Yoga and a full time job sometimes don’t work out well. I know really well that I need to practice my asanas  when the work gets demanding. Even a short yoga session improves the day a lot by helping with the breath. In spite of all this knowledge, what happens in reality is something different. Sometimes, I skip my practice as I wake up later and need to be at work at a certain time. I know what it takes to get my practice in the morning. To let go of the day at 10 pm in the night.

With the internet access at my finger tips, it is quite difficult to stop reading whatever it is and retire. The constant connection to the universe is affecting me. I notice the clock at 10 pm and I am not yet ready to sleep. My alarm clock goes off at 4.30 in the mornings. I automatically put it off. When I wake up, it is too late to practice. I did not worry too much about issues with time when I had taken time off from life.  There were no complexities, no variables. I had the entire day to think about yoga. Now with the limited time, I need to plan the day quite well. I do understand that there is always time in a day for what you like doing. Internet is  what I need to give up for a few hours.  It is all clear. I will try to cut myself off the net after 8 pm and see if that will help me keep up with my daily practice.

I still recall the valedictory function at KYM last year, on February 27, around 19:00 hours, Chennai time; after one month of daily practice of asana, pranayama and dhyana, my mind had reached a stillness that I had never enjoyed before; that whole month was plenty of new experiences, emotions and new knowledge.

One year later everything seems changed. On February 27 I woke up suddenly, at 3:34 am, Santiago de Chile time, shaken by the most violent earthquake that I had never experienced before. During 90 seconds I was convinced that I was living my last minutes on this world; I was terrified, not because of dying, in some way I was surrendered to death, but because I thought that it would be very painful. I live in an eleventh floor apartment, and I thought that the violence of the movement would break the building: I felt like being swallowed by the unlimited power of nature; I was minute, weak, insignificant in front of such almighty  energy. It was the terrifying force of nature, the fecund pṛthivi, the unconscious prakṛti; “Mother Nature” brought death, destruction, chaos, pain and suffering to my land, in a way that I never imagined. The force of the nature crushed us.

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