The Ashram Diaries: India
An ashram is a place of spiritual or religious retreats… In India you’ll find many of them dotted around the country, a popular place for yoga teachers & practitioners or those seeking to understand more about the spiritual teachings, or go deeper within. Having dipped my toe into the world of teaching over the last couple of years, I arrived in India with my first ashram experience booked for my first week. At the “orientation” we were explained the rules and daily schedule, and the teacher Rama asked us why we had come and what we were seeking in our time there.
Once a week, you leave the ashram gates for a silent walk for sunrise meditation followed by the morning satsang (chanting) over the nearby lake.
I thought long and hard about this as others responded with common themes of discipline, focus, yoga practise, learning, and pondered why my travels had brought me to a place with a rigorous 6am-9pm schedule, where you engage in cleaning and tasks to upkeep the non-profit organisation, a place of both restraint and physical intensity. I am someone who struggled and did not enjoy the mundane of 9-5, having the days set out from start to finish. I’m usually not someone who deals well with rigorous routine, with being told what to do, or with being in the same place for any length of time. So, what is my purpose in coming to the ashram?
Over my 5 days attendance (which I thought was a decent amount of time but was constantly met with, “only 5 days?” & “you’re leaving already?”) I slowly worked out the answer to this question. But to answer it, I must first explain more about the schedule and daily experience at the ashram.
The loud thrum of the bell would sound to waken the guests at precisely 5.20am, in order to be ready and in the main Siva Hall for 6am. For the first 30 mins, we enjoy a seated meditation whilst the sun comes up and streams it’s beams in through the bold arches of the hall. This is then followed by “satsang” - an hour of devotional chanting as a group. The chanting is supposed to be done in a mode of total surrender, as a sort of act of sacrifice to a higher power, first time in the morning, with strong faith or belief in the mantra or song. As you may be thinking, this is something totally alien to me and I’ve never been a part of something like it. My first intrusive thought at satsang on day one came as a fast kind of hallucination that I might have accidentally joined a cult, or been being filmed as part of a Louis Theroux documentary.
As the mornings and evenings (yep, twice a day!) progressed, I began to witness and understand the act and the benefits it brings for some people. As you get lost in the repetitive lines of the chant, a soothing feeling washes over your mind and body, and you start to gain a feeling of power through community of everyone chanting together. It takes energy to do so and therefore this output feels like a positive affirmation, giving into something bigger than yourself before starting your day.
A quick tea break before into the 2 hour yoga asana class in the main hall, a beautiful architectural structure, to come together with a group of likeminded yogis for practise. Before arriving, I ignorantly hadn’t researched enough about the Sivananda style, which is a set 2 hour sequence following 2 pranayama practices, sun salutations, and a rigid structure of asana that not only does not change, but has no flow or transitions, and is even narrated as a set script by each teacher taking the class. After day 2 my mind started to put up barriers to the practise, “but I love the dance and flow of yoga, getting lost in the transitions and flow of my body”.
I thought I was craving variation within the asana practise and wasn’t accepting of the slow growth I was building through patient repetition of the sequence.
It’s day 2 and there’s already been a lot that has tested me. The rigidity of the asana class, morning and evening, the patience it takes for anything systematic to happen like check in or purchasing anything, the double satsang first thing in the morning and last thing at night. The fact that you have to have shoulders, knees covered at all times and cannot wear any tight clothing I.e. yoga leggings in 35 degree heat! The locked front door! I tried to go for a sunrise walk one morning with a new friend, only to be told we physically are not allowed to leave whilst we have committed to being there. A mix of fire and anger rose in my belly as I fought the urge to get my suitcase and leave anyway. Why am I wound so tightly? What is the resistance to this routine and why am I fighting it so much? After all, I am the one who brought myself here in the first place…
Back to the schedule, yoga is finished at 10am straight to brunch, where we file in and sit cross legged on the floor in a long line and, Oliver Twist style, are served from giant buckets of various roasted vegetables, salads and rice onto our silver thali plate. Dinner is supposed to be eaten in silence, though not all adhered to this rule and it was one of the less strictly enforced ones. In India, people eat with their hands in an unusual technique of mushing the ingredients together, swiping your palm across the plate and picking it up with your 4 fingers to eat it. I really enjoyed witnessing the different techniques as people from all parts of the world had their own spin to this art across my week there. Eating in silence gives you time and space to not only be deeply connected to the food you’re putting in your body, but I also found myself noticing all sorts of cultural and social differences I found entirely fascinating.
My one qualm as a die hard foodie was the lack of variety, and also the lack of onions and garlic, as in Ayurveda the excessive use of these in cooking is considered irritable for the stomach as they create heat in the body. As a lover of both of these things to create flavour, and a general lover of food in my day to create joy, I found the mealtimes to be fascinating, but difficult after a while.
Brunch is followed by karma yoga, as the ashram is a non for profit, they rely on the assistance of guests through karma yoga duties to maintain the space as clean as possible. I enjoyed my duty of sweeping and mopping the main yoga hall, and found the community element that this task brings humbling and connecting by nature. In the afternoons, there was a daily yoga philosophy lecture, followed by another 2 hour sivananda asana class, before dinner at 6pm. The evening satsang chanting followed and by 9pm, I was so exhausted that I couldn’t possibly think about anything else other than sleep.
So, back to the original question… Why did I go to Sivananda?
There’s a part of travel that can be exhausting, which for me is the constant need to be booking, researching, moving, all of which requires time online. I try as much as I can to be offline whilst I travel, so that I can experience and feel the little pockets of culture, moments that would otherwise pass you by. I try to condense connecting, researching and posting into a small chunk of the day where I sit in a cafe and get it all done at once, allowing my day to be free of being online and more about being fully present.
The schedule of the ashram meant 5 days of not thinking, planning, organising, and just dropping deeply into a very healthy mix of meditating, physical asana practise, learning, and listening… total mindfulness at its core. There is something entirely simple and effective about this combination, many of these practises are things we all yearn to be able to include more regularly as part of our life routine.
The ashram allowed me to experience a week of pure awareness, and switch off from the constant stimulation we are faced with overthinking about what we just did, or what we are about to do. Presence and awareness is everything, the present moment is all we can control and many a yogi will tell you, there is never any point in worrying about anything else. One of my favourite quotes by Lao Tzu is, “if you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” Although perhaps slightly over-simplified, these words encapsulate why I felt drawn to go to the ashram, and experience the pure bliss of genuine presence.
Although I might not have seen them all whilst I was there, I was being taught lessons from the moment I entered. Lessons of patience, the power of slowing down and about the beauty and strength in coming BACK to something. I’ve always been a flighty person, who loves change and experiencing new things. Whether that’s a new place to travel, meeting new people, moving home, changing job, I’m often on the lookout for the next thing, and have always struggled with the monotony of routine. I met an amazing friend called Romina at Sivananda who said to me, “Christie, sometimes it’s the things that we like the least, that we should do the most.” These wise words stuck with me, and made me consider other things in my life I’ve been too quick to dismiss or move on from for my lack of patience.
Travelling is full of lessons and learnings, sometimes when you least expect it. It’s my favourite way to pause, reflect and grow through experience.
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