Tag: India

mantras and shoes

by L. Valdez Karl


Tracy from A Lotus Girl wrote about the Tantric Heart Wheels and when I saw them I knew I had to get one. om mani padme hum is one of my favorite mantras and there are over a million mantras on microfilm contained inside the pendant. From the Tantric Hearts website:

“The Om Mani Padme Hum mantra is unique in its incredible potency in purifying karma and accelerating enlightenment realizations. Known by advanced yogis and Dharma masters to enhance siddhis (spiritual powers) it helps to uplift others from lower states, accumulate merit (good karma) and actualize the wisdom to realize enlightenment.

These sterling silver mani-wheel pendants are easily spun. With a flick of the finger they whir like a mini-tornado radiating blessings. Spinning a prayer wheel while intoning Om Mani Padme Hum imbues you and your surroundings with the expansive luminosity of Pristine Interconnected Non-duality. This is another way of saying that while spinning a prayer wheel you are practicing a profound Dharmic path that will help you realize the true essence of your natural mind – unlimited cognizance free of solidifications. At the heart of this Dharma practice is the ACCUMULATION OF MERIT (good karma) and the BLOSSOMING OF WISDOM. Prayer wheel pendants this powerful bestow extensive compassionate benefits to those openhearted enough to reap their fortunate karma.”

I ordered the one in the picture and I received it in within a few days. The picture does not do the pendant justice so if you love prayer wheels, order one because you won’t be disappointed. I think mine is beautiful and I will wear it in India.

and below are the shoes I am wearing with a sari I will wear to a wedding….

I made a good friend on my first trip in 2005 — she calls me “akka” which is Tamil for “older sister” — and she invited me to her son’s wedding. I am honored and very excited about it. it is not a Hindu wedding, but I will borrow a sari from my friend, or if she does not have one that matches my shoes, she said she will buy one for me to wear. my friend is taking me to a beauty parlor, will arrange for my hairdo, sari fitting, facial, makeup, and anything else I want. hmmmmm….not many Indian women have hair like mine — curly/coarse/frizzy/ringlet curls. we are also renting jewelery because I can’t wear a sari to an Indian wedding without the proper gold. I so wish I still had my pierced nose!

if I look awesome all decked out in a sari with lots of 22K gold and a bindi, you can bet I’m taking lots of pictures!

christmas gift idea: poo paper

by L. Valdez Karl


My students love me so much that they gave me a box of paper made from elephant ca-ca!

Seriously, I love it…this morning my private students gave me a box of handmade note paper that is really made from, well, elephant poo poo. Go to The Great Elephant Poo Poo Paper Company. My students know I’m all about the environment and that I love elephants so they thought it was the perfect gift. The paper is 100% recycled and odorless (good thing!) A percentage of the profits from the sale of the poo poo paper (I love that phrase!) is contributed towards the conservation of elephants.

So check out the website. They have neat journals for people on your Christmas gift list who love to journal and also stationary sets for people who still write letters.

I love handmade paper. It has character. One of the things I’m taking to India is a handmade journal I bought at an art fair. Everything is handmade, even the leather cover. The artist told me that he buys hides from a beef processing plant (yuck), tools them into journal covers, and also makes the paper. My journal has a deep, rich burgundy cover that will become seasoned and burnished the more I handle it, like the way an old saddle gets or an old pair of boots. The paper inside is rough and scratchy with a nice earthy feel to it. I looked at many journals at the artist’s table, but when I picked up this particular one, a picture flew into my mind — I saw myself sitting outside a temple in India, journaling. I was meant to have this special journal. When I paid for it, I said to the artist, “I know this sounds weird, but…”, and I told him what I “saw.” He looked at me, smiled, and said, “it’s not weird in my world…” mine neither, bro.

and yes, that IS a picture of me being blessed by the temple elephant in Pondicherry, India, 2005. now THAT was the money shot!

feel good friday

by L. Valdez Karl

For those of you who want a little taste of why India is in my heart.

