Dip in the Ganges

So we finished off our day yesterday with the 5pm Meditaion, a chill out evening and something to eat. Akhilesh explained to us we were going to do 'Yoga Nidra' which is quite familiar to me, a rotation of consciousness around your body parts whilst staying alert but relaxed. Half dozen of us from around the globe laid back on our mats, and that's the last I heard as I sank into a deep 'sleep' totally unaware of any of my body parts and as far from alert as it's possible to be! Luckily I seemed to regain some sort of awareness as Akhilesh concluded the meditation, I am pretty sure I didn't snore, well only maybe a bit. As the class from around the globe marvelled at 'Yoga Nidra' and said how fabulous it was, I nodded silently. We followed this with a potter and then the buffet offering rather than the a-la-carte, this left me feeling less full and I had the best nights sleep so far of the whole trip.

We got up next day for the 7am Yoga session and headed for the top floor studio again. We practised a posture to retain a youthful face and pranayama breathing to rid us of 99% of health problems and disease.
We balanced, stretched and tried laughter yoga (Akhilesh was very good at sounding like he heard the most hilarious thing ever!). During the balancing I chose a drishti (concentration) point near the window ledge in front of me, this proved to be a mistake as I should have realised about the pigeons being fond of the roof. A pigeon flew down to the ledge and my drishti concentration was shattered, I wobbled and wobbled a bit more, then it disappeared and I seemed to regain my composure. Suddenly the pigeon reappeared, did a head bob and peered around the edge of the window staring at me. I wobbled again, almost fell over and couldn't contain my laughter, although I did attempt to keep it silent :)

After breakfast, we packed ready to depart for the Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama Ashram. Despite my sore throat and sneezing I decided that I couldn't be satisfied with the paddle in the Ganges we had at the Ganga Aarti, I needed a full on dunk. The waters had gone down a bit and it looked less life threatening than when we'd arrived in the bouncing down rain. A couple of days earlier we'd gone down to the hotel private ghat and it seriously looked treacherous, this seemed to be confirmed by the fact you had to be secured with a large chain to stop any chance of you being swept away, which to be honest looked fairly likely. We headed off out of the front gate and onto the promenade, down the steps to a little 'beach' right in front of the hotel. The water seemed very calm and didn't look at all life threatening. Eventually after negotiating the rocks I got right down into the water up to my shoulders, it really wasn't cold at all and splashed my head and face. Those who bathe in the pure water of the Ganga are protected from thousands of dangers forever and get rid of sins of generations, being purified immediately!
Obviously this took a little while and eventually I had to drag myself out of the water dripping wet and head off back to my room to have a shower and get organised to move to the SRSG Ashram on our next journey of discovery.