In search of Saraswati…

My time in India is coming to an end – for now anyway. I’m sure I’ll be back at some point in the future. There are still so many experiences to be had and interesting characters to be met. And despite the various contrasts that I touched upon in an earlier post, I’m still deeply drawn to the spiritual awareness, or “groundedness”, that continues to be explored and practiced here. I like to call it “groundedness” as spiritual awareness freaks people out or conjures up various images that don’t accurately convey what I’m talking about. I think the majority of people have a greater understanding and respect for the word “grounded”.

So, I’m not saying goodbye to India, but I’m saying goodbye to this Blog. I’ll keep the Blog active at the address – blogs.bootsnall.com/libbyswan/ – to serve anyone interested in travel to/within India.

Before I go…Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute – http://www.kdham.com/

This is where I am currently. (I’ve broken my “no Internet for 7 days vow”.) I’m attending the 7-day yoga-therapy/naturopathy “treatment course”. I’m essentially a patient at the facility’s “Yoga Hospital”. To be a student here, you must be enrolled in one of their Certificate or Diploma courses. The shortest of these courses I believe is approx. 6 weeks.

Anyway, today is day five, and I’m thoroughly relaxed and well-rested, albeit a bit sore given I’ve been doing two yoga classes a day, after many months of no exercise other than walking/hiking.

This has been my daily regimen:

6.30am – Wake-up
7am-8.15am – Yoga (Very much like Hatha Yoga, although Kaivalyadhama’s Yoga is “non-denominational” – so I’ve been told)
9am – Breakfast (Veggie)
9.30am/10am – Naturopathy treatment (approx. 40 min. to 1.30 hours, depending on what’s been assigned to you/what you’ve chosen)
12pm – Lunch (Veggie)
2pm/3pm – Naturopathy treatment (same situation as above)
4.30pm-5.45pm – Yoga
7pm – Dinner (Veggie)
8pm – Lecture (I’ve attended none of these as my concentration span has crashed by dinner time)
9pm – Sleep (You can go to sleep at anytime you like. 9pm has been the time I’ve usually been crashing by.)

Oh, and I’m getting all of this for USD $15/day. Or it could be USD $12. I have my own room (there are two beds) and a separate/shared (VERY CLEAN) bathroom. And given it’s the low-season there are only four other “patients” here with me (only one other foreigner). The rest of the people visiting the campus are students either doing a Certificate or Diploma course. Of these students there are about 10 other foreign students that dine with us at meal times. Makes for an interesting crowd…

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 2:59 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.