Kerala - Days 3 & 4

It's been a full couple of days. Yesterday morning, we had our second day of yoga. (We have yoga every other morning.) We covered nine asanas (poses), five exercises, and Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Quote of the day from class: "He who controls his breathe, controls his mind. And, he who controls his mind, controls his breath." After yoga, we learned how to do Shirodhara which is one of the treatments I want to include in my practice. One of the main reasons I'm here is to see how these treatments are done traditionally, and this one was high on my list.

I ditched afternoon class yesterday! I didn't mean to. It just sort of happened. I was on my way up to lunch when I was invited to go up to the mountains with a couple from our group and a guy who grew up there. Our afternoon class was mostly review, so it was a better day to cut. It turned out to be a very serendipitous trip.

This morning we covered Pizhichili, a treatment that originated here in Kerala. It is the pouring of oil all over the body. I got to be the demo and my body needed it. My skin is very dry and my tissues just soaked up the oil. This afternoon, we covered Abhyanga which is heated oil massage. As part of our afternoon sessions, we each get to experience the treatments, so I had a full body heated oil massage in the afternoon.

We got out of class early and seized the opportunity to finally leave the building and do some shopping. Eight from our group including our fearless leader, Dr. Shekhar, plus one Ugandan who checked in today and was just standing around until we stuck him in a tuk-tuk to make nine of us took three crazy tuk-tuks into a nearby town. We only ended up going to one shop. I enjoy sari shopping in India. It's a process. You walk up to a counter and the first guy you talk to becomes your guy -- until payment do you part. There are stacks and stacks of saris neatly folded on shelves in the wall behind the counter. You point at something behind him, he points at something, you direct him up or down until he lands on the right one. He pulls it out and unfolds it. You look at it. If you seem remotely interested (and this is my favorite part) he very matter of factly models it for you. They'll pull off and unfold every single sari from the shelf if you want them to. There's chaos on the counter and order on the shelves and they manage to restore order perfectly re-folding each sari when you're done.

At one point, after my salesman had draped himself in several saris whether I wanted him to or not, to get him to crack a smile, I told him it was a good color for him. By the time I was done shopping, I had almost the entire sales staff "helping" me. They were trying on scarves and picking out saris for me. An older salesman even tried to get me to take an 18-year-old salesboy back to the States with me.

I wasn't planning to buy anything and came home with two saris and twenty-two scarves. Oops.

A sari I bought.

The 18-year-old showing me that same(!) sari.

Showing me scarves. My sales guy is the one on the right.