Yoga Adventures in India

Submitted by India Week on Thu 08/03/12

As part of India Week we are celebrating Indian Culture, Tradition and Life today. Here yoga instructor Adam Olivestone describes his amazing experiences of studying yoga in India.

"India had always been one of those places that was on my list of ‘must-go-there-one-day' but honestly speaking, the fact that it's not known as being the easiest place to travel in, to put it mildly, as well as the guarantee from nearly everyone I'd met who'd been there - ‘If you go to India you WILL get sick', was enough for it to remain on the back burner. But then I got into yoga.....

I'll spare you the boring, indulgent details of why yoga had become a big part of my life but suffice to say that several years working in advertising was enough to drive me to look for something to alleviate the stress and spiritual turmoil I found myself in. After trying many different classes around London and further afield, Ashtanga yoga was the one that seemed to stick.

Ashtanga Yoga

Ashtanga or ‘Eight limbs' is a system of yoga based on the writings and philosophy of the ancient Indian sage Patanjali. It was popularised in the West in its current form by Sri K Pattabhi Jois, who passed away in 2009 and whose family continue to run the main Ashtanga school in Mysore, India.

And that was where I found myself in June 2005. After having quit my job to go on an extended yoga trip I spent a couple of months in Thailand with a renowned teacher who said that Mysore was the place one should really study to get in touch with the ‘source'. So a combination of my newly found faith and curiosity got the better of me and there I was on a plane bound for Bangalore.

Fortunately, as it turned out, my cousin's extended family are based in that part of India so I was met at the airport by one of my surrogate Indian relatives (who I was to stay with for a couple of days) and whisked onto the back of a motorbike and was soon weaving through the perilous Bangalore traffic.

Any anxieties I may have had about going to India instantly melted away as I was confronted with the glorious display flashing past me. Life literally hits you in the face in India so you can either take it on the chin or get knocked out with the first punch. Fortunately I managed the former.

Yoga in Mysore

Mysore Palace

Mysore was formerly the seat of the Maharaja and still retains much of its grandness - wide tree-canopied streets, gleaming palaces and temples and the soft scent of sandalwood exist side by side with not-so-pleasant smells, extreme poverty, mangy dogs and roads that disappear into pot-holed mud tracks.

Gokulam, the suburb of Mysore where the Ashtanga school is based, is particularly salubrious (by Indian standards anyway) so I quickly realised that staying here for a while would really not be so bad. I also quickly realised what my teacher in Thailand had meant about the importance of studying here.

Where as in the West, yoga students are often used to a soft, nurturing, maybe even indulgent approach to learning yoga, my experience in India was more in line with a more long-standing traditional approach. No-nonsense, sometimes fierce even but ultimately compassionate.

One of the eight limbs of the Ashtanga method is ‘pratyahara' or ‘withdrawing the senses'. Ironic then that India is a place where all one's senses are stretched, sometimes to their very limit. Yoga however, is ultimately about coming to terms with reality - of the self and the surrounding world - so what better place to confront those things than India?

I've recently returned from my third trip and look forward to going back again soon to this endlessly fascinating and challenging place. And - dare I say it - have yet to get sick!

Adam teaches Ashtanga Yoga at the School of Oriental and African Studies in central London. He can be contacted at soasyoga@yahoo.co.uk. Or if you're interested in learning more about Ashtanga and studying in Mysore, click here.