I discover Karma yoga and the warm familiarity of routine

Ok, so I've been back in London (and work) for almost 2 weeks now, but let's for a moment just pretend that I'm still in paradise - join me in this folly for just one more blogpost on this incredible journey.  I mean look at the place!

After half a week the routine at the Ashram was soo familiar, time passed very slowly indeed.  Add to this the fact that I'd also made friends - the best sort too - independent but engaged - the type of friends that didn't feel that obligation to stick together all the live long day but knew we could if we wanted to.

With the exception of the last couple of afternoons where the immediacy of "the end" brought me and these friends closer in the clinging hope that we could make "the end" simply go away, I would otherwise go lie on the beach.  I'd invariably find some ridiculously excluded spotand put in a solid four to five hours of dedicated adoration of surya (The sun). I read 3 books on that eye-wateringly beautiful beach all told. That's unheard of these days.  What is more, it was starting to feel normal.  Like my life should feel.  That has NEVER happened on a holiday.  I've always been quite ready to come home.

But you see here I had "the schedule".  At around 3 o'clock I'd go have a shower to wash the sea, salt and sand off in preparation for late afternoon yoga which was immediately followed by dinner (vegan and not indulgent in any way shape or form - I lost 5 pounds). 

Then:  Enter the official witching hour. 

By 7pm the sun would have just set leaving that deep magenta, light lilac tint in the sky.  At this point, I would do one of two things - clamber onto my bunk to read some more or huddle outside the ashram's little boutique with other like minded socialites and watch the exclusive world of the Sivananda cult go by.  Usually this was the point when I'd actively seek out my friends and squeeze into that free hour all the words I hadn't spoken all day.

At 8pm we'd file into the temple for evening satsung.  There is something very comfortable and comforting about a routine as set as this.  I can see why some personalities are inclined never to leave; why some people once immersed in the safety of this sacred schedule are left unable to leave it after any significant amount of time.  Hell, I was only there for one week and I felt like I was being pulled from the cosiness of a mother's (ok a nice aunt's) bosom when the dreaded "eviction" notice came.  I'd seen that note 3-4 times in the week I was there - never addressed to me until Friday. 

There is was flapping like a dog's wet tongue.  A note on my door reminding me of my check out time   Urghh. 

So the following morning I broke with routine. After breakfast, the time when I would change into sun mode and pad off down the beach, I instead offered to help the kitchen staff with the mountain of dishes left by the other guests.  Perhaps the sheer drudgery of it would help reprogramme my mind into accepting it was really time to leave and go back to the "real world" where you have to do dishes.  I discovered doing the dishes at the ashram is considered Karma yoga. Jesus Christ - how can you feel bad about that?  I wished I offered to do them more often and now it was too late.  I knew then I would simply have to return.

I walked with the pitiliess steps of a Greek tragedy to my room.  It was time to go.  I looked at the yogis doing other forms of karma yoga, briefly watched those in yoga teacher training sitting on a wooden platform studying anatomy or some such module.  I visited the temple one last time and bumped into "Jesus" not literally, an English fella with long hair and a beard that looked just like what we are led to think he looks like and it struck me: I really don't want to leave.  I know these people!  These are my people!!

Then the biggest blow of all.  Time to say goodbye to my friends.  The only consolation being that they too were leaving.  I choked.  I cried.

Unspoken, unheard and unseen was the heart-dwelling promise that we would meet again.

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.

The Ashram Extravaganza Begins Immediately

Having arrived  and checked -in latish in the day, I had been given a key to what would become my home for the week.  I am in Om 9 of the Om huts. As I wheele my luggage over rambling paths that weave in and out of the thick vegetation towards where the map says these huts are located, I wonder what my roommates are like.  Om 9 accommodates 4 people in two sets of bunkbeds.  The last time I stayed in a dorm was back in 2002/3 during my backpacking trip around Oz and New Zealand. I loved it then and I have a feeling I'll love it now.  There is no better way to my mind of avoiding the "lonelies" than to share a room when you are travelling solo even if it does feel like summer camp in secondary school.

No-one is in when I get there but I can see the bottom two bunks are already taken. I'll have to wait a little longer to meet my roomies.  I chose the top right bunk.  I would have gone for a top bunk regardless.  I love the top bunk. It's so much more cosy up there, plus you're well away from any floor dwelling critters...even if you are "destination fart smell".

I set about making myself at home but all I really want is a shower.  I peel off my jeans (slightly warmer in The Bahamas than in West Hampstead and the sweat has made them stick to my skin) and push my trainers off one foot at a time.  I am immediately hit by a decidedly cheesy whiff (well I have just come off a 9 hour flight) and am very glad at that point the room's other occupants are not around to witness it.   First impressions and all that and oh! the shame of it.  I high-tail it to the shower.  Best shower ever.  The first one after a long flight always is.

