Art of Living- Day 3

I must say I softened up a bit after the previous day's surprise birthday celebration and I saw the initial signs of enthusiasm which prodded me to attend the last day of the workshop. Thanks to my neighbor, I arrived late at the venue and one certain volunteer was rubbing her hands in glee at the fine amount to be imposed on us. Turns out, I had five more people for company and everyone argued voraciously. Apparently, she

was just kidding and we went in to see a game in progress resembling 'Fire in the mountain' childhood game.

I forgot to add yesterday that some newspaper would be covering the event and everyone turned out in their best outfits.Including me. After the usual round of breathing exercises, we settled down to hear a few more teachings.

Now comes the really funny part. We were placed in front of a participant (of same gender!!!!!!!) and asked to look into their eyes while some song played in the background. Trust me it was really embarrassing and to make matters worse, we had to repeat the exercise with two more people. The whole exercise could be described in a single word- AWKWARD. I sighed audibly when it came to an end but groans followed soon when we were asked to close our eyes. And dance.

Now, I do dance with gay abandon when no one is at home and I don't care how terrible my steps are, for the simple reason that no one is watching. How do they expect me to dance freely when I am being watched by the volunteers? Trust me, it was not a good experience for me since I was waiting for the song to get over.

The workshop ended on a good note with the last activity wherein we were handed out paper plates. Now everyone was supposed to compliment each other on the basis of our interaction in the past few days. Trust me, there is nothing more liberating than letting go of all our preconceived negative impressions and prejudices about a person and giving their positive aspects more weight in your thoughts. There was this really nice energy coursing through me as I penned down a word of praise for each one of them. It felt.......awesome!

So go ahead and repeat this exercise with your friends and believe me, the greatest benefactor will you. Go fish out those paper plates and let me know about your experience :)

Art of Living- Day 2

So after the disappointment of the first day, I was in no mood to attends the next day's session. To crumble my already weak willpower, my neighbor who had enrolled with me for the course simply refused to attend any more. Seems he have had enough of it since he was enrolled against his wishes for the course plus the first day was too much for him to take. But being the paisa vasool karo attitude girl that I am, I decided to complete it and attend the remaining days too. Surprisingly, he went a change of heart by evening and agreed to give me company.

The second day began with the breathing exercises but I was pleased with myself since my threshold for pain had increase and could carry on with the exercises with minimal pain. Something to cheer about definitely :)

The rest of the session was nothing out of the ordinary and we learnt a few more sutras which were practical enough. It is strange knowing that what we were advised to implement in real life sounded so obvious but it is the case of easier said than done.

Now as we moved towards the end of second day's session, we were asked to close our eyes(what is up with this closing eyes part. It is done with such regularity that now it seems more of a chore) and were told that it is someone's special day. Obviously Gandhiji, I thought since it was October 2. I was pleasantly surprised to see a drool-inducing cake in front of us and was more surprised to hear we we had a birthday boy in our midst. This one sweet gesture by the organizers was enough to lighten up my uninterested state of mind and I had a deliriously happy time.

All is well that ends well I say! :)