The Ayurvedic Shaman

I admit it… I freaked out. I woke up with about sixty red bumps on my feet and all I could think was that some bizarre Indian parasite had entered into the souls of my feet while walking around barefoot in a temple. That or leprosy. So I went to the health clinic near the ashram, where the doctor promptly dismissed me as having mosquito bites. Oops.

While leaving the clinic, I ran into a man I had seen before. Once, while coughing up a storm, an old man with wild white hair and a scraggly beard had run up to me in the street and screamed “Sun prana! What you need is sun prana! I learned ayurveda from a 300 year old man in a cave! Sit in the sun and breathe in the prana!” Only in India of course would this suggestion and situation seem both plausible and reasonable. I recognized him instantly this time as he ran up to me and shouted “You! Come, come!” and ushered me into an office inside of the clinic. Inside was an exam table and hundreds of copies of the Bhagavad Gita. He began to flip through the holy book to find passages that he shoved in front of me with a “Read this!” or “Here! Here!”

He looked at me with eyes that seemed to glow and said, “You have mucus behind your pituitary! Hold your head over steam for four minutes and then….HAAAWK!” He made an awful noise and a retching motion. “Practice!” An unlikely cure for mosquito bites, but I’m sure useful in the long run.

He explained that he was the head of the ayurvedic clinic at Parmarth Niketan. His name is Siddhi Yogi. A few different times a beggar would approach his office and he would break out into a monstrous demonstration of insanity, flailing his body and making high pitched squeals. When the beggar would back away and leave us alone, he would stop and continue on with the conversation like nothing unusual had occurred.

“Watch me! Watch my aura!” Every word was an intense command, and then he closed his eyes and began to do very heavy pranayama unlike what you might learn in your neighborhood yoga class. I could not see his aura, and told him so apologizing, but his eyes were like lightbulbs they were so bright. The conversation went to and fro so fast I could hardly keep up with him. This passage in the Bhagavad Gita, that pranayama, how the local sadhus were frauds and hash had no place in yogic culture (the smell of marijuana is common while walking among the local renunciate crowd), his guru, the practice of meditation, and on and on.

When he found out I was teaching Kundalini yoga and meditation at Parmarth Niketan, he said “Good! Good! Teach! Teach! No student of yoga ever becomes a terrorist.” Not exactly a benefit of yoga I had ever thought about, but it certainly feels true.

The conversation then spun to the true sound of “Om”, which he said most people completely mess up. “It is the sound of the universe, all creatures make this sound, calling home. Listen to the tigers, to the elephants, to the trees bending in the wind…they all make the same sound.” He demonstrated a breath that sounded like a very gutteral and less well enunciated “Auummm”. He told me that he takes care of sick tigers and elephants up in the mountains and that he can use mantra and pranayama to communicate with them, and listens to the change in their pranayama to indicate where the pain is in their body. As he was speaking about his work with animals, I was struck by how the tradition of ayurveda that he follows is so strikingly similar to the shamanic practices of Native America. The herbs are different and there are more asanas involved, but the system of using sound to communicate with animals and heal them is so connected.

Speaking with Siddhi Yogi is a treat. You never quite know what to expect. If you saw him on the street you might think he was just a beggar, but at Parmarth he runs a large ayurvedic clinic and is treated with great respect. You feel in him someone with great reverence for the old ways and a deep understanding of the connection of all life. He is a good teacher. I listen harder now. I listen to the breathing of the cows and the sound of the wind of the Ganga. I hear it in my own heartbeat. Wherever you are now, listen for it. In the animals, in the plants…listen for the sound of the universe that connects us all.

Chasing Waterfalls

You never end up where you plan in India. I should know this by now. And yet even though I keep a flashlight, toilet paper, batteries, snacks, water, first aid and a knife in my purse, I am still caught unprepared for the unexpected.

I went to a waterfall outside of town for the Spring Equinox with some students from my yoga class. The waterfall was by all accounts “just off the road.” I wore flip-flops and a flowing skirt, which is standard weekend in Rishikesh attire.

When we started up the trail to the waterfall, I anticipated a pleasant walk. I soon realized that we were in fact hiking up a very steep trail, full of loose rocks. It was very hot and the sun was boiling our backs. I began to get winded and was struggling up the trail. My students delighted at the opportunity to tell me to “keep up” for a change, since I am always pushing them physically in class. So I kept up. I tried to make a journey a physical and emotional challenge, training my subconscious to climb any mountain in front of it. I was sweating and shaking, but I continued up. The trail split into two, one section that went down into a ravine with a path about six inches wide between a sheer face and a 200 feet drop. The path itself, if you could call it that, was full of loose stones and abrupt drops. We thought for sure that could not really be a path, and continued climbing up the well-trodden wider path that wound up the mountain. We kept climbing, the incline progressively getting harder. Each step was harder and harder, and the sweat on my feet was making me slide in my flip-flops.

