I forgot what it's like to ride a bike on the weekends here unless you go at the crack of dawn or at night. I quickly remembered as soon as I got to the path and it was full of couples with baby carriages, men with daughters balanced on their crossbars (no helmets), marathon types with spandex shorts and giggling joggers in college sweatshirts all vying for space on an extremely narrow path. Oy.
Anyway, yoga teachers' training yesterday was interesting. It was Kundalini day. (I'm getting certified in vinyasa yoga, but Kundalini is part of the training program.) I've never tried Kundalini and I was chatting to the girl next to me when suddenly the sound of a gong cut through the silence. A dramatic-looking woman with black curly hair and dark lipstick and a large blue jewel at her throat followed the gong and dove into a chant (apparently not Sanskrit, which we're used to, but Gumakh, a dialect).
I'm still processing the experience. Let's say Kundalini is very different from regular yoga, and I'm curious about trying it again, but it's a weirdly powerful thing. The central image of Kundalini is a serpent coiled at the base of the spine. Kundalini wakes it up. This is the kind of yoga Sikhs used to train their armies. I hadn't been expecting anything particular to happen, but the other image of Kundalini - a flower struggling to rise up through the dirt of accumulated experience - was accurate too. I felt like all this psychic dust was being stirred up, experiences I thought I'd forgotten or moved past.
One girl even started crying, saying that her brother died when she was 15 and she is still coping with it. I admired her for being so open in a roomful of people she met 4 weeks ago, but it was also unsettling. I'll probably try it again in 2 weeks. I won't go next week because her class would be the day before inversion (handstand) day. I want to be fresh as a daisy for inversion day. (Kundalini is tough on the arms, and so are inversions.)
Anyway, yoga teachers' training yesterday was interesting. It was Kundalini day. (I'm getting certified in vinyasa yoga, but Kundalini is part of the training program.) I've never tried Kundalini and I was chatting to the girl next to me when suddenly the sound of a gong cut through the silence. A dramatic-looking woman with black curly hair and dark lipstick and a large blue jewel at her throat followed the gong and dove into a chant (apparently not Sanskrit, which we're used to, but Gumakh, a dialect).
I'm still processing the experience. Let's say Kundalini is very different from regular yoga, and I'm curious about trying it again, but it's a weirdly powerful thing. The central image of Kundalini is a serpent coiled at the base of the spine. Kundalini wakes it up. This is the kind of yoga Sikhs used to train their armies. I hadn't been expecting anything particular to happen, but the other image of Kundalini - a flower struggling to rise up through the dirt of accumulated experience - was accurate too. I felt like all this psychic dust was being stirred up, experiences I thought I'd forgotten or moved past.
One girl even started crying, saying that her brother died when she was 15 and she is still coping with it. I admired her for being so open in a roomful of people she met 4 weeks ago, but it was also unsettling. I'll probably try it again in 2 weeks. I won't go next week because her class would be the day before inversion (handstand) day. I want to be fresh as a daisy for inversion day. (Kundalini is tough on the arms, and so are inversions.)
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