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The controversial plow pose during a yoga program in India By Sonja Bjelland

The yoga world seemed stuck upside down recently with a headline declaring “How yoga can wreck your body.”

The New York Times Magazine piece excerpted from a book by the paper’s science writer William J. Broad called “The Science of Yoga: The Myths and the Rewards.”

Fellow NYT columnist Maureen Dowd wrote the only piece I’ve seen that looked at the book on a whole and showed some of the contradictory and surprising findings that were not included in the excerpt.

The section included in the magazine carried some incredible examples of yoga-related injuries and started what any publication hopes for – buzz.

So much so, that other publications did roundups of the best responses to the NYT piece and it devoted an opinion section to allow six people from the yoga world to respond. Comments on the article were stopped at 700.

What was missing in those responses was addressing what the article was about – do we need to look at what we’re doing in yoga?

The village elders class at the BaliSpirit Festival By Sonja Bjelland

Instead, the responders blamed the student for not being mindful enough in practice and letting our egos run away. But it’s more complicated than that. If we want to admit it or not, bad positions and bad instruction can cause problems.

When I started this site, my first retreat was with Judith Hansen-Lasater. I still remember her saying how many fellow yoga instructors needed hip replacements in part because people tried to stack their hips in triangle pose. She encouraged us to question teachers who taught that and I’ve done that even in the last few months. After all, one of the tenets of yoga is to be “non-harming.”

Reality is the original poses were done by men and ones who sat cross-legged all day at that. Western, female bodies are different and the alignment should be modified accordingly.

I hope instead of just being defensive and keeping everything the same that this encourages the yoga community to think about anatomy and alignment.

This is all the more crucial when you’re traveling for yoga.

In a regular class you can walk away and never return. But if you’re at a weekend or weeklong yoga retreat, you’re stuck.

That’s why I had to learn to watch myself closely when I studied yoga in India. Tradition trumped modern science and some poses did not make my body happy. I found out how important it was to know if the teacher understood the human body as well as how much I had to hold back my ego while also challenging myself.

The Taj Mahal at sunrise By Sonja Bjelland

The reaction in India has been different than in the U.S. and blames it on the Western commercialization of yoga and people only focusing on the physical part of yoga, not the breathing and meditation aspects. But this isn’t a conversation that only needs to happen in the U.S.

I found Indian yoga far from safe. At 6 a.m. we were expected to roll back and forth from a seated forward bend back to plow pose and up again. This was not a slow moving thoughtful movement, but rushed.

This also came up when I attended the BaliSpirit Festival. It was hot and some classes were over my head. It’s in these elements that yes, the ego is powerful. You want to do as well as the rest of the class, especially when a teacher calls people out for being a beginner in her class – which was listed as all levels.

So no, yoga is not exempt from competition and the ego does lead to our injuries. In fact, they used to have yoga demonstrations in India where the boys studying would display their feats of strength and flexibility.

But I prefer to keep my eyes closed and listen to my body so I don’t hurt myself.

Friends gather on a roof at Parmarth Niketan By Sonja Bjelland

I’ve often described my stays at yoga ashrams as being like summer camp.

What I’ve discovered in the nearly year since, is the enduring power of the friendships built on a yogic foundation aren’t that much different than what I can imagine from summer camp as well.

I started noticing this during late-night conversations with my roommates on my first retreat at the Mt. Madonna Center in California. I made other friends over those brief few days that have been lasting friendships.

In India, the connections were almost more immediate. I had been traveling for weeks by myself in cities that require you to muster up the courage to walk outside. I would chat with any fellow travelers. Then I landed in an ashram surrounded by more Americans and Brits than I’d seen in weeks.

Then I started meeting my roommate and my other classmates.

Gardens at Parmarth Niketan By Sonja Bjelland

I know a lot of people can’t imagine having a roommate, or staying in a dorm as an adult, but I found it was the best way to make friends.

For 10 days at an ashram in Rishikesh our group of 13 made our way to 6 a.m. yoga. We attempted chanting and sang “Imagine” on a dorm rooftop more than once by candlelight.

