The Ayervedic lunch was really nice - it tasted good and it made me feel really healthy.
After the lunch, we had to go to our rooms and sleep for 2 hours. Swami Mario said that this was to break up the normal day routine that people always follow - breaking the day in 2 with some sleep could result in new insights bla bla bla -- I had made up a number of excuses in my life to pursuade my kids to take a rest in the early afternoon, especially when I wanted a break for myself.... but I would have never thought of this reason. Oh well...
Sleeping for 2 hours in the middle of the day, in an uncomfortable and too short bed, with a few kids yelling and screaming outside.... no need to say it did not work out like it should.
Two hours later, the group rejoined in the central room. We sat in a big circle, and I was hoping that swami Mario would have asked the others what they thought of the weekend so far, similar to the discussions he had had with both my wife and I. Unfortunately he didn't... I felt it was a missed opportunity. And I know it is wrong to judge, but he disappointed me in not listening to people's frustrations. Maybe he could only handle one on one confrontations, and not with an entire group.
Luckely, we started the first actual yoga session - Sivananda yoga for 1.5 hrs. This was what I had come for.... and it was really good. We ended the yoga session with a mindfulness exercise - a complete bodyscan.
I was so happy about those 2 hours - until one of the monks came into the room to tell us we were going to be late for the 'aarti babaji'....
This was my cue - I called swami Mario into our room, and thanked him for the past 2 hours of yoga and mindfulness, but told him that the time had come for my wife and I to end the weekend. He was surprised .... I explained that by leaving now, I could leave with a 'good' feeling - that feeling would quickly go away if I had to attend another 'aarti babaji' or attend one of his karma yoga sessions.
And while the rest of the group were in the 'aarti babaji', it was aarti bye-bye-ji for us as we took our bags and left for home.
One thing was clear, if we would ever consider a yoga weekend again, we would check and double check the program to be completely sure what we would end up in.....;
Showing posts with label weekend. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weekend. Show all posts
Friday, January 11, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
We will, we will .... worship you?
After the offering ceremony, we were allowed a quick drink before we would start the "aarti babaji".
When booking the weekend, I had googled "aarti babaji" just to know what it was and what to expect. Apparently, google doesn't know everything, so I left it to be a surprise for the weekend - but since it was scheduled 3 times, I hoped it was some sort of asana's or mindfulness exercises.
On Friday, we were already told that the ashram was build to honour a guru called Babaji. If I would have known that babaji was a person's name, I would have probably googled the "aarti" part alone, only to find out it was a religious ritual of worship (wikipedia's words). Before I knew it, we were sitting in a church-like setting, women on the left, men on the right, and were handed a little booklet in Sanskrit (with Dutch subtitles). There was a monk playing the harmonium and then the chanting began - and we were off....
I started reading the Dutch translation of the Sanskrit texts and got a flashback to my youth. I went to a Catholic school and we had to go to church quite often. The mass was what we called a singing mass - the priest would sing most of the hymns which resulted in them getting stuck in my mind forever. This was exactly the same thing to me, but replacing Jesus with Babaji....
For myself, I had struggled long enough wheather or not to believe in a supreme being, and I was at a point where I had had it with all sorts of worship..... "aarti babaji" was too much for me to comprehend. The worship of another human being was not my cup of tea.... sure, I was a big fan of Freddie Mercury and loved the way he could play a crowd, but I consider that admiration. Maybe Babaji was a Freddie Mercury for these monks... who knows.
I was glad the whole thing was over (another hour well spent - not) - finally we could have some breakfast.
The good thing about breakfast was that I could get a sense of what the others were thinking of the whole experience so far. Maybe I needed to open up even more to the experience. Surprisingly enough, the majority was not getting what they expected ... and most of them were not really happy about it either.
Anyway - the next item on the agenda was the Karma yoga - finally something that already was called yoga .... I was really looking forward to it.
When booking the weekend, I had googled "aarti babaji" just to know what it was and what to expect. Apparently, google doesn't know everything, so I left it to be a surprise for the weekend - but since it was scheduled 3 times, I hoped it was some sort of asana's or mindfulness exercises.
On Friday, we were already told that the ashram was build to honour a guru called Babaji. If I would have known that babaji was a person's name, I would have probably googled the "aarti" part alone, only to find out it was a religious ritual of worship (wikipedia's words). Before I knew it, we were sitting in a church-like setting, women on the left, men on the right, and were handed a little booklet in Sanskrit (with Dutch subtitles). There was a monk playing the harmonium and then the chanting began - and we were off....
I started reading the Dutch translation of the Sanskrit texts and got a flashback to my youth. I went to a Catholic school and we had to go to church quite often. The mass was what we called a singing mass - the priest would sing most of the hymns which resulted in them getting stuck in my mind forever. This was exactly the same thing to me, but replacing Jesus with Babaji....
For myself, I had struggled long enough wheather or not to believe in a supreme being, and I was at a point where I had had it with all sorts of worship..... "aarti babaji" was too much for me to comprehend. The worship of another human being was not my cup of tea.... sure, I was a big fan of Freddie Mercury and loved the way he could play a crowd, but I consider that admiration. Maybe Babaji was a Freddie Mercury for these monks... who knows.
I was glad the whole thing was over (another hour well spent - not) - finally we could have some breakfast.
The good thing about breakfast was that I could get a sense of what the others were thinking of the whole experience so far. Maybe I needed to open up even more to the experience. Surprisingly enough, the majority was not getting what they expected ... and most of them were not really happy about it either.
Anyway - the next item on the agenda was the Karma yoga - finally something that already was called yoga .... I was really looking forward to it.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
The rice, the rice, the rice is on fire....
Let me tell you about my first ever "yoga" weekend.
It was a few years ago - the yoga magazine I always bought displayed these mouth watering yoga retreats - one week, warm climate, wonderful scenery, yoga classes.....yep, my wife and I defenitely wanted to try that.
As yoga rookies, we wanted to be sure it would be our cup of tea, so we decided to look for a yoga weekend closer to home (risk reduction, just in case - I'm still a rational person).
One day, my wife found something on the internet - a "yoga and mindfulness" weekend in the north of Holland. Not exactly the warm climate we had hoped for, but driving distance and at a local ashram in a wooded area. The program was not 100% clear to us - welcome and introduction on Friday, on Saturday it said something about offering in the morning followed by 'aarti babaji' (thanks Google for not clarifying), ayurvedic breakfast, karma yoga (which was described as helping in the kitchen - so maybe we could learn how to cook ayurvedic food), ayurvedic lunch, relax time, yoga followed again by 'aarti babaji' and ayurvedic dinner......and the same thing on Sunday (except for the dinner). With an open mind, it sounded OK and since we had no other programs to compare to, we decided to give it a try.
We arrived on Friday evening, just to get to know the group of people we would spend the weekend with. I was one of 2 men in a group of 12. No worries. The group was diverse but everybody seemed to be looking for something..... I introduced myself as a rational person, looking for a yoga experience and starting the weekend with an open mind to see where it would bring me.
Saturday had an early start - 5.30 AM wake up to take a shower - you needed to enter the little temple for the offering ceremony clean - no shower, no ceremony. At 6.00 AM we were on our yoga mats doing breathing exercises - it was the first time I did breathing exercises ; alternating nostril breathing, ujjayi breathing ... it made me feel good and made up for the early wake up call.
With clean lungs we had to put on a wrap and head for the temple. The door opened and there was a open fire in the middle of the room - the upper half of the room was filled with smoke - goodbye clean lungs, why did I do those breathing exercises? Why did we need to shower to come here when we were going to leave smoked anyway? I started repeating to myself - keep an open mind, keep an open mind.... it is all about the experience.....