We passed some women in colorful saris cutting leaves from the jungle and putting them into bundles. We stopped and shared water and snacks with them and asked them what their bundles were for. We gestured our way into understanding that it was for their cows. Big smiles and a namaste later, we continued our quest for the waterfall. We emerged out of the jungle into a terraced agricultural village on the top of the mountain. I finally said to my companions that there couldn’t be a waterfall up at the top of a mountain unless it fell out of the sky. We had clearly passed it. We wondered whether that non-trail could possibly have been the real trail.

Walking down the mountain was worse. I slid half the way down, due to sweaty flip-flops and stones giving way beneath my feet. I practiced staying in the moment, trying to be extremely conscious of only thinking about the step I was currently taking. I asked God to help me not sprain my ankle, or worse, fall off the mountain. I finally made my way down to the lower path and the women I was walking with by this time appeared to me more mountain goat than human. They would leap from rock to rock, whereas I would step in the same spot and the rock would slide out from under me. About twenty feet onto the second trail I slid pretty dramatically. There was really no room to slide and I almost slipped off the mountain into the ravine. I pulled the plug. Making my excuses, I told them to go ahead without me and started back down the mountain alone. Walking down a very steep mountain sliding everywhere by myself,feeling faint, didn’t feel like a particularly bright idea either, but I went very slowly and continued to stay totally focused on the present moment.


Present moment by present moment, I made it by myself down the mountain, never seeing the waterfall. We never know what mountains we will have to climb in life. Even if we plan for one eventuality, more often than not a possibility that we never considered comes to pass. Flexibility, determination, and mindfulness are the tools we need in our “emergency kit” in our bags. And a good pair of hiking shoes wouldn’t hurt, either.

The Energy of Money

One of the German bakeries in town has some delicious little chocolate balls that hit the spot when you crave something sweet, so I picked one up on the way to teach my yoga class. I gave the cashier 20 rupees and should have gotten 5 rupees back. I didn’t even look at my change and thought that perhaps I should give the change away either to a beggar or use it to buy vegetables for Beatrice. I looked at the change in my hands and realized it was a 2 rupee piece. I was instantly annoyed. Had he short-changed me because I was white? All sorts of reasons filled my head for this discrepancy. I was watching my own annoyance with interest, rather surprised at the sudden way my mood shifted. The difference of 3 rupees is not much at all (45 rupees is one US dollar), but the energy that I was surrounding this two rupee piece with was one of lack and disappointment.

As I neared the ashram I saw a small boy selling a flower boat as a offering to the Ganga. Wrapped in a leaf boat, there are flowers of several colors and types, a small clay plate and wick with wax, a sprig of incense and some matches. I asked him how much it was and he said 20 rupees. “Too much for me, my friend,” I said. “Ten rupees!” He shouted to me. I really didn’t have time to go down the ghat before class so I looked at him and smiled. I told him to keep his flowers and to take the 2 rupee piece. As he took it, he had the biggest smile on his face. 2 rupees is just enough for a piece of candy in the local shops. He lit up the night sky, shining so brightly, and he transformed the negative energy I had put on that two rupee note.

The time is coming on this earth when we will need to transform the energy that we have put on our money. We can continue to put stress and feelings of lack on it and watch that vibration change hands with the coins, or we can radiate bliss onto it, no matter how small the denomination. That little boy by the Ganga was a great teacher to me. Bless your money and watch it bless you.

Holi Holy Moly!

Holi Moly! Holi is the Hindu festival of color and the welcoming of spring. People walk through the streets throwing paint…a pink, purple, green, red, yellow, orange explosion. Young boys hide on roofs with water guns full of dyed water waiting for an unsuspecting passerby. A water balloon or two gets thrown. Old women in bright saris walk up to you with a smile on their face, say “Happy Holi!” and smack you in the face with pink paint. Cows, dogs, people, trees…no one is safe. The paint stains your clothes and skin and can be quite toxic, and I was advised to steer clear of participation and stay within my ashram cell.

But curiosity got the best of me. As a white woman who walks around dressed in all white, I was a ridiculously brazen target, so I bought purple pants and a purple and red top for the occasion, hoping to look like I had already been someone’s victim. I wanted to see Holi but not participate. One of the Rishikumars, the boys who are attending the monastic school here at Parmarth Niketan, came up to me and asked me if I wanted paint thrown on me. I said I did not. He said, “But it’s Holi!” Then he gently smeared paint all over my face. I gave up. I was Holied.