Many of us have stayed connected via Facebook and email. One Bulgarian man from our class may soon be meeting up with a few from our group while in California.

When I head to Colorado in a few weeks one of my yoga camp friends will be in the area.

These are friends I’ll happily see whenever I make my way to London or Australia.

And I will always have a place for them to sleep.

I got lucky with my group of friends in Rishikesh.

Yoga friends in Rishikesh, India By Sonja Bjelland

My other, shorter, stays at yoga ashrams in India, Thailand and Bali all led to friendships, but not always the kind of bond from 10 days together at Parmarth.

I think the length of time helped strengthen that. At Sivananda’s Kerela ashram, the yoga vacation program allows people to come and go every few days. I was only there four days and met some great people but I didn’t leave with the connections I’d made before.

Thailand and Bali lacked the dorm-yoga-ashram type accommodations and therefore required much more effort to make friends.

I would ask people if they liked what they were having for dinner or if I could join them when there wasn’t a seat available. That meant I rarely ate a meal by myself. Otherwise, it would have been easy to hang out at the beach and go to yoga classes twice a day without meeting anyone.

But I didn’t let that happen and made friends who have given me more reasons to hop across the pond. Those links also bring each of us back to a time when we were focused on deepening our practice through a yoga vacation and allows us reconnect to those moments.

Within the yoga community and yoga spaces we often feel safe. An automatic trust in each other’s goodness based on our oneness of yoga practice.

But this last week has been a reminder that yogis are human too, and that can be bad.

At the Hanuman Yoga Festival in Boulder, a man was found hiding under a tarp inside a portable toilet. The Smoking Gun is saying he’s into “spiritual pornography” and travels from festival to festival giving massages.

Yes the story is ripe for all sorts of puns and potty humor, but it also raises the issue of people who prey on the open-heartedness of yogis. After 10 years writing about such incidents for newspapers, I’m still working on moderating my level of skepticism back to a more normal level. I’m transitioning from thinking everyone I meet has a bad past as I attempt a more open-hearted life. But like everything, it’s a balance.

Ashrams and retreat centers in India and Thailand have also come under fire for gurus having sex with patrons and various other accusations. A friend of mine in India was groped by a security guard at an ashram while she was walking to her dorm. The ashram took care of the situation immediately but it reminded the rest of us that we still still had to keep our guards up.

And as disturbing as the sex crimes are, they’re not the only brand of potential evil.

Last week the LA Times reported a jury in Arizona convicted a self-help guru of negligent homicide in the deaths of three people who paid to undergo a sweat lodge ceremony.

It wasn’t a yoga activity, but it was in the hallowed spiritual grounds of Sedona and something yogis might participate in. I’m not arguing that all sweat lodges are evil because Native Americans have held “sweats” for years.

But Sedona and the yoga/self-help industry gathers seekers. People looking for something more who want to live with an open heart.

Now the family of one of the victims, Kirby Brown, is now working to create a safer self-help industry.

“Our goal now is to bring attention to this issue, and call for some action–both in applying existing legal protections to the industry and developing new ways to help protect people from this type of fraud and recklessness,” their website stated.

Winter at home in Illinois by Sonja BJelland

The other day I was talking to someone about my yoga travels and she said my upbringing must have been a big help.

I’m not sure she knows how true that was.

I’ve written about what lessons I learned on the road, but what skills did I have before hand that were useful that I hadn’t realized would be? No, these aren’t necessarily lessons everyone learns growing up. But they were part of mine and they’ve served me well.

1. How to hang laundry out to dry

This sounds simple enough but when I was standing on the roof of one of the Amma Ashram dorms hanging out my laundry I realized how many people didn’t know how to properly hang up their clothes. The trick is you overlap the clothes so you use fewer clothespins. That’s especially important for thin or smooth materials such as satin that can wriggle out of clothespins. Those are also the clothes that need the clothespins that snap together instead of the two-pronged clothespins. This knowledge was way in the recesses of my brain after a childhood of seemingly constant laundry duty. But my laundry stayed on the line above the smattering of fallen clothes.

