When I am at the Mandiram I love listening to Desikachar's stories about his father's students. Desikachar told us a story about how perturbed he was when he saw his father hugging a western woman, on the street no less. If you know anything about South Indian culture, especially Brahmin culture, that is absolutely not done! Then his father told him it was Indra Devi, his student.
Desikachar told us how when he was growing up he was not interested in learning yoga. He was not like Jois or Iyengar who started their studies when they were young. Desikachar was an engineer, he wanted to make money. Then one day he saw his father stop his pulse for two minutes, he had such control over his body. He told us when that happened he fell to his knees and asked his father to teach him everything he knew about yoga. The rest is history.
I am honored and blessed to have such a close connection to the source, to the heart of yoga.
Sixty-four more days and I am back in Ma India's arms. My friends keep asking me if I am going to come back. Studying yoga at the source, climbing Mt. Arunachala, Kali temples in Kolkata, the Temple of the 64 Yoginis in Bhubaneswar, culminating my India trip at the largest spiritual gathering in the world, the Kumbh Mela....
A few years ago an akashic record reader told me (before the Mela was even a thought in my mind) that what I experience on one of my India trips will be so profound that I will have to go to a "place with palm trees" to recoup.
I am. Zanzibar has palm trees.
