the story of how two yogis went from sivananda to sthalam8 and were better yogis for it.

good morning readers!
i'm sure we've lost at least a few considering the utter dearth of posts over the last couple of weeks.
Since there's no hope of catching up chronologically and comprehensively, here's a story of hope, excitement, fear, sadness, anger, adventure, and walking down a hill:

after spending about a week in pune, we flew down to Trivandrum in Kerala, took a cab to Neyyar Dam, about 30km away, and ended up at the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Ashram. We arrived late at night, filled out many forms, read many rules, and were handed a pile of blankets, pillows, and mosquito nets and were directed towards the women's dormitory. Everyone was asleep (10pm lights out) as we fumbled through the long hallway. Thanks to my headlamp that melina will never stop making fun of, and will never admit is really really fucking useful (has proved invaluable on at least 4 different occasions, most involving power outages), we found two empty beds, built our bug huts, and went to sleep.
At 5 20 am, bells ring out, and we are called to satsang. 30 minutes of silent meditation in a large outdoor hall, 30 minutes of devotional chanting, and then tea, a snack, a yoga class, a lecture, a vegetarian meal served from buckets and eaten with our hands as we sit cross-legged in a different long hall, some other lecture or something, another yoga class, more meditation and chanting, and then sleep.
We tired of this routing very quickly.
The yoga was terrible, the whole thing was way religious, we felt our souls being eaten, or rather, we had a profound sense of our personal lack of bleief in souls, at least the kind they were purporting to feed.
We planned to stay for two weeks and left after two days. We escaped in the early morning, dumping our blankets and pillows in the reception room and trekking down a long hill, the wind of freedom blowing through our hair, even though my hair is now very short.
This place was seriously not our cup of tea. One of the main swamis, when I asked him if a godless person could practice yoga (according to the ashrams philosophy--i know from personal experience that a godless person can in fact practice yoga), told me, in effect, that if you practice in the correct way, you will inevitably come to god, and surely even a person that has no belief in god can "appreciate" that there is SOMETHING, lord, SOMETHING.....
it seemed desperate, it seemed ill-informed, and the food made us sick. it wasn't a challenge that we were "not up to," because lord knows we're up for a challenge, but rather it was making us sad and angry. Anyway, the yoga was bad. I mean, who does sivasana between every asana? And, to quote melina in a confesisonal conversation of which there are many, "dude, don't tell me how to do kapalabhati breathing--i fucking KNOW how to do kapalabhati." Also, you can't expect me to come out of sivasana and then do headstand, then do sivasana, and then locust? Out of your mind??!
We spent the next day in Kovalam, running into the waves on a marbled black and white sand beach. We smiled hugely and ate delicious fish wrapped in banana leaves.
The next day we fled even further, to Cochin, a city made up of several islands, surrounded by gorgeous backwaters. We stayed for three nights, took a day long tour of the backwaters, rowed a boat with a bamboo pole, saw a tabla and sitar performance, went to a town called Jew Town, bought dresses, and generally took charge and ruled the universe.
I suppose that brings us up to now, kind of. From Cochin, we took a twelve hour bus to Bangalore (booked ever-so-kindly-and-incorrectly by our hotel owner), and then another 3 hour bus to Mysore. After that trip, we both immediately got sick, having to postpone our yoga shala search for a full day which was depressing. We found an ashtanga shala that we love and we'll practice twice a day. We'll be here for the next two weeks. We live in a little apartment nearby that we've fixed up nicely and made into a place of sanity and clarity. I need it now because my most recent relationship has just ended, and it's of the utmost importance that I "keep it together"--no time to wallow, only to progress. We made an actual salad today. Best quote of the evening:
me: "so, if we can't find a bar, we'll just go get some cake, buy some liquor, go home, get drunk and watch high school musical on your ipod?"
melina: "wow, we really are just trying as hard as possibly to recreate exactly our life at home."
me: "hey man, we gotta preserve SOME kind of sanity!"

and thanks for listenin'.