Hanging laundry in my room in Goa, India By Sonja Bjelland

2. How to tie knots

Sometimes I had the luxury of outside clotheslines or even my own personal clotheshorse. But often I was left stringing up some clothesline across my room tying one end to the shower nozzle and maybe one to the towel bar and back and forth until I could dry two shirts and one pair of pants. My sailing years proved handy as I got to keep up my bowline tying skills as well as some quality hitches.

3. How to cook from scratch

Processed food is easing its way in to developing countries but it helps to know how to start with the basics. When it was my night to cook at a small ashram in India I was able to pick up at the farm stand eggplant, peppers, onion, garlic, basil, zucchini and tomatoes and whip up a modified ratatouille. The same proved true when I lived in Peru. If I wanted peas or green beans I was glad I knew what they looked like in their original form and how to snap them ready for cooking. Then I walked down to the payphone on the street and called my grandma to ask how long I needed to cook them.

4. That honey catches more flies than vinegar

There were times I could have pitched a fit. Parts of my family are pretty epic at doing so. But rarely will that do any good in Asia. My very first room in India I had to change because I could smell the mildew as I walked in. Mildew and mold are my biggest asthma triggers – a problem I hadn’t even contemplated. I was shown two more rooms and found one that would do. I proceeded to inspect every subsequent hotel room before agreeing to it but doing so with a smile.

5. How to clean and fix a bathroom

Bathroom No. 1 in Delhi, India By Sonja Bjelland

At the yoga ashram I visited in Rishikesh, the bathroom had 4 to 5 leaks. They called the “plumbers,” volunteers who may know something but not about Western toilets. Most of the world doesn’t use Western toilets so don’t expect anyone to know how to fix one. The squat versions don’t have any components that can fail so at least know how to put the chain back on the handle.

That bathroom was one of many that weren’t quite up to my cleanliness standards. I’ve heard different versions of why the bathrooms are so bad ­– even at $50-plus-a-night hotels. One person said it’s because only the lowest of the low caste would do such work so no one really knows how to and thinks they’re above doing so. Another person said it’s mostly men working in hotels so they just take the hose that is next to the toilet and spray down the room without actually doing any scrubbing. It’s a great combo.

More than once I took out a Clorox wipe to tackle the mildew I could see. In ashrams they would give you cleaning supplies. I readily took to the bathroom. Happily a fellow Midwestern and I scrubbed the three bathrooms in our dorm. Gone was the black coating on the floor and walls. Did we do it out of pure service to the ashram? Nope, we knew we enjoyed it.

Islands off the coast of Thailand By Sonja Bjelland

Maybe you don’t want to follow my footsteps hiking on jungle islands and navigating Indian trains but many more yoga travel options exist. Having a vacation feel more like you’ve walked out of a yoga class and less like you’re walking out of a night club  seems to be catching on. With so many options, I’ve offered up a few thoughts to keep in mind when considering a yoga holiday.

1. How intense do you like your yoga?

Do you want a constant challenge pushing you into new poses and ferocious sweating or are you looking for something more restorative? Make sure you don’t end up with a power yoga instructor when you’re craving something more yin. You’ll end up miserable. If you’re not sure, ask detailed questions in advance.

2. Are you OK with chanting and philosophy?

It should be expected at an ashram but may also be part of the curriculum at other yoga locations. Read the online descriptions carefully and if you’re not cool with chanting about Krishna you’ll likely not be happy being expected to do so. Some are more secular and teach more general philosophy but ashrams should be expected to lean toward Hinduism unless stated otherwise.

Sunrise on Bali By Sonja Bjelland

3. How rustic or lux do you want to go?

Sometimes what you need is being taken away from computers, cell phones and your hyper-charged life. But other times you need a comfortable place to be safe and feel good. Ashrams and similar yoga centers can be as basic as camping. Yoga spas trend toward the opposite end. Plenty of locations land in between. Anywhere from dorm accommodations with thin mattresses to private bungalows with scenic views.