This video has a nice “first time in India” feel to it and the Three Dog Night song is perfect for it. Video was shot in north India where I have not been — yet. One day…..

you’ll see lots of westerners in the video, but where I go, I’m usually the only one! and that’s just the way I like it….

peace!

ditto

by L. Valdez Karl

“i am so very happy to be a student instead of a teacher for a few weeks. cause teachers need love, too. often my students don’t understand this & don’t want me to go away. but we are no different from them. we are all students who need guidance. and i can’t give if i don’t receive. a teacher who does not continue to study & practice is nothing but an empty vessel with nothing to offer.

and no one wants that.”

[emphasis added]

another pithy bindi comment from from her blog bindifry’s itty bitty brain basket. I emailed her to tell her that I’m lovin’ what she’s writin’ because she’s sayin’ what I’m thinkin’….

The Buddha pictured above is the Medicine Buddha. Read more here:

“Medicine Buddha’s blue sky-colored holy body signifies omniscient wisdom and compassion as vast as limitless space and is particularly associated with healing both mental and physical suffering. Making a connection with him, practicing meditation, reciting his mantra or even just saying his name helps us achieve our potential for ultimate healing.

The historical Shakyamuni Buddha provided teachings on healing and systems of medicine which were collected into four volumes called “The Four Medicine Tantras”. These teachings became the basis for the system of medicine practiced in Tibet and other Buddhist lands. They are characterized by a belief that all disease is essentially rooted in a psychosomatic cause, namely, spiritual confusion…”

I am using my trip to India as a healing mission. I have private classes set up at the yoga school where I will get a private consultation regarding my health, physical and otherwise, and a yoga/pranayama/meditation practice will be prescribed. I will then do my private asana class every day with a senior teacher of TKV Desikachar along with pranayama and meditation classes and a Sutras class.

There is nothing seriously wrong with me, at least that I am aware of. A medical procedure I was to have today has been rescheduled. but all this year I have felt “off” and ungrounded no matter how much yoga I did or how much I meditated. I have only myself to blame because I went off my thyroid meds early this year which wreaked havoc on my body. let this be a lesson for y’all: don’t mess around with your thyroid!

But in my bones I know it is more than that. being in a state of energetic dis-ease all year took its toll, and then the coup de grace of the dysfunctional yoga studio was the finishing blow on my subtle body, my sukshma sarira. I know that the rage I felt about what happened, while no longer consciously apparent, settled into my subtle body which then manifested physically into conditions relating to the first, second, and third chakras.

So I’m going to India to heal myself. India is always psychically healing to me but it is my hope that it will especially be so this time. like bindi’s experience, my students also are never thrilled when I’m gone for a month, but it’s the way it has to be. India feeds me and nourishes me and without it I am just that empty vessel that bindi wrote about. This is only my third trip, but each time I am there I feel like I have always been there.

My students know how I feel about India and they always ask me if I am coming back “this time.” Last night a student said that if I don’t come back he’s going to come looking for me which I thought was sweet and funny.

I told my students last night that this time I am not bringing anything back. I usually return home with a large suitcase filled with gifts and items to sell like shawls and silk scarves, jewelery, and cool Indian “yoga stuff.” this time I will be selfish — no lengthy travelogue emails home describing every street cow I see or every bit of yogic insight gained. and absolutely no blogging about my adventures. I’ll be in-country and off the grid. So to my friends who read this blog, sorry, but don’t expect to hear from me for an entire month.

It’s time for me to lose myself in the arms of Ma India. and whatever happens, happens.

it’s time for this vessel to be filled.

the colors spoke to me

by L. Valdez Karl

I keep drifting back to stare at this picture I took in September 2005 during my first trip to India.

It was taken on the grounds of the Park Guesthouse in Pondicherry. The guesthouse is right on the Bay of Bengal and I woke up at dawn one day to do yoga outside, facing the rising sun. Surya namaskar on the Bay of Bengal at dawn is a good thing.

This is an amazing display of Bonsai Frangipani, which are trees in India.

Looking at the thickness of the stems the plants must be quite old, and would surely be several feet high if growing normally.

I tweaked the photo a bit to make the colors pop, but what you see is what you get in person.

I will not visit Pondicherry on this trip, I’ve already been there twice, but that’s where I’m sending my yoga student when I hit the road.

