Tenderized

I feel like I've been marinating. For the past two weeks I feel like I've been sitting in a vat of breath, and posture, sweat and gaze - throw in people, places and surprise news from home for a little extra spice. I feel raw; vulnerable; tender.

As I near the end of my third month in Mysore, my third month away from my creature comforts, family, and friends, things here are really starting to sink in. Deeply. They're beginning to colour the way I act in my everyday life and change the way that I respond to situations. I'm worried they're beginning to make me a little nutty. I'm regularly exhausted, my body aches and I feel like there's a lot going on inside my head, things that I am not even sure how to properly express.

Practicing Ashtanga is amazing and transformative, no matter where you unroll your mat. However, practicing here, working with intensity, determination and focus that I've never experienced anywhere else, changes the game entirely. Without distractions of work and home, without the stabilizing effects of routine and loved ones, India forces you to confront the aspects of yourself that you'd prefer to ignore. Suddenly everything that you hide away, the skeletons in the spiritual closet, are all exposed. You're gutted; your viscera laid out for the world to see.

It's horrifying. It's disgusting. It is utterly devastating.

But this mess is the impetus for change.

This is where the other parts of the practice begin.