4. Solo, friends, group tour?

Yoga vacations are ideal for solo travelers because you can meet so many new people on the yoga retreat or vacation destination. But it’s also a fun time for friends, sisters or mother and daughter combos. Many times they have enough chances for self reflection but also group interaction. If you’re searching for your soul, however, make sure the place will meet your needs. Some travelers are seeking more quiet personal space than some noisy Indian ashrams or Thailand yoga/party resorts offer.

5. Which continent?

Antarctica is the only one not currently available that I’ve found for yoga travel. The rest of the world is up for grabs – pretty much. Do you want something with the comforts of home or do you want to explore another culture to help you explore yourself?

Is their a country you’ve wanted to see and maybe add a yoga holiday to that. Just today I spotted articles online about a yoga cruise on a tall ship from Greece to Turkey and a foodie yoga tour of India with a woman who owns Indian food restaurants in the U.S.

6. Yoga retreat, yoga vacation, yoga spa or yoga adventure?

Some towns like Chiang Mai, Thailand and Ubud, Bali, have so much yoga you don’t even need to go with a group to make your

Yoga vacation in Cambodia? Of course, mix with the Angkor Temples

own yoga time. Others such as India are more challenging for travel but have live-in yoga options. Retreats keep you in a group of like-minded yogis, which is a great way to travel and make new friends. Then there’s straight up adventures. Yoga and horseback riding, heli-yoga in Canada, and yoga and whitewater rafting or hiking.

7. What are you looking for?

Is this meant to be a spiritual awakening or a weekend tune-up? Are you looking to stay somewhere for weeks or days? Is this about physical or mental fitness, or both?

Admitting to yourself that you really just want to sit quietly in the woods for a few days and do some relaxing poses is fine. Don’t require that you undertake some detox regimen with 4 hours of yoga a day just because some friend recommended it. Know what you want and do that.

Bus ride Kerala State, India By Sonja Bjelland

It’s been brought to my attention that I’ve left out one key ingredient in how to take a yoga vacation in India – how
to get there.

Yeah, sometimes you hop on a plane in New York and land at an airport where someone whisks you away after you cross customs and plop you’re at your destination.
For most of the places I’ve written about this is entirely possible.

You can take a plane into Delhi, grab a connecting flight to Haridwar and have a driver waiting with a sign to pick you up and take you the hour to Rishikesh. You will pay a premium for such service. But for many people it’s worth the convenience. The same goes for almost every other ashram in India.

Then there’s the other way to go.
Those of us who travel for months at a time know what it means to save $25 by taking an overnight train because that also saved another $10 in room expenses. That’s another day on the road for us. I’m not the world’s cheapest traveler, so I splurged sometimes for that $80 airfare instead of the 36-hour train ride from Delhi to Goa. I’m sure I would have had plenty of experiences on the train. But the plane offered it’s own adventure.

Everything felt so Western and comfortable. The plane was new and clean.

I had the window seat in a line of three seats. An Indian man in business attire took the aisle seat, raised the armrest and proceeded to sit cross-legged.

An interesting site but nothing untoward until he raised his left side and passed gas. And then did it again.

I was aghast. This to me was egregious because I was in my safe Western environment – an airplane. Didn’t this man know that the rules changed just because we were in a really expensive vehicle and not on the train?

On the train to Haridwar By Sonja Bjelland

But I didn’t say anything because I also had realized by then that with 1.2 billion people in a country, there is no sense of privacy. All human expulsions are considered just something natural humans do. And so it is nothing for a massage therapist to belch while giving a massage. Or for a man to fart, hock a loogie and scratch himself in the course of 10 seconds all while having a conversation in the middle of the street.

So yes, I may have missed some adventures taking the plane instead of my usual train method, but India still came along.
Train is the most common way of traveling in India for everyone. But remember 1.5 million people work for the train system alone. It’s heavily bureaucratic and packed with people.

