Third Month Crying

Except for the creaking of my fan and the occasional howling street dogs, Mysore's been quiet over the last three weeks. With no fellow students around I've taken the opportunity to catch up on work, take on a few writing assignments for causes I believe in, go gluten-free and regroup after the intense month and a half of practice with Saraswathi.

During self-practice these days I decided to revert back to the primary series. Mainly, to give myself an incentive to stand up from urdhva dhanurasana. I decided I wouldn't work on intermediate again until I could do this. I know that Sharath doesn't let anyone start intermediate till they've mastered this bit, and I figured, there must be a reason for it.

I researched online and found every possible resource to guide me through it. I found some really valuable advice by Kino MacGregor, saying that you should press the insides of your feet on the ground. What a difference that makes. A blog on the Ashtanga Picture Project said you need to believe that you can do it. A few weeks back, I'd asked a certified teacher who lives here in Mysore, Philippa Asher, how to stand up and she said you have to use the breath.

So every day, I completed the primary series, dropped back, pressed the insides of my feet on the ground, tried to believe that I was gonna spring back up, and breathed.

Nothing happened.

I wasn't anxious to get the pose or anything, there's no rush and I'm well aware that all is coming if you just keep practicing. And if it didn't, well, pura vida, at least I tried my ass off. So I stuck to my little routine. Pressing, believing, breathing.

Then last Friday, something miraculous happened. No, I didn't stand up from Urdhva Dhanurasana. The Costa Rican football team (called la Sele) beat Italy at the World Cup in Brazil. Jaws dropped everywhere. Tears were shed. No one was expecting this, not even the Costa Rican football players, I'm pretty sure. I was chatting with a friend back home after the game and we resolved that if our team had beat Uruguay and Italy, then everything was possible. EVERYTHING.

The next day, when I stepped onto the playing field of my mat I thought, if Bryan Ruiz scored a goal against Italy, then I can surely get up from urdhva dhanurasana.

I finished the series. I pressed. I believed. Only this time, I really believed. I breathed. I pushed my pelvis forward and got onto the tips of my fingers. I felt waves of electricity circling from my hands to my feet. It was like being strapped into the electric chair. I was zapped, my body collapsed to the floor. But I'd felt something. I'd felt energy moving to my legs, and I was pretty sure this was the energy that lifted you up.

The next day...

I pressed. I really believed. I breathed. I got zapped. And then my body sprang up to standing. Gooooooooooooooooool! Gooooooooooooooool de Costa Rica! Gooooool gooool goool.

Like a replay on television of the moment of victory, I repeated it about twenty times to make sure it had really happened. Yup. It was for real.

I assumed I was going to feel ecstatic all day. Ha.

After I practiced, I showered, ate and got ready to start working. As soon as I sat down in front of my laptop, I started sobbing. Uncontrollably. The tears took me completely by surprise. It couldn't be PMS. Everything was great. But I couldn't stop crying. How could one not cry, when the sky turned orange and pink and yellow at sunset. I went to the grocery store and I couldn't reach the toilet paper on the shelf so a man came and helped me. He was just so kind, so sweet looking. I walked out of the store and started sobbing again. I wanted to call my mother. Then the floodgates really opened.

The next day I felt like myself again. I finished the series, I dropped back. I shot back up. And as soon as I was standing, I started wailing. I dropped back. Shot back up. Wailed. Dropped back. Stood up. Sweat and tears were gushing out everywhere. I had to sit. I felt nauseous. I managed to get through the closing sequence. I lay down to take rest and I was still sobbing. I looked at the sky outside and understood that everything was okay out there. Everything was okay in here too. Whatever was happening did not require an explanation. It just...had to be.

Clearly, the backbending was getting intense, and it had triggered something. I googled "backbending, emotions" and found this:

"Backbending often brings up strong emotions when students first begin to practice it more regularly and go deeper. It often does not really matter whether you are flexible or stiff in your spine if you are unfamiliar with the strength, stamina and flexibility needed for most backbending movements. It takes lots of practice before you will feel confident about integrating a full backbend sequence into your daily practice. Healthy technique and anatomical awareness is crucial to the longterm practice of backbends. Be aware that when learning how to safely bend your back you may experience rational and irrational emotions. Sometimes the most flexible students have the most troubling emotions arising when they start practicing backbends." ~ Kino MacGregor

Well, I guess I don't need to be institutionalized.