My India.

enjoy.

Seva Cafe: love all, serve all

by L. Valdez Karl

From YouTube:

Volunteer Anjali Desai explains the vision behind Seva Cafe, a pay-it-forward restaurant in Ahmedabad, India, where each patron makes a donation toward the next person’s meal. Devoted to the principle of “think globally, act locally,” Anjali describes how this communal experiment in giving reminds us that every individual act of goodwill resounds in the collective human consciousness.

I love this idea. “Think globally, act locally” has been my mantra for years and I think it’s a very easy thing to forget as we rush around in our crazy lives. It’s all about mindfulness, being in the present moment and knowing that our actions, however inconsequential, affect someone or something else. Interbeing, as Thich Nhat Hanh believes.

Would the world be in the shape that it’s in if we truly believed in a collective human consciousness? I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel a paradigm shift coming on.

losing myself

by L. Valdez Karl

namaste, namaste, namaste!

It has been a while since I’ve posted — the closer it gets to blowing this American pop stand at the end of December, the more I have felt the need to take a break from blogging.

I’ve posted a map of the Indian state where I will be waking up less than two months from now, and believe me, it can’t come soon enough.

I’m going to a wedding in Chennai, and although it won’t be a Hindu wedding, I’ll still wear a sari. It is the wedding of my friend’s son and she said I can borrow one of her saris. She has already told my usual rickshaw driver that I am returning and she said he is happy I am coming back. He has three young daughters, and I want to bring them silly presents. They will be a big hit in their neighborhood when they walk around blowing bubbles from those soap-in-bottles I’m going to bring them. Maybe it’s time silly string hits Chennai.

My friend calls me “akka” which is “older sister” in Tamil. I call her “thankachi” which is “younger sister”. My thankachi told me she can not wait to see me, she has much to tell her sister. She loves birds and listening to them, so I am bringing her a DVD of Midwestern birds.

Then I spend five days at my yoga school in private classes — asana, pranayama, meditation, and a Sutras class. One of my students is meeting me, he is bringing his girlfriend, and they have never been to India before. I told him a long time ago that I don’t mind him meeting me as long as he doesn’t cramp my style. We will all take the classes together at the school and I will do things with them everyday until I feel stifled and encumbered by them, then it will be time for me to be alone. I have found a Buddhist temple in Chennai that I want to visit everyday, along with a Kali temple, jai ma!

After 10 days of Chennai (Madras on the map), I will tell my student what bus to take to Pondicherry and I will tell my driver to take him there, then I hop a 10:30 pm train that takes me off the beaten path in Tamil Nadu so I can explore temple towns. Not before I get mehendi on my feet though. My student and his gal will have to make it back to Chennai on their own, because I will be long gone. But he’s a big boy, I went to India the first time all by my lonesome and this woman of a certain age was fine. More than fine.

If you click on the map, you can see a route that meanders down to Madurai, where I will hop on another train to take me Kerala, on the other side of South India on the Arabian Sea, where I have never been. I plan on lots of yoga and ayurvedic massage. And being alone. Another new experience for me will be flying domestically in India — I’m flying back to Chennai from Kerala. A 90 minute flight costs $75.

As my gal pal in India, Sirensongs, says “Why do people go to India to find themselves? India is where you go to LOSE yourself.”

45 more days and I step into my freedom. India nourishes me and I need to visit Ma India as much as I need air to breathe. Mike says it all for me: “…if I don’t follow my Heart, I will lose a piece of my aliveness. It doesn’t take too many compromises to become a walking dead person…”

I do not belong here. Ma India, I’m coming home.

the official transportation of this blog

by L. Valdez Karl

I always give credit where credit is due so I will admit that I stole this post from Fran.

She’s right when she says that in the talk shows’ credits they always have “transportation for guests provided by Fast Eddie’s Limo Service…” or someone like that.

So I decided the official transportation of Linda’s Yoga Journey is the always lovely AUTORICKSHAW!

