Welcome to Yoga Camp. Arriving here after the past month’s experiences feels like Club Med for ashtanga yogis. The small area of Gokulum must house over 300 foreigners, most of whom are here to study at the K Patthabi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute.
The schedule consists of daily practice, one’s start time can be anywhere from 4:30-10:30 depending on when you arrived in town. As you stay longer and others go home, you move earlier into the morning shifts. This is followed by “compulsory chanting” with a young Brahmin named Lakshmish who has been around for years teaching Sanskrit at the shala. Students can opt to join Sanskrit grammar and yoga sutras in the afternoons as well. Many are on a schedule where they come to the shala 3x/day. I’ll take only Sanskrit (again) and keep some time for sitting on my towel in the flat doing abhyanga (oil massage- Dr’s orders).
As always, Sharath and his mother Saraswati are holding it down. Sharath is now inviting authorized teachers to assist in 2-hour shifts. This makes me very happy because there is no way 2 teachers can comfortably handle so many students. Sharath is in good spirits, smiling and joking and helping everyone is his amazing way. I think so many years of focused time with his grandfather, and a sincere love for his own practices have made him an amazing steward for the 6 hour sweat-mass here in Mysore. It is an inspiring thing. I am so glad to see they like teaching, as Guruji did.
Me, I am quiet, I smile and give thanks and don’t ask for much. When I arrived, I said, “Sharath, very busy shala! It’s good you are having assistants now.”
“Yes,” he answered, “its good you have come.” I laughed and replied, “You are going to put me to work?”
I didn’t realize at the time that he has been calling randomly on us to help. I thought he was joking. My first thought is: I came here to just practice, no way am I working. Then I am in the room practicing the first 2 days, feeling my friends moving about the room, seeing them helping. Again, I have this sense of family. Since things have gotten so busy in the past 5 years and Sharath has taken over, I have seen him open up the family business to westerners due to a simple need for help. Now we westerners are in there helping each other. Sharath and Saraswati keep on eye on things and correct assistants when necessary, but most of them are already teaching somewhere else.
As I feel into the room with the family of teachers, I realize I too feel a desire to be of service. I want to help my friends do their yoga, give of my time I took to “focus on my practice.” It seems now a part of the full circle for me of practice-teach-practice so I am inspired to teach- teach so I am inspired to practice. The wheel turns seamlessly now, especially because I feel the community in the Back Bay in Boston behind me, and others I have met along the way in other locales. I know they are taking practice with Karen Brenemen and Cara Brostrom (who is here now), Shakti-women in their own right. Their energy, through the dark winter, pushes my wheel forward just as much as my travels here in India. Talk about global yoga.
I am most thankful for the inherent goodness of it here. At the heart of it, the family seems happy. Sharath’s wife brings in a mid-morning snack and the kids come to give kisses before going to school. Can you imagine walking into a sweat-mass of foreigners in crazy shorts in the morning on your way to school? No wonder Sharath is building a house away from the shala, where they currently live upstairs.
Faith in the practice is what keeps it all going. Things seem to change in life, but not in the Mysore room. Same time, we come in and take practice together, support each other, inspire beginners to change their lives as we have, welcome them in. This is what the family is all about. The yoga spirit moves us all along and we keep the wheel turning with our consistent, Divine effort.
Being here is like putting my wheel under an open dam. Spinning, spinning.
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