I found a ton of blogs exploring the rise of emotions during backbending. I'm no scientist, but considering that the spine is a key player in our nervous system, I figure a lot of traumatic experiences must be stored in there. That time you pushed a kid in the second grade and he and his desk rolled onto the floor. That guy who crushed your heart when you really, really needed him. The finality of death. The entire journey of existence from day one. What if it's all stored in there? Inside our cells, and our spine controls it all? And when you bend it every which way, all the traumas get squeezed out. Stuff that goes beyond our own existence, from the collective subconscious. Experiences that have been handed down from one generation to the next and come prepackaged in our DNA.

Maybe this is why we have to be able to drop back and stand up before starting intermediate. If the intermediate series, nadi shodhana, purifies the nervous system, then backbending is a hell of a great way to get started. Maybe if everyone just waltzed into the second series, the shala would be full of emotionally paralyzed, wailing ashtangis.

During my online search, this is one of the most beautiful blog entries I was able to find about backbending:

http://www.yogachikitsa.net/2013/11/01/standing-up-from-back-bending-a-lesson-in-vulnerability/

She talks about how terrified she was of standing up from backbending without assistance, and then she realized what this meant: she wasn't able to stand up for herself.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I must get back to sobbing.

SELF-practice

Choose Your Own Adventure

When I was a kid I had trouble sleeping. And whenever I managed to sleep, weird stuff would happen, like I'd sleepwalk and scare the crap out of my big sister who'd think I'd turned into a zombie.

To cope with the ordeal of bedtime, I started reading. (Back then there were no laptops or iPads or devices to distract night-fearing children). So I read. I read all kinds of stuff, anything that I could get my hands on, all the books in my sister's bookshelf. Some stuff I couldn't even understand because it was written in Old English, but I read it anyway. And instead of worrying about the ghosts under our beds and the demons in our closets, I'd run through the prairies with Laura Ingalls Wilder, visit the trippiest enchanted kingdoms and my favorite...Oh! My very favorite were the Choose Your Own Adventure books. You see, the night was so long, and if you finished one adventure, you could always just turn back and choose another one and another one and so on, until one of two things inevitably came: sleep or daylight, and the ghosts would go home.

When we turn back to look at the things we've said and done throughout our lives, the decisions we've made, it's always tempting to consider, "Well, what if I'd chosen that other adventure? What would've happened then?" And sometimes we'd like to turn the pages and go back to find out. But unless you're proficient in time travel, you don't get that privilege. You author the linear plot of a novel called: Your Own Adventure.

When you're on the spiritual path you begin to understand that every twist on the road, every hair that falls out, every word that comes out of your mouth and every single thing that happens from the moment you open your eyes in the morning until you close them at night, is exactly what you need to happen for your own personal evolution.

It's during the stormy times when this is hardest to remember, when you desperately want to flip the page, but ironically, these moments accelerate our growth like nothing else.

This week, I officially turned down a six-month communications consultancy back home. And today I rented an apartment in Gokulam for one year. And I thought of the adventures that will follow from these choices. I'm smiling like a jack-o'-lantern as I write this.

Mysore is quiet these days, the Ashtanga schools are now closed, Saraswathi's in Malaysia and most of my friends have gone home.

The other day I told a certified teacher how much I was dreading self-practice and she said something along the lines of: "But Ashtanga is meant for self-practice!"

I mulled this over and decided to quit looking for authorized teachers all over the place and just unroll my mat where I am right now. So each morning I practice in the middle of my living room, which is airy and sunny and spacious.

And the strange thing is, I've realized that the Mysore magic is not exclusively contained inside the walls of KPJAYI. It appears to unfold all over Mysore, all over the world, in our own living rooms! I've understood that we carry it inside wherever we go. When we practice, we plug into the Source.

The stuff we learn from our teachers keeps us going, it fuels our self-practice. For however long is necessary until we can get back to them. Even if it takes a lifetime or two.

"The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure." ~ Joseph Campbell

Kapotasana in a Few Short Verses

"Relax," she ordered.

But how to relax,
when your teacher is trying
to rip off your arms?

"Breathe," she said.

Oh how I tried,
but I gasped and suffocated instead.
When the world is upside down
how should the air find your lungs?

"Don't move your arm!" she scolded gently.

But a rebel arm kept
jerking to one side,
governed by a mind of its own,
irreverent to the desperate pleas
of my exposed heart.

