The practice

The father of Astanga yoga, Sri K. Pattabi Jois, has been ill for some time and not attending practice at the shala, and his grandson Sharath has stepped in (he's been teaching forever anyway). I really had no idea what to expect (on purpose), so I just rocked up to their place--the Astanga Yoga Research Institute--to find a short line--classes had been on break for two weeks and were just starting up the day after I arrived (which gave me plenty of nap time that first day). Because I signed up at apparently the last possible moment I was put into the 6:15 am class. Thank God, the other class meets at 4:15 am. This plus the bucket shower would have left me unspeakably grumpy. But the thing that shocked me the most was Sharath.


I took my giant wad of cash (27,530 Rs) out of my wallet and started counting for the man taking my application, and he says, No, no. Takes the bills and shoves them into a money counter like at a bank. More, more. He says. We finish our transaction and I say (in full Indian style), What is your good name? And he looks at me a little funny and says, I am Sharath. It all felt so un-yogi like in a weird way, like, shouldn't he not touch money or something? But then I was glad, becase far too often I've felt people think about paying me last as a yoga teacher, and so to see him be there and all like, this is my business, well, I liked it. Besides that, the man is always there, working working.

The first week has been all led-primary and thank God. It's killing me and we've only done five days of it! By setu bandasana I have NOTHING left. And yet there's another solid 20 minutes left to go, a full ten of which is utplutihi (suspended lotus). OK, I exagerate, but seriously, Sharath's count is excruciating. But now we have two glorious days OFF. I was going to head into Bangalore but no one is back from holidays yet and besides I've met some very interesting characters here in Mysore. So we're heading off in search of a Jain temple and a coffee plantation.