Day 3 at the Ashram - in which I make friends

Against all the odds I make friends today.  Not just any friends but people that I have a distinct feeling of having met before...you know in a past lifetime (in true ashram fashion, one lifetime is simply not enough).  I have no other explanation.  We each live the reality of a different decade; one of us is in our 60s, one in the 40s and another one in the 20s and I'll wager that while, yes you will guess which is which from the picture below, it may well take a couple of minutes.  And that is the power of yoga my friends. 

You know, I may well live a 100 lifetimes (may already have) and I will never be able to understand or fully explain what it is that draws certain people together.  I mean why these two girls?  Out of tens and tens of others.  And at a time when I was only really planning a week of sun, sea, yoga, mediation and reading.  No other ambitions outside of those.  As a group, everyone there seemingly has very little in common with each other outside of yoga and by no means is it a common denominator.  Believe it or not there are degrees of devotion to the activity.  It's a delicate balance.  One day I absolutely cannot live without doing asanas while another I willingly give it all up for a cup of coffee or glass of wine but mostly I'll take yoga over anything else.  It's all relative in the end. 

So here I am, in Nassau - The Bahamas, an island I always thought would be at the very limits of my financial means.  It's day 3 and I know I will be back next year and the year after that and one year I will bring The Lish with me.  I realise at that point that nothing is really ever out of reach in life, nothing.  It's all about how much you want it and how dedicated you are willing to be to achieve it.  Sometimes all it takes is a leap of faith. I spent weeks deliberating, calculating and pondering the sense of this trip.  Last year I went to Spain for a very different type of  yoga retreat  (a yoga holiday if you like, of the sort you take when you're too scared to try an Ashram) and it served it's purpose well.  That trip triggered what became a daily yoga routine that has endured to present day.  It's because of that experience (and a niggling sense that I was missing a trick somewhere)  that I'd felt the need to find something much more hardcore.  In the Sivananda Ashram - I found this.

So let me tell you a little story about hardcore.  It starts at 5am. This is the time the cowbell clangs apologetically signalling the start of a new yogic day.  I anticipated physical pain and a mental refusal to comply.  And who is to say this wouldn't have been the case had I not been suffering from jetlag.  Instead I'm irritatingly sprightly.  The half hour meditation is easier today. For one, I know what to expect and thankfully jet lag has a way of raising you up high before plunging you into nauseating fatigue without notice.  So while I arrive at the temple with a spring in my step - it isn't long before tiredness takes every drop of juice from me and all I have the energy to do is sit quietly, eyes closed thinking of nothing - which is lucky since that is what is required of you.  Then chanting.  Then yoga.  And only then are you given the simplest of meals.

I'm titillated by the insanity of it all.  It's 10:30 am, I have been up for 5 hours and the day is only really beginning (I've done so much already) and I've still got so much to do.  Not least the serious business of sun-bathing before it's time for afternoon yoga and satsung comes around again.

All in, I figure I'm rampaging through an 18 hour day like it's nothing.  And I can't wait to do it all again tomorrow.