India, so far...

So I've been here for two weeks, having taken four days to get here because of flight delays and new flights arranged, overnight hotel stays in Germany, then flying backwards to the UK, sitting at Heathrow for 6 hours then finally flying to Bangalore, only to take the cruelest 4 hour cab ride of any humans life...lol.

At first I was so overwhelmed by all the noise, all the smells, but more than anything all the people that I almost thought I would turn around and go home. But thankfully I didn't. I went in to register for classes the first day I got here and Sharath graciously let me start early, which helped. The yoga integrated me into the place more than I would even have guessed.

Everything here is cheap, dirt cheap by Americans standards because our penny is worth about 60 cents, depending on who's changing the money for you it can even be more than that, or less if you're at the airport! So, eating out, taking rickshaws and just about everything else is very affordable and it becomes easy to overdo it, especially eating in my case.

Sharath first day noticed how much eating I'd been doing and said "only one meal a day." Now, anyone who knows me knows this is a virtual impossibility because I love eating more even than yoga. But I got his point, mindlessly eating wasn't going to serve my practice, so I started paying attention to when I was really hungry and when it was just I'm bored so let's eat, or I'm overwhelmed by this place, let's pacify ourself by eating, or even what the hell else is there to do other than eat?!? lol

My waist is actually quite a bit thinner in those two weeks, most likely due to the intensity of the yoga practice in this place where it originates from and the shear amount of people practicing with me, when I'm used to being alone at home all the time, but even more so probably because of the heat. I sweat like I may never sweat at home, or ever have. But really the energy in that room is just intense and can really pull some shit out of you.

Speaking of that, Seabrook and I, who are sharing a space while here, are both having our shit coming out, a lot. Which is fine, this is what we're here for, to transform ourselves. And boy is it ever deeper than anything at home. Westerners have been coming here since the 70's to do this work with this particular practice and so the energetic intention of self-healing and transformation is just in the place, not just the shala, but damn in the whole area. We've had a few disagreements, but for the most part we know this is what's going to happen and have to embrace it and need to quit saying sorry since it's going to keep happening until we go home, maybe even after we get home, who knows!

On Tuesday I started taking classes with Jayashree and her husband, chanting the Yoga Sutras and then discussing philosophy. It's amazing, I love it. Her energy just radiates, and today he started the class and she walked in a bit later and I could just feel her as she walked by, I have a lot of love for her. This trip I am taking the Sanskrit classes at the shala that also include disseminating the Hatha Yoga Pradapika, but I know that the next trip will be about just sucking up the knowledge these people have in them and going with it, not that I don't love the shala classes, but I know she's my teacher on this subject, much as Sharath is my teacher in the yoga.

Speaking of that, so when I got here I'd spent about 52.5 hours traveling here, miserable. And my body had locked up with that, especially my sacrum and lumbar spine, so in my first class he stopped me at Marichasana D because I couldn't even get close to realizing it in my body. The next day though I opened up enough to get it and he stopped me at supta kurmasana, which I am still being stopped at on my second week. Today I held the bind in it, having gotten there with help of one of his assistants but he didn't see. He had been personally helping me until today and said when I could hold it, even with help, I'd be able to move on. So, tomorrow being a led class I don't know if I'll get it or not, I'm much better in the Mysore style classes where I can move at my own pace with my own breath, so we'll see how it goes. My goal is to at least get through the primary series and working on standing up and dropping back at the end before closing sequence.

I say that and at the same time I know that I am not overly concerned with that goal. I am here to realize this practice as a sadhana, a spiritual practice, that I can take with me for life and use as a way to connect to source on those days when my mind isn't necessarily able to get there on it's own. I think it's happening, I feel closer and closer each day to source. But then again maybe that is part of being here, maybe it's just having had that intention for this journey, who knows, but the work is working and I'm loving it more and more.

There is so much more to tell, kirtan with Mark Robberds, Abhyanga (Ayurvedic oil massage) with two men working on me at once, all of the lovely people I've met, either who I already knew from Facebook or just met here because there are so many awesome people here, just tons more stuff. And maybe I will write them as they come to me, probably more after I get home and start integrating this experience, but not now. This is a good start...see you all soon.

