We all know that Yoga is good for us. The South African team knows it too. They are pictured here doing a modified Vasistasana. They all have sthiram, but sukham is completely missing.  Here’s Boston’s Big Picture on World cup 2010.

Definitely comes easier when you are 7 years old. I love the Sanskrit name Poorna Bhujangasana. In English, it is translated as King Cobra pose, somehow it loses a lot of beauty in the English version. Poorna means full, complete and it is never captured in the English name of the pose. So lost in translation.

I love the Sanskrit names of asanas and the Indian names of Indian people. Most people in the West want to shorten my already short name, so it gets easy for them to say my name. I have never agreed to that and it is always my full name that I ask people to refer me by. There is so much beauty in the name when it is said the right way. I was definitely cross, when someone wanted to call me “S”, as my name was too complex for that person. I said no way, I cannot be called S. That’s a huge loss for my name.

Imagine teaching a yoga class, come to the top of the mat. Come into U, then U, then A, then B. Just because someone found it too much to handle.

This is a fabulous pose to start an asana practice. It looks so simple but quite works the entire body and wakes it in a gentle but conscious way. I love to start with this and I can feel how it works on my body. I also have to add that I have not seen this sequence in any other “style” of hatha yoga, except at Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram. This is the asana that made me realize how a mild and easy looking asana can work so well.

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I live extremely frugally these days. I cook every day and I know it saves me a bunch of money. I was always big into cooking as I thoroughly enjoy it. I don’t like to eat out every meal as most of the food made at restaurants don’t taste good to me. I always cooked even when I used to be rich, but now I cook every single day to be very disciplined with money. Being frugal has taught me a lot of good lessons. I don’t waste anything that I buy. Even the tiniest piece of ginger will be made use of. I have a budget for every single thing and the accounts are sparkling clean. I actually like being so disciplined, I only wish I would live like this even when I start making tons of money.

I made this cauliflower dish for dinner. It took me 20 minutes to make this. So delicious and extremely simple.

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This is the only case where 20 must be greater than 120. I mean 20 minutes of yoga everyday is way better than 2 hours of yoga once a week. Keeping 20 minutes aside to move the joints of the hips, knees, shoulders, ankles, spine makes a big difference for me. Until a year back, I would always go for intensity and the sweat. Now I realize I cannot keep 2 hours aside if I work full time and have  a meaningful yoga practice. Sometimes, I cannot even take one hour for yoga, either it is a goof up with the alarm clock or the day is really tight. I have noticed that I can always find 20 minutes.

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So many poses in the Aṣtanga primary series, so little time to do. So, I practice my own Aṣtanga inspired home practice. I move the headstand before shoulder stand sequence and change a few others. At KYM, I was taught that shoulder stand is the counter pose for headstand and I understand how it works on the neck. I do mellow vinyasas with knees on floor as the practice goes beyond an hour. I cannot do too many chaturangas. Of course, PJ (Pattabhi Jois) wouldn’t approve if he saw me doing this sequence. But, I don’t approve of him either, having changed all the important Sanskrit yoga terminology. So, it is ok.

Now that my knee is slightly better, I try to practice Aṣtanga in the weekends. It takes more than 2 hours to get this done. How can anyone manage doing all this, every single day?

This is the note I saw from someone whose bicycle was stolen last week in Vancouver. I did not know a simple sketch like this could convey so much emotion. The eyes were quivering and so much tears. Yes, losing a bicycle is painful. It is part of city life where people just steal.  Stealing seems to be  such an easy thing to do. Once you put away the moral aspect of it, I guess people can do this. It happens all over the world.

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I picked up Stiff from Vancouver Public Library. Stiff by Mary Roach has been around for a few years, but I got to it only now as I noticed it on a display case. The book must be very popular, as it is still distributed under “Fast Reads”, meaning I can only borrow it for 7 days, no renewals and one dollar late fee for each day. 3 weeks is the time for any other not so popular book.

This book about the curious lives of human cadavers is definitely a fast read. Mary Roach is a hilarious writer. She is not the medical types, but a writer for salon types. I had simply not thought about so many things about dead bodies until I read this book. I was surprised to find out what people and the medical community did with cadavers.

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One of the highlights of my teacher training in San Francisco was that we were taken to Samuel Merritt College in Oakland. To meet the dead. Or, I see dead people tour to quote my yoga teacher. I did not know what to expect as we were told this is not for everyone and people were asked to eat light or skip it. And, every reaction from the wanna be yoga teachers would be normal. We all reached there early in the am. The person in charge of the lab read paragraphs from Siddhartha and Bhagavad Gita and how we need to thank them (the dead) for the offer of studying them. In short, we were not allowed to say anything inappropriate about the dead was the message. We wore thin gloves, divided ourselves into small groups and off we went inside.

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Symbol of Iśvara is the Praṇava, which is Oṃ.

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