Yoga Ashram India series on TravelWireAsiaI write a regular ‘column’ for the TravelWireAsia website about India, yoga and travel in Asia (my favourite continent for travel!). Recently, I published a three-part series on How to “do” a yoga ashram in India. Here’s a synopsis of each post — to read the full article click on the link provided.
HAVE you considered going to an ashram in India? This is a 3-part series on where to go, what you need to know and what to expect. (more…)
Travel to India is like going through the looking glassWHEN I TRAVEL, especially in India, I feel like Alice in Wonderland; I feel like I’ve fallen into the rabbit hole, or stepped through the looking glass. I lose my bearings and everything is challenged, including my sense of self in the world and my ideas about how life and people should be.
And the experience of being in the alternate universe of a foreign country has helped me become more aware of myself and of the role perception plays in shaping reality.
In India, I meet other foreigners who tell me they think Pahar Ganj in Delhi is “the real India,” and who say the only way to travel in India is by staying in 150-rupee-a-night hovels. I also meet Delhi-born Indians who tell me they think Pahar Ganj is a ghetto and wouldn’t go near it. They prefer Delhi’s five star hotels and the shopping malls of Gurgaon.
When I live with my partner’s Indian family in Delhi, I am accepted into the family and I live as an Indian. But when I travel, I am seen as a foreigner and as if I know nothing about the culture. What’s the truth? (more…)
Anand Prakash Yoga Ashram, Rishikesh, India
The first light of dawn has not begun to rise from behind the Himalayan foothills when the sound of a gong begins to echo through the corridors of Anand Prakash Yoga Ashram in Rishikesh, India. At Aurovalley Ashram, on the outskirts of Haridwar, the buildings are spread out across the ashram’s acres of gardens and you have to wake yourself to be ready in time for 6 am meditation in the silent, white marble meditation hall.
This is my favourite time of day in India. The intense golden-yellow Indian rises like a benevolent god. In fact, the sun has been worshipped in India since the dawn of time. A feeling of sacred reverence seems to fill the air. In Rishikesh, it’s in the sounds of chants, bells and the song of the Ganges River; at Aurovalley, it’s in the sound of birds, the breeze in the trees and the sight of massive tropical blooms. Huge, crimson hibiscus flowers dangle from trees that line the ashram’s pathways, and whole walls are covered in fuchsia bougainvillea.
In the film Eat, Pray, Love – based on the best-selling memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert – Julia Roberts’ character travels to Italy to enjoy food, to India to study yoga and to Bali to, eventually, fall in love. In India, Gilbert purportedly stayed in a yoga ashram in Ganeshpuri, a pilgrimage centre outside of Mumbai (Bombay). But there are countless yoga ashrams all over India. (more…)
This was me about six years ago, after yoga teacher training. Photo by Christine Lynes.
Starting today, February 18, 2012, I am undertaking a 30-day yoga challenge: for the next 30 days, I will go to one yoga class a day at Lila Yoga Studio. I am giving myself this challenge because I have essentially spent most of the last three years sitting at my desk, and on my computer, working very hard to get my travel writing and travel blogging career off the ground. I have often worked 16-hour days, writing, organizing Toronto Travel Massive events, building social media relationships, pitching story ideas to online and print publications, trying to get sponsors for Breathedreamgo – all the myriad things it takes to build a successful career.
The toll it has taken on my physical health is a bit grim. Six years ago, in 2004-5, I trained to become a vinyasa yoga teacher, and by the end of the training I was in peak shape and I felt great. From then to now I feel I have aged 20 years: I feel heavy, stiff, out of shape and I’m worried about my spine and joints. Sitting is a killer, there is no doubt about it. So I am taking this yoga challenge to get my energy flowing and my body moving; to lose some weight; and to get back into my yoga practise.
Please follow my journey — which I will update weekly here on Breathedreamgo and more regularly on Twitter and the Breathedreamgo Facebook page.
