Here at the yoga studio, I generally arrive early for the morning asana practice so I have some time to relax before we begin. Recently I've been bringing my iPod along and cranking up some vicious sludge metal while people slowly trickle in and do their pre-class warm-ups. I quickly earned a reputation as the resident metalhead, probably due to the Buried At Sea and Weedeater "God Luck And Good Speed" and Birthday Party (the latter of course isn't metal but yogis wouldn't know the difference) t-shirts I wear on a regular basis.
All of our teachers our Indian, including the man who teaches Application of Yoga, which endeavors to illustrate in the most concrete terms how yoga can cure mental and physical disease. It sometimes crosses a line into the evangelical. Our teacher eventually revealed that yoga cured him of severe asthma, so he's a true believer, and this past week class was populated by case studies of people claiming that yoga alleviated and/or cured high blood pressure, diabetes, depression and low back pain, amongst other maladies. One day he was lecturing us on the dangers of "excessive indulgences" (I forget the Sanskrit word for it) and then rather bizarrely mentioned what he called "hard metal" and made this awkward downward pounding motion with one of his arms, like he was smashing his way through a moshpit stomp or something. A full third of the class turned around and looked at me. I can't blame them, I think it's pretty clear that I'm a poster boy for the detrimental effects of longterm exposure to doom metal on the male psyche.
I proudly walked into the ultra-posh Park Sheraton the other day wearing the aforementioned "God Luck and Good Speed" t-shirt. For those of you who have yet to enjoy the bliss that is Weedeater live, frontman Dixie Dave has one of the most fevered stage presences I've ever witnessed. Walking around the club before the set you can observe the off-kilter energy in his movement, he can't sit still, he always has a leg or a foot dancing around pounding to the beat of his invisible drummer and when he's in motion during an instrumental bit of a song he does this jig that looks like a schizophrenic homeless man dancing for quarters on a street corner to pay for his next dose of Haldol. He has a bad habit of puking up Jack Daniels during the set because of the way he screams from the back of his throat. And the music is heavy and sludgy as fuck. So it felt good to spread that vibe around a high-end hotel, where I must add I ate beef -- to be exact, a hamburger -- for the first time since I arrived in India on January 7.
Meditation is of course a popular topic amongst the yoga students. I had a conversation the other day with another yogi about the music we listen to while we practice. I told her that I prefer songs that are long and heavy and slow and even in tempo and that language distracts me. She responded that she also preferred instrumental music, and I clarified by telling her that it was language that bothered me, not vocals and that I preferred music where you couldn't make out the words because the screaming was so intense. This is absolutely true, my favorite yoga soundtrack at the moment is Rosetta's "Wake/Lift" and I'm lucky if I make out a word or two per song due to all the larynx-shredding.
To their credit, as bizarre as this may seem to the other students, no one seems to judge me for my eccentricities, there's a remarkable lack of ego in the program -- a welcome break from the Ashtanga scene -- and people know that I love yoga, even though I listen to metal and I'm a (unemployed) lawyer and can't sit still during meditation class. I'm a fidgeter by nature and on top of that, we don't have proper chairs to sit in so we've spent the last 3 weeks propped up on cushions and yoga mats.
I've noticed a similar policy of tolerance from our teachers. I have never earned a reproachful stare for my restlessness during meditation or my off-key "singing" during Vedic Chanting. I'm surprised by how much I like Vedic Chanting, it's very soothing and when you find your rhythm it's quite captivating. I've been doing my best to irritate my friends before and after class, as usual. My "friend", who I shall refer to as "A", is American and familiar with South Park, and in a moment of divine inspiration I launched into my Eric Cartman vocal imitation while doing Vedic Chanting (If you haven't heard me imitating Cartman singing "Come Sail Away", it's highly recommended, same goes for Asia's "Heat of the Moment"). She gets red in the face when I do this and has to fight back laughter, so naturally I enjoy breaking her concentration at the most inappropriate moments. At one point her group kept stumbling over a particuarly tricky Sanskrit word and during a lull I leaned over and recited the line nigh perfectly in Cartmanspeak, a beautiful thing. While I'm doing Cartmanesque Vedic Chanting, I like to add in at the end of a line "Hey you guys, seriously" or "I hate you guys". It's fortunate I have about 40 SP episodes ripped to my Video iPod or I would be in serious withdrawal by now.
One more week to go! The time has gone by very quickly here in Chennai. Next Saturday I'm off to Shanghai!
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