Bangalore business blast!

After 6 weeks of intensive yoga practice in Goa, on March 16th a 24 hour train ride took us to Bangalore for a few weeks of high tech business networking. It proved to be a stimulating shift from our yoga journey, reconnecting me to my professional life and the high tech business.

From Goa yoga..................................................to Bangalore business blast!

For years I had been thinking of India’s main high tech hub as a place to discover and perhaps some day even live and work in. Friends and team members had given accounts about the high energy level, the fast growing companies and the job market frenzy. I had read Friedman’s “The world is flat” (book @ http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/the-world-is-flat, video @ http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/519) and developed some assumptions that I needed to check first hand, mainly around the scarcity of managerial and leadership skills in young, successful, high growth businesses.

My friend Elaine from Colorado (http://www.yarbroughgroup.com/) invited me to co-facilitate a diversity workshop at HP there and for me to do some on-site preparatory work for her. That would have been a motive for going there to network, but the workshop was cancelled. Discovering Bangalore and networking with business executives still attracted me, though without a gig I would have to build my network from scratch. With Kamala’s encouragement I decided to tackle it: go to an unknown city, in a foreign culture, set up meetings with people I had never met, to initiate a personal network and assess the market for my skills and services.

Relying on a handful of ex-colleagues and friends to introduce me to their contacts, I started reaching out over phone and email. By the time we left Goa, despite difficulties getting people’s mindshare from afar, a few had agreed to meet me over email. At that point, only one firm date had made it on my schedule for a business lunch.

To prepare myself I revamped my resume and acquired some appropriate business clothes. I had to learn again how to tuck a shirt in properly, wear a belt, socks and shoes for the first time in over a year....

My hair style did not need nor would tolerate any grooming: I had no hair to style!

 

 

Bangalore, we're ready for Business!............... Anshuman and Madhura, our guardian angels

Anshuman, now a good friend, helped us find a “serviced apartment” that impacted our first impressions of Bangalore. With a living room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms and bathrooms -that worked-, plus filtered water, it was a striking return to modern commodities and made our living conditions relaxing and fit for a productive and pleasant stay…

Gayatri pride residence .......................... Feeling good in business clothes again

Living in an all Indian neighborhood, with its partially paved streets, little stall shops and “Sagar” eateries where we ate out, while being just a couple of blocks away from a main shopping artery, we discovered what an interesting mix Bangalore is: a typical spread out, small-neighborhood Indian city and a cosmopolitan, global, vibrant high tech business and commercial center. We loved the tree bordered avenues and the presence of parks and lakes throughout the town. We generally found the traffic to be no worse than in any other Indian city.

 

Musician beggars and their beautiful cow in the street below us

Our 18 days in the Bangalore business world were an exciting shift from the yoga journey, and passed so quickly that before we knew it we were heading to Rajasthan, then off to Nepal. _____________________________________________________
Write-up on the business situation in Bangalore.

India in a nutshell
- India counts about 1.2 billion inhabitants, 4800 babies being born every hour.

- In 2007 it passed the $ 1 trillion GDP, became the world’s 12th largest economy.

- Depending on estimates, GDP growth was above 9% in 2007, currently around 6% and going towards 4 to 5% for 2010.

- Domestic GDP is strong, at around 86%, meaning the Indian economy is relatively self sufficient.

- Exports are lower than imports, respectively at 14% and 21% and both growing at around 20% annually. - GDP per capita is around $800 annual with extreme inequities.

Based on first hand salary information, a construction laborer in the Himalaya foothills or a restaurant waiter in Kerala both earn around $50 per month, while an entry level engineer in Bangalore earns between $6 000 and $20 000 a year depending on the specific industry and skill set, that could double with 10 years of experience. A senior executive salary would be around $200K+.

- Between 2007 and 2009 internet users grew 62% from 129,000 to 207,000.
- There were about 362 million cell phone users in India in February 2009.

- 15.4 million new cell phone subscriptions in the month of January 2009 alone.

Bangalore in a nutshell
- Bangalore’s population was below 3 million in 1981; above 6.5 million in 2001; estimated at around 8 million today.
- Registered vehicles went from 660 000, in 1991, to 2 200 000 in 2005.
- Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and National Aerospace Laboratories, established in Bangalore in 1940, strongly influenced it becoming the high tech competency center it is today.
- Altitude: 3000 ft. Bangalore’s climate is one of the most clement in India; the coldest it gets is around 60 F(15 C), the hottest is around 95 F (35C).

Executive summary of business meetings

· Timeframe: March 18th to 30th 2009

· 15 meetings: 13 Indian nationals, 2 Americans.

· CEO’s, Managing Directors, HR Directors, HR Consultants.

· Companies represented: Wipro, Synopsys India, Microsoft India, Aperian Global, Cisco India, Manipal Medical Systems, Intuit India, M2Square, Cobalt investments

Themes developed below

· Marketplace

· Job market

· Cultural traits and challenges

------ Rural to Urban

------ Soft skills

------ Matrixed is foreign

------ Global mindset

------ Indian culture in business context: strengths and limitations

------ Corporate versus local

· Leadership

· Human Resources

· Learning and Development / Consulting

The following summary is a mix of opinions expressed in my interviews, and my own personal comments.

Marketplace From high growth to the first impact of global recessionMany companies in Bangalore have experienced exponential growth and investment in the past 5 years. As an illustration, Wipro, one of the worldwide leaders in Business Process Outsourcing, grew 35%+ revenue each year from 2005 to 2007, doubling employees between 2004 and 2008 from 41 000 to 82 000 (

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=741012). In the past 5 years, multinationals such as Cisco, Microsoft and Synopsys grew in Bangalore from some one hundred employees to several thousand, becoming in some cases the largest corporate entity outside of the US.

This growth has drastically slowed down in the past 6 months; figures are evaluated week by week to reflect the continuing reductions in customer deals and investment budgets, repercussions of the worldwide recession.
· As a result, cost reduction initiatives are becoming common with frozen salary increase budgets and reduced variable compensation payouts.
· Measuring and reporting productivity is becoming a central theme as corporation headquarters make investment choices between competing low cost country locations, mainly India and China but Brazil and Eastern Europe are also in the mix. How to best compete internally for headquarter investments and demonstrate productivity ratios remains a concern for Research and Development entities.
· Immediate return on investment is the priority on any new programs/initiatives.

A different reality is just appearing in Bangalore, where leaders and employees will need to acknowledge a new set of rules relative to the slowdown. We can expect to observe some usual symptoms of denial, complacency and a lacking sense of urgency in addressing the issues in a timely manner, but would also anticipate seeing the energy, reactivity and adaptability of the Indian culture in action. For many managers who grew up in a thriving growth environment this will mean playing a new role and focusing tightly on performance. Prioritizing, resizing, de-layering are the name of the game. The intense focus on growth and on acquiring talent concealed so far internal issues such as lack of efficiency, performance, management capabilities, employee engagement and skills development that are now becoming visible and requiring attention.

Job Market
The IT job market in Bangalore is softening though it is still churning in certain areas. The hiring and retention situation is highly contrasted between Multinationals and Indian market leaders on one side with high retention rates, and the bulk of midsize and smaller Indian companies competing for talent on the other. However the main disparities are per industry sector and job family. On an average, engineering counts a 20% annual attrition rate while call center jobs rotate at 40% or more, with recurring issues of junior employee retention in lower qualification environments. Job hopping is however less common than a couple of years ago and employees are starting to manage their careers rather than just focus on increasing their base pay.

Cultural traits and challenges From rural family life to the urban jungleMany young Indian graduates join a company fresh out of college, after having spent a childhood in rural India, surrounded by their extended family, and having benefited from a well structured environment in college. Once on the job, they find themselves as young adults in an unknown, urban environment they often consider as hostile, without the local support network they had at home and in college. Some companies have hired dozens of in-house counselors to assist employees with personal problems that stem from this cultural shock and impact their behavior and performance.

Soft Skills
A common theme in our meetings was the lack of social, soft and managerial skills. The Indian university system is focused on producing technical excellence -and does this with very high standards that are on par with western universities- but falls short when it comes to preparing its graduates to take on managerial responsibilities or interact with other cultures. While going through college, very few Indian students will hold a job; in fact it would be seen negatively by their peers as a lack of financial resources. When they join a corporation they have practically no professional or management experience. And because the high tech industry has been in a high growth mode, the brilliant young graduates will be promoted to manage twenty or thirty people after a couple of years in the company, based on their technical abilities. And as the growth is ongoing there is little time to focus on developing these young managers. And attrition rates increase. And as growth spurs more promotions, management levels end up with incompetent team leaders. This is a familiar pattern for many of us in HR, anywhere in the world and was one of the assumptions I was here to test. Confirmed.

Matrixed is foreign
Many western corporations and some large Indian companies have matrixed reporting structures where power of authority alone is not enough to make things happen. Influencing others to engage and work on our goals is a given; bartering for resources and mindshare is learned early-on in our business environment. But for the Indian culture, based on respect for seniority, family position, socio-economic level, caste and authority, it remains a big challenge. Learning to navigate the informal influence structures of western organizations is somewhat counter-nature and takes time and experience to learn, and is not necessarily taught in multinationals. Beyond this cultural gap, it also requires developing the soft skills discussed above: interpersonal communication, presentation skills, understanding national/ethnic/gender diversity, global etiquette, virtual team behavior, managing by influence…
Global mindsetThe executives I met were very keen on the imperative to develop global mind sets and skills in their immediate teams and across the broader organizations. With the increasing role of Indian companies in the global game –business process outsourcing (BPO) as well as software product design and development-, every manager and leader interfaces nowadays with customers and teams around the world. Those who were educated abroad or worked for multinational companies have worked across cultures and developed a global mindset. And though others may be strong performers in a local management team or customer situation they lack experience with diverse cultures, values and behaviors.

Some of India’s best known companies (Wipro, Infosys, Jet Airways, Aricent…), have integrated foreign members in their top executive teams to bring this needed diversity. Other industry leaders (Tata, TVS, ABG…) have an exclusively Indian leadership team, remaining more traditional in this sense. Smaller Indian companies are highly challenged to become global and will achieve this by attracting Indian nationals having lived abroad and wishing to return to their mother land -or by creating formal training and exposure programs for their workforce.

The lack of Global mindset and skills is certainly not an Indian exclusivity. Many organizations and professionals in California or elsewhere claim being “Global”, when they have a couple of sales offices or production entities based outside the US. I have noticed few “global” behaviors such as having an accurate awareness of one’s own culture and what differentiates it from a local one, how to thoughtfully and effectively operate across these cultural differences, etc... Though in Silicon Valley, the level of diversity in the workplace and the interaction with teams across the world is such that the environment itself develops this awareness over time.

Aspects of the Indian culture in the business environment
Strengths/Differentiators
Openness: used to cultural and religious diversity within the Indian subcontinent
Resilience: brought up in the struggling, resilient Indian society, have had to adapt to difficulties, constraints and challenges; have learned to count on themselves…
Conceptual, Creative, Open, Adaptive
Reactive, Multi-tasking
Highly technical and analytical mindset
Responsive to defined rules and processes when well directed
Willingness to learn new things
“Collective” culture: team player, naturally collaborate/cooperate, ask for help

Limiting factors
Tendency to over-think, to remain at conceptual levels,
Re-invent what has already been defined
Create short cuts to do less work, circumvent process steps if not well directed
Hide bad news until it blows up
Denial: avoid dealing with a problem, pass it on, procrastinate, hide it
“Collective” culture: lack of personal ownership or accountability for follow up, drop the ball, delegate without maintaining responsibility on delegated task
Corporate versus local cultureIn the multinationals, corporate cultures dominate how business is conducted and how/what communication takes place. A “universal business culture”, - admittedly most often North American-, appears as the 80% cultural baseline, giving employees the exposure stated above, while 20% remains local culture, more specifically in personal interactions how employees relate to each other and to their managers. American expatriates tend to congregate and generally don't mingle with locals. In the Indian companies there is a greater challenge to expose employees to occidental ways of communicating and working, which becomes increasingly critical in international customer-facing roles.
LeadershipLeadership and bench strength development are two essential areas for these fast growing organizations to sustain their success and competitiveness. Interviewees found that at least concerning senior leadership this should be the prerogative for the Board of Directors. As stated above, developing soft skills, cultural awareness, basic sound management practices and leadership skills is paramount to enable these growing companies to build an organization with sustainable performance. But senior management teams seem to have other challenges. The appearance of “collective culture”, such as appearing very connected socially by spending time together, having senior team lunch or coffee does not equate to demonstrating teamwork and seeking alignment on common goals. A newer CEO model of “peer among peers” is emerging in some highly respected Indian companies, departing from the more traditional, hierarchical, hub and spoke concept of the role, so there are signs of progressive practices that will over time pervade the organizational levels. With the Western economy meltdown, perhaps India will find alternative economic development models that we don't and can't imagine today.
Human ResourcesTop Indian universities give future HR professionals a solid training in what they call HRD (HR Development), but due to the pace of growth, the volume of graduates can not meet the demand, resulting in a tense HR job market, especially for seasoned HR managers and directors with international experience. The HR function is pretty much similar to what I’ve observed in the US, the bulk mainly reactively serving immediate business needs, and in the multinationals and larger Indian corporations attempting to move towards a more proactive, higher added-value business advisor role. While many opportunities are advertized, senior HR roles are less visible and require personal relationships and connections within specific business networks.
Learning and Development / ConsultingThe best Indian companies have a track record of focusing on T&D and management development, but in the context of fast growing, young companies and fresh engineer graduates, leaders have yet to acknowledge their needs for employee and management development and allocate the appropriate resources to address an issue that is even stronger now that the slower growth is revealing internal problems.

My purpose in Bangalore was to discover the marketplace, check my assumptions, see if there was a fit for my international profile and inquire about potential consulting possibilities. My insights proved to be right-on, and my offer of global experience and leadership development best practices was validated by most of the people I met. But the timing was off, given cost restrictions and predictable downsizing activities to come, due to the global recession. I was told that just a year earlier I would have easily created an activity there.

I was very motivated to take more time, jump in and give myself time to start a consulting activity, but our visas were expiring and we were shortly returning to Europe. As I write, I’m still working on building my consulting activity in the near future and will certainly go back to Bangalore to reconnect with this network of stimulating business men and women, and explore opportunities,... perhaps once business starts picking up there. After all, 13 months experience in India and a local network are strengths to build on.

Bangalore is a place to keep an eye on, with such wealth of competency and entrepreneurial energy. And if the downturn is now affecting the business there,count on the Indian resilience to see the place bouncing back perhaps faster than elsewhere.

To close, I would like to very warmly thank all the people who took time to make my Bangalore exploration possible, and who referred me to further contacts. Your open, welcoming attitude told me a lot about the culture of this pulsing city. I will be back.

My next blog, “A Taste of Purity”, will cover our trek around the Annapurna in Nepal just before we flew back to France. Then there will be a couple more coming; one on organizational alignment and yoga, the other on my intercultural experience in India.

From Rajasthan to Kathmandu

After two and a half weeks of high tech business networking in Bangalore, we left on a 44 hour train ride for Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, where we spent a week visiting textile stores, clothes shops and historical sites.

We made some block print cloth purchases and added a new facet to our trip: sourcing, negotiating, making and shipping wholesale clothes to my son Kevin, who started selling Indian objects on the markets in the South of France.

We visited the timeless monuments of the Mughal era. In Jaipur, the Maharajah’s City Palace; Hawa Mahal, the Palace of the Winds built for the Maharajah’s wives; Jantar Mantar, the Royal observatory that has told time for over 200 years with a precision of two seconds. A few miles away we extensively explored Amber Palace, where the Maharajah was established before moving the capital to Jaipur.

Jaipur City Palace

 

Jantar Mantar, the 18th century royal observatory
http://picasaweb.google.com/Frenchyrjm/RajasthanJaipurAmber#

We were in awe at the beauty of the Mughal architecture of turrets and ramparts, archways and galleries, terraces and interior gardens, waterways and fountains, geometrical vaults and inlay marble work, built-in cooling systems, and ceilings of convex mirror mosaics reflecting evening candle light like stars in the sky.

Jaipur, Hawa Mahal, the Palace of Winds
 

Amber Fort and Palace

The following week we spent moving from place to place, experiencing shifting realities while discovering some of India‘s most beautiful sights. From Pushkar, a small holy town on the edge of the Rajasthan desert, we headed by early morning bus back to Jaipur, bustling, noisy, hot, dry and dusty; a day later another bus took us to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal, the next day a train brought us to hectic Chowk Bowli, the main bazaar in New Delhi, for our last night in India. Finally, a plane flew us to Kathmandu in Nepal.

Sunset in Pushkar

Taj Mahal

In Agra, the all white marble Taj Mahal reflecting the early morning sun, shifting from pink to orange to yellow, awakened our hearts by its perfect proportions and the finesse of its semi precious stone inlays, expressing ultimate beauty, permanence and eternity. The Agra fort and Palace revealed to us how the Mughal emperors brought refinement to its culmination, before their decline.
 

Agra fort - Haziz, our vivacious 70 year old guide

http://picasaweb.google.com/Frenchyrjm/TajMahalAndAgraFort#

 

We could appreciate a taste of the palace lifestyle they created, cultivating and integrating arts in every form into their daily life. We felt its inspiration, traveling across centuries, and calling us to bring some of this intentional creation, this quest of refinement and beauty into our own lives.







Agra fort, details of semi precious stone inlay in white marble

Thirteen months after debarking in Calcutta we landed in Nepal, leaving India and its overwhelming turbulence behind us. We gave up the restless masses of people in every town or city, the chaotic traffic where crossing any street spurs a heightened sense of danger and self preservation and where any open road space around you is immediately filled with a vehicle, most often blowing its horn.

We turned away from the staring looks, from the haggling rickshaw drivers and the “everyone pushes to cut in front of everyone” approach, encountered on the road and every time we had to wait at a restaurant, post office, shop or ticket counter, or enter or exit a bus.

Jaipur traffic - Agra: 3 tourist vendors to each tourist

We abandoned the trash, strewn in the streets and the sidewalks, heaped in the ditches and vacant lots and its indescribable odors. We walked out on the broken plumbing, flawed electric outlets, the short circuits and power surges that burnt-out three of my power supplies and melted four of my power cables.

We also left temperatures well into the 100’s that combined perfectly with the Rajasthan desert dust to completely dry us out. This year in India has been a challenge to our sensory tolerance level, to our mental adaptability, a strain on our physical health and hygiene standards, and has shaped our resilience day, after day, after day.

We have come closer to accepting what is and letting go of our expectations of what things could or should be. We’ve learned about ourselves as much as about the world around us; we’ve focused on cultivating patience, “radical acceptance” and open-mindedness, while dropping our wish lists and secondary needs.

Sweet family rickshaw greeting – Women in beautiful saris recycling cow dung

Departing from India we’re also renouncing the beautiful smiles and the laughter, the “Hello, what’s your good name?” or the post office manager who stops his work to take me on his scooter to an ATM, the elegance of Indian women -even when hauling cow dung -, the impeccable uniforms of school children and the courage and relentless, selfless labor of the lower social groups.

Last morning in India: School rickshaw ride – Comic and efficient Indian freight…

Thirteen months have for ever bound us emotionally and in spirit to Mother India with her infinite diversity of colors, prints, shapes, tastes and faces; her lively, colorful, welcoming and engaging people, her timeless wisdom, her heart beating with devotion at every street corner, her enchanting music and rhythms, temples and rituals...

 

Evening sari shopping in Jaipur – Rajasthani bangles shop

We now have a third mother-land in our lives to which we will return and who will continue to nourish our minds, inspire our dreams and challenge our assumptions.

After a seamless check-in at Indira Gandhi International airport, a quick flight and a swift Nepalese immigration process, we took an epic “taxi” ride to the neighborhood of our guest house, finally parking alongside a torn down main road that covered it with dust in a matter of minutes. Just off of the dirt street stood a gate and an alley, leading to Kathmandu’s “Boudha” neighborhood.
 

The ripped up dirt road and the gate to the Boudha area, barely noticeable

The shift of realities we had been experiencing during our week of moving from one place to another culminated when we hauled our luggage across the 4 lane dirt road and entered the Buddhist area of the stupa, through the decorated white gate.

All noise ceased; the air felt clean. Tibetan music was playing from the shops around, bells were ringing in temples, and the biggest stupa in the world revealed itself to our eyes with its procession of monks clad in red or orange, traditionally dressed Tibetan refugees and young people wearing jeans.

Passing the gateway to Boudha – The 1500 year old stupa, biggest in the world

Hundreds of people were circumambulating, reciting mantras, counting beads on their mala rosaries, turning the multitude of prayer wheels in the walls as they paced around the immense shrine, earning merit on the Buddhist way to wisdom and realization.
Just like the millions of others before them, right here, every day, for the past 1500 years…

Circumambulation around the stupa – Setting sun behind the thousands of prayer flags

We felt like we were passing through a portal of parallel realities that instantly affected our senses, emotions and state of mind. The air had become soft and protective; everything our eyes met inspired inner contemplation, quest of harmony, divinity and peacefulness. We had arrived at a very special place on our journey, where time was at a standstill.

Our intense weeks’ travel, lugging baggage on and off the bumpy rickshaws, bustling taxis, buses taking dirt trail detours, hectic train stations, narrow trains, up and down the stairs of one-night guesthouses, in one instant, was all behind us.

Arriving at Boudha, we at once felt at home in this yet unknown place. We were secure, relating to and uniting with the world around us at a subtle, compelling level. We circumambulated the stupa, turning each of the hundreds of prayer wheels; the first drops of rain we had felt in more than six months started to fall.

This was an auspicious welcoming to Nepal, where our Asia journey is coming to an end… for now.

Yoga in Goa

We reached the beaches of Arambol in northern Goa on January 31st, just 24 hours after leaving Chennai, four days after returning from Sri Lanka and one year after leaving California.


Kamala enjoying the open door train ride ~~~ Indian passengers in Chennai station

Ever since friends in France had been visiting India in the 70’s, I had thought that Goa was a town. Little did I know it was a state with some 24 beach towns strung along 80 miles of Arabian Sea coast line, each village with its own personality and type of tourist, ranging from young backpackers to charter bus groups, from old hippies to five star resort guests.

A brief glimpse of Goan history
In the Vedic times, Goa was referred to in Sanskrit as Gomantak, “a land similar to paradise, with fertile land and good waters”. Its geographic situation bordered by the ocean to the west and separated from the southern plains by a low mountain range to the east made it a destination of choice for colonists.
In 1510, the Portuguese fleet landed in Goa to establish a port and control the spice trade, so far dominated by the Arabs. Goa became the jewel of its eastern empire, referred to as "Golden Goa". Despite a turbulent history of repressed revolts, failed plots and the rise and decline of its commerce, it remained under Portuguese rule for 450 years - compared to the 250 years of English rule in India-. In 1961 Nehru resorted to military force to take Goa back from the Portuguese; he found no resistance.


We loved the old Portuguese houses everywhere around Goa



From 1560 on, the inquisition in Goa pretty much eradicated any Hindu religious practice; its goal was to convert all and prohibit any penetration of Hindu practices into the Catholic rituals. The Inquisition Tribunal had powers to confiscate property of the accused and to condemn them to death by burning on the stake. This lasted until the late 18th century. For more history, check out http://goacentral.com/index.htm.

Goans have thus been converted to the Roman Catholic Church centuries ago by the power of coercion. So nowadays, in a country that has an 82.5% Hindu majority and a strong 11.6% Muslim minority, Goa sticks out as a state of Christian majority, while only 2.3 % of all Indians are Christians. This may well have a lot to do with Goa’s popularity as a western tourist destination over the past 40 years.

I was reflecting on what a collective religious identity actually means, when a fraction of a country’s population is converted to a religion whose origins reflect a totally different culture and region of the globe...

Our first weeks in Goa
Back in July ’08 when we left the Himalaya Iyengar Yoga Centre (www.hiyc.com) in Dharamsala, we were hoping to stay in India long enough to participate in our teacher’s Spring Intensive class in Goa, 7 months later. At the time we still had our November return tickets to California and no idea how travel events would unfold… After my fall in November, I doubted I would be in good enough shape to do so. But by early January, 6 weeks after the accident, we were committed to attend and I was envisioning the intensive as physical therapy that would allow me to attain complete, in depth recovery.

We arrived in the late afternoon and found our teacher Sharat directing a class. It was moving to see him and his partner Lila for the first time in 7 months. We were all excited to be together again, as we had spent 4 months living around each other at the Dharamsala yoga center.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Entrance to the yoga center~~~ Sharat had grown a beard and was looking great!

That evening, our first impression of Arambol was soft and relaxed. The weather was mild with a warm breeze blowing in from the sea and the beach was full of European families with babies and young children playing in the sand, young Indians playing cricket, volleyball or soccer, dreadlock tourists, fire twirlers, and several dozen beach restaurants made of bamboo and coconut leaves. We had the first lettuce and avocado salad in our one year in India, and even ordered a glass of wine to celebrate the crisp, fresh, delicious veggies!

Sunset beach cricket ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Locals playing on the beach

During the 3 weeks leading up to the Intensive, we attended class from 7am to 11am, then headed down to the beach for a swim in the ocean before having breakfast at Carpe Diem, our favorite beach café held by Arun and his family. The mix of sustained yoga practice and warm ocean bathing was starting to strengthen and energize my body.

Carpe Diem cafe ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Arun, Ayush and Arpita the owners

I had been physically struggling after the accident, especially recovering while traveling to Sri Lanka; at times, walking for more than an hour was an ordeal. At that time I was clumsy in my movements, and though I had since felt my energy slowly coming back, my body was lacking confidence, and for example would be tentative when walking up stairs in the dark. Though everything looked fine externally, my body needed to get a grasp of its balance, its strength and its ability; the active memory of the recent trauma needed to heal, fade and go away.

Time passed quickly in this relaxed setting and we found ourselves staying in Arambol without the yearning to discover the surrounding area. We took a memorable scooter excursion to Panjim, the capital of Goa, to admire the European architecture in the old Portuguese neighborhood of Fontainhas.

As the weeks went by we felt the increasing benefits of the regular daily practice and the swimming, and we were back into “yogic shape”, ready to start the intensive wholeheartedly.

The Intensive
Twenty students of all ages and venues of life were enrolled, coming from 15 countries: Poland, UK, Canada, Malaysia, Japan, Peru, Russia, US, Italy, Holland, Mexico, Sweden, Austria, Germany, and France About 70% were female and 30% male.

Our group of students~~~~~~~~~~Sharat during a noon lecture under the canopy

Schedule
5:00 wake up
5:45 inversion self-practice in the yoga hall
6:45 morning chants
7:15 posture/asana class
10:45 end of class, clean yoga hall (Kamala and I had this task)
11:00 lunch served at the center
12:00 daily lectures on Ayurveda and on Yoga
2:00 rest
3:30 relaxation postures self-practice (with guidance/correction)
4:30 breathing/pranayama/relaxation
6:00 break – sunset on the beach
7:00 dinner served at the center

By now we were missing our cherished time in the ocean! The schedule was packed and allowed virtually no time for other activities, by design. We had one day off per week that we spent doing some self-practice, going into the neighboring town for the ATM and errands, or just for hanging out on the beach. The next day of intensive arrived very quickly.

Kamala at Mapusa market~~~~~~~~~Nanda, the very friendly coconut vendor

Sharat’s teaching
Sharat is a senior student of BKS Iyengar and has taught for the past 25 years. Beyond this, the particularity about his teaching is how he shares his practice on the spot, himself doing the postures and taking the class through minute descriptions of what is happening throughout the body. With the detailed instructions of how to achieve the proper alignment and what we should be feeling in our bodies, he leads everyone from a live experience rather than from a scripted class sequence. In fact, Sharat re-creates his class every day, exploring his own body, which allows him to engage his passion and be totally present in his teaching. A perfect example of a teacher role-modeling an essential attitude for the practice of yoga: presence.

Being a Vipassana meditator as well, he brings a focus on the inner experience of subtle levels, on the being, while encouraging us to stay alert to keep the mind from taking over in its habit of controller-achiever, in doing. He constantly repeats “Let go of your mind. Be in your body, not in your mind!” and gives tips on how to tell when we are in our mind, thinking a posture rather than doing it, such as when we can notice a slight hardening of the eyeballs in their sockets or a tightening of the breath, the neck or the throat.

Applying his instruction I gain an unprecedented level of awareness, concentrating and listening into my body, increasing my ability to sense what is happening and reducing the craving my mind has to push the body into the posture through command and assess its “performance”. It’s a tricky game to tame the mind and distinguish when it is driving versus when the body is allowed to get into a posture and experience it on its own. Practicing “being” through my body versus “doing” through my mind has brought a centered, balanced feeling and a more relaxed state to both. The mind can now become the observer of what is happening within my body.

Stretchhhhh the groin!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Flexxxxxx the back and hips!

Over time I’ve discovered how different parts of my body are intimately inter-connected. For example, when I bring all the elements of my lower body together in a posture: the soles of my feet, mounds of my toes, equal extension of my toes, lateral stretching of my feet, grounding of my heels and activation of the center of my thighs,… it creates an extension and ascending thrust of my upper body, naturally elongating my spine and opening my rib cage, without any direct, local effort.

When standing, if I rotate my thighs slightly inwards and consciously ground my heels on the floor, a lateral movement of my hips is initiated that in turn creates space in my sacrum and my lower back…

Sharat is guiding us through each muscle, tendon and bone, while emphasizing how in doing so we can pull our energy towards the center, into the core of our body, and experience this powerful centering and self alignment, that then paradoxically creates an expansion from the core outwards and upwards.

Balancing Trikonasana ~~~~~~~~~ Flexing the back while activating the thighs

In Yoga, the practice of body postures is meant to eliminate physical and mental tensions and create the physical condition that allows us to still our body and calm our breath. This in turn allows us to silence our inner dialogue and quiet our mind through meditative practice, and gain access to higher states of consciousness. A good physical shape is the prerequisite to being still and to work on the next step. As an illustration of this step by step process, how can we find peace of mind when our body is in illness and/or in pain? How can we calm the mind if our breath is tight, shallow or erratic?

Our lunch was a moment of repose and joy. A fresh vegetarian salad buffet complete with sprouts, yogurt, bread and soup was the reward for a morning of fasting and long practice. We hadn’t eaten this much raw food since we had left Thailand after our fasting experience and our bodies had been craving for it for months. Of course we had prepared our own grated carrots and beets now and then, but it’s practically impossible to find lettuce in many parts of India.

The mosquito proof yoga hall ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Afternoon lecture under the canopy

The afternoon lectures were held under the canopy attached to the coconut trees in the yoga center, and covered principles of the ancient Indian science of life and health, Ayurveda, presented by Joilly, a local Ayurvedic doctor, or theoretical aspects of yoga such as yoga philosophy, breathing techniques, or how to consider the application of Ayurveda principles to a Yoga practice. After our experience at KYM, the yoga school in Chennai, and Arya Vaidya Sala, the Ayurvedic hospital in Kerala, this was an opportunity for us to integrate further our understanding of both disciplines.

After an hour of rest back at our guesthouse, we would resume the asana practice for an hour of relaxing poses, practicing new postures, or in my case consistently working on two or three postures that specifically addressed parts of my body that I needed to heal, by releasing the residual tensions from my accident. This session was meant to prepare for the later afternoon breathing-relaxation, by choosing postures that would open up the thoracic cage while being effortless from a strength or flexibility perspective.

Observing Richard's permanent back knots~~~ Kamala going further and further

I observed how difficult it was to maintain even a simple, non-demanding posture for a sustained amount of time, when it triggers tensions or pains in your body. To stay with the pain, submit to it, to not react and allow the tension to be, finally brings an unexpected, relaxed state to that part of the body. It acts in the same way as in Vipassana meditation, when one is sitting totally immobile, allowing pain to arise, observing it without reacting by shifting positions, which brings the pain to vanish altogether after some time. Relaxing in a posture, as challenging it may be, is one of the goals of the practice. It requires dropping tensions, letting go of our sense of pain, -our attachment to it- and softening our body at the same time it’s being stretched, twisted, or flexed.

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Kamala in hand stand~~~~~~ Very effective neck/shoulder release inversion

By the same token I admit that I would naturally gravitate towards wanting to achieve more by making my posture –even a relaxing one- challenging, by pushing my flexibility for example, to attain the healing goal I had set to myself throughout the intensive. Were we speaking earlier about not being in the mind and only being in the body?...

We practiced the pranayama/breathing and relaxation at the end of the day in lying position, with the objective of totally relaxing the body to allow the flow of breath to be completely free, unrestrained, to enhance the subtle life-energy (prana) circulation in the body. This was accomplished by a guided relaxation and simple breathing exercises.
It took us to the end of our day’s work.

Sharat -shaved - leading the meditation~~~~ End of pranayama session

During the late afternoon break we would head down to the beach to see the sunset. I would usually take this time for my daily swim and play with the crashing waves. Over the weeks we spent in Goa the weather got warmer and warmer, as did the water, and the days became windier, especially in the evening. The ocean could be furious with 6-10 foot waves and I had befriended it by sheer playfulness, deciding to learn to bodysurf. It gave me a fine sense of my body’s power and its liveliness, feeling so vigorous and daring. It reminded me of my sense of self when I was a young teenager. I knew that I was completing my healing with a renewed vitality…

After a shower we would head back to the camp and have a typical north Indian dinner with our fellow students, composed of dishes of rice, mixed vegetable sabji and lentil dahl, and a sweet porridge that would usually be in short supply... We then retired and would be in bed around 10:30.

Three weeks of this regime followed our three weeks of preparation, and I felt my body transformed, back to the shape it was in when we had left Dharamsala late July ’08. I felt in great physical and mental shape as I have each time we’ve practiced with Sharat. We feel a deep and pervasive well being, a centered, lively and balanced energy, and a heightened sense of our inner being.

In Panjim, a week after we arrived~~~~ 6 weeks later, the last evening in Arambol

At the same time we were doing the intensive I was daily emailing and calling colleagues and friends to set up what would be our next step: a couple of weeks of high tech business networking in Bangalore. As I write, we are on the train leaving Bangalore to Rajasthan, so stay tuned in for a very different next blog: “Bangalore Blast”.