Surrender

Surrender, or as Abraham would name it, allow...

Sounds awful to most of us thinkers out there. Surrender, letting go, allowing, all sounds like complacency to us, right?

I'm coming to find out that it's where the real juice is. So you focus on what you what so hard and then it doesn't come, doesn't come, doesn't come. Then you're like this visualizing shit doesn't work, it's a bunch of crap.

Ever think you've thought about it so much that you've gone into the feeling place of not having it rather than the feeling place of having it? The feeling place is where you want to be, and when it feels good that's the direction you want to move in in your life, when it doesn't feel so good, maybe not.

I'm told by my therapist I'm an INTJ, the T standing for thinking. And you can't be a thinker and a feeler. But lately I'm moving into a place of feeling. Abraham teaches to notice how you feel and when you get that, what were you thinking about? If you were feeling good and thinking about something you're looking forward to, then great. If you were feeling bad and thinking about it, you're in the place of lack of it and it ain't coming your way, period. So think a thought that makes you feel better, and then another one and another one...and so on.

So how does this all apply to surrender? I have no fucking clue, other than that allowing, letting go of your attachment to the outcome of a situation, or surrendering to whatever the universe has in store for you is the way Abraham says to manifest those things.

I'm talking almost daily to my friend who is already in India, practicing at the shala, having experiences that I'm excited to start having myself and it seems the whole theme of Mysore, maybe of all of India, is surrender. I'm like what?!? I have to deal with this there too, wtf!!! lol, of course I'm being a bit dramatic for the humour of it. Yes I like to spell humour the British way, they spoke English first I figure they got it down.

So, surrender. India will take you and give you all the experiences you long for, BUT they will never be in the way you're attached to them happening. Sounds awful right? Nah, I'm getting used to this, since fall I've been getting good at allowing the universe to deliver things to me as it will, rather than being upset because it happened to come some other way, that maybe caused me a little extra growth and expansion as a spiritual being having a human experience. Maybe even more than a little.

Wow, so chilling out, allowing things the way they are and even making peace with it is the way to go? Yeah, it would seem so, sorry if you're attached to having things the way you would have them. Me, I'd rather have them come whatever way they get here and see how the contrast of their delivery affects me. I think of it as a fine tuning of self, or Self.

Now, I say all this and sound like I'm so well adjusted and blah, blah, blah, but it will happen and I'll act like someone shot me in the heart with an arrow and whine and moan about it. Or not, lately anyway, not so much.

How do you deal with stuff?

Me...

Yes, I am the focus of all of my blogs, of course. The only thing I have to do is think my own thoughts about life is affecting me and use that to teach the yoga I believe in so much to teach others to notice their thoughts about how life is affecting them, and to shift it when necessary.

So today I read on a Facebook friend of mine's account his recent blog about his getting into Kundalini Yoga and taking Amrit to become Sikh and how he came away from it when he began studying Ashtanga Yoga in 2000.

Oddly enough this made me think about my own journey into the study of yoga, whatever style you like. So, here it goes...

In late 1999 I had a wreck, the wreck hurt my arm and I was not able to do my normal, tiny little workout where if I started to sweat I stopped because I hated to sweat. Of course, I smoked 2 packs a day and drank 5 days a week and ate mostly fried foods, that sweat would NOT smell good, duh.

Anyhow, so I for some reason remembered years before that a friend trying to get me to take yoga with him at his college thinking that I would love it, I never did, although it never left my mind. So on that day I decided, maybe I'll call around and see if there are any yoga classes that I could try, never having the thought that I may need to bear weight on my arms in this sort of "work out" as well.

I found a place that your first class was free, the Solar Yoga Center, if you're in St. Louis you may have seen it as you drive down Forest Park parkway. So I went, I didn't tell my partner whom I was living with at the time, I just went and boy, it shook me to my bones. I wasn't even able to walk properly for the the next four days. This style of yoga they taught there was very odd and involved some things called psychophysicals, much like Kundalini Yoga exercises, then a cold shower, much like a Kundalini Yoga practice, then savasana wearing white, then 12 or so postures and then you went home with no ending savasana.

