Yoga and life

it has been roughly 9 months that i had a change of lifestyle - someone close to me introduced me to this thing called 'Yoga' - and it has made all the difference in my life.

When i get a chance to talk to people about yoga, i hear mixed responses. Most of them are excuses for escaping from yoga. One of my Canadian friends finds me 'prejudiced' to yoga because of my heritage, while another friend thinks it is not his cup of tea. However, i have been successful in getting my parents to do yoga, and some of my friends too.

One of the amazing things about yoga is that you are perplexed that your body simply finds it tought to take a pose (position) and maintain it for a while - if you think you are macho, and can simply muscle through it, think again. In fact, the more macho you are, the more difficult it gets to flex your muscles (i was reading some article which discusses why an American male cannot do yoga - because he cannot digest that while an average guy can do poses with no struggle, the muscular him can barely keep his breath to maintain them. Only that this guy does not know the secret of teh average guy - teh average guy has been practicing yoga for over an year!!).

While there are different forms of yoga, all of yoga boils down to keeping the mind out (no mind talk), and focusing on the present. The present is all that matters - a quote from my yoga teacher "You have not done anything, you are not going to do anything".

Talking of yoga styles, though there are thousands in practice, Iyengar yoga (traditional style), and Bikram's Yoga (aka Hot Yoga) are pretty popular here in the States. There is another adaptation of the Hot Yoga called the Vinyasa yoga (vinyasa - flow), which is the one that i practice.

The Vinayasa is not for the faint of heart - with room heat up to more than 110degF, the poses get tougher. The 90 minutes of the class is divided into a series of poses - the warm up, the standing poses (surya namaskar poses, Virabhadrasana aka warrior poses, Triguna aka triangle pose, half moon, lunging sequence, garudasana aka eagle pose, chair pose, dhandasana aka tree pose), the balancing sequence, spinal strenght poses, abdominals, and then floor poses. The entire class is very lively and moves swiftly from one pose to another - the water breaks and the ever desiring shavasana are aptly spaced so you survive through the sequence.

Yoga has been scientifically proven to heal lot of body problems that typical humans carry around in the old ages (thanks to the high tech, industrial society current generations start to get these problems much earlier) - yoga makes your body flexible and strong, builds stamina, improves focus and good breathing, and takes care of diabetic complications, ulcers, back pains and many many more ailments.

To follow...

Series - People who struck it rich

http://www.leaderspa.it/?act=scheda&codice=605298&platform=pc&formato=hardware - Subrah Iyar (Mumbaite living in Bay area - Founder of WebEx)

Joke - THE Question

A chicken is lying in the bed smoking a cigarette, totally relaxed, while an egg is seen by the side the bed, with utter frustration and a sad, fragile face. The chicken smiles at the egg. The egg says, 'I guess we have answered the question'.

Pathos of living in an alien nation

What a pain it is to work and survive in a foreign nation - one might argue that nobody is forcing anybody to work in a foreign nation, but that is not an excuse. One has to deal with all the Visa bullshit, there is a fear of getting evicted, there is the culture shock and not able to freely socialize esp in a non-cosmopolitan environment, differences in food and eating habits, shopping and mating habits etc etc. A foreign national is always seen as a second class citizen in the developed countries, with the opposite happening in the developing countries (in these countries, there is another issue of preferential treatment by race, which is a completely seperate topic altogether). Think about it, for all the strife, and pain and issues going on for centuries now, there is one magic bullet to it - that is, to get rid of national boundaries. That, to me, is a free economy - and all rationalists will agree.

Lets work out some logistics here - with national boundaries gone, the whole world is just one big country. Each country of today becomes a province/state with complete autonomy over the actions but governed by a global authority (the UN of today, but something much more meaningful than a rubber stamp for the VETO nations). There is free flow of trade and talent across nations. Global elections are held to elect the central governing body and its members and each province (today's countries) gets to nominate members proportional to the population of the country rather than by arbitrary means or by virtue of a stronger economy. There will be incentives for people to freely flow across the nations, and this will make sure there is good distribution of people of all races all over the world.

These days are not very far away as far as i can see - probably by 2100, there will be a necessity for a global brotherhood. Whoever thought decades back that most of the European nations will be allied into EU with a single currency and total free trade flow??

Bush on Turkey and EU

I dont understand what business is that of Bush to recommend Turkey's inclusion into EU - no wonder Chirac is pissed of at Bush's statement (if i were Chirac, i would have done the same). it is time Bush started taking the big-brother attitude to normal levels, and not express them esp in a time when the entire world is scrutinizing US's actions against Iraq.

Schindlers List (1993)

I have heard stories about this movie - that it is freaking long, that it is the best movie to watch on the theater if you want to make it out with someone in an isolated public place, if you watch to the end of it you get a badge of patience honor etc.

But when i saw the movie last week (6/27), it changed it all. This movie is simply one of the deepest moving movies i have seen in my life time. The story of Oskar Schindler is pretty amazing - here is this guy, a womanizer, a guy who bribes officials, a guy involved in scams - but he has a good heart, which is what differentiates him from the Nazis. This guy is not like Gandhi, who is seen as an epitome of all goodness (ofcourse he reveals the darkness in his past, but those actions are nowhere closer to Schindler's womanizing, and scandals, and money laundering). Schindler is also not a Robin Hood, though he is, in some terms. As he is seen saying, he is a 'profiteer of slave labor'.

That was, but, the story. The movie does a very good job with portraying the incidents in the camp, German officials like Goeth's completely disregard for Jewish lives (he is seen shooting Jews for target practice). The music is powerful (conducted by John Williams - Superman, ET fame; he also won a Oscar for this movie). Very subtle touches - a little girl that comes in colour (the movie is shot in B/W), the fear of Schindler's factory workers when they are sent to a huge chamber and in what looks like a human furnace but turns out to be a shower treatment, the making of the list etc. Funny Ben Kingsley reminded me of his role in Gandhi as the martyr, and he plays a Jewish accountant running Schindler's factory.