We had to sit one after the other (like children pretend to be on a train) - the smoke was now above our heads like grey clouds packed with snow. We all got a bowl with approx. 1 kg of rice brokens and then we were ready to go.
Three 'monks' would lead the ceremony - we just had to sit and listen to mantras in Sanskrit and when we heard 'svaha', we had to repeat 'svaha' and throw some of the rice out of our bowl into the fire, always with our right hand and little bits each time. 'Svaha' is similar to 'Hail', in case you were wondering. This lasted for almost an hour, and while we were all throwing our rice, the monks themselves threw in flowers, apples, bananas, a coconut.....
As a food engineer I couldn't stop thinking - what a waste of food..... 1 kg of rice equals 16 portions - times 12 people equals 192 portions and then all the fruit.....it seemed to me that this rice could have been used better at a local shelter.
One thing was clear - this whole offering was not my cup of tea..... so after an hour, it was on to the next chapter of the weekend, on with an open mind to 'aarti babaji'.....
It was a few years ago - the yoga magazine I always bought displayed these mouth watering yoga retreats - one week, warm climate, wonderful scenery, yoga classes.....yep, my wife and I defenitely wanted to try that.
As yoga rookies, we wanted to be sure it would be our cup of tea, so we decided to look for a yoga weekend closer to home (risk reduction, just in case - I'm still a rational person).
One day, my wife found something on the internet - a "yoga and mindfulness" weekend in the north of Holland. Not exactly the warm climate we had hoped for, but driving distance and at a local ashram in a wooded area. The program was not 100% clear to us - welcome and introduction on Friday, on Saturday it said something about offering in the morning followed by 'aarti babaji' (thanks Google for not clarifying), ayurvedic breakfast, karma yoga (which was described as helping in the kitchen - so maybe we could learn how to cook ayurvedic food), ayurvedic lunch, relax time, yoga followed again by 'aarti babaji' and ayurvedic dinner......and the same thing on Sunday (except for the dinner). With an open mind, it sounded OK and since we had no other programs to compare to, we decided to give it a try.
We arrived on Friday evening, just to get to know the group of people we would spend the weekend with. I was one of 2 men in a group of 12. No worries. The group was diverse but everybody seemed to be looking for something..... I introduced myself as a rational person, looking for a yoga experience and starting the weekend with an open mind to see where it would bring me.
Saturday had an early start - 5.30 AM wake up to take a shower - you needed to enter the little temple for the offering ceremony clean - no shower, no ceremony. At 6.00 AM we were on our yoga mats doing breathing exercises - it was the first time I did breathing exercises ; alternating nostril breathing, ujjayi breathing ... it made me feel good and made up for the early wake up call.
With clean lungs we had to put on a wrap and head for the temple. The door opened and there was a open fire in the middle of the room - the upper half of the room was filled with smoke - goodbye clean lungs, why did I do those breathing exercises? Why did we need to shower to come here when we were going to leave smoked anyway? I started repeating to myself - keep an open mind, keep an open mind.... it is all about the experience.....
We had to sit one after the other (like children pretend to be on a train) - the smoke was now above our heads like grey clouds packed with snow. We all got a bowl with approx. 1 kg of rice brokens and then we were ready to go.
Three 'monks' would lead the ceremony - we just had to sit and listen to mantras in Sanskrit and when we heard 'svaha', we had to repeat 'svaha' and throw some of the rice out of our bowl into the fire, always with our right hand and little bits each time. 'Svaha' is similar to 'Hail', in case you were wondering. This lasted for almost an hour, and while we were all throwing our rice, the monks themselves threw in flowers, apples, bananas, a coconut.....
As a food engineer I couldn't stop thinking - what a waste of food..... 1 kg of rice equals 16 portions - times 12 people equals 192 portions and then all the fruit.....it seemed to me that this rice could have been used better at a local shelter.
One thing was clear - this whole offering was not my cup of tea..... so after an hour, it was on to the next chapter of the weekend, on with an open mind to 'aarti babaji'.....
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