Exactly two months from today I will be back home in Ma India in Chennai which is in Tamil Nadu in South India. One of the things I love about Chennai is the traffic — yes, really! — because I’ve realized that it operates on Chaos Theory. It took me about two days during my first trip to figure out how the chicken crosses an Indian road — basically you walk into it, because if you hesitate, you’ll really screw things up. Or you sneak into a crowd of people on a street corner and walk with them in relative safety in one fast moving glob of humanity, the idea being that if you’re surrounded by people, chances are someone else will get hit by a bus. And if you are a really lucky, the bus will stop. Hopefully not on top of you.

The video below was shot in Hyderabad, but it’s close enough to show you what Chennai’s traffic is like. Actually it has less traffic than on a typical Chennai street. Watch it and you’ll see lots of ‘ricks…THE OFFICIAL TRANSPORT OF LINDA’S YOGA JOURNEY!

I’ve only been in one minor accident while riding in a ‘rick, have run out of petrol once, and have only seen a few roll over, so don’t worry — we’ll get you where you want to go…eventually. Just sit back and relax!


view from an autorickshaw, Chennai, 2005

the times they are a-changing

by L. Valdez Karl


Y’all won’t be reading very many cathartic musings and rants because a week from today I am headed to Northern California for Spirit Rock’s Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation Training. I will be gone for 10 glorious days.

I can’t tell you how excited and grateful I am to be accepted into this program because it is truly a ground-breaking, leading-edge training, something that I have searched for for a long time — well, ever since I started teaching. According to the latest Tricycle magazine,

“the 18 month long training is designed to ground participants in the deeper, meditative dimensions of yoga as set out in Patanjali’s classical yoga system, through the integration of asana and pranayama with mindfulness meditation techniques…. The program’s integrated approach harks back to the way yoga was practiced thousands of years ago.

The teachers for this retreat — and what’s cool is that there are different yoga and Buddhist teachers for each retreat — are Jack Kornfield, Anna Douglas, Phillip Moffit, Mark Coleman, Stephen Cope, Janice Gates, Anne Cushman, and Tias Little.

The retreats follow a structure similar to a vipassana retreat, with regular periods of seated and walking meditation and yoga interwoven with dharma talks, yoga talks, workshops, Q & A sessions, and individual interviews with both yoga and vipassana teachers. Awesome!

Between retreats there are readings and practice assignments and we are assigned a “dharma buddy”, somebody in my geographic area.

So no blogging for me. It will be good to detach from the outside world, or at least detach as much as possible. It will almost be like going to India because when I am in India, I rarely read newspapers — maybe the international version of the New York Times occassionally — and I especially don’t want to read about the United States. When I was in India the first time, I completely missed Hurricane Katrina. and you know what? it felt good.

So try it some time, detaching from the constant barrage of negativity and the “live in fear” mantras that this culture is bombarded with 24/7/365. you will feel a difference, believe me.

And when I return I will tell the story of how I left the yoga studio where I have been teaching the last few years. Let’s just say that I had the guts to stand up and be honest about a situation that was based on delusions and lies and I got shot down in flames for it. Since Friday I have been honored and humbled by students who told me that they consider me their “spiritual teacher” — when most days I consider myself a fraud, merely an ant at the bottom of the yoga hill.

So this retreat at Spirit Rock can’t come soon enough because I feel disappointed, betrayed, and totally emotionally fried by the entire studio experience. if that sounds melodramatic, oh well, it’s the way I feel. I don’t live my life in delusions or lies. not anymore. and any life (or yoga studio) that is built on those two things will crumble soon enough, it’s only a matter of time.

But as they say, a door closes and another one opens. I talked today to a studio owner who sounds wonderful and we are getting together after my return. Plus I will learn a healing modality in November that my gut tells me is going to be an important part of my Path. As a reiki master I always intuited that there was something more out there, something much deeper and more profound. An akashic record reader told me that “reiki is too mundane for you.” And Ma India is only 86 days away.

I will leave you with the words of my teacher, Gelek Rimpoche, about how to deal with someone who upsets you:

You should try to realize that the person who is upsetting you is not doing it willingly. They are under the control of their own self-grasping ego and driven by delusion toward harmful actions. In that sense, their actions are like that of a drunkard or madman. With that understanding, ask yourself if it is worth getting angry with a madman or a drunkard. There is no reason to hate such a person, who is suffering under the control of their negative emotions.

