Bits of life

A-5 Words-950

time, at least, an hour’s journey ahead.
“Say, Ashley honey, do tell me of the rest of your therapy guru, Mr. Sharma and how and what you happened to learn from him.”
“Oh, yes, Jim, I was thinking very much on the same lines. So, as I was telling you, Mr. Sharma and I happened to visit Deepa’s home at the same time. He was an extremely engaging and open-minded person. I remember on one of those days, Deepa’s dad brought a friend of his to get advice and treatment for spondilitis from Mr. Sharma. He was about fifty four and looked as if he was suffering from pain and something else I could not put my finger on.”

“While treating that gentleman, Mr. Sharma used to tell me, ““dear Ashley, to be a physiotherapist you need to be patient, intelligent, intuitive, and sympathetic and should know to use the right tone while talking to the patient. He or she, a physiotherapist also needs to be healthy and hale physically, mentally and spiritually. Positive attitude is the very bane of our lives without which we cannot achieve success in the treatment we mete out to our patients. This was a practically tested fact. Before I became a full-fledged physiotherapist, I went to college for a while. I was hardly serious about class room lessons or preparation for exams. My focus was always on the practical field. I used score high percentage of marks in lab examinations. I just scraped through with theory. I was a good sportsman, captain of the volleyball team at school. We went to national level competition too. After the intermediate board exams, I bid good bye to studies and concentrated on Karate and Yoga. I went to the Karate master in the morning and played foot ball in the afternoon. My evenings were devoted to the learning of the techniques of Yoga, Pranayama and meditation. Till today I am grateful for my parents who agreed to my wishes and paid for the different training centers. I was free and independent. After my training at a local Karate Institute, we went to participate in competitions held at Kathmandu, Nepal. I was able to get a black belt and thus I was qualified to start an institute by myself. I was a trainer for sometime in my own town. I was surprised to see more women hopefuls for the black belt than men. This is because in India a woman needs to be strong, agile and skillful. They need to defend themselves from drunkards and rapists who frequent the lonely streets after eight in the night. Gang rape cases came out in recent years. The present government insists on women to learn martial arts to lead fear free lives. A majority joined karate, kungfu and several martial arts known to our rishis and yogis of ