This is my first trip to Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, India. I am here with my wonderful yoga teacher Melodie Batchelor (Herne Bay Iyengar Yoga Centre) and my dear friend Vanessa and her husband Phil. We arrived into Mumbai late at night on the 29th November and set off for Pune mid morning the following day.
The drive to Pune was an adventure in itself, with the driver seemingly drifting off to sleep on the long open roads. Although I was in the front seat, I didn’t particularly notice the swerving and lane crossing as it seemed as though that was just the way of the roads in India. However, Phil was much more aware and concerned that we would make it to Pune in one piece and even offered to drive at one point!
We did make it however and arrived at our accomodation unscathed. Our accomodation was a large apartment on the fourth floor in a building directly across the road from the Institute. The location of our home for the next three and a half weeks proved to be such a blessing as we could just wander across the road for the 5:40am classes and get home from the evening classes without having to worry about rickshaws or park opening hours.
Arriving on the Friday meant that we had the whole weekend to wait before we could register and start attending classes at the Institute, which to our bodies after a 17 hour flight and 4 hour drive, felt like an eternity. I was however, able to and observe the sunday Children’s class, which as it turned out was the first class I attended at RIMYI. I was such a wonderful experience to see so many children (at a guess I would say there were about 50 children in the class) and such a vibrant, dynamic and fun community of teachers. I got the feeling that these kids had no idea how lucky they were to have these wonderful teachers and monumental institute available to them. Many of them still had the same attitudes my own children have in my children’s classes. The kids still dragged their feet claiming tiredness, many could not reach their toes because of tightness and some just lay on the floor instead of even trying to push up into Urdhva Dhanurasana.
This was actually comforting for me to see. I have to work hard to get my kids in my yoga class enthusiastic, and so do the teachers at RIMYI! But they are VERY good at it! I was able to record the class sequence and copied it below.
- Standing for prayers – the children are relaxed. It is not a strict environment. The children all have their place and there are no mats out.
- Warming up – jumping and vrksasana
- Surya Namaskar – between each cycle the children call out the different names of the Sun Gods that they can remember
- Jumping – feet apart, do it quietly and then do it loudly!
- Trikonasana – left side, right side quick movements
- Trikonasana to parivrtta trikonasana
- No one is really getting corrected in the poses, they are just moving swiftly through.
- Parsvakonasana x 3 each side, fast
- Jumping and jumping in a 360°
- Urdhva hastasana to urdhva dandasana to urdhva hastasana to malasana
- Dandasana then lift the buttocks off the floor and go into malasana x 6 times
- Cross legs
Raya takes over the class half way through and asks the kids to get out the soft mats.
- Urdhva mukha svanasana to ustrasana to dhanurasana to parsva dhanurasana
- Parsva dhanurasana left to right ‘rolling over the hips’
- Raya asks the kids to call out the names of two poses they know beginning with the letter ‘U’. As the kids call out the pose, the class does the pose.
- The class is split into age groups of two year groups, so 8-9 year olds, 10-11 and 12+ and they have a race – who can stay the longest in Urdhva Dhanurasana. Raya encourages them to stay in for 100 counts.
- Raya says to the kids there are three things they need to do. 1. Practice 2. Eat good food and 3. Get good rest.
- Handstands – helped up or on their own to the wall
- Sirsasana – along the wall. Raya says to us “they’re going to fall in life, they have to learn to fall softly.”
- Sun salutations – then halasana
- Urdhva dandasana to halasana
- Malasana – roll- up to urdhva hastasana
- Halasana to paschimottanasana -‘ do it gracefully’
- Abhijata carries on with the main group and Raya shows three of the older boys how to do Bhekasana
- Halasana to janu sirsasana
- Malasana to Halasana
- Choose a pose ‘not savasana, dandasana or swastikasana’ for the final prayer.