Even though I couldn't walk, I recognized that something had happened to me and I was awake in my body in a way I'd never experiences or new was possible, so I went back on Saturday with partner in tow. It was $30 for a whole month back then, the teachers taught as volunteer work so didn't receive pay, so the money went toward running the building.

Anyhow, during that week I was curious about this yoga stuff, so I decided to find a magazine or something to read more about it, and I'd heard of the Golden Grocer in the CWE, which was a hippie-ish store, so I drove there and found what I was looking for in the Yoga Journal in their turnstile. It had tons of articles and stuff, including one about Madonna playing a yoga teacher in her new movie about to come out The Next Best Thing, and it went on to explain how Madonna in her own life was practicing Ashtanga Yoga and how it was transforming her.

Upon reading the word Ashtanga I knew that was something that I had to find, the word just resonated with me deep inside. So I looked in the yellow pages (yes, that's what we did back then, most things weren't on the internet so doing a google search wasn't an option LOL) and called each place listed of which there were only five, and the last one Experience Yoga! listed an Intro to Ashtanga class and a regular Ashtanga class, but you were required to come to the Intro one until the teacher cleared you to go to the other one, they were sold in 8 week sessions. So, the new session was starting in a couple weeks, I called, left a message, she called me back and we talked for an hour and then I went two weeks later, going to the Solar Yoga Center every day I could in the interim.

I went, that story is for another time, but when in about my third class I was sweating in down dog and crying and felt as if I was dying, I felt this clarity of thought and this knowledge that I was going to be in this for the rest of my life, so I bought a book. I kept going to that class, then the session ended and she cleared me to go on to the full class because for some reason it was like dropping a fish into water, I got it.

I took that and ran with it and decided to do as much research as I could, using my partners computer I searched around for Ashtanga Yoga everywhere I could, called every teacher I could and asked as many questions as they would answer, probably annoyed everyone under the sun more than they would ever admit, but I was hungry and starving for the information I was seeking. I even heard that you'd come to yoga in this lifetime only if you'd done it in a past life, and for the first time believed in reincarnation because nothing could've explained why this was the most important thing to me on the planet, suddenly, other than that adage.

So, I discovered my teacher was teaching me a different version of the practice, not the traditional, authentic version, but not far off. And this man K. Pattabhi Jois was teaching it the traditional way, and happened to be on tour, so I looked at where he was going and thought about if I'd be brave enough to go and try this thing out. This coming from the shyest person on the planet who had to get really drunk to be able to talk to people lol. I decided on Boulder and called the studio that was hosting him, which happened to be Richard Freeman's studio, his wife called me back. We hashed out the details and she gave me some options on places to stay and had me mail her a check, which I did. She then called me back a week or so later and found one of her students who would put me up in their place for free, so of course I saw it as a sign that yes, I had to do this thing and fully embrace it!

So, anyhow all these other things happened which I've blogged about before, but one thing I may never have is this. In the back of that same Yoga Journal was an add for these VHS videos of Pattabhi teaching, one primary series and one intermediate series, so I ordered them. But also across from them was this video of this most heavenly glowing angel in a turban called Gurmukh who was touting her Kundalini Yoga video, of course I had to order it too.

Over the years 2000-2008 I would practice primary series, intermediate series, even up into the third series of Ashtanga Yoga and on my days off I would do this crazy Kundalini Yoga with Gurmukh.

Eventually in 2006 I began studying Anusara yoga after a weekend with Mitchel Bleier, just to learn alignment and would still practice my Ashtanga Yoga with this alignment info but in 2008 that slowly began to slide away and I was just practicing Kundalini and Anusara, coming only to KUndalini Yoga sometime that year. Having found a local teacher and was doing different Kriyas and having all sorts of experiences.

Then slowly I began following the Sikh path, as Yogi Bhajan taught it, not as it was practiced in India. More about the energy of why we were doing things, than the dogma of why. Slowly went to a couple solstice events and decided to go all the way and become Sikh and wear the turban and all of that and teach Kundalini Yoga mostly. (This is how I got my name, Sat Inder Singh Khalsa, Sat Inder being my first name. And even though I've left this lifestyle somewhat, going back to being called Keith didn't resonate, I had left behind much of what he was about and forged ahead into a new place within myself, so Sat Inder still resonates.)

