PPH Misfits

Our band of misfits roamed the halls of Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana or S-VYAS, a Yoga University on a quest. Coby, a fellow yoga teacher’s training student from Australia and I were looking for advanced pranayama (yogic breathing and energy manipulation) techniques.  Tal, a Chinese Medicine Doctor from Israel, was looking for instruction and guidance to perform the last of the yogic purifying techniques.   We all came for a yoga intensive, but were triaged into the Promotion of Positive Health (PPH) group, admitted into therapy.

The first day we filled out forms, waited, were piled into a bus for a very short 2 hours from Bangalore, waited, filled out questionnaires, waited, were weighed, measured and fed. 

At the introduction assembly, we knew were close to our answers.

“Uncontrolled speed is the disease,” esteemed Dr. H R Nagendra said in her address.  “Reduce speed on all levels.  Rest.  Yoga is the skull to calm down the mind.  Slowing down trick is yoga,” she continued.  In her address she went over how cancer was sent into remission through yogic breathing techniques developed at SVYASA University.  Depressions and OCD were not diseases, according to her: “Be angry, be depressed, but slowly,” she explained.  “Then you have space between two thoughts and you can see what is.  OCD is a supernormal condition, also not a disease but hyper speed.  There is a great capacity for super focus that is present.  Only difference is it is not focused on the right place.”  Dr. Nagedra assured that through yogic breathing and asana techniques, as well as rest, cure has been attained.  Bliss was near. 

Yoga citta vriti nirodha, we head again Patanjali’s shlokah from the sutras.  Yoga is to gain mastery over the modifications of the mind.  It is in our mind where a lot of dis-ease resided.

“Are you satisfied?” Harish, our therapist and group leader asked us the following day.  We have just completed the second session of the day with special technique.  It was much like the first, slow movements, half poses, sleepy yoga of a parallel universe.  “I know you are not,” he learned to read our face.

Harish hard at work crafting his Positive Health group

After 2 weeks of nearly 2 dynamic vinyasa classes per day, therapy was not the order.  Coby and I came for knowledge, and lack thereof along with lack of movement as we practiced it was torture.  The answers were there, we just didn’t know if they were coming to us.  Yoga therapy was mind management technique, and we needed to manage our mind and expectations because we were being turned from students into patients. 

All around were people who seemed to be ecstatic.  Many older people had come for treatment and health management.  There was a very cheerful young boy, of Indian descent from Canada, with severe limp as he walked and a scar at his throat.  He was smiles, and his mother was in pure joy at the place.  “They have a program here, and I have come here especially for my son.  He has many problems and this place makes him feel better.”  I could see the pain in the mother’s eyes and the magic that it was for her child. 

However, thankfully, my problems were different.  The thirst for knowledge thankfully has no physical side effects other than restlessness, irritation and business of the mind.  The state of being close to the source, hearing the water, but without a clear path to the spring had to be resolved. 

Meeting with the famous Dr. Nagendra the very first evening and explaining the “yoga intensive situation” gave us all hope.  She confirmed, much to our Harish’s surprise, that there is in fact a track for people to come for intensive practice and knowledge.  However, it was off the beaten path, which is usually an incredibly uncomfortable road in the land of rules and traditions.  She wrote out our prescription: meeting with different professors to study philosophy, a teacher assigned directly to us for advanced pranayama practice.  Harish, our therapist and section leader, was left with the task of making it happen, and like a traditional Indian man he had a hard time going outside of his section’s Promotion of Positive Health track for the therapy misfits like us. 

By the third day, most of the program was still not in place.  Though we had begun to meet with professors in their holmes  and attending a lecture here and there, things were not set, and most importantly, there was no pranayama. 

“I told you, it is not so easy.  I must coordinate the professor’s schedules, find you a time when they are free, to know who is free.  Of course, Dr. Nagendra can write, but to make it happen is another matter.  Look, why don’t you come for your section’s sessions.  You will learn something, Just you try!” Harish was kindly promoting Positive Health therapy down our gagging throats. 

Tal, Coby and I would vent our frustrations to one another in between breaks, sharing the pain of going against the institutional grain.  Almost as though by magic, the times that our conversations would reach a heated crescendo nearing anger, patient Upma would show up, as thought right on cue.

“You are so blessed to be in this place!  In all of India, in the whole world, there is nothing like it!  Do you understand how lucky you are?” she would look at us seriously, searching our faces for gratitude. 

The first time she appeared, Coby remarked that she heard from someone that this woman was not well.  The second time, the coincidence was just getting to be a bit much.

“Everyone in this world is so concerned with getting and taking and getting and taking.  We are all given what we need.” Upma walked into the Positive Health section room where our band of misfits gathered to gripe.  “If a child is told, ‘Therefore zebra,’ he would not understand, he would fail the test.  The child must start from the beginning, understand the problem, and the solution should be revealed in time.”

Starting to feel like mental health patients, we decided it was time to take matters into our own hands.  The good old advice from my taxi driver the very first day in Mumbai surfaced again:

“Asking, it’s good for us.”

So, at every meeting, during every meal, and whenever anyone asked how I was, I would relate the advanced pranayama technique and yoga intensive quest. Coby and I were starting to formulate alternative plans.  Should we go to Mysore to study with a teacher she knew?  Can we create a 7 day intensive to get the kind of knowledge before we have to leave India?   Should we risk the time it takes to travel and settle in a new place, leaving the dwindling possibility of reaching the goal for the uncertainly of the unknown? 

Towards the afternoon of the third day, Coby and I met yet another professor with nearly dwindling hope.  Tal did not come this time as he was defeated by an earlier morning incident of a cancelled cleansing technique session.  The manner of this professor was different.  He fussed around us like we were esteemed guests, offering us tea, handing each one of us presents in form of apples.  

“Hmmm, so I think there is one woman who can help you.” He responded to our well-polished intensive search "presentation".  “She is a simple one, but she has amazing insight into pranayama!  These kind of people, when they go deep into a subject, it is beautiful!  I will phone her directly and find out when you can meet.  You and I will meet separately for Raj yoga philosophy”

Coby and I looked at each other in disbelief, but the professor was already on the phone, arranging the meeting. Just a few hours ago at breakfast, I sat at a table with American Yoga teacher trainers and shared my quest.  They let me know about their pranayama class at 4pm and said our group could join!  At 5am there was also a 2 hour teacher dynamic trainer’s yoga class.

Our schedule was starting to come together.