Go with the flow, Sama, just go with the flow. Detach from the outcome and all is coming.

While I’m gone, please go over to the sidebar and look at “Compassion in Action” — please click one or all of the charity buttons to donate…it doesn’t cost you anything but about 10 seconds of your time.

shanti
salaam aleikum
peace

100 days

by L. Valdez Karl

One hundred more days and I lose myself in Ma India for the third time. These pictures are only three out of the 500+ pictures I took during my first two trips…

the vibrant colors of flowers from a flower seller’s cart in Pondicherry…

the joy of a man dropping flowers onto another man in a flower warehouse in Chennai…

and finally the children…children that have nothing compared to many American children, yet they have everything that is important…

These are some of the images that are burned into my mind ever since I returned from my first trip in 2005. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about Ma India, the good and the bad and the ugly. Some days I wake up thinking about her, and some nights I go to sleep thinking about her. I can’t explain it, it’s just the way it is. For those of you who have been to India, and love it as I do, you know exactly what I’m talking about, there is no need for explanation. As Louis Armstrong said about jazz, “if you have to ask what it is, you’ll never know.”

I long for that very early morning in Chennai at the end of December when I take my first step outside the airport, and hesitate, stopping to drink everything in with all my senses, the sights, the sounds, and yes, even the smell of South India — a damp, cloying smell mixed with a bit of green and smoke and diesel fuel that attaches to my skin like wet cloth — and then step into my freedom.

Yes, freedom, because I feel free and light in India. I’ve just read the book Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney and she describes for me how I feel when I go to India, a solo woman traveler of a certain age…

I was alone, finally, with no one to protect me. I wanted to sing for happiness — a rare, raw, immediate sort of happiness that was directly related to my physical situation, to my surroundings, to independence, and to solitude. The happiness I felt that morning had nothing to do with the future or the past, with abstractions or with my relationships to other people. It was the happiness of entering into something new, of taking the moments simply for what they were, of motion, of freedom, and of free will. I loved not knowing what would happen next, loved that no one here knew me. I felt coordinated and strong, and the world seemed huge and vibrant. It was a relief to be alone…

My happiness was a feeling of physical lightness, of weightlessness, like drifting on air…

To prepare for her trip up the Nile, Mahoney read the Egypt travel journals of Gustave Flaubert and Florence Nightingale. She writes that she recognized in Flaubert’s notes (written about 1850) the same kind of happiness she felt. She quotes Flaubert as he witnesses the Nile:

I felt a surge of solemn happiness that reached out towards what I was seeing and I thanked God in my heart for having made me capable of such joy; I felt fortunate at the thought, and yet it seemed to me that I was thinking about nothing: it was a sensuous pleasure that pervaded my entire being.

Mahoney quotes Florence Nightingale’s reaction to a Nile sunrise:

It looks. . .so transparent and pure, that one really believes one’s self looking into a heaven beyond, and feels a little shy of penetrating into the mysteries of God’s throne…

This is the sunset taken from the top of a temple in Rameswaram and just beyond the horizon is Sri Lanka. That night, as I stood at the top of that temple and stared into the limitless expanse of ocean, I began to cry as I imagined the monkey god Hanuman leaping from rock to rock to rescue Sita. Like Flaubert, I also thanked God. . .and Buddha and Shiva and Kali and Tara that I was “capable of such joy.” Such profound joy and pleasure that it indeed pervaded my entire being.

Finally Mahoney describes Flaubert and Nightingale as neither having “any desire to fit the tediously cliched expectations that society had slated for them”; that they both “prized solitude”; and both traveled Egypt during periods of “considerable personal uncertainty and self-doubt”, agonizing “over how they would use their talents and answer their natural impulses.”

I am a woman of a certain age who travels alone, relishing my aloneness. After traveling around the sun over 50 times, India was the first country overseas that I visited and it will be my last. I also do not suffer tediously cliched expectations gladly.

Ma India, I’m coming home.