So finally after about 4 attempts and probably the same amount of hours I manage to get some pics on to show you. I have asked myself whether ro not it is really worth sitting in front of a computer for that long just to get a few little pics, but hey ya'll wanna see what I've been seein right?

Well it's been over a week now since I arrived here in India but it feels like longer. The course is really intense, but in a good way. We start at 7 AM and carry right through to 6ish, within the day we cover many aspects of the Yoga philosophy and it is all fascinating, there's not one aspect of the day that doesn't deserve total attention.

We have a Vedic chanting class before lunch with a truly amazing teacher called Jyotsna. She is the human embodiment of fun, so much so that she makes you feel as if you're back in primary school you know, when the teachers used to make learning like play. Whenever she enters the classroom people start smiling. It may have something to do with her subject matter, which seems, upon scrathing the vast surface, to be a most powerful tool in the art of healing. I've never known an activity to have such a profound but immediate effect on it's practitioners (once you get over the initial feeling of feeling like a muppet, which last's all of a minute). As soon as we start smiles and laughter abound.

I still wake in the mornings and wonder where I am for a few seconds but then I realise what I'm here for and why and I smile. Even in the first week of the course the learing curve has been exponential. Not so much at an intellectual level more on the experiential. I feels so good to be finally gaining insight into those matters and aspects of which I have been (it seems) so blindly fumbling in the dark with. To gain more clarity on the level of learning and through concentration or focus clarity on the level of percieving the world without those misapprehensions, or conditional/habitual thought processes which limit us in so many ways.

Essentially what we are being taught here is healing through yoga, not yoga as many people in the west percieve it. As an opportunity to stretch and look beautiful in a pose and maybe feel good also, but as a scientific healing aid to those who are need care. Through the many aspect's such as asana (posture's) breathing excersises, concentration, chanting etc people come to know themselves a little better, they come to realise how distracted they are when they are unable to sit still for a minute with their eyes shut and focus on only one thing. Try it it's not easy. Slowly through this practice people become more able to know themselves, and thus know the world outside of themselves with more clarity. It's like driving your car down the motorway and along the way all these things like insects and dust slowly accumulate on the windscreen, after a while your view of the road is altered but you'll carry on with out wiping the screen even though these things that are clouding your vision could potentially be dangerous to you and others.

So as you can guess I'm loving it here. In fact a group of us have left the noisy, metropolis for the weekend and are sunning oursleves and swimming on the beach a little further down the coast in a beautiful temple town called Mamallapuram (I delivered your letter Emmy). It is a cool place and so nice to swim in the Indian ocean. Yesterday I had and Ayurvedic full body massage for the sum total of 350Rs a bit less than 4 quid, I might even have another one today just coz I can. But it's back up to the big smoke this evening for another week of accelerated learning.

Just for your info, the photo taken with the woman in the red saree was taken yesterday, the picture of the water was the view from my hotel room, and the other was in Chennai, people sleep a lot here and anywhere, you'll even spot them lying literally in the middle of a busy road catchin a few zzzz's.

Till next time

Love

Duncs