It starts with buying a ticket unless you manage to buy one in advance on ClearTrip.com. Otherwise, this requires physically going to the train station. In Delhi, that meant walking through the dingy, crowded hall up stairs to the tourist ticketing office. Other places will have one window to deal with tourists, the disabled and veterans.

First, you have to fill out a form with the name and number of the train you want. Some trains are express with fewer stops and others stop at every hamlet along the route. I tried to avoid arriving in a new city at night so that also changed what trains I took.
You can track down all that information on IndiaRailInfo.com or at one of the electronic kiosks at the train station. Seat61.com is also a great resource for train information for anywhere in the world. You will likely need your passport to buy the tickets so have a copy of it with you and the original in hand.

With so many people taking the train, tickets may need to be purchased way in advance. Especially if you want one of the nicer cars. A few popular routes will have a “tourist quota” two to four seats that they won’t sell and save for tourists needing to make last minute purchases. This saved me several times.

Then there’s the waitlist. Even if you book online, your section may be full and you won’t know your seat and car in advance. That requires you to ask around at the train station and likely look at the paper taped to the side of the train cars to find some spelling of your name next to your seat number.

Traveling alone I chose to take the 2AC class, second class with air conditioning. This is the second best option and they descend from there.

It had minimal amounts of cockroaches and mice and I was usually comfortable. Not the best sleep but you actually do get a place to rest your head and they issue everyone a new pillow and sheet.

In the sleeper classes, each “seat” folds into a bed. They are sort of like day beds.

Terra cotta lamp in Jodhpur, India By Sonja Bjelland

Bags can be secured below the seat and chained to the metal hook. Yes, you’ll need to bring some sort of luggage lock that would allow that. I bought a Swiss Army one. Worked fine for me. Some folks go with an entire swath of chain-link around their bag.
I didn’t have any problems but there’s a reason people go with the fortress system.

From the previously mentioned websites and a handy iPhone app, you can monitor how late your train may be. They make up time when they can so it’s not always accurate. But it is important to write down how many stops your train has and when it stops where. They do not announce the stops and unless it’s a major destination each stop ranges between 2 and 5 minutes so you need to be at the door and prepared to hop on or off with ease and grace.

At the train station, signs tell what car is supposed to be at that place, so you have to line up with where your car, or carriage as it’s called, is likely to be. Then you watch it go by and run like mad with everyone else to catch up.

While I was on the train, I would try to find someone in my car heading to the same place to make sure I got the correct stop. I’m sure this all works fine when you know the system, but it made me anxious. I never felt like I knew my stop and feared missing my stop.

Or maybe I was hopped up on the hot cups of saccharin they call chai.

Then you still have to get out of the train station.

In the north at least, walking out of a train station as a lone, white woman makes you top priority for porters wanting to carry your bags for a tip and taxi and rickshaw drivers.

I aimed to have transportation arranged at almost every city in advance. Having an Indian SIM card in my cell phone meant drivers could text or call me to know when I was getting in and find me when I got off the train. A few had the wherewithal to guess I was the white girl walking by myself. One waiting outside the Jaipur train station spotted me, grabbed my hand and got me through the scrum of drivers wishing they were him.

Another savvy hotel operator met me at the train station with a sign. His place was only a short walk from the station.
Ashrams usually have a tour operator they work with who can arrange pick up and drop off. Have the number of the hotel or ashram on you in case something doesn’t work out.

Then there are buses. I figure this post is long enough that I’ll keep this short but buses are a good option for short distances of 4 to 6 hours. The ones I took were like a school bus without glass in the windows. The open air cooled it down and kept the smell to a minimum. They stop every few hours for restroom breaks because there aren’t any on the bus.

These are popular in the south and a much more laid back option than trains in the north. You find out through your hotel or at the bus station what time the bus is supposed to leave. Some run as often as every half hour. Once you show up you can usually grab a cup of chai and ask around to find your bus. Fares are frequently paid on the bus and are usually in the 60 to 80 Rupee ($1.50 to $2 USD) range for a 4 to 6 hour trip.

