to Haridwar

day 3

Last night swamiji gave a class on Ayurveda, and Yoga and practical questions which everybody thoughly was on the edge of there seat despite stuffing ourselves with another incredible meal. I love this hotel in Haridwar. it's 100 years old and has a cool and tasteful colonial decore and right on the Ganges. I woke up early for for ganga snana (ganges bathing) which was incredible and started yoga asana class at 500am with amy.. Something about being up early here doesn't seem so early. i think most of us are over our jet lag. her class was an hour hten we all sat on the edge of the Ganga and sang kirtan as the water rushed by. Our meditation was broken as a pretty decent sized monkey walked two feet in fromnt of us. Then swamiji gave his morning asana pranayama & kriya class. i wanted to bring him on this tour to show the students authentic yoga as opposed to what we commonly think of yoga in the west. He is a store house of wisdom. Today he stressed the importance of simple pranayama but as soo as we do longer than 15minutes without authroized teachers we can get the body into big trouble.

We boarded a bus early for the holy city of rishikesh. We got our first glimpse of the Himalayas with it's green lush jungles and it literally sent shivers up my spine. This is where the famous swami Shivananda had his ashram. He was the guru of thousands including the more prominent schools like Bihar School of yoga and Swami Satchidananda of Intergral yoga. (the woodstock swami). My teacher Radhanath Swami came here as a young boy and would sit in meditation all day on a rock. the town is filled with holy men and women yoga schools and ashrams as well as some a handful of western tourists. The village is breath taking with two suspension bridges crossing from one side of the village to the other. The Beatles stayed here in the sixties. The ganges is beautiful up here and I took our bath immediately.

The group is good and we've been singing and doing asanas regularly. At this place there is a really wonderful ayurvedic clinic right next door to us where we're are getting oil massages as well as shirodhara (a type of treatment where they gently pour herbal oils on your head). phenomenal. cheap too. 800 rupees for each treatment. (16 bucks).

I passed on the treatments cuz i wanted to go to the book store.