"Kapotasana is a bitch," I wrote in an email to my teacher back home.

"Kapotasana is an ego killer," she replied.

"Extend your arms. Keep your head off the ground," chirped a teacher in a YouTube video.

I extended my arms. I kept my head off the ground.

I surrendered completely.

"I trust you with my life," my cells spoke to Saraswathi from an unnameable place. "If worse comes to worst you'll just snap off my arms."

"Relax," she ordered.

I relaxed.

"Breathe," she said.

I breathed.

And my hands clutched my heels for the very first time.

Backbending poetry from the Source 

A Hindu, a Muslim, and a Christian

So...it's not about the asana.

I've figured that much out. Challenging as they are, the Ashtanga yoga series are simply a means to an end. I have no idea what this end is. Is there a pot of gold at the end of the sixth series?...(I like to envision it as a long sweaty rainbow) A stack of warm chapati and dhal? A really fancy saree? How can we even be sure that there is an end? A destination. I think it's a lot more ambiguous than that. I think it's about the journey, just like life itself.

Along the way, the series heal all kinds of stuff, if you allow them to, that is, if you surrender and give them all you've got. Everything. They'll wring out your mind, forcing out streams of negativity, anger, fear, hatred, anxiety, sadness, you name it. They leave you free to sit there with a giant smile on your face, like a drooling, toothless baby in a state of permanent goo goo da da bliss. Of course, babies have their tantrums and dark days too, but ultimately, they snap out of it. Or so I've heard.

The practice also awakens some dormant demons. We've all witnessed them, heard of them or felt them tossing and turning as they rouse out of their slumber.

As luck would have it, I made a friend here who has been coming to Mysore for years, he actually practiced with Guruji. He's almost 50 years old but looks (and acts) like he's not a day past 13. So, not only has he been something of a restaurant and tour guide for us newbies, but he often drops these groundbreaking wisdom bombs that are pretty earth-shattering. He's really private and would definitely kick my butt if I revealed his name.

So, he's clear on one thing. The teachers he respects are humble. They're the ones who are not out there seeking the spotlight, waiting to pose for the yoga paparazzi, the stars of their own celebrity fantasy. The ones who, like Guruji, are dedicated to transferring their knowledge to a little family of students that they care deeply about. Because parampara goes both ways. They're low profile. Ego-free.

When he says stuff like this, I imagine Saraswathi or Guruji or Sharath opening Facebook accounts and posing for selfies and new profile shots and it makes me giggle internally. I am so glad they are not into that kind of stuff. I am so glad that Saraswathi is a 72-year old grandma who is clearly not into this for the glory. And that you can see that just by looking at her face. Into her radiant, multicolored eyes. She really wants everyone to get the pose, whatever pose they're stuck on.

I'm also glad that my teacher back home sometimes wears really old yoga pants that have holes in them. And I'm so glad that, from what I've seen, Ashtanga yoga generally attracts simple people, who are not into trendy yoga mats and flashy yoga clothes. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I just don't think that's what this is about, not for me anyway.

So, my friend, I've asked him countless times to sit down for an interview to share everything he knows with the world but he's too humble and private for that, he says there are tons of people who know more than he does and believes that every bit of knowledge will come to us if we just keep practicing. I kind of agree. Maybe words and blogs and magazines are pointless too in the end. In the face of this practice, that strips you of everything unnecessary, down to the very bone marrow and our pumping hearts.

Anyway, he shared a beautiful story the other day, something he heard straight out of Guruji's mouth. One day Guruji said something like this:

"Three men are shipwrecked." (Ok, picture it all in Guruji's accent, and actually my friend couldn't remember if it was a sinking boat or some other catastrophe. Let's go with the boat.) "One man is Muslim and he prays to Allah and Allah saves his life. One man is Christian and he prays to God and God comes and saves him. And the other guy is Hindu, so he prays to a thousand different Gods. And the Gods start to quarrel with each other about their plan of action. The boat sinks and the man dies."

Apparently, Guruji used this story as an example of what'll happen to people who have multiple teachers. He said we should stick to one guru. Otherwise we'll get all confused and end up a (ship) wreck.

I think I have two now, my teacher back home and Saraswathi, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't quarrel if my boat were to sink.

And the other day I had the overwhelming feeling that it simply wouldn't make sense for me to practice anywhere else right now. I want to stay in Mysore and learn everything that Saraswathi can possibly teach me.

