Universal Yoga

Workplace Yoga: Universal Yog

Vijay, our yogi, a glowing smiling, healthy young man, gave us a paper power point presentation today in our apartment. His mission is to spread yoga to the masses. Yoga is a big deal here. In the Delhi Diary, similar to SLC weekly guide, there are daily meditation and yoga classes at a number of places. Yoga is supposed to make one feel energized, calm, relieve stress, enhance concentration, promote positive thinking, build relationships, and cure ailments among other things. Besides working with sedentary office workers, military, police, Vijay works with NGOs to empower women through yoga. Aside from the flaws within the health system here in India that effect HIV treatment, distribution, doctor biases, prevention etc., which is the interface I hope to work in the future, women empowerment, is absolutely essential in combating the disease. Unlike in Shillong and parts of the north east, where it is a matriarchal society, here the patriarchal society in addition to a lack of sex education poses interesting ethical dilemmas for women on 3 fronts; education/discussion, transmission, intervention

Today is July 13, 2008. There was somewhere important I was going with this last paragraph a week ago, but I’ve already written about it. I had six hours of sleep. The internet finally turned on, and I was up late talking about my issues with Kasey, Katie, Mom, and Nikhil on Skype. According to Vijay, if I do the meditations right, I would need only 3 hours of sleep. The math is every ten minutes of correct meditation equates to 90 minutes of sleep. Thus, Mohammed Ghandi was able work 21 hours each day; 3 hours to rest your body, 30 minutes to rest your mind. 8-9 hours of sleep is not needed. Vijay came on his motorcycle, helmet, goggles, white kurta to the Maitri office today. We all crammed into the little office, sitars tinkling in the background. Today was a Workplace Yoga Workshop. We stretched and ommed. 30 minutes of meditation last night and sleeping with a purpose did not remove the thick heavy air that still clouded my brain, muscles this morning. It was near impossible to see the dark place behind my forehead in glaring fluorescence and sleep clouds hazing my mind vision (visibility 5%) during the extra 5 minutes of meditation in the office. Tonight is another yoga session with Vijay at 8 PM. Running, Pilates, and Yoga. Writing, reading The God of Small Things (Top 3 Books). I will not finish Holy Cow. More Workplace/Corporate Yoga.