone for a few minutes in the Hotel Astoria Office. Ready and waiting for the opportunity, he took the crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket, read the numbers on it and dialed my long distance number in secret.
“Hello? Melania? Is that you, Darling? It’s me, Are you humpty dumpty? Bloody shak shak, Yoga yoga yoga then gone! Sha! Everyday I a little bit older than yesterday. What can do, man? Do you miss me Melania?”