Beatrice, my special cow and the star of this blog, was no longer white either. She was a rainbow. The two of us stood in the street watching the dancing festival, people running through the streets shouting and throwing paint, everyone a crayola experiment. To celebrate, I bought a can of coconut water and after taking a long sip to cool off, I poured the rest onto Beatrice’s tongue. “Happy Holi, Beatrice!”

Let the springtime into your life. Don’t be so worried about the purity and holiness of yourself that you forget to experience the joy of color and a celebration of holi-ness. There is a time for meditative austerity and a time to run through the streets, dripping like a melting rainbow, shouting “Happy Holi!” to the Divine Love Intelligence that painted the canvas of this universe with such gleeful, colorful exuberance.

The Light of the World

There is a dirt road that follows the banks of the Ganga lined with cactus and blooming bushes. Cows and dogs play cuteness games to compete for scraps from the humans that pass with warm butter cookies in their hands. There are small shacks with large yards full of flowers, wood piles and cows that are surrounded by gates all along this road. They are homes given to sadhus by the ashram that owns them for them to live in until they die, when possession will be passed along to another sadhu. You can hear the roar of the Ganga and see her rocky shoreline from this road about fifty feet above her. It is the place of legends, where Sivananda held his unbroken meditation for years and was not the first, nor the last master to do so. I walked by one gate and was attracted by the white cows walking into the yard. I went to check to see if one was my favorite cow Beatrice to pass her a butter cookie I had saved in my pocket. It wasn’t her, but instead I attracted the attention of an old man inside the yard wearing all white robes and with three lines of yellow sandalwood paste on his forehead.

I suspect that in my all white robes with matching white turban and chuni (which looks like the white bridal veils worn in western weddings), I was enough of a curiosity to rouse him from his normal routine of privacy. My friend Ramprakash, who speaks fluent Hindi, was walking along with me and the sadhu called out to him and gestured to me. A conversation which I didn’t understand ensued, but I caught enough to get that he was explaining that I was a Kundalini yoga teacher at Parmarth Niketan and that it was a yoga of the Sikhs (thus explaining the Adi Shakti symbol I had on the pin that fastened my chuni). My name was Ramdesh, he explained, and his was Ramprakash. The sadhu responded for awhile and then my friend turned to translate. “He says that wherever you see Ramdesh (God’s Land) there is Ramprakash (God’s Light). He wants to tell you that you should keep teaching and keep learning. You will shine a lot of light in the world.” The old sadhu talked about many things, including about how when the cows in town are sick, they are brought to him and he takes care of them, so to let him know if I see a cow that needs help. My heart melted. Anyone who takes care of the sweet natured cows here gets an A in my book. It was time for aarti by the river, time for our evening prayers of chanting the Hanuman Chalisa, so we said our goodbyes.

It occurs to me that his message had nothing to do with what I am doing here in Rishikesh in so far as it being me personally or teaching yoga at an ashram. He was not trying to build up my ego, nor should I allow his message to do so. We can all say to anyone that we meet, “You should keep teaching and keep learning.” We should all be able to see the truth in each other and say with confidence, “You will shine a lot of light in the world.” If we all live up to the potential that lies within our hearts, our lives would effortlessly unfold in cycles of being a student, a teacher and always a light. It is our truth. We can turn off the switch if we want to, but it still is our potential as light bulbs to shine when the switch is turned on.

Look around you…can you see a budding flower, a strong tree, the blue sky, a white cloud? Is there a crack in the sidewalk where a little green blade of grass bravely peeks through? Even in the wreckage of a war, there is life. There is the wind. There is the moon and a sunset and a dawn. God’s Land is everywhere. And when you can see God’s Land, then you will see God’s Light. And then you see the light.

The Saint and the Crazy Woman

There is a woman who attends aarti at Parmarth Niketan some nights. You cannot miss her if she is there. She is a white woman with dirty blonde hair who wears an all white skirt and all white robes. She stands on the ghat and dances, a very solemn expression on her face and a series of complex and intense mudras on her hands. Everyone stares. She makes no indication that she notices and continues along in her dance, winding her hands from mudra to mudra, twist and contorting, sometimes holding a small sprig of white flowers in her hands. People whisper, some laugh. You can’t help but notice.

