Not a dry eye in the house*

Another full day of yoga – 6.30-8.30, 11-12.30, 17.00-19.30. We also squeezed in a trip on the backwaters in a lovely boat, and the all-important ice-cream stop which resulted in the purchase of a tub of pistachio ice-cream which I shared with just one other person…so delicious!

But I digress. Am inspired to write about the last session of yoga which was for about 15 minutes just before dinner. It was a practice of eye yoga, or Trataka. It helps to cleanse your eyes and improves your eyesight. So I was already signing my name on the dotted line having worn glasses since I was 5. Jaish (sp) explained how the practice would work before we started and described how we would be staring at a candle towards the end of the practice without blinking, and our eyes might fill with water but we should not blink and we should let the tears roll down. I was intrigued.

The first stage was to look up and look down about six times then run your palms together until they were hot and cup them over your eyes without touching the eyes. This was repeated with a look to the left and right about six times, palm rubbing then cupping. Then we had to look diagonally top right bottom left six times, rub our palms and then cup with intermittent pressure and breathing. The same for the opposite diagonal. Then for the last eye exercise, we had to do a complete circle of looking, rub our palms together, cup our eyes and apply constant pressure while breathing deeply. Are you keeping up?

Then we gently had to look down and slowly lift our gaze to the candle and stare at the flame for about 40 seconds without blinking. Will power was needed. My will power was in deep savanasa from the previous session. And as soon as someone says “Don’t blink” it just makes you want to blink even more. I tried so hard but failed within about 6 seconds. And then I was blinking like mad until I regained control and was able to focus on the flame for the last few seconds, as a single tear dropped down my cheek. More palm rubbing and breathing, and we had to slowly lift our gaze to the black spot at the centre of the flame. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really see the centre of the flame, but there was dark patch that I could focus on. Again I tried to stop blinking and lasted a little longer, but once the water started to well up my instinct was to blink loads. More palm rubbing and cupping over our eyes. The final look was to see the whole of the flame including the sparkly bits around it – I was impressed I could see the sparkly bits but was blinking so hard that I wasn’t sure I could see much else. At the final palm rubbing and cupping, we had to apply pressure, inhale deeply and then making a humming sound as we breathed out. It was at this point I lost my composure. My focus was then intensely on not laughing. But as I said, when you know you shouldn’t do something, the urge to do it is even greater. I concealed it (I think) with a slight cough. (It brought to mind a famous evening which mum had asked us to attend at her church to celebrate Trafalgar night. Us being me, Nick, Jo and our kids. It has gone down in the history books as one of the funniest evenings – we all got hysterical and were shaking with laughter but trying not to show it. We weren’t invited back the following year.)

*As we walked out at the end of the class, I was interested to know if anyone else had welled up with tears. My small sample suggested it was 50/50 – so the title of this blog is misleading, hence the asterisk. Another woman on the course also said she had thought that if anyone had walked in on us, sitting in a circle, in the dark, around a table with a candle on it, hands cupped over our eyes and humming, they might have thought it was slightly weird. But it was really enjoyable and I am glad I tried it. Oddly, only my right eye watered….what does it mean?

So another lovely day in Kerala. I can’t believe I only have one week left before I go back to work. It has gone so fast. I have been so lucky. I have started dreaming about colleagues in odd circumstances, so maybe my brain is already gearing up for the grand return. But I still have four days in India so here are some pictures of the fishing nets I took while on the boat. (I just realised they all look the same, but can you spot six differences?)