So Far, So Good

The course started last Monday, although we had an initial meeting the previous day. We’re a group of 20 like-minded people from all over the world (mostly British, but there’s an American and we’re five Spaniards) and we all get on very well.

We start our day at 7:30 with an hour of practice. This week, they’ve been having private appointments with all the students in order to design a personal sequence according to their goals and physical concerns if any. Until we got that appointment, we were allowed to do our own thing, and as soon as you were given your routine, you then started doing that instead.

After breakfast (which is buffet-style and fantastic – it’s a five-star hotel, after all), we attend a lecture on theory by Mohanji and then, after a 15-minute break, we learn asana. Some of the asanas are done in a different way to what we’re used to (Utthita Trikonasana is done with your feet parallel, and the classical version involves a twist, not a lateral bend) and the overall principles applied are somewhat different, the emphasis being on breathing and spine work. This is new for all of us, but we all agree that this way of practising asana makes you more concious of what you’re doing and is both safer and more effective. He says we shouldn’t have blind faith, but understand these principles and then try them, so when we make such affirmations, it’s because we’ve experienced them ourselves.

Lunch sucks. It’s getting better, but when a Spanish chef tries to follow instructions from Indian masters that pay lots of attention to the suitability of meals according to Ayurveda, that’s what you get. Undercooked chickpeas, bland soups and overcooked veggies. But, as I said, it’s getting better.

We finish at 5 in the afternoon, which gives us time to digest all the information we collect from the lectures and the asana instruction. Besides, I’ve had the chance to come back home a couple of days instead of being the whole month away from Elvis and The Girlfriend.

The more classes I take, the more I’m convinced that the Mohans aren’t masters only because they’re knowledgeable about yoga, but because they’ve got an amazing talent to bring light over some subjects that seem obscure and complex. Mohanji has this special ability to make the metaphysics of yoga look rational, logical and full of common sense. I agree with him that yoga, in essence, is like that, but nowadays there are so many styles and schools that people are getting confused about the main subjects. Especially in the West, people need to go back to the basics and forget about fancy things that have nothing to do with the real path and goal of yoga. I feel very lucky that both my first yoga class and my first teacher training has been with them.

Reading, Part 2

Now I’ve finished both books by the Mohans and the one on the ethics of teaching yoga by Donna Farhi (I really don’t have time to look for the links so just look for them in my recent posts). I’m currently reading the second chapter of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (translation and commentary by George Feuerstein). I hope I can manage to finish reading the rest of it before the course starts (Sunday next week), as I know they regard it as the definitive text on yoga.

I can’t belive I’ll be starting the course in just over a week. Still haven’t received any detailed instructions or information on the schedule. I’ll send an email later just to check everything is going as expected.

Not much else going on in my life these days. My life is really boring sometimes.

It’s Going To Be Worth The Wait

Veganomicon is coming out in November. Yay!

Reading, reading and…

… more reading.

I finished the first book by the Mohans the other day and now I’m halfway through their second one. They’re so comprehensive, I still can’t understand why they are so underrated. Desikachar’s “The Heart of Yoga” still remains my favourite introductory book on yoga (or my favourite book on yoga, for that matter) but these two are close runners-up.

I have to say some of the ideas shown on the Ayurveda section of “Yoga Therapy” are new to me in that they’re slightly different to the approach taken by some important authors on the subject (Vasand Lad, Robert Svoboda). For example, the Mohans describe Vata Dosha as being formed by air and Pitta Dosha exclusively by fire. All the other sources seem to agree that Vata has space as well as air, and Pitta is a combination of fire and water. I don’t think this makes a big difference in diagnosis or treatment, but it’d be certainly interesting to know the reason behind that apparent simplification.

I’ve also finished reading the first part of “Instructing Hatha Yoga” and I’ve stopped right before the section on asanas. I’ll resume reading once I’ve finished the teacher training but I wanted to cover the introductory sections so I can then go straight to the meat of the book. I didn’t learn anything new, but it served as a nice refreshment on some basic concepts like the mechanics of breathing and the three different styles of learning (visual, auditory and kinesthetic), which I already heard about in the Pilates teacher training. It’s great to have all this information together in one single book and I think it should be listed in the recommended bibliography of all yoga teacher trainings.

I practised yoga on Monday. These days, I’m mostly doing a modified version of Primary Series, skipping some poses and adding some others so, I guess you can’t call me an ashtangi anymore. I still feel I am an ashtangi, though – I just have to add some variations or else I’ll get bored (that, and it’s a bit too late to change the name of the blog, anyway). I planned to practise again on Wednesday or Thursday but that didn’t happen because, despite still being officially on vacation until tomorrow, The Boss asked me to substitute her and I just couldn’t say no. I’ll try later today.

On a different note, I realised the other day that I probably won’t have access to internet during the training. Not that I can’t live without it, but it’d be sad to miss the chance to keep a record of the experience in my blog. I could write something every day, save the entries as drafts and then publish them all once the course has finished, but it sounds somewhat excessive. A weekly summary sounds more sensible but that can only happen if I the schedule allows me for some free time to come back home (I won’t be losing sleeping hours for the sake of a post).

Come to think of it, the course starts in two weeks and I still haven’t received
any information regarding the schedule we’ll follow, equipment needed
(if any), etc. I’m so eager to get started!