WanderingWhy…

Rishikesh! The small town in Northern India made famous by The Beatles. Long ago The Beatles spent some time here at an ashram relaxing and left with most of the famous White Album written.

That same ashram closed in 1997 and the yogi died last year but it seems to make the place seem all the more interesting as it is slowly swallowed by the jungle and taken over by monkeys.

Over 40 years later, people still wander into Rishikesh in search of personal spiritual experience.  I consider myself too much of a realist (skeptic, cynic, obnoxious asshole, whathaveyou) to join in the search in a place that has now become a commercialized new-age Disneyland.

There are many good teachers here but many more self proclaimed gurus looking to cash in.   Take this advertisement for example:

Maybe he’s legit but the comedian in me cannot look at that billboard and take it seriously.

So, yoga was the main reason for coming to India.  Yoga is really WD’s gig and since I had my fun training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in the homeland of Brazil now it was her turn.

I did do some yoga myself back in Bangkok at a very good studio called Yoga Elements. After a year of sitting on buses and eating poorly I decided to do something positive with my downtime and get back some reasonable level of fitness while WD was back in the States.  The instructor there, Shiang, put me through pain and suffering on par with any jiu jitsu training and after a month I found I really enjoy yoga.

So, I decided to join WD in her hunt for good yoga in Rishikesh. There are several very different yoga styles and in this town the choices are really overwhelming.  Ashtanga, Hatha, Iyengar,…  A regular yoga buffet.  Unfortunately all classes are held at the same time so you can only check out two places a day.

Eventually we found a few places to practice in.  One was WD’s normal practice of Ashtanga but she told me it was too rough and advanced for me.  So nice of her to look out for her wuss husband not to get hurt in the vicious art of yoga.  So, I didn’t risk losing a limb in that class and she went alone.

The other two classes were held in a studio in our hotel.  I have no idea what style the night class was but I’ll venture a guess it was Hatha (should you care about the details).  It wasn’t ass whooping like in Bangkok but I enjoyed the class.  The instructor did his best to communicate with the students and teach well.  I eventually dubbed him “The Swami” since he had fondness for chanting and a calm demeanor.  He looked the part too with a long beard and hair that was normally under a turban when he wasn’t teaching.

Swami was the complete opposite of our morning instructor whose class we attended exactly two times too many.

The morning class was Iyengar style.  We had heard about this type of yoga from another traveler who was an instructor back in Canada.  The class uses props and looks to perfect poses and build strength by holding them for longer than most other styles.  There was a beautiful Iyengar studio right on the Ganges River but sadly it was booked solid for the next three weeks so that was not an option.

But Iyengar was also offered right in our hotel in the morning so we decided to give it a go.  We went to the first class and it was okay but seemed a bit all over the place.  Thinking it over and talking about it afterward we decided the style was probably okay but the teacher not so.

Stupidly we went back the next morning and got the full onslaught of horrible insults and instruction.  To say the teacher was psychotic would be a complement.  The class instruction went something like this:

“LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK!”

“YOU SEE? YOU SEE THE THINGS I AM SHOWING YOU?!”

Not really, I thought.  Some details would be nice.

“NO ONE KNOWS THIS! NO ONE!”

Well that includes your whole class.

“ROLL THE THIGH” he repeated about six times.  Actually, he repeated everything he said six times and his vocabulary was extremely limited.  I’m grasping for the vocabulary in describing exactly what he was like but if you can imagine a cross between Bill O’Rielly and Richard Simmons you’ll get the idea.

He was about 140 lbs. and loved to pose loud rhetorical questions-except when you were supposed to know he wanted an answer.  He “taught” class in a pair of 1970’s short running shorts and asked the class to examine his buttocks for two hours.

“WATCH, WATCH, WATCH, WATCH, WATCH, WATCH.  YOU SEE?!”

No buddy, no one does.

“LOOK MY BUTTOCK”

Uh oh.

“LOOK, ROLL THE THIGH, SPREAD THE BUTTOCKS.”

Did he just say what I think he said?  This thought was confirmed as he pulled up his short shorts to reveal the bottom of his left cheek.  Oh no.

“LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK! YOU SEE? YOU SEE? YOU SEE?”

I don’t want to look.  See what?!?! What are we looking for? Your tonsils!?!

“YOU SEE?!” This time he expected an answer from the class.

“YOU ARE ALL SO SLOW! YOU COME TO GET YOUR ONE MONTH CERTIFICATE AND DON’T EVEN KNOW THE NAMES OF THE POSES!”

One month? Damn.  Some of these poor students have been subjected to this every morning for the last month?  They have traveled from Japan, Europe, North and South America for this? It’s the students fault they don’t know the name of the poses with this clown as the instructor? Terrible. I can’t believe I got out of bed for this crap.

Thankfully I never learned what he was “teaching” and never saw the gateway to his tonsils.  More thankfully, there are good teachers out there.  Thank you, Shiang!  Thank you, Swami!

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