Bada Bagh, Jaisalmer: India is my soul culture
Last month, I started writing a bi-monthly “column” for the new Travel+Escape website — which complements the new Canadian TV channel — about immersive travel. What is immersive travel? It’s travel that takes you deep into a culture and changes you. Immersive travel can be voluntourism, solo travel or long-term travel. It can be embarking on a spiritual path or a going to a health & wellness retreat. Or it can be simply an attitude. It’s about being open to a new culture, learning from it, and letting it change your ideas, beliefs and assumptions about life and the world. If you go on a trip, and see things differently when you get back home — then, you have probably experienced immersive travel. Here’s a synopsis of my first three columns. (more…)
Social media is a spiritual discipline
In Hindu mythology, there is a concept of vehicle — an animal that transports a god or goddess. Ganesh has a rat, Durga has a tiger and the goddess of the arts, Sarasvati, has a swan. To me, as a blogger, Breathedreamgo is my vehicle: it is the means by which I am transporting my work and my passions. And it is also the means by which I hope to transport my readers — to travel adventures; personal transformation and a world of beauty, where the spiritual traditions, history and living mythologies of India come alive. (more…)
Me, Liz and the subcontinentBecause I travel in India and write about it, many people ask me if I was influenced by the book Eat, Pray, Love, and they try and compare me to author Elizabeth Gilbert. Here are the five key differences between my story and Gilbert’s.
1. I did not have a hefty book advance to subsidize my trip. My trip to India was not research for a book, and I had to subsidize it myself out of my meager resources. I sold 1/3 of my possessions, gave up my apartment, moved into a small room and scrimped and saved for a year. After I returned, and realized how much I’d changed, I went through a lot of financial instability. The whole experience was a “real spiritual quest,” in the sense that I threw myself into it without any attachment to outcome. A big part of my journey was about throwing myself off the cliff to find out IF a net would appear. Read on for the other four. (more…)
Scene from the Mahabharat: Krishna and Arjun at the battle of Kurukshetra
Yoga philosopher, Kirtan leader, Sanskrit teacher, Sitar artist and the writer / blogger behind Akshara Yoga blog: Ram Vakkalanka is accomplished in many things. He is also my friend, I am proud to say. Ram and I have bonded over our deep love and respect for the wisdom traditions and culture of India. We have many shared ideas and notions about yoga and spiritual philosophy, and feel that the essence of these teachings is largely lost, overlooked or misunderstood in the west (and sometimes even in India).
Some time back, I wrote a blog, What yoga is, after attending a workshop with internationally known yoga teacher Mark Whitwell at the Yoga Festival of Toronto. I was delighted to discover that Mark Whitwell really “gets” yoga; and I feel the same way about Ram. Over dosas at a Toronto South Indian restaurant, we discussed the essence of spirituality and Ram told me the story of Kaushika, which I loved. He said, “In the great epic Mahabharata, there is the story an aspiring yogi called Kaushika who meditates for many years but fails to attains self-awakening.” I feel the story expresses a truth about spirituality that many people don’t seem to understand. Here it is. (more…)
Sylvia Fraser in India, 2000
In 2005, as I was getting ready to go to India for the first time, on my six-month “trip of a lifetime,” my friend Chrissy gave me a copy of The Rope in the Water. As I read about Toronto author Sylvia Fraser’s pilgrimage to India, I was struck by the many similarities between us; and completely flabbergasted to discover that we share the same birthday (March 8 – International Woman’s Day).
I loved the book and decided I had to meet Sylvia Fraser; that somehow my destiny demanded it. Well, it took me five years to finally connect with her and I am happy to report that we are now friends. I interviewed Sylvia in February 2011 about her many transformative travel experiences and her reality-defying “rope in the water” story (see below and find out how a non-existent rope saved her life when she was being carried out to sea by a riptide, off the coast of Kerala in South India). Here are the highlights of our interview.
Mariellen Ward: What is travel to you, and why do you prefer being a seeker and going on pilgrimage?
Sylvia Fraser: Travel is something I love to do, it’s a need, not a luxury. If I’m not happy, planning a trip is absolutely the best. (more…)
On the morning of April 14 approximately 10 million people streamed into the sacred town of Haridwar in north India to bathe in the Ganga on the most auspicious day during the 2010 Kumbh Mela. I was one of them. Find out how I found myself alone, and at home, at the world’s largest spiritual gathering.
In Varanasi, where the veil between life and death seems very thin, a boat ride on the river can become a journey to the other side. Come along with me on a boat ride on the Ganges River in India’s oldest, holiest city and pierce the veil.
The Ganges / Ganga River is the Mother of India. The River speaks in many voices as she travels from the high Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. At the source, her song is joyous, full of the the jubilance of youth, the rush of fresh mountain streams, the sincere chanting of pilgrims and the excitement of the onward journey.
