Tag: Ma India

Krishnamacharya, Desikachar, Indra Devi

by L. Valdez Karl

Here is an amazing video of Krishnamacharya, his son Desikachar, and Indra Devi from 1988. Sri Krishnamacharya was 100 years old in this video.

When I am at the Mandiram I love listening to Desikachar’s stories about his father’s students. Desikachar told us a story about how perturbed he was when he saw his father hugging a western woman, on the street no less. If you know anything about South Indian culture, especially Brahmin culture, that is absolutely not done! Then his father told him it was Indra Devi, his student.

Desikachar told us how when he was growing up he was not interested in learning yoga. He was not like Jois or Iyengar who started their studies when they were young. Desikachar was an engineer, he wanted to make money. Then one day he saw his father stop his pulse for two minutes, he had such control over his body. He told us when that happened he fell to his knees and asked his father to teach him everything he knew about yoga. The rest is history.

I am honored and blessed to have such a close connection to the source, to the heart of yoga.

Sixty-four more days and I am back in Ma India’s arms. My friends keep asking me if I am going to come back. Studying yoga at the source, climbing Mt. Arunachala, Kali temples in Kolkata, the Temple of the 64 Yoginis in Bhubaneswar, culminating my India trip at the largest spiritual gathering in the world, the Kumbh Mela….

A few years ago an akashic record reader told me (before the Mela was even a thought in my mind) that what I experience on one of my India trips will be so profound that I will have to go to a “place with palm trees” to recoup.

I am. Zanzibar has palm trees.

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Ma India, take me home

by L. Valdez Karl

As I’ve mentioned time and again on this blog, ever since I returned from my first trip to India in 2005 there has never been a day that I do not think of India. it can be a child’s face that flashes through my mind, or something I learned in my yoga classes there, or a smell that makes me remember where I was when I first smelled that smell. a soap or a spice will bring me back. even the clothes that I bought in India still smell “like India.” I brought back a supply of my favorite shampoo and sometimes I sit on my bathroom floor, open up a bottle and sniff…sometimes I cry on my bathroom floor.

I came across the blog of a professional photographer — the photographs of India and Indians are beautiful, so I’ve posted this video he took in Chennai in 2006. I’ve been to Chennai three times and I’ve never visited Marina Beach. I’ve been on the beach in Pondicherry and Rameswaram but never Chennai….next time.

I want to, need to, return to India so badly. now that I am going through some rough emotional times I think even more about being in India, maybe for 6 months out of the year. India is the only place that heals my soul. an Indian friend told me that my heart is calling me to India because I am missing something here that I need very badly.

a regular reader of this blog and his wife will study yoga at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram for one month later this year and then travel to my favorite temple towns. email discussions of their itinerary make my heart ache — I was in Tamil Nadu in January and I can still feel the temple ground beneath my bare feet, the sun on my bare arms, the smell of jasmine in my hair, and the touch of shakti all around me as I sat in temples. even though I returned from India this year sicker than a mangy Indian street dog, I was home less than a week when I started dreaming those Tamil Nadu dreams.

I want to go home. jai Kali ma, take me home.



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