I have a look at the schedule - will I have time to check the place out before evening Satsung?  (No, I don't know what satsung is either).  Whatever it is, it happens twice a day at 6am (yes, AM) and 8pm daily - and it is mandatory.  In any event I have a little spare time and head straight for the small convenience store.  I'm sure Lord Vishnu won't mind me having a little browse for trinkets before the serious business of whatever satsung is.

En route, I cross paths with yogis of all shapes and sizes and ages.  Also lots of up-tight New Yorkers.   I'll have to be careful of the yanks.   Perhaps I will just keep myself to myself. Good job I have a great book.  I've started reading Timothy Leary's biography and in retrospect, I couldn't have chosen a more apt book for the setting.

Still not entirely sure what satsung is, the cowbell clangs signalling the start of it.    I make my way to the temple, obediently and find a free cushion to sit on.  Everyone is sitting crossed legged, straight-backed with their hands in chin mudra as if meditating.  I am not sure what to do so I sit quitely checking out the weird and wonderful pretending to do the same but obviously nowhere near able to concentrate.

Then the big swami dude floats by dressed in the traditional bright orange swami uniform and takes his seat at the front of the temple.  He starts Omming.  The lights fade and the place falls silent...for half an hour.  No one moves.  I am so tired I find it quite easy - though I can't say I am exactly meditating.  And I am not sure I'll find it this easy again.  Then the lights flicker back on and we are told to refer to page 10 of the Kirtan.  WTF is Kirtan?  I take my lead from those around me. Turns out Kirtans are like hymns in a church and p10 is the page to turn to in the "hymn" book. 

So turns out Satsung is a hindu ritual that involves meditation followed by chanting (or to put it the christian way - singing).  And I love it.  I feel strangely rejuvenated and yet I've done nothing.  Literally.  I wonder if I will feel the same enthusiasm at 5:45 am the following morning.

So that all done and dusted I wonder what is next - probably a slow shuffle to the room and a spot of reading before lights out.  But to my utter astonishment one of the leaders of the ashram gets up and begins to run through the evening's entertainment.  Am I hearing this right.?.. "entertainment" at an ashram? 

Ok - I'll give this a go...wonder what passes for "entertainment" at a place like this?  Well, my friends - turns out these Swamis know where it's at because for the next hour we are treated to a show by the famous sitar player known in the west for his work with George Harrison and Eric Clapton - not Ravi Shankar I hasten to add...another one who arrives with his tabla player.  Jesus Christ it is astounding.


Well, now I was intrigued.  I can't wait for tomorrow's satsung. 

But first sleep.  I am a little concerned about the 5:30 wake-up and I suddently realise how freaking hungry I still am but with food only served 2 times a day, I have a long time to wait.  A teeny tiny frisson of panic runs through me.  How am I ever going to get through this week? Nevertheless with the hypnotic sounds of the sitar still floating in my mind, I find my way home. 

I finally  meet my roomies - large friendly Americans (only slightly uptight) who snore and think I'm Australian.

My Week at the Ashram: Day 1

For me, any trip begins with the turbulent night before a flight especially if I need to be up early.  Tortuous ceiling gazing where minutes feel like hours; Incoherent mind chatter broken only by thoughts of danger and disaster.  Will the taxi arrive on time?  And when it does, will the driver take me to a quiet country lane to rob, rape and murder me?  Even if I survive the taxi ride, chances are the plane will crash on take off.  My funeral plays out to music by The Pixies and I'm especially troubled by my daughter's pain and confusion.  Jesus Christ!  I need to lighten up.  What is wrong with me? 

The alarm goes off.  It hardly needs to.  I've been awake all night.  My bags are by the door, my clothes laid out in "rainman" fashion, so much so, I am dressed in one flowing movement which is just as well since my eyes aren't working properly.  I then go say my last goodbyes to The Silverback and The Lish because of course, I'm probably going to be murdered on the way to the train station.  I take a mental picture of my lisherlish's angelic sleeping face.  I'll need something to focus on when I'm being slowly tortured to death.

Enough already. I'm out the door.  The cab is waiting for me. It takes10 minutes to get to Paddington within half an hour I'm at the airport.  10 minutes later I'm through security.  And now I have to kill TWO WHOLE HOURS.  Christ - I missed out on 8 hours sleep for this?  I'm so preoccupied at how smoothly this is all going I kind of forget that I'm actually on my way to Nassau, The Bahamas Dog!!!!  I'm off to Paradise Suckas!!!!  And before I know it I'm on the plane.  I get to my seat and I see a man with hair like this.....

...and the mothafucka is sitting next to me.   

So I'm about to take off for a 9 hours flight.  Stuck with the German Phil Spector farting away next to me and I realise I haven't given a second thought to The Silverback or The Lish in over 2 hours. How quickly we forget.  I also realise I haven't brought any snacks with me.  Well done.  Still, I figure since I am on my way to an ashram where indulgence is not de rigeur - fasting for the next 9 hours will be good practice. 

Four hours later I'm ravenous - ready to eat the arsehole out of a donkey.  I'm so hungry I can't even concentrate on the films.  I can't read and I'm in no mood to write.  And I most definitely don't want to speak to the Herr Spector sitting next to me.   I mean - look at him.

So I drink.  It's the only thing that British Airways doesn't charge for.  What a great idea.  I'm off to an ashram where coffee, tea, dairy, meat, fish, garlic, onion (yeah, I don't get those last two either) and ...what's the last thing?...oh yeah, ALCOHOL is strictly forbidden.  But I clearly don't appreciate this fully at the time.

We land in The Bahamas.  At. Long. Last.    I'm deliriously tired; ferociously hungry and absolutely mangled by alchohol.  And it's baking.  But it's all too easy.  My bag is one of the first off the conveyer belt.  I ask someone for change to call the ashram and I'm shown to a table where there is a freephone.  I must be dreaming.  I have in fact overslept and the plane has left without me.  I'm still in West Hampstead - must be.  But no.  It appears I am actually in Nassau airport making a free call. 

This bodes well.

I'm left alone to make my own way to a taxi rank.  No one bothers me.  No one tries to sell me rum.  The cab is clearly licensed and one fabulous ride later that takes me right across the middle of this beautiful island I arrive at the "new dock on Elizabeth and Bay".  I memorised that in advance to look like I knew where I was going.  I'm a white honkey with an Anthropologie bag worth hundreds of pounds slung over my shoulder. I smell of insect repellent and I'm convinced that simply by confidently stating the destination I'll will surely slip by unnoticed, just like a local.

But it's all perfect.  I get to the dock where someone who looks decidedly yogi-like is already there waiting for me.  I mean this is just incredible.  I'm swept into a boat and this is where I end up.

Little did I know but this would be the beginning of the very best solo holiday since my round -the-world trip in 2002.  And this little hut below would be my home for the next 6 days.

And this my back yard:

London and all the stresses that slowly chip away at me day in day out felt very far away indeed. 

And while I didn't know it then, this would mark the start of a life changing experience.

The Apple

When faced with a bowl of fruit, I never choose the apple.  It's not that I don't like them, I actually love them especially when paired with cheese.  The thing is I have porcelain veneers on my four front teeth so biting into a crunchy apple is simply out of the question- too risky.  I have lost count of the number of times one of those pearly beauties has flicked off after an ill-judged nibble on a piece of french bread,  And each time it has resulted in an excrutiatingly expensive visit to the dentist.  An apple is absolutely the forbitten fruit. Unless I am absolutely desperate can  I justify the rigmarole of having to core it and chop it up into slices like some little Lord Fauntleroy.

But the other night, hunger pangs had me rooting through the kitchen cupboards and as luck would have it, I was down to a choice between a leathery piece of chicken or an apple.  I opted for the apple.  I had resigned myself to the fact I'd have to take a plate out, go to the cutlery draw and hope to god there was a clean sharp knife in there (there wasn't - there is no greater annoyance) and finally fish out the chopping board.  Using a butter knife I set about hacking the apple up (I was past washing the sharp knife at this point).  I threw in a few slices of cheese - well I'd gone to this much trouble, I might as well go the full monty, and I sat down to enjoy the delicious creamy tartiness of this perfect food match.

And as I sat munching through the slices I was suddenly put in mind of an apple I once gave my mum. It's a memory that has lain undisturbed for many, many years.  My mum had been taking to hospital after hemorrhaging for an operation to put it right.  I must have been about 10 or 11.  I went to see her post-op after school and was very relieved to see her looking well.  I pulled out an apple - these were in the days when all my teeth my mine, so apples were an easy fruit.  Immediately my mother's face lit up with Jack Nicholson mischief.  She asked if she could have the apple but told me to carefully just slip in into the top draw of the little side table by her bed.  I didn't realise it at the time, but she was still "Nil by Mouth". I was happy to give her something for her troubles.

The following day I went to see her again and this time the lady in the bed next to my mum's piped up:  "You're not smuggling more apples in today are you?  Your mum certainly enjoyed it last night." Then she turned to my mum and said with a wink" Did you think I didn't hear you?"

My mum had waited for the still and darkness of the early hours to enjoy the apple under the bed covers.  The jig was up.  My mum let out a raucous cackle - a cackle she was famous for.  It was infectious.  I was happy to have been of service.

It's an odd memory.  One I haven't thought about in years and now of course, every time I see an apple I find myself thinking of her.  It is a sweet memory which inevitably ends in sadness as I think about all the things I didn't get a chance to give her.  And then I think about the feeling of confused displacement at realising my mum was mortal - that she might not be around one day - that in fact it had been a close call. 

I spend those few nights my mum was hospitalised at a neighbour's house.  Don't get me wrong, she wasn't just any old neighbour, she was my mother's best friend and a person I have sadly fallen out with for reasons too stupid to try to justify here.  And I can't help thinking this memory is in some way a sign that it's time to get back in touch.  Afterall, she took me in without question and cared for me as if I were her own and let's face it, she's the closest thing to a mother figure I have left.

So if you were to ask me how I like them apples?  I'd have to say: I like them apples fine.

For those of you watching in black and white, the brown ball is next to the pink



I've long been a fan of snooker.  Don't ask me what the rules are because I don't know - it's the serenity of the game; the toc-toc of the white ball on coloured; the silent awe of the crowds and the true personality of the players - something lacking in many other sports.  Well that and the fact that it's usually on late at night which helps lull me into a blissfull state of slumber. 

It all began when I was a little girl.  I was always a bad sleeper (I have the eyebags to prove it) and I suppose I used to wake up at 10:30pm or later and go bother my mum in the living room who would be watching a movie or some such thing.  She would put the snooker on (or in the summer it was baseball - which I also like for the same reason and know as little about) in the hope that it would bore me to sleep.  In fact it had the opposite effect. 

So anyway, snooker has this warm childhood thing about it that stayed with me over the years and with which I have become slightly obsessed.  I used to love the personalities like Hurricane Higgins or count dracula klone, Ray Reardon.  Today the latest icon has to be Ronnie O'Sullivan.  The Liam Gallagher of the game and he plays like a bastard.    When I heard his father was in jail for murder, I needed to know more.

Count Dracula

So the Silverback got me his autobiography.  And I was not disappointed.  Turns out there are a lot of spooky coincidences - not so much between Ronnie and me, more circumstantial.  For example, Ronnie and his dad run a lot of the sex shops in Soho.  I work in Soho and spend every lunchtime picking my way past these very shops to get to Berwick Street for lunch.  I work on the road where one of Ronnie's shop is - I've been in and bought a coaster - nothing too saucy.  And no he wasn't there.

Ronnie also suffers from depression and is, as anyone who has watched him in the past, very open about it.  Put it this way, you don't want to be playing him when he is in this mindframe (or rather you do since he tends not to play well at these times).  But he seems to have tamed that side of himself.  He is fiercely honest about his upbringing and his internal battles.  It's inspirational.

Plus he's a bit of alright which always helps.

Maverick

Ignorance is bliss, even if it is a cop out

Let me preface how I'm about to describe myself by saying, I have slayed the demons.  Truly I have.  I mean it took a lot of self delusion and other mind tricks but I haven't had a slump in well over a year and that to me means progress.  However that doesn't mean I don't have depressive tendencies, it's just that they are no longer dangerously despondent, which is nice.  What a lovely way to start a Saturday morning blog post. Bet you can't wait to read on.  I mean if it's this uplifting at the outset, goodness only knows how much higher it could possibly take you.

It's just that lately I've been making the mistake of reading the newspapers and boy are they ever filled with despair and suffering. I stopped reading them a while back and now I remember why.  Stories of child abuse, animal abuse and human suffering of unimaginable depths.  I do sit there after reading these awful stories and think about how it makes me feel - how alien it all seems and try to look at the flipside of this.  The fact that it's alien means it's really not part of my day to day existence and I'm grateful for this.  We really do live in a sort of paradise in the developed world for the most part. Don't get me wrong, many of these awful stories are perpetrated by people who live in the luxury of the West.  That just pisses me off.  But for the most part, we don't know we're born.

For example, I was rumaging around my favourite vintage shop in Soho when I overheard the salesgirl (I say overheard, she was broadcasting it) telling her colleague how her mother was bi-polar and her father had abused her as a child - in lurid detail.  I looked at her to see what an abused child grows up into.  She was the size and shape of someone who has "issues".  I felt terrible for her but I also knew she was lost to the part.  She was enjoying telling the story.  This is what you need to do to make the whole sordid thing palatable to yourself and those around you.  I'm sure her guilty parents too had their fair share of childhood abuse - it's a well understood vicious circle and it takes a lot of courage to break the cycle because it means facing up to your reality.  When it's that ugly, who really wants to?

So what can the rest of us do?  The ones who have really done OK.  Well, we can live our lives in an attitude of gratitude is what we can do and never miss the opportunity to be kind to someone.  And I personally need to stop reading the news. 

As I like to joke with  my PR colleagues, I don't read the news, I MAKE THE NEWS...if you read the more niche publications of the technology trade press...sort of....ahem.