In late 2011 a friend was bugging me to learn Ashtanga Yoga having heard I used to study and teach it, and eventually I gave in and decided to teach him by practicing with him, but only once a week because it was too hard on my body to endure anymore. The Kundalini had healed me, so I wanted it to stay my focus.

The problem being that I was having more back issues again and discovered that the Kundalini Yoga wasn't enough for my body to stay happy and healthy, the Ashtanga having healed my degenerative spine, completely, well along with a little chiropractic work. So upon taking on this practice, which had formally been my friend, I noticed that it again was waking me up to a new level of awareness in my physical body, but this time not only that, but also my energetic body. Something the Kundalini had awakened in me and I figured only it would keep that alive, the Ashtanga was affecting as well, curious.

So another friend who was taking my Kundalini classes heard I was practicing with our mutual friend, and asked if I'd want to do it another day a week with him, so he in turn could learn it as well. I gave in reluctantly, not wanting to do such a challenging practice again. (I'm inherently lazy and was glad to not to have to work so hard anymore). And so it began. Two days a week led to three, which led to four, then eventually to six!

And here I was, one morning getting up to do my Kundalini before my friend came over to practice and finding that I had no desire to do it and just waited until he got there and did our practice together, then I felt amazing, just like I had while I was only practicing the Kundalini. Craziness, could this be where I started and now I'm coming back around to it with a fuller and more complete experience of the yoga and could I be having this revelation, that yes indeed, I'd come back home.

So, here I am, last year having studied with Kino MacGregor twice, gone to the Ashtanga Yoga Confluence and seen my old teacher Nancy Gilgoff and had Eddie Stern get me back into Marichasana D again after four years! Then studying with Mark Robberds, another certified teacher whom I will be seeing in Mysore in one month.

Oh, and yes, I'm going to Mysore! Finally. I wanted to back in 2002 when I retired from my corporate job, but Guruji was traveling, so I went to see him on Maui and met Nancy there. But yes, coming full circle, indeed!

It reminds me of a T.S. Eliot quote that David Swenson mentions at the end of his Advanced A and B series videos, and I'll close with that...

"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

T.S. Eliot

Magic...

A friend of mine just told me the song Magic Man by Heart goes through her head sometimes when I'm talking to her, or typing to her on Facebook while she's at work (and should be working) rather. I asked why, she says because a lot of the things I say sound more like magic to her than what she's used to knowing.

I thought about it for minute, another friend had a thing on Facebook I commented on and she said my car is magic. And now I'm thinking about this too.

So, if many around me seem to think I live a magic filled life, why do I feel it's mundane-ness so often?

So that makes me think of Abraham. Abraham introduced the idea of an emotional scale, different emotions equal different vibrations. So I'm feeling anger but this dude over here, he's feeling anger way beyond anything I'd even be comfortable feeling in my body. Okay, so at the last workshop I went to with Abraham they talked about levels of emotion, so anger even has a scale, say like 1-10. Where are you on that scale? Evaluate and recalibrate to support the direction you want to head in in your life. Good stuff, lots of thinking but apparently thinking is serving me today! lol

So the level of magic I live at feels mundane to me because it's my norm. But apparently not the norm of those around me, ok, I'm okay with that. I'm even happy about that. I don't want to live with any less magic in my life than I do. In fact I would love more, so remember what my new years sankalpa is? Embrace!

So now to embrace the magic and allow it to completely engulf my life! Somehow I feel India will play a large part in this. Going there is a dream I've had for a very long time and the yoga I'll get deeper into there has been in my life for a very long time. India itself as a completely different culture will shock me out of myself while I'm there and when I come back am I going to allow myself to slink back down into the mire I very often find myself getting stuck in? Hell no...

Once I embrace this new level of magic, it's only going to keep growing and growing and expanding and make me look seem like those they call saints in India, people who seems to think a thing and it manifests before them. Beings with no attachments and allow their lives to happen, keeping their vibration at such a level that there is no way the universe couldn't deliver every part and parcel of everything they wish to manifest.