So I decided that I'm not going back...yet.

I feel like I've found everything that I was ever looking for here, and I looked pretty much everywhere. Under the sea, in deserted islands, all around the world. And this kind of explains why I didn't want to leave India when I visited the first time. I wasn't done with this place. India wasn't done with me. But does anyone ever want to leave India? I guess so.

And now I found her, Saraswathi. And a place where everything revolves around the practice. So, there's no time to lose. I was starving for this, and one day I hope that I'll be humble enough and ready to share what I've learned.

In the meantime, practice, practice.

A Little Place Called Crazy Town

“Two one way tickets to Crazy Town please,” Heidi said at the bus station in San José earlier this year, and we shrieked with laughter.

It’s raining and thundering and huge bolts of lightning are descending all over Mysore. The sky is at war with us. The power just went out in the middle of a Skype conversation with my sister in the U.S. and now I can’t finish my work. All my editing and design software seemed to crash this week too and I wonder if it’s time to simply throw the laptop into the Kaveri River. Or into the Ganga up north. I wouldn’t even bother with a puja. That is so tempting. Then I could just read and write poetry in notebooks, take naps and sit in meditation all day long. Like a monk or a shrub. 

The topic I wanted to cover today is of the utmost importance.

Crazy Town is both a place and a state of mind. If you’ve ever been a journalist then you would know this town very well.

It pops up behind you like a movie set when the world picks you up in a whirlwind and you’re forced to give up control and things start to spin wildly around you and mad laughter rises like soap bubbles from the depths of your soul. It may include PMS symptoms such as crying wildly in pristine beaches or yelling at innocent taxi drivers. Feeling completely at ease and not giving a damn about any consequences are required to gain admission into Crazy Town. In Crazy Town you’re always despeinada.

You may find yourself there because life has just tossed you around like a salad and then barfed up non vegan ranch dressing all over you. Or perhaps you were born wearing Picasso goggles. Born and bred in the C.T.

Last October, my best friend Heidi, a guy I liked and I went to the beach. It may sound like I’m always liking guys but come on, he’s only the second one I’ve mentioned on here. And really, that’s what happens when you’re a single, heterosexual girl. A woman, to be exact.

Anyway, we were in Cahuita, which is a gorgeous Caribbean beach town in Costa Rica, like the beach towns in your dreams, where they cook rice and beans in coconut milk and the sand is marshmallowy white.

This guy, to whom I wrote a beautiful love letter on the back of a world map that had to be read above 10,000 feet, he was so organized, methodical and practical in his approach to life. He was an engineer and he must’ve thought that we were lunatics. (He actually confirmed that later). Anyway, he had to leave the following morning and as he was walking away from our cabina I told Heidi, “He was just a visitor here…in Crazy Town.”

That is to say, he was not a resident, he’d simply dropped by for a weekend visit but his home was actually somewhere that he later christened Organization Town. I go visit there sometimes.

This is how Crazy Town was born.

That day, Heidi and I laid our sarongs on the sand and sat in front of the ocean to compile a list of people we thought might be Crazy Town residents, visitors, and people we’d probably never, ever see in this town. We texted a few people to confirm. Then we stumbled into the home of a famous, very old Costa Rican Calypso legend named Walter Ferguson and Heidi, who has a beautiful voice, sang to him, we took photos and decided to interview him on the spot.

Crazy Town may sound childish or insane and it is, I’m not going to lie.

It will make you sing “We didn’t start the Fire” at the top of your lungs and strike up a conversation with attractive Spanish men sitting in the car next to ours in the middle of a traffic jam. It makes you scribble “Toxoplasmosis of the crotch” in notebooks and then laugh about it for years to come.

It’s whatever makes you feel ALIVE like one of these Mysorean lightning bolts, crashing and sparkling and being, just BEING, fiercely, unapologetically.

It may be emotionally exhausting to live here year round, but I do hope everyone gets to visit, at least once in their lives.

And if you decide to make it, Heidi and I will be waiting. We’ll hold up signs saying: “Welcome to Crazy Town” and maybe we'll serve you complimentary drinks.

How Low Can You Go?

Bang.

That's the noise my head made when it crashed into the ground this week as I was doing the dropback sequence. 

Between the second series backbends, three urdhva dhanurasanas, three dropbacks (which I can't yet get up from on my own), three assisted backbends and one attempt at heel-catching per day my lower back is in shock mode. 

