Out of Body Experience

Waking up to 16 loud gongs at 5.30 am every morning. That’s part of the deal when you enroll for the Teacher’s Training Course (TT...

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Waking up to 16 loud gongs at 5.30 am every morning. That’s part of the deal when you enroll for the Teacher’s Training Course (TTC) at Sivananda Ashram, near the Neyyar Dam, about 45 minutes from Thiruvananthapuram.

I was one of the lucky ones to experience the agony and ecstasy of the TTC, a rigorous routine for aspiring yoga teachers.

My first challenge? Rising to the sweet sound of the gong. During the orientation,we looked like an ad for the United Colors of Benetton—students from over 15 countries participated in this course.

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A typical day started with meditation and satsang. The first few days, I found it tough to meditate. As the Swamiji guided us through it, all I could think of was the menu for lunch. (I later found out it remained the same all four weeks; only the colour of the vegetables changed occasionally). But by the last week, I was meditating so deeply that I didn’t even realise that an hour had passed.

After tea at 7.30 am, we were taught yoga asanas for a couple of hours. During the first two weeks, Tiger balm became my closest buddy. Our teacher would remind us, in true yogic style, how our body was not our body. Yeah, I really wished my body wasn’t my body.

One of the biggest challenges, besides trying to balance my entire weight on my fingers, was trying to keep the famous Kerala mosquitoes away. Repellents became an integral part of our lives. As for food, we had two meals a day—brunch at 10 am, and supper at 6.30 pm.

If we missed either, tough luck. My karma yoga was food-serving. I was sure I would be asked to clean bathrooms—which, by the way, I was prepared for—instead I got to serve 200 people seated on the floor every single day… a lesson in forward bends.

		PEACE ON EARTH

			• There are more than 30 Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres worldwide, propagating yoga and Vedanta • Swami Sivananda’s teachings are a synthesis of all formal doctrines of yoga • Sivananda centres teach traditional Hatha yoga, which includes asanas or postures to control the mind through the physical body and subtle psychic energy • TTC courses last four weeks. Graduating students receive a certificate Story continues below this ad • Upcoming TTC courses: At Netala, Uttarkashi, September 12-October 10 and at Neyyar Dam, November 14-December 11. Cost: Starting from Rs 70,000 for a dorm • For more information, log on to http://www.sivananda.org

The afternoon was devoted to Vedanta philosophy and Bhagwad Gita classes, one of which was taught by our delightful Swamiji (who was Italian). By 4 pm, it was time for asanas again, with everyone standing on their heads, fingers or whichever body part was on the list.

After another gruelling two hours of asanas and pranayama on starving bellies, we would charge for dinner. At home, 9 pm or later is when I dine but here, I amazingly ate at 6 pm and did not resort to midnight snacking. At 8 it was meditation and satsang again, and by 9.30 we were ready to crash.

Our cultural activities were fun. One night a week we’d put up a talent show. We had German songs, Iranian Sufi dances, Tai Chi, Spanish samba, Maori fire dances, Sanskrit stories, African songs—you name it… One of the memorable experiences was the kriyas, a sequence of cleansing techniques. One of them is the Kunjar Kriya where one has to drink umpteen glasses of salt water and vomit them all out—now imagine 200 people throwing up near the ashram lake at six in the morning.

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Another was the mantra initiation ceremony where one is given a chant that has to be followed for life. Its impact and energy was so powerful that one poor Aussie girl collapsed right after the initiation. As my wonderful English roomie from Cornwall would say, “India is just too much, luv”.

For the first two weeks, my body and mind were screaming, ‘Go home, you can’t handle this’, but in the last two weeks I became a true yogi. Four weeks of head stands and throwing up, chanting and mantra, philosophy and meditation, sambhar and red rice. And my first step towards a ‘holistic life’.

Finally, as we all stood teary-eyed at the graduation ceremony, knowing the next day we would all go our separate ways, we knew we had one thing besides yoga that would always bind us together—mosquito repellents.