Getting ahead of myself you think? Maybe so, but who gives a shit? I can be excited and amazed at life and in wonderment at the way my life is turning out and enjoy it and love it and love you and everyone who I meet and heal myself and help others heal themselves, maybe even heal themselves myself, and find more ways to love and live and be amazing and happy and peaceful and see others for their amazing and wonderful selves and see the potential in myself and others that maybe I would never have before but know now that it is the truth and the only way any of ever can be. Manifesting the god, the divine, the energy within that truly is us.

To end this tirade I quote Yoda from Empire Strikes Back:

“Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.”

Truly, luminous beings are we, not this crude matter! When we embrace this we will be living the most amazing lives possible!

Just the way I like it...

I was noticing today on Facebook all the reviews of each persons year on their statuses, or links to their blogs with the same theme, so it made me want to write something and I was thinking of what I want to focus on and what direction to take, but really, as the title above says, my life right now is just the way I like it.

This year didn't really begin for me until February, I kept myself on hold during January for some reason, but in February I started watching RuPaul's Drag Race's latest season and was inspired, then I went to the Ashtanga Confluence and broke through some old shit, when I came home I was moving forward in a way I hadn't in quite a while.

I did 5 yoga trips this year, that's more than I have ever done in one year. Hmmmm, maybe I did 4-5 in 2008 to study with Desiree Rumbaugh, but I think it was 4. Anyhow, focus, back on point...lol.

I took the San Diego Confluence trip, I went to Chicago for a weekend to study with Kino, I went back to Chicago to see Abraham live and study with Mark Robberds, I went to Indianapolis to study with Kino again, then to Springfield to study with Jodi Blumstein.

All were amazing and had benefits in their own right, but each one helped me move forward, especially the second trip to see Kino and the week with Mark, both had deeply profound effects on me.

I also had a trip to the Washington DC area to explore love with someone I'd met on Facebook. So I really did take more trips this year than I'd ever expected to. That trip was good and I learned a lot about myself, about how I don't want to be and that I really want to cultivate happiness within myself without the perceived need for external gratification on that front, just what I feel to guide me, which is what Abraham teaches. I do feel bad the way I left things with said person, but still have no clue how to reach out and make peace around it, so am letting be what it is.

So this year I started with a Sankalpa, which means an intention, to let go of things. Letting go was never my specialty and to do so seemed like it would kill me, but letting go is what I did. I let go of many friendships and some of them even blossomed due to my non-attachment to how they were "supposed" to be. I let go of many things that I don't really need to get into on here right now, but all things that I've had little stories around that were no longer serving me and my path.

This year my Sankalpa will be to embrace things. Embrace things that others are happy and feel wonderful about, embrace other people's belief systems as theirs and their right to have them, embrace everything! Why not?!? I've always been the one to think I know the way things are and are done best and I should reform you to feel the same way as I do and then your life will be wonderful, but what? That's stupid.

My life is created by me and therefore is geared towards my beliefs, my feelings and whatever my focus is at that time. Yours shouldn't be and never will be, so I have to embrace whatever it is you like, not for myself because I have my own things, but for you. "You love that, that's great! I'm so glad it makes you happy to have that in your life!" And really mean it, not just be paying it lip service, but to really mean it. I think I've laid the ground work to allow this to happen to!

So, don't let others influence what you want in your life. Feel how you feel when you think about things and either add it in, or subtract it out and create an existence that makes you happy to be living. I slowly have and will complete that year circuit that I began last February at the Confluence and with RuPaul by RuPaul's new season that starts again in the same month this year, and all of the new inspirations it will bring, but also I will be in Mysore mid-February this finally studying with Sharath at the source of the Ashtanga system!

Everything you want can happen if you believe it can, BUT do you believe it can? Still doubting? Don't doubt or it cannot come in. Believe it can and see if it doesn't just come creeping around the corner at you... You can have a life just the way you like it too!

I love you all so much, Happy New Year!!!

Holiday

Typically I'm not too big on holidays, after all holiday is a run-on for holy day and isn't every day holy? Or shouldn't it be? I try to think so anyway, although I don't always act holy...

This year was no different, I wasn't looking forward to it at all. No particular reason why this season, just following an old pattern I think. So when I asked my mom what was going on and we talked for a while, for some reason I agreed to spend the night at her house on Christmas eve, something I never do, but I did this year and I ended up enjoying myself.