Of course you can always hire a driver. And I’m sure it would still be an adventure.

On most evenings, unfortunately during the beautiful sunset, the Agama center has a lecture for all the students.

Each focuses on a different topic in yogic philosophy or something more specific to this branch of what’s considered Kundalini

Sunset on Koh Phangan, Thailand By Sonja Bjelland

yoga in the States. The talks also mix in with whatever yoga poses we’re learning that day and after 4 hours of meditation and “asanas” or poses it helps. I also like these lectures because I’m a thinker and otherwise it could get boring for me just sitting by the beach all the time.

Tonight’s lecture focused on purification, but not just in a detox sort of way. Though the Ananda Wellness Resort here on Koh Phangan in Thailand does have that too.

She talked about cleaning out negativity. As I was discussing with some friends over Pad Thai afterward, it’s carving off the bad blocks in your life sculpture.

The teacher, Laura Carrotti, said life is about consciousness, existence and bliss (a word I’m kinda partial to).

Negativity is a choice, she said. Every person decides to produce negative thoughts or emotions such as anger, envy or hatred and can also make them go away.

Easier said then done, for sure.

But I know in my own life I’ve managed to do some of that. I made a list of negative crap in my life that I wanted out and I took the steps to cut those ties. Again, not easily done but so worth the effort.

And not to say there won’t be more negativity in my life. But I looked at my life recipe and saw what made it salty, and spicy and sweet. And I feel like I cut out the ingredients that didn’t serve the dish. If you don’t mind another metaphor to make my point.

Carrotti noted that when people get angry, for example, those physical reactions are associated with someone who’s sick: High blood pressure, sweating, etc. Being more content and happy provide the opposite effect.

This isn’t about holding in all that anger. It’s more about not getting upset or depressed in the first place. Admitting that fear, anxiety and negativity do not define a person and that it is a choice. She recalled the phrase “worrying is praying for what you don’t want.”

In those negative thoughts, she said to think of something positive, like rainbows or puppies.

One friend I’ve met here had just unfriended someone on Facebook because he kept causing drama but she still felt bad about it. We reminded her that he was someone who just brought negativity to her life. And that was an easy ingredient to remove.

One of my favorite things about giving gifts is finding something you know someone will really use.

Even if I’m picking up gifts from an open-air market in India, I still want it to be something I think the person would wear or otherwise use.

So what will a traveling yogi really need?

First check out my What to pack? page for a few basic ideas of what he or she will need.

If they’re heading to India for serious yoga study, it’s helpful to know the Sanskrit words for yoga poses. The Language of Yoga: Complete A to Y Guide to Asana Names, Sanskrit Terms, and Chants gives exactly what it says. This will explain some of the chants common in yoga houses and a little translation help for the yoga poses.

Yoga teacher training, local or abroad, requires a good thick mat. Four to five weeks on a thin travel mat will just not work. If your yogi does sweat-inducing Bikram or Ashtanga yoga, they might also want a yoga towel, which keeps you from slipping on your mat.

With a yoga mat you probably need a yoga bag. This is nice to have at ashrams because you can have your mat, Kleenex and notebook all together.

As always for a yogi, gift certificates to a favorite studio are also good. Not sure which studio or if they travel frequently, Passport to Prana is a multi-studio pass good in major cities throughout the U.S. and Canada.

The Colorado Springs Gazette featured a column this week with several good ideas from going to class with your yogi to paying for a private yoga session.

Then there’s the amusing creations people come up with that are just fun. This sock-monkey Shiva ornament struck my fancy.

But what a yogi would probably like best is for you to give to someone else.

India’s a difficult place to travel but also an incredible place to visit. A few tips can be the difference between starting your trip off with a lot of crazy or only a little crazy. After all, this is India – it will be crazy.

Men in line for a Hindu temple in Kanyakumari, India By Sonja Bjelland

1. Spend the first night in a nice hotel wherever you land. Jetlagged and tired you’ll be miserable sleeping on a wafer-thin mattress with bells waking you up before 6 a.m.