One day while walking in front of the ashram I saw her go into a bookstore. I followed her inside and told her that I thought her dance was beautiful. I figured that she was the object of so much ridicule that she might like to hear a friendly voice tell her something kind. Her voice was small and delicate and she spoke very deliberately. Often she would close her eyes and squint, as if trying to hear some very quiet voice on the inside of her head tell her what to say next. She was eager to talk and share spiritual discussions of her path and her practice. She said she lived in the mountains and experiences much harassment from the locals. She said that she works with flowers and herbs, spent four years in a cave, is a total renunciate, fasts for much of the year and practices levitation as a form of daily meditation. She said her name was Upasana and that she had come to India after a very painful upbringing of abuse to find God. She spoke of specific intense sadhana practices, her guru, and asked me to say prayers of protection for her from my tradition. I asked her if I could watch her levitate, but she said that only her disciples were permitted to view it, as people outside of their order were not allowed to watch other than in certain very public instances that have been, according to her, well documented. She was a gentle and delicate woman, seeming more fairy than human. It was time for arti, so I suggested we walk together and I told her I would sit behind her and do a meditation for protection for her, since she had said that she was very aware of the negative attention she got. We went through aarti like that, me chanting softly “Aad guray nameh, jugad guray nameh, sat guray nameh, siri guru devay nameh” behind her and her dancing her mudras. After aarti, she thanked me for my mantras and my kind words, said she would pray for me and we went our separate ways.

I asked someone I knew at the ashram afterwards who she was. They said she was a “mentally unbalanced” woman who lived in the hills. Now I do not know whether she is a levitating saint or a crazy woman with visions of grandeur. It doesn’t matter to me. She is a woman who is living her life how she chooses to live it, and I don’t agree with her being the object of negativity from so many just because they don’t think what she is doing is normal. Maybe she is crazy, so she should be looked upon with compassion. Maybe she is a saint, so she should be looked upon with compassion. Essentially who and what we are doesn’t matter. Our souls all deserve to be treated with compassion, tenderness and the freedom to express ourselves how we choose. We all deserve a mantra of protection.

Choose Wisely

Our emotions are our choice. Our reaction or non-reaction to our emotions is a choice as well and a product of a disciplined mind. We don’t like that word discipline and resent that word choice. “I can’t help it, it is just how I feel,” we say, and yet in truth we can help it at every moment.

Yesterday India got the best of me. Mother India is a wonderful teacher of patience, for anytime you try to get something done that you would expect to take an hour or a day takes six hours and two weeks to accomplish. You must be prepared for twists and turns and unexpected side trips to have mango lassi with someone’s cousin. After weeks of careful planning, financial investment and reassurances, at the unveiling of what it was I wanted, in fact, it wasn’t what I needed at all and wouldn’t work for me. Disappointment set in. I went back to my room in the ashram and for a few seconds I began to cry. Then I stopped to examine myself. “I want to honor your emotions,” I said to myself, “But this is unnecessary. Go outside and look at people with real problems, then find someone to help.”

I splashed cold water on my face, went outside and gave some Indian sweets to the man who had tried to help me arrange what I wanted, fed my favorite cow her nightly turnips and walked down to the ghat on the Ganga where pilgrims from near and far where making their way down the stairs to the holy river. The sounds of the tabla, the harmonium and voices harmonizing in Sanskrit filled the air. One after another I found older women who were unsteady on the steps and offered them my arm. I filled water bottles for them with Ganga water so they didn’t have to bend down and hurt their backs. I lent a simple hand to others and pulled myself up.

My emotions and tears were a habit. They were the result of years of conditioning that let my emotions run wild before me and let reaction rule my day. I had to short circuit that habit and choose a different path. My emotions were my choice, and I choose to feel good. There is nothing that will make you feel better faster than giving. In serving another, you remove your ego from the equation. The ego is where your emotional pain lives, so by stepping outside of your ego by being in service, you separate yourself from your drama and your place of pain for awhile. You can catch your breathe and regain emotional equilibrium.

Practice non-reaction. With the daily discipline to choose devotion, non-reaction and introspection our whole lives can change. The Swami here at Parmarth Niketan says to start your day with devotion, live it with non-reaction, and end it with introspection. It is like a multi-vitamin for your spirit and protects you from illness and depression.

When your mind and your expectations of the world around you lead you into depression, recognize that you can take control of your experience and change it. You can decide not to allow negativity into your life. The practice of daily sadhana gives you the strength to practice non-reaction and begins to rewire your brain so that your emotional reactions are easier to control. Whatever that sadhana is for you, whether it is yoga or meditation or prayers, do it consistently. Honor yourself with that time and watch the nature of your experience change.