This yoga stuff has just proven itself to me even more by helping me grow into someone who can be okay and even happy with anything that life can dredge up. I'm not sure when but I had become someone who didn't like the holidays and this year made me know that not to be my truth any longer.

I went to Illinois to my grandmas early in the day of Christmas eve, then went to moms and we left and went to see a movie, Saving Mr. Banks (very good film btw), then dinner, then home showered and slept. On Christmas morning, after sleeping 9.5 hours mind you, something I never do, off to my sisters which was a very good time as well.

I left there and decided to go see the Secret Life of Walter Mitty, another film, on the way home and dinner too before getting home. The movie dredged up my fears of going to India but also showed me that they are unfounded and without the excitement that fear also offers life wouldn't be worth living. I left the theatre feeling quite amazing and ready to take on the world.

I also left knowing the life of privilege that I lead. Meaning that I have lived quite a life. In the late 80's I left home, started a job in the big city (St. Louis believe it or not lol), started exploring the fact that I was a gay man and going out to gay bars at 18, I then also became a drag queen for about a year, what a crazy bit of time that was (partly because every time I did drag I was also on acid!). I didn't do much but sleep around a lot and drink a whole lot in the early 90's, all the way to the late 90's I think, then I fell in love. A love at first site that no one ever has and we all may only have the privilege to experience once, if that. Then I became a stripper, dancing nude on a bar in socks for tips, just to explore the issues I had with my physical body. Very quickly behind that I discovered yoga, and that's when it all started to change. Now since then I've left a corporate job, studied yoga on Maui, lived in Europe for a month, traveled around the country with my mother, switched yogas completely thrice, coming back to the one I originally fell in love with. Became a Sikh, changed my name legally, built a life for myself around yoga and teaching it, that I love mind you, and began teaching yoga teachers. Now I'm about to embark on a trip to India to study yoga in depth.

I've discovered what I love and what I want in life, and all of that shifts and flows and changes in many unexpected ways all the time, but that's okay. How many people have the privilege of knowing what they want to do with their life and actually set out to do it?!?

See what I mean about privilege?

Now I'm so excited to get up early tomorrow and practice yoga and then go and teach it, I love this! How did I not find appreciation for things before now? Maybe I did, just at a different level than now, but now is where I am and now I'm so happy and in love with all the people in my life and what I do with my life!

I can't wait to be in India and experience the culture and the way they approach everything in life as such a holy experience, I feel like I should be there already. Maybe I am...

Crossroads

So, does anyone else feel like they're at a crossroads in their life? I do. This impending trip to Mysore to study Ashtanga at its source is a big thing in my life that I'm finally doing, but in that it's so big, it's bringing up many, many other things in life that I've hedged on or avoided, or have delved deeply into and went wrong. All the things in life that could be considered a crossroads...

Choices, we all have them, many of us having been trained to take the safe choices. Only to find years later that the safe choice may not have been the right one for you, but as part of your path you took that one and followed it until it led you to another choice, sometimes leading you right back to the same situation, presented differently, and gives you the chance to make that choice all over again usually having different repercussions because you're at a very different place in life at this time.

So, here I am, I'm going to India this time, not wimping out like I did back when I meant to go in 2000 or 2002. Going to dive in deep. And now I'm friends on Facebook with a lot of Ashtangis who are over there now and I'm seeing their pics posted, the notes from Sharath's conferences that are inspiring to me, the status updates telling of their practice and/or adventures for that day and it's just terrifying me. Not terrifying me in a way that makes me scared to go, but in a way that's inspiring me even more because I know I'm facing a fear around something and am still going anyway. So am diving into the fire and asking it to burn away all that no longer serves me.

Much like the practice, which will chisel you into a fine tuned organism, not just your body but your psyche and your energetic fields as well. So everything in life can be approached this way, and I'm going for it. No more backing away, but facing the things and moving through them. I'm teaching a bunch of workshops lately and before I go that are inspired by my practice and things that I've wanted to share for a while and I'm dealing with people that I need to organize my feelings around, all sorts of things.

This will be my work for the new year, maybe you'll join me???