Strangely, it's not too sore or anything. And strangely, I don't feel nervous or psycho after practice every day, which is what usually happens when I OD on backbends back home. Either way, I feel that once my lower back and I get through this, a set of wings is going to sprout out of my ass and carry me deep into the terrifying jungle of second series. 

Well, this week, I was so tired of bending back, that my arms simply refused to extend faster than my head. 

Luckily, apart from letting out a deep, maniacal howl,  I survived the emergency landing. 

In fact, it served a magnificent purpose.

See, a miracle had happened a few minutes earlier. The Mysore Magic kicked in and somehow, with a facial expression that probably looked like I was giving birth, I pushed with all the power in my being and managed to spring up from laghu vajrasana all on my own. It resulted in another uncontrolled landing, this time on my face, but I cared very little for the lack of grace, inside of me there was a party going on. Oh yea, I got up, oh yea, here we go, oh oh oh yea.

The rappers in my head were still going at it by the time I hit backbending. 

And then came the big bang. 

I immediately understood that it must've been Providence, begging my ego to wrap up its little party. It worked wonderfully. Nothing like falling on your head for your ego to zip it. 

And that was that. If I hadn't landed on my head, instead of "Bang" I would've surely started this post with "OMG, guess what? I got up from laghu... It was SO awesome." 

So, tomorrow I'm taking my remains to the 3 Sisters in Laxmipuram, to see if they can patch me back together again with their ungodly castor oil bath. And to prepare for Kapotasana. May 26th, Saraswathi said. Oh lordy. 

Tomorrow is May 18th, the date when Guruji left his body, and I'd like to do something special, so I hope the castor oil doesn't leave me terminally exhausted. I'm not exactly sure what it'll be yet, or who will want to join, but thanks to two friends here, I already have a little secret surprise planned for Ashtanga Magazine, this magazine that I started this year with my teacher back home and a friend. It's online, www.ashtangamagazine.com but hopefully one day we'll make some money and take it to print too. 

I was going to write about something completely different but I got distracted. My friend Marcos back home, who's really sweet and plays the guitar like a fiend, he'd like to come to Mysore too and practice and the other day he asked me if it's a good idea to come here in low season, and I actually wanted to discuss that. 

I've never been here during high season, so I can't really compare, but I can comment on low season. 

For starters, Sharath isn't teaching now, so unless you're willing to practice with Saraswathi and miss out on weekly conferences, you shouldn't come now. 

Low season is hot. HOT. HOT. So...if you can't stand the heat...

Also, a lot of popular places in Gokulam that asthangis go to during the year close as soon as Sharath stops teaching. Mostly restaurants like Anu's, Anokhi, Vivian's, and Kushi, which was open before, just closed for a month this week. But a few places are still open: Tina's and Chakra House, Sandhya's in Laxmipuram, the 3 sisters (they cook too, and it's yum), Anima, Café Pascucci, and of course all the hotels, like the super nice Metropole and the Green Hotel. Personally, I find it kind of nice that many of these restaurants that cater to westerners are closed now, in that sense it feels like the low season experience is a bit more authentic. Maybe just a tiny bit more like it was back in the day. 

A major advantage is that you can pick and choose where you want to live. Usually, all the places closest to the main shala are booked solid. But now, you can actually arrive here, look around and have your pick, everything's available. Three friends are actually staying right across the street from the shala at Saraswathi's old house, which means they roll out of bed and roll into the shala. It's awesome to go to their place and look at all the old photos of Guruji and his family hanging on the walls.  

Next, the shala is not overflowing with people. There's actually enough space in there for everyone.

I also feel like our gurus are more accessible. As in, if you feel like having a chat with Saraswathi, you can just drop by in the afternoon and chances are you'll find her there. Sharath walks up and down the street all the time and cracks a smile whenever you see him. Little Sambhav often plays outside or hangs out at the shala too. 

Oh yea, and not to forget, because Sharath isn't teaching, Saraswathi's students get to practice at the main shala, which is pretty awesome. 

At first, when I arrived it seemed like there was no one around. I can be a lone wolf anyway, so I didn't mind this at all, and was gearing up to have more of a spiritual experience. 