2. Research what you can. This is easier for Europeans than Americans because so many Europeans know someone who has been to India. Not so for Americans, but Yoga Journal has written extensively on the topic. British newspapers such as The Guardian’s travel section and European travel publications are also great spot to find information on traveling in India.

3. Headlamp. The power goes out all the time and they’re not easy to find in India.

4. Don’t over do it. Western bodies aren’t used to sitting cross-legged for hours or contorting ourselves the same way. Don’t let the teacher push you in to some pose you know will only mess up your back in a mean, mean way.

5. Do some yoga before you go. No, it’s not likely you’ll be able to fit 4 hours of yoga into your day before you head out on an Indian yoga vacation. But you won’t want to start off cold. It’ll just hurt that much more.

6. Take the big bottle of Advil. See No. 5.

The Taj Mahal at sunrise By Sonja Bjelland

7. Learn the names for a few basic poses in Sanskrit. It’s the language of yoga and it will be much easier to understand what the teacher wants you to do if you know your tadasana from your savasana.

8. Plan a few trips out of the ashram. Either before or after your yoga time, take the chance to see a bit outside those walls. Ashram life does teach a lot about India, but seeing it in person gives you more perspective on what you’re learning and challenges that yogic calm.

9. Keep tabs a little on the outside world. Security alerts from your home embassy and reading India news websites can let you know if you need to reroute your trip because of weather problems like I did or violence such as tonight’s bombing at an Aarti on the Ganges river.

10. Pack an open mind. India is far from the Western world and that much farther from American life. But it’s still incredible to witness.

Ashram life may be the cheapest yoga vacation in India but it’s not for everyone.

A Sivananda yoga students sits by the nearby lake. By Sonja Bjelland

Four hours of asana practice a day did manage to relieve the tightness in my neck from my pack, OK and the duffle for my purchases.

But poses or asanas only make up a small part of yoga in India. All those body contortions help people sit longer cross-legged in mediation. The physical poses have equal importance to meditation and chanting for a well-rounded yoga practice.

Even more than complaining about the food and the mildew, I’ve heard visitors say they just wanted “yoga.” They didn’t mind the meditation but really couldn’t get into the chanting. It’s that religious side of yoga that makes Westerners squirm.

If Hinduism or yoga came first I won’t debate. Both started several thousand years ago so by now they are pretty integrated in India, regardless of the ongoing debate surfacing in American media as seen in this recent New York Times article. And religion, any of them, is part of everything in India. It’s just the culture.

A man at a Hindu ceremony in Kanyakumari, India By Sonja Bjelland

In one cab the car’s owner had a Ganesh doll and the driver put up a Christian rosary. People show their religion outwardly. The many Hindus who attended a morning service will have a red dot on their forehead. Muslim women cover their heads and many men wear a skullcap. Christians frequently don a gold necklace with a cross or post “Jesus loves you” stickers on their rickshaws. And this is only the more popular religions in India. The religious landscape is as diverse as the topography from the thick jungle and rocky beaches to vast deserts and snowy Himalayas.

Being in an ashram allows visitors to focus on their own spirituality. But time there can prove difficult to bear for those who are not at all spiritual or disagree with what the ashrams teach.

Most ashrams associate themselves with a temple and Hindu spiritual leaders. Devout Hindus pray twice a day – morning and evening. Seven days a week. Ashrams serve as sort of combined

A hilltop cross in Kumily, India By Sonja Bjelland

monasteries and convents so visitors are expected to participate as well.

But that doesn’t mean becoming Hindu. That’s only by birth anyway. It’s about pondering your relationship with the world and whatever you believe. Teachings will be heavy on believing something – but not usually one religion over another. At the Sivananda ashram in Kerala, the chants included paying homage to Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses and on and on. To keep it all the more inclusive, and highlight the internationality of the ashram, the morning universal prayer would be given in a different language almost every day – Farsi, Russian, Spanish.