Category Archives: india
My Yoga Challenge
I started yoga later in life than I wish I had and when I did, I simply fell in love.
It helped that I had an awesome instructor and developed a virtually break-free habit.
It helped that my yoga tutor showed up at my doorstep at 6 a.m. most mornings.
It helped that I had a yoga buddy.
It helped that I was in the birth country of yoga and had promised myself that I would learn something new during my temporary two years there.
And then I returned back home to the USA.
I just couldn’t get myself to practice yoga. There was no personal, home-based instructor. No yoga buddy, no pattern established, no inclination to start, too much travel, too transient a stay in a single place, too much work, yada, yada, yada…excuses upon excuses, they just kept multiplying.
I missed yoga like anything but couldn’t get myself to do anything about it. 😦
Enough is enough. I gave myself a talk a couple of months ago. One of those tough talks. Clearly my mind was messing with me. There would be no more excuses. No more BS. I was determined to start my yoga again and keep it going.
I set myself a new goal: Do a few minutes of yoga every day. Without fail. No weekend passes. No holidays.
It would be the first thing I did every morning. No matter where in the world I was.
That’s the nice thing about yoga – all you need is some floor space, a yoga mat or carpet, and you’ve got all the equipment you need to practice and practice well. Plus a pinch of determination to start the practice, and to keep it going.
To make it easy on myself, to ensure follow-through and cut through the “no time” BS excuse, I gave myself a short 15-20 minute daily yoga goal rather than an hour. I actually started with 10 minutes. That’s a challenge that anyone can overcome.
But what a challenge that first 10 minutes was! Tough, tough, tough – with a hugely, inflexible body and fat in new places warping all my poses, what did I expect? But I persisted.
Day after day after day, for the past 70 days (but who’s counting?) without fail, I have practiced my (“petite”) yoga every morning. It’s not much, yet it’s a lot. Twelve Surya Namaskars – that makes 840 so far. But then, who’s counting? Each Surya Namaskar has 12 yoga poses, so that’s 10080 asanas so far. Hmmmm, not such a bad idea to keep counting. 🙂
The Surya Namaskar set is followed by plank for 30-45 seconds, halaasana (plow pose), and lately, vipreet karni.
Finally. A new habit appears to be forming.
Something else has helped me with this new convention – help from background music. Every day, it’s the same music (I did say “habit”, didn’t I?). I play Suprabhatam (a Sanskrit poem that is chanted at dawn at Hindu temples). There’s something soothing yet invigorating about it.
This has become such a regular pattern that now it’s likely Pavlovian. Watch out, if I hear this chant elsewhere, I’ll start performing Surya Namaskars, and you’ll know it’s that yin-yang woman. There are worse things that could happen…
It’s not a done deal, but at least a new journey has begun again. And by writing it down for even one other person to read, I expose myself indirectly extending and enhancing that commitment of mine. Trust me, I’ll take any help I can get – just to keep this routine from getting interrupted ever again. I’m trying to get addicted here and am possibly half way there.
Remember the grace of Surya Namaskar? This awesome performance is still the best video I have seen so I share it again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVrj2bDnddw
I also found another visually stunning video of Surya Namaskar. Click on the picture below to watch.
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Now, you go get yourself some yoga – you won’t regret it.
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Photo Credit:
By Ursula [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
A Massive Scale Democracy At Work
The world’s largest democracy (India, in case you didn’t know) is voting now to choose its new government. The sheer numbers that India is dealing with are enormous and astounding – some that the rest of the world will never witness.
As of Feb 2014, the number of people from this 1.2 billion strong country who are eligible to vote is an amazing 814 million+. Compare that to about 150 million registered voters in USA.
In fact, around 120 million voters in India will be voting for the first time since the last national elections that were held in 2009….they are the new grown-ups with a huge, new responsibility to help guide the country into their future.
A first time female voter displaying her voter identity card, at a polling booth during the 4th Phase of Lok Sabha General Elections-2014, in Sikkim on April 12, 2014
930,000 polling stations will be used with 1.4 million electronic voting machines. Thousands of police and paramilitary personnel have been deployed to polling stations to provide security. Truly a behemoth project!
The actual voting is taking place over a period of more than a month, that began on April 7th and will go through May 12th in a phased manner across various regions of the country.
The national level elections for the Lok Sabha or the “House of the People” (the lower house of the Parliament of India) is represented by members of Parliament from a total of 543 constituencies. The leading party (likely an alliance of parties) will need 272 seats to form the government of India for the next five years. By mid-May, India will have a new leader and government, elected to take the country forward.
Sadly of the more than 3300 candidates contesting the national elections, more than 550 have criminal charges filed against them, with 328 of them being serious charges (murder, kidnapping, rape…). 😦 How is this even permitted?
Appalling Statistics. Frightful Reality.
But even with all that said and done, this is truly a marvel as it unfolds…democracy in action at a truly massive scale. And whether one likes the outcome or not, the country has to live with it because the majority has spoken. Did I say, democracy?
[Click here to know everything about this election in 2 minutes, video by BBC].
I can safely say that the leading candidate scares the bejesus out of me.
I lost my right to vote when I immigrated and became a citizen of the great democratic nation where I now live. But I didn’t lose my right to care. Or to have an opinion (a strong one at that).
I tell myself, just look back in history and you can see that democracies around the world have survived despite electing some terrible leaders, sometimes coming out even stronger for it. In fact, you don’t have to look too far, simply see the current highly ineffective, corruption-ridden government of India that is forcing people to choose change.
I tell myself that the nation is strong enough to survive, whatever happens. Until the next election.
I tell myself that someday more people will vote for clean, progressive and secular versus the alternative. And someday there will be a viable alternative. Perhaps even multiple alternatives.
I tell myself that I will eat my words if I am proven wrong this time. Happily.
I tell myself that ultimately, even with all its flaws, democracy in action is a beautiful thing.
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Statistics courtesy of Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), India
The Yin and Yang of Life Anywhere 