However, you will start to meet people and realize how awesome everyone is, and how amazing it is that you all have yoga in common and can pretty much talk Ashtanga 24/7, and then your social agenda can get a little packed. I have to work on freelance stuff so I'm not on full vacation mode like most of my friends, but still, we're having a blast. In fact, we're eating a bit too much. I got a little worried today when I  had to clutch my rolls and move them out of the way so I could bind in the Marichyasanas. So, my goal next week, is to exercise more self control (that can be a hard one for me, I love food).

Oh, and my final observation will be an advantage to some and a disadvantage to others: we're all beginners. I know the very humble advanced students say we're all beginners, but I really mean it. We're in Ashtanga diapers. What I mean is, there are no Kino MacGregors around this time of year. I think the most advanced student at the shala right now does half intermediate. A few people are starting from scratch and a lot of people are not hardcore ashtangis or devoted to the lineage, they're just trying it out or in the middle of traveling. So, I don't know how advanced practitioners might feel about this. But I suspect it's beginners' heaven. At least it is to me. 

Anyway, if you have any low season questions, feel free to drop me a line.

My heels to my hands in Kapotasana: "You can't touch this!" 

A Few Lessons I've Learned about Living and Dying

Yesterday was Mother's Day in many places, and although there were no visible signs of it in Mysore, Facebook was bursting with photos and quotes.

It made me think quite a bit about my mother, who actually believed that Mother's Day was just a commercial scam (I inherited this idea from her, among other things). 

Although she was alive and healthy-looking a year ago at this time, she passed away in September, right after my 35th birthday, right before I was supposed to come here. I ended up cancelling that trip and that's why I'm here now. 

Every day, when we practice here in Mysore, I look at all the photos of Guruji and Amma, his wife, hanging on the walls of the shala. And I wonder how Saraswathi feels about not having her parents around anymore. She is so full of love.  

Saraswathi's going to Varanasi with her daughter Sharmila and her grandkids this week to do a puja on the Ganga for Guruji, who left his body on May 18th. At some point while I'm here, I'd like to do the same for my parents. Last time I came to India, I didn't feel that I was ready for Varanasi. I guess the time has come.

My mother's the second parent who's died on me in this lifetime, and although she and my father taught me a great many things, I think they taught me the most crucial lessons I've learned so far by transitioning out of this life. Even for that I am grateful to them. 

I bought a book here the other day, and in the preface it says that Mozart called death the key to unlocking the door to true happiness. And I get that now.

I'd like to share some of these lessons because maybe someone will find them helpful.

Dying is ok.

Really, it's not that bad. I mean, of course, we're animals and most of us are programmed with a survival instinct that makes us repel death. And that's natural. But, after watching the two closest people to me decay and leave their bodies, I can tell you that it's perfectly ok to die. 

My mother was the closest person to me on Earth. We used to bicker a lot, because we were like, extensions of our own minds, but I fear that no one will ever make me laugh as hard as she used to. I wasn't even aware of any of this until she was bedridden. Her death shook me to the ground. Suddenly, I had no home base, and I missed her. I missed hugging her because she was like a cute little polar bear. And well, she was my mother.  

Then one day, I read all this stuff written by Ram Dass. I love that guy. 

Like me, his mother died when he was 35. And like me, he went to India the year after. That's when he met his guru, Maharaji. 

He seemed to have turned out all right, and that made me feel like everything was going to be ok. 

He talks a lot about death, and in one of his writings, he mentions that the problem is how we perceive it. 

Once we understand that it's not the worst thing that can happen to us, once we see it as something beautiful, as the equivalent of being born, and as the book I'm reading says, as a chance for our souls to achieve wholeness, we understand that there is really no reason to grieve for our loved ones who've died. They are ok. And we will be ok too when the time comes to shed this skin. 

We have less time than we think. 

Carpe diem is correct. Yea sure, people are always saying this, but we should be really aware of it and act on it. We don't know when our time is coming, and sometimes, we delay our plans based on an erroneous perception that the people we love and ourselves will be around forever. Mañana is a very popular philosophy where I'm from. But you see, you never really know if you'll be around mañana. Whatever it is that you have to do here on Earth, do it now. Regardless of what other people think or say. If you need to quit your job and move to India, do it. If you're going to write a book, start writing. 

Last July, my mother and I had plans to go to this port city in Costa Rica called Puntarenas, sit by the ocean and have a Churchill, which is a decadent mix of shaved ice, condensed milk and powdered milk soaked in red syrup. 

From one day to the next, she was bedridden. 

