India, Day 5

I woke up at 4.45 am again but decided to go back to sleep, telling myself to treat it like a real holiday, and instead do the evening session. I’m beginning to enjoy the yoga classes even more, the whole group is on the same wavelength now, we all understand and appreciate what he’s trying to teach us. His emphasis on the precision of the poses is painful at times. Each muscle, each bone and join position can be wrong even in the simplest positions like the standing position. It makes me retrospect how much have my other yoga teachers been compromising. After the class I go for an ayuverdic massage and a reiki session. You can learn Reiki level 1 here in 3-4 days, but I try the session first. Massage is awesome, the woman knows her stuff. The reiki relaxes me at first, then my blood pressure goes up very high, then back to relaxation, then I dose off. My understanding of reiki is too shallow to judge the session. It’s about channeling the energy by the giver, the medium, to a receiver. It’s supposed to have healing properties, but I feel little. My friend Swaran used to heal my headaches and bad moods by placing his palms on my forehead. Maybe today I’m just not in such a bad shape.

The evening class is the best session I’ve done in yoga, ever. He makes us do a series of stretches on ropes suspended from the walls. The rope acts as a counter-lever to my leg, so by pulling up the rope I pull up my leg. One person stands below me, pressing my hip joint down for a maximum stretch of the groins. I got off the ropes feeling like god gave me a new backbone. And this is only day 2. I can’t stop thinking how much Brenda, Annie and Manuella would have loved it here. Ok, so this is the one lousy part of a single travel – you don’t get to share your joys with the other person. But I have my blog.

Over dinner, an Indian man asks me in the first 1 min of the conversation what my qualifications are. The industry of "advertising" seems beyond his generation. "I’m a respectable government servant" he announces. "My children are both computer engineers. Waiting for a visa to America". "Do you use email?" I ask him. "Pardon me madam?" This concept too is beyond his generation.