Day 6: Piles of books to read and so much to know

How is it possible to wake up every morning and have a day that was even better than the last? How can I experience daily rituals and look upon them with such utter appreciation and wonder?  Each day I am waking up and looking forward to my next interaction, the next thing I will learn, the next person I will sit with at breakfast, the next meal I'm going to eat, the way this yoga makes my body feel, and relishing in the excitement that I have so much time left to do everything and anything I can think up in my mind. And with this knowledge, the time to do great things will become infinite...spanning far beyond this trip.

It's like going to therapy but it's magnified a million times. I want to change my life, to be more happy, to live for the moment and be with my friends and family and enjoy every minute with them. People here, not just the teachers, but the students, are teaching me that it is possible...that we have all been brought here at just the right time in our lives on our journeys and our karma has triggered the universe to bestow upon us a magical experience with absolutely no negativity.  Just a feeling of love. Sounds so lame and cliche, but I'm starting to believe the statement "Ask and ye shall receive".  The universe is really listening if you are willing to open your heart. I feel like I want to teach yoga the way it's supposed to be taught, with all aspects, not just the poses...which are nothing compared to the study of the philosphy.  

The girl I met here whom I am very close with and we spend most of our days together is named Blagica (pronounced Blagitza).  She is the girl I mentioned from Macedonia:

She is 32, and play and screenwriter.  She trained with famous writers during her degree, and has just completed her first proper play, which she is looking to sell to a 'playhouse', where she will start to see her dream realized. She wrote it in Macedonian, it's a love story, and is getting it sent here to translate it into English for me.  She married a famous man in Macedonia, he is a radio personality, but it suddenly ended and became front page news when he sold an interview about their marriage to the press.  She therefore knows some high profile people in the television industry in her country and has been approached to help write on a sitcom for which episodes have already been ordered...she is looking forward to returning to steady work in her craft. I'm so excited for her, she is so passionate about it. She has practiced yoga for a few years now..she knows so much of the philosophy that I love to talk to her about her experiences with her yogis and teachers, and she is so knowledgable that when we cover a topic in class we have a talk over it later over coffee and it all makes sense. She is a generous, loving soul who is packed full of intelligence and grace. I feel lucky that we take care of each other here.

Today we learned about the difference between all the yogic paths: Astanga, Hatha, Vinyasa, Vikram, Raja, etc.

Hatha Yoga (ha/tha...sun and moon, male/female, same as yin/yang) is the basis of yoga, like the notes you learn to play an instrument.  Hatha yoga encompasses the basic poses you learn coming from the source, the ancient teachings, the asanas...it's a yoga where you find the balance within. Astanga focuses on fluid movement on poses learned in hatha which is kind of like intermediate hatha...a guy named Patanjali came up with it and Astanga Vinyasa is like modified hatha..a certain sequencing of the hatha poses, kind of packaged up and sold as a new way to practice.  If hatha yoga asanas are the notes, Astanga Vinyasa flows are the composed song. Using blocks and straps and things come in with Iyengar yoga..again hatha yoga in a modified way with a new name on it to make it attractive.

Kundalini Yoga is the yoga of breathing, Kriya yoga uses techniques to evoke the energy within, and Vikram or Bikram yoga began as this Vikram guy coming up with 26 hatha postures performed in a hot room, marketed for the westerners who dont live in hot countries.  Packaged and sold, to make yoga more attractive to westerners.

There are all sorts of branches, and it gets quite complicated, but there is even a branch of yoga that is call Swar yoga, where people actually believe that wether the flow of air in your nostrils is balanced or not decides what kind of strengths and weaknesses you have in your practice.  Can you believe that my teacher actually told us that if you notice the dominant nostril is the left, your mind is predominant at the time, and if your right nostril is then you are more physical, that postures seem more easy...but when both are open and in balance, the entire spirit comes forth and you are strong in both areas. I asked if I should actually believe that I was in pain and it was hard this morning mostly because the flow of air was predominantly in my left nostril, not my right. He said ya, there are entire schools of though on the matter. People in the class were nodding their heads like it was common knowledge or something. I was in shock.  

As if the next class I went into, the idea was presented that we learn how to respond to stress in the first six years of our lives, and it shapes our unconscious reactions to stressful situations for the rest of our lives.   If someone has been hit, they learn to deal with stress by fighting and acting out and being confrontational.  If you were sick or experienced trauma in the first few years of life, it affects your psyche long term until you recognize it and deal with it when you are older..because you couldnt when you were too young to understand it. Unless we learn to recognize that we are prone to reacting a certain way based on the way we were conditioned and be aware that it needs changing, we will always react to emergency situations the way we were conditioned to in the beginning. Our mind only knows the past to deal with the present.  That is why, according to the teacher, that we go into therapy...to discover the root of why we act certain ways, to acknowledge it and to therefore change the outcome. hm.

Anyways, everyone here has been very forthcoming in suggesting books to read, and I've been handed about 4 new ones just in the last two days. I think I'll take a bit of a break from blogging all night for the next little while and get some knowledge going on. It's been ages since I sat and read a book with no distractions.  On my bucket list for this week:

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hossein

Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams

and one that everyone here says is a must read: 

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.

I'll let you know how it goes. I'm starting to get a bit homesick and it's just the first week...missing and loving all my favorite souls, and so looking forward to spending lots of quality time with you when I come back to reality.  For now...I'll enjoy the dream. xoxo