The fact that we didn't have our Churchill is really not that bad, but you get my point. 

No matter what happens to us, we can always choose how we react to it. 

Actually, to be honest, this lesson floated into my consciousness one night in Thailand, at a permaculture farm near Chiang Mai. I'd smoked a lot of weed and went to the dorm room to lie down and suddenly this idea hit me out of nowhere. We can choose what we feel. It was like an orgasm. The most revolutionary orgasm I've ever had. 

This happened before I'd discovered yoga and now, as a yoga practitioner, it makes even more sense to me. 

The thing with yoga is that it calms the mind. So it's easier to catch our thoughts as they race around all over the place. It's easier to observe and understand them. 

I was really young when my father died. Seventeen. And I had no idea how to process what had happened or deal with it. I spent the next decade grieving, self-destructing and being unaware of many of the amazing things and people around me. Not that I wasn't having fun, I had a blast. Ahh..the terrible twenties. 

When my mother died, I recognized the familiar tormented feelings of utter sadness, and I immediately said to myself, "I am not grieving for another ten years. Fuck that!" 

Of course I had to go through a period of mourning, and I tried not to repress a single emotion. 

But knowing that we are the masters of our minds, and embracing carpe diem has led me to consciously choose to be happy. 

The world is full of beauty and kindness and we can choose to focus on it. To focus on the people around us who are not dead. To focus on life, which is happening now, around us, in all it's glory, regardless of what has happened to us and what is going through our heads. 

Don't ever assume that your plans are set in stone. Because in the end, the universe will do whatever it damn pleases.

India is a really great teacher of this lesson, try traveling around here by train. 

Last year I decided to work about twenty jobs so that I could come to Mysore, with a stopover in Sweden where I'd visit some guy I liked. I was living in the gorgeous Costa Rican beach town of Nosara. And I wasn't enjoying my present. I was working two jobs at a yoga retreat there, practicing in a rush between jobs and coming home exhausted only to open my laptop and work on freelance writing and translation projects. I must've been the only stressed out person in the history of Nosara. I had no time to sit by the beach and watch sunsets or hang out with my awesome friends. Finally, I collected the cash I needed, bought my plane tickets went to San José, got all excited, and then suddenly, my mother was bedridden. The Swedish guy disappeared. And I understood that over the last few months, I should've worked really hard at enjoying my present, not the future. The universe had pulled another one of its funny little tricks, and this one came in the form of a slap in the fucking face, so hard it left me reeling.  

And unfortunately, I have to admit that I have trouble with this lesson still. I have a tendency to work too hard, it runs in the family. 

Except now, I make a conscious effort to take breaks, to not be in a rush, to never end conversations because I need to get back to work, to pet puppies, smell flowers, graffiti walls and enjoy life. 

People's bodies' may die, but they don't.

This is a very common spiritual teaching, so I've been familiar with it for a while now. But immediately after my mother died, I realized that she was still with us. I felt it very strongly. In fact I was afraid that I had swallowed her soul by mistake because when she was on her deathbed, I was holding her hand and pressing a little Shiva pendant on it, breathing and repeating mantras in my head with my eyes closed so that I could stay calm. I wondered if the mantras and Shiva had made her soul stick around. My sister was on her other side and I have no idea what she was doing, but she stayed calm too. We'd both read a lot about the moment of death and we knew that people around a dying person have to stay calm to ensure that they go through a smooth transition. I'm so happy that we could give her that. 

When my mother stopped breathing, I had no idea that she'd left her body. My sister figured it out, and I couldn't really believe it, because I felt that she was still there. We had to check about twenty times until we finally realized she was gone. From her body.

Before I left Costa Rica I thought my mother's presence would be staying home. But she didn't. She came to India too. I find that I can't even miss her because she's around me all the time. 

I may be crazy, that's one possibility. But I'm also aware that yoga clears our nadis (energy channels) so our perception is magnified.  

Either way, if you're worried about losing someone close to you, don't be. They may leave their bodies behind, but what they really are, which is LOVE, will be around forever. 

I always felt like I'd skipped a generation. My parents were really old when they had me and people always thought they were my grandparents. I'm aware that when most people lose their parents, they're much older than my sister and I. But I'm pretty grateful to have been fast-forwarded these lessons at our age. I know they're going to make the rest of the journey much easier, however long it lasts. And sharing them? Ahh that makes me even happier.