Road To Mysore

I got an email from one of my high school friends today. My favorite high school teacher just passed away. I thought he would live a little longer but Mr. Teofilo Lutao passed away yesterday. I won't be there for his burial so I'm glad I was able to say goodbye to him when I was home a couple of months ago. I'm lucky to have known him and I'm going miss him very much. Rest in Peace Mr. Lutz.

My time in Mysore has drastically slowed down since my Thai massage class with Enzo. I've been having long social meals and just kicking back. I think that's going change. I wasn't planning on doing massages here since I've saved enough when I was preparing for my trip. Last week a few people asked me to give them a massage and since I was having a slow week, I said "Why not". I did 4 massages last week and I'm already booked for 5 massages this week and it's only Sunday. I may get busy the coming week. I'm not charging a lot here but for Mysore standards it's enough to pay for rent and maybe even for Guruji. The extra cashflow is great coz I won't have to touch my savings while I'm in here. If things turn out well, I won't have save that much to get back to Mysore next year.

When we first met Phil, we all thought he was crazy. Phil from Jersey(not New Jersey but Jersey in the Channel Islands) is 24 years old and naturally flexible. He is also such a driven yogi that he practices twice a day everyday. We all told him to slow down coz he might get hurt. He just would smile and ignore us. After awhile we decided to let him do his thing and maybe he'll slow down eventually. Phil happens to also be my flatmate. He took Sara's room when she moved to another place. I thought since we live in the same house I might rub off on him. The irony is I think the opposite is happening. Vivian my other flatmate and I are now looking to do two practices a day too. We have the time and if we're tired we can always take a nap. We even did a full practice last Saturday.

This morning was a led primary at 5AM. Since it's a led practice, we only do 5 A's and 3 B's so it's harder to warm up. The pace is much faster too. Phil and I decided to wake up at 3:30AM to warm up before class. Never in my wildest dream did I imagine waking up at such an unholy hour to practice yoga. By 4AM, we started our mini-practice starting with 5 A's and 5 B's. I did a few random standing and seated poses. By 4:30, we prepared to go to the shala and were in the shala by 4:50. The warm up really help our practice this morning and I think we're going to warm up at home before every led class.

This morning our cocky friend Vincent was promoted to the intermediate led class. His been bragging about this all week so we were giving him a hard time about it. This morning, we all tried to tease him about being promoted. Mr. Cocky was actually very nervous and refused to talk to anyone of us. The thought of practicing with the very advanced student intimidated him. He even didn't place his mat down until the other students placed there mats. There's this whole seniority space thing going on here so he didn't want to offend anyone. We all love Vincent so a lot of us stayed to give him moral support. Vincent did well today. He's got a great practice and I expect him to be back to his cocky self this week.