Travel Day 975 – Sivananda Ashram, Kerala, INDIA
Actually the next day turned out to be pretty much exactly the same as the first had been, as it was simply following the same rigid schedule…
Main Hall of Sivananda Ashram in Kerala
The wake-up call was at 5.20am again, at 6am we had the same morning Satsang, at 7.30am we had the same chai in the open courtyard, at 8am we had the same Asana Yoga class and at 10am we had pretty much the same thali brunch as we had the day before. But by 11am we finally were doing something different for Karma Yoga as we were all asked to build a human chain up the mountain, originating in the forest and then pass big logs of wood all the way into the ashram…
While it was technically fun to do something else, carrying wood in the mid-day heat turned out to be an extremely sweaty and energy-consuming activity and with no time to rest, we were barely able to take a quick shower and show up to the 12 noon yoga coaching. Unfortunately the yoga coaching was not nearly as good as the meditation coaching had been yesterday and so I made the resolution to try and skip this class over the next couple of days in order to free up my much to busy schedule a little bit…
Open Dorm Room at Sivananda Ashram
1.30pm saw us again with a tea in our hands in the open courtyard and 2pm saw us back at the teaching of the yoga theory. Unfortunately the person who was holding the teaching yesterday seemed to have left the ashram and so the quality was not nearly the same as we had experienced the day before. By 3.30 it was then back to the Asana Yoga class and by 6pm it was once more time for our well deserved second meal of the day, the dinner…
Luckily by now we had realized that between the 6pm dinner and the 8pm Satsang there was actually a little bit of time within the schedule and so we decided to use it for some music practice. There seemed to be a few musicians in the ashram and so we got a little group with instruments together on the roof the dining hall and just had a little jamming session with candle light and naturally this became the first real highlight of the day…
Indian Dance at Sivananda Ashram
The second highlight then became a South-Indian dance performance by one of the yoga students who had agreed to give a solo performance during the evening Satsang in the main hall. Since she was a professional dancer, this little intermission did not only break up our rigid schedule, but it also added some more color to our ashram experience. This seemed to be quite important, especially because after that it was just back to the usual 10pm back-to-the-dorm and the 10.30pm lights-off…
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