Hakunamaste!

Krithiga M

The alarm goes off exactly at five. I slowly rub my eyes and grudgingly sit on my bed. It’s time for my much awaited Yoga class. I rush through my early morning chores and step out with my yoga mat. My sister yawns beside me, and I resist the urge to yawn myself.
We brave December’s chilly wind and finally reach the Yoga center. It’s empty, except for a couple of people who are adjusting the corners of a red shamiyana, which they have carefully laid out on the ground.

Within minutes, our Yoga master and the rest of the Yoga doers have settled in Vajrasana, the diamond posture.

It’s not easy to concentrate on the prayer when your legs are threatening to break under the pressure of your rear. I slightly open my eyes to peek at my sister fidgeting beside me. I try not to smile. Inhale. I chant the third round of ‘Omkara’.

One of the perks of attending the morning batch of Yoga class is that we get away with mischief as the Yoga master assigned to our batch is quite young, unlike the second batch master whom my sister fondly calls ‘Sotta Motta’.

The first day was the hardest and the funniest. We started off with Suryanamaskara, an ancient yogic practice that involved twelve steps; a form of salutation to the life giving sun or ‘Surya‘. There is a particular shloka with which one has to start, followed by a ‘Bheeja mantra‘. By the time we had reached the fourth cycle, my sister and I were gasping for breath. Our master had enough empathy in him to slow down the practice to suit our pace.
This was followed by a couple of standing exercises. Vriksasana, the tree posture, required us to stand on one leg with the other on bent and placed on our thigh. To a person who has balance problems walking without tumbling on a flat surface, this poses as quite a challenge. True to my butter legs, I could not stand for more than five seconds and started dancing on one leg. Apparently it was hilarious, judging by the enthusiasm with which my sister related the story to my parents.

The real fun was the ‘Rock and Roll’ asana, the mere mention of which makes me and my sister laugh. It requires us to lie down on our stop, bend our legs and hold them with our hands… and rock. Then roll. The first attempt did not involve any movement except that of our neck. We urged our bodies to move and collapsed on the floor giggling when the pot-bellied man in front of me attempted to rock his body. (No offense to pot-bellied people out there.)

Our favourite time during these asanas is the one minute of break between the asanas. We eagerly await these one-minute boosts to our laziness. Closing our eyes and savouring the richness of one second has never been more fulfilling.

By the tenth day, the results were visible. The ghosts of laziness that had tightly held on to me for years slowly released its grip. My body gave in, and seized this new found flexibility with warm tingly sensations. I realised the gift of our breath, Pranayama made sure of that. My body feels lighter and head clearer. My biological clock is better regulated, now that it’s been forced to sleep early and wake up early; and what’s more, I sleep better.

We still giggle when someone tumbles or grumbles, but now, it’s with a new found consciousness of both the clumsy and the able.