Chanting, New People and India’s People

The school offers also other studies than asana practices. It is obligatory to participate to chanting (singing) lessons. We have chanting three times per week and today started beginners’ class. We are chanting for example mantras, asana names and numbers in sanskrit. Nobody does it alone, so it doesn’t really matter if you are just humming along. I like chanting a lot. It’s nice to sit still for a minute and just concentrate on something. Chanting calms me down and it creates nice group energy. The school offers also sanskrit and yoga sutra studies. I participated here once to a yoga sutra class, but it wasn’t for me. I think that it’s nicer to study terms and sutras alone. And in every case I will be studying philosophy in Thailand, so I thought that it will be enough for me. Sanskrit sounded a bit too demanding, but maybe I will give it a try later.

Today I went to Anu’s cafe again and I met Turkish Maria and American Amy. Both were really nice and it was fun to chat with people whose mother tongue English really is. Maria had been in Purple Valley (yoga retreat center in Goa, which I can higly recommend), so we had much to talk about (mostly about the incredibly delicious food there…). Me and Maria were jealous about Amy’s washing maschine and blender. What comes to Mysore style, she is living in a mansion with all gadgets, when me and Amy have to hand wash our clothes and dry those outside. I have also found the only Finnish people practicing yoga here at the moment. Tom, Juha and Anna are Ilpo’s students from Helsinki. We all had noticed that Helsinki Ashtanga Yoga School really follows the tradition of Pattabhi Jois, because the led class here was held exactly in the same way than it is done in Helsinki. An interesting chat with them too and always nice to use our beautiful, secret language.

I bought an Indian version of People magazine for my evening’s entertainment. The film Eat, Pray, Love is in every cover here right now and they had created in People’s magazine new mantras for celebrities based on that film. For Demi Moore it was: ”Tweet. Shrink. Cleanse.” and for Mel Gibson: ”Yell. Curse. Pant.” Everything is so global nowadays, that there isn’t really a place to hide… Poor Demi.