A Tribute To Our Yoga Teachers On The International Yoga Day!

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We met our Guruji for the first time, the lady with the white dupatta! We admire her a lot!

I had been doing yoga for many years now! But only for the past 4 years, I do it very regularly, thanks to the teachers from the above yogashram.

The International Yoga Day was celebrated last Sunday itself by our centre, since this day, 21st June, is falling on a working day, Wednesday.   They had been celebrating for many years now.  But we, 6 of us who learn yoga at our complex itself (the teacher comes and takes 4 classes a week for 9 of us ladies on our terrace!) joined this celebration for the first time.  Our class is for an hour.  We usually do one set of Suryanamaskara, i.e. 12 nos., on 2 week days' evenings and 2 sets mostly on 2 days' (week ends) mornings since the weather will be cool in the mornings. When the teacher coaxed us to join the celebration and pushed us to do more sets, i.e. 4-5 sets for the past 10 days, we found it very difficult to do....or so we thought! Still we never dreamt of doing 108 suryanamaskaras and 208 aasanaas, AT A STRETCH! But we did! She, the teacher, had assured us that it would not be difficult since we do it with so many people around us!

Nearly 300 odd people, mostly women and some men, joined at the venue (Rani Meyyammai Higher Secondary School, Adyar) at 5.30 on the morning of 18th June, '17.  I noticed that more than 20% of them were above 50 years of age, myself included! More than 50% of us opted for doing both Suryanamaskara and aasanaas and the rest joined for doing just the aasanaas.  We were given token nos. and asked to sit at the allotted places on two floors of the school auditorium.  Though we were given juices and water bottles, we were asked to sip only water till the programme was over.

The programme started with our usual prayer.  On the way to the venue we were discussing about how much we might do and it didn't cross 6-7 sets! Our teacher Rathi Madam started the mantras and all of us started bending stretching, rhythmically...in a bit  slower pace than we usually do at our classes.  A 70 year old lady was doing easily in front of me! Some small children also were there...they were too fast and were waiting for us to finish! And all of us ladies from our complex, finished without taking any break! After shanthi aasanaa for 2 mts., we started doing aasanaas.  Till, nearly 100 aasanas we were fast and did without feeling tired.  Then we started looking at each other discussing if we should stop at 108! But we somehow finished 208 aasanaas!

Our ages were 64 (me!), 61, 56 and so on...we could do it at our age was because of the good teachers we had.  They never pushed us but coaxed us to do difficult aasanaas slowly.  If they taught tough aasanas one day, next class was with easy aasanas like spine relaxation, extra breathing exercise etc.  The 208 aasanaas we did after the main suryanamaskaara, have helped us to recover from the body pain fast later on.  All of us had thigh and back pain for a day or two.  We are back to normal on the third day and attended our usual class.

My friend saw a maami wearing brahmin type of sari and doing the namaskaaras.  She was very comfortable, it seems.

We hope to continue as long as we can!  I had written a post earlier too about yoga here!

Now, to some pictures from the Yoga celebrations:

Getting ready!

They gave us a prize too for being regulars in the class! We got medals for doing Suryanamaskara and asanaas, separately....altogether 2 medals each and a cup! We will display it in our complex and lure more ladies to join our class! IT IS GOOD!

Our namaskaarams to all our teachers!
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