OM SHANTI OM SHANTI (OH SHIT WHAT ARE WE DOING!)

Celias View Sivananda Ashram , Neyyar Dam, India December 2006

The day had finally come where we were to depart for the Ashram, a decision that had caused much debate amongst our little trio, with Curt very uncertain whether he really wanted to come and do yoga for five hours a day right up until the day we left for Sivananda Ashram at Neyyar Dam.

We decided to slightly bling it and got a car all the way to Neyyar Dam arriving in the late afternoon of the first day of Sivanandas Yoga vacation course.

With retrospect, we couldn't have had worse timing and everything coincided to make our first impressions of

Sivananda and ashram life in general very very bad! Janette on top of the ashram roof 5.30am Kerala India

First off it took forever to check in and Curt got left behind for over an hour waiting to be shown to the sparse boys dormitory. Secondly we missed all the yoga classes for that day but did arrive in time for Satsung, the part of the day where the ashram gets together to chant as well as meditate. The meditation was all right although we found it very hard at first but the chanting seemed to last forever and ever and ever.

That was absolutely nothing however compared to the talent show that followed !
OH MY GOD!
I Have never sat through anything so horrible in my whole life. Blissed out , daggy westerner gets up and sings terrible hare krishna like song completely out of tune and the another one does and then another one and it never ends!
But the worst person in the talent show?
The Australian man who got up with a guitar and sung a Bob Marley song badly WITH A FAKE JAMICAN ACCENT!
It was actual torture.

I divided my time between inwardly cringing and deciding on a scale of one to ten just how much cooler I actually was than everyone else in the room ( bar Netty and Curt)

I understand that Ego is a huge thing that Yoga devotees are supposed to overcome on their path to spiritual enlightenment ( and more flexible bodies ) and that being cool is just a part of ego but you can take that too far people! Mine and Nettys room...girls dormitory

Once we finally escaped we had a quick hurried conversation about what we would do. We were all freaked out and kind of disappointed but we had paid for three nights in advance ( only 450 R about 4.50GBP or $12 AUD a night for accommodation, food and yoga but still ) plus me and Netty still desperately wanted to try the yoga. Curt was very much for just bailing then and there despite it being 10pm at night as he hated it so much....

So what a surprise it was when the next morning me and netty finally run into Curt at 7.30am and he is singing the praises of the ashram and telling us he was happy to stay for the whole week!

It turned out that while me and netty had answered the 5am wake up call only to wander around for two hours lost, Curt has also gotten up ( every activity at Sivananda is mandatory so he didn't have much choice here) and had been taken on an amazing hike up a mountain in the dark to watch the sunrise over Neyyar Dam and the valleys surrounding it. The group held Satsung ( meditation and chanting ) on the mountain as the sun came up and Curt maintains it is by far and away the most beautiful thing he has seen in India.

Both me and Netty were extremely jealous but it did lift our spirits and make us more hopeful for better things. Plus while curt had been wandering up a mountain we had discovered the extremely strange noise we kept hearing everywhere was the Lions roaring from the Lion sanctuary on the next nearest mountain which gave the ashram a slightly trippy vibe which we liked.

So we decided to get into it and actually we started to have a really good time. We all loved the yoga classes which were some of the best I have ever taken. We did them in a huge marble hall and we all progressed super quickly so that now we are back in Varkala we haven't been able to find a class as advanced as we need. Our little group was split over meal times, taken all in long rows , eaten on the floor and with your hands and in silence. The meals were very basic and taken twice a day, once there would be vegetables and rice and sometimes pappadoms and the later meal would be very simple, rice and something very bland to go with it. Curt loved meal times, just enjoying getting his hands dirty, I found them kind of difficult since there were lots of people and it was kind of gross and noisy and Netty just hated eating with her hands.

We all enjoyed the Karma Yoga, ( basically helping out with chores to promote unselfishness) which was actually really easy but all three of us struggled in different ways with Satsung.
Luckily on the second day we attended a lecture ( we had skipped it on the first day very naughty so we could hang out and talk ) but actually it really helped.

Our lecturer was a guy called William a teacher from another connecting ashram. He was a really good lecturer just dabbling in different topics and yet he managed in less than an hour to allay most of our fears about the ashram as well as explain the five points of yoga in greater detail and talk a lot about the two gurus on which Sivanandas teachings are based. Both had been hugely active pacifists and had done really great things world wide ( plus helped with the cover of Yellow submarine for the Beatles :-) and we left with a better understanding of the role of Satsung in our yoga studies but also felt a lot more comfortable about not joining in with some of the more devotional parts of the ashram.

The next couple of days were kind of a high then low then high sort of a thing but we did finally decide to bail two days early for Varkala. It was a bit of a rushed decision based on our future travel plans but we have all left addicted to Yoga and maybe with some unfinished business in the land of ashrams!