Kate Taylor's Yoga Site

Practice today was tough. I forgot to turn on my alarm and woke up only 30 minutes before practice. I usually like to get up an hour before practice and have tea and be awake before I start. The good news is that I slept soundly in my new place - without earplugs! Here is a picture of the house - I live on the ground floor.

When I got to practice my lower back was in pain and I was not looking forward to my first sun salutation. My butt muscles were also killing me - I think from stretching into Marichi D. Anyhow, the mind was in full on "I don't want to do this" mode for almost the whole practice. If I had been at home I would have stopped after a few poses and called it a day. Here, though you can't exactly show up and then fold up your mat and leave. So I persisted and by the end I felt much better mentally, though my body was still pretty sore.

After practice I went home to my next adventure of the day - my first bucket bath.
Here is how it works - you turn on the hot water heater about 15 minutes before your bath. After it is hot, you fill a large bucket with a mixture of hot and cold water. Then you start scooping water out of the bucket with the little pitcher and pour it on you. You soap up, shampoo, and rinse with the pitcher. It works pretty well, but I was a little reticent about sittng down on the little stool buck naked, even after scrubbing it thoroughly with lysol before I started. It actually turned out to be kind of riualistic and reminded of stories I've read about the japanese sento baths. You may notice that there is a hand shower and there is even a real shower head our of view of the photo - problem is taht those only have cold water. Might be nice in the really hot summer, but the weather here is cool in the mornings and I hate cold showers.

After my bath and doing some laundry (again, in a bucket) I met Jennifer and Lars for an Indian breakfast. We went to the Stand Up Cafe and had Dosas and Idly. I likethem even better for breakfast, especially after a hard practice. Lars also showed us a great bakery whher we bought a few traditional Indian sweets. One of the Mysore specialties is made from Ghee and Djaggery - basically butter and sugar. I also got a couple of cashew based sweets for later in the day.

On the way home I took a picture of this Kolam. Panting these on the driveways and entrances to the houses is a traditional South Indian ritual practiced by the women in the house each morning.

They are traditionally made with rice flour, but some look like they may be done with chalk, and some houses have them painted on the driveways permanently....I envision those houses inhabited by modern career women or busy moms who don't have time to be painting their doorstep every morning. Not that the other indian women have lots of spare time - seems like everywhere I go there are women out doing all kinds of labor. It's the men you see standing around in western cafes having tea or coffee.

Today's Sutra lesson in the next posting.