Mysore Magic - Part 3 "The Practice"

In the last few posts I shared with you how I felt the "Mysore Magic" during my trip to India, today a bit more on this topic..

It is 4:30 am Monday morning: waking up for morning led class, walking to the shala in the dark, sitting in a long line down the street to the shala. It might seem a bit insane to those that haven’t done it. It might seem insane to those that make this pilgrimage the first time as well. Once you step into the shala, however, you know this is exactly where you ought to be. The sound of the opening mantra vibrates through the room and that first sun salutation; there is a special energy I can feel here. Normally I am not the biggest fan of led classes, but the first led class in Mysore was just amazing. Even though it’s so early in the morning I sense my body opening up, and feel the practice on a deeper level. As I listen to the Sanscrit count, my mind feels steady and my body knows what to do.

In self-practice classes it seems despite the many distractions, despite so many people around me, I feel remarkably calm. I can keep my drishti, the gazing point, steadier than ever before, not letting anything shift my focus. I feel only the rhythm of my steady breath and my body moving in tandem with it.

From day one I feel that my body is opening in the warm weather, in the hot shala. I can go much deeper in pretty much every asana, binding where I couldn’t in the cold months of winter in the UK, and just feeling that wonderful flow during the practice. For me this is what I love in the asana practice, you feel like you are dancing to the music of your breath. Perfection. But not in the sense that the asana needs to be perfect – the perfection is in the energetic flow of the practice.

Another breakthrough is having Sharath ji assisting me: he tells me to get up from the backbend, to stand up, that my inability is all in my mind - and suddenly I can do things I did not think I was capable of. And once done, I find that the next day I already know I can do it, and my body listens to my mind! To me, a great teacher is someone who makes you see what you can’t: that you can do so much more than you thought possible!

My mind is calm after the practice, my body is aching. It is now time for Svadhyaya, getting deeper into the philosophy of yoga, going beyond the asana. There is so much time during the slow pace of life in Mysore that it’s pretty much a given that you will end up in a philosophy class one way or another. It is such a departure from our scripted lives in the western world: there is time to contemplate, meditate, think and just be. There is time to study the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras, understand the eight limbs of ashtanga yoga, the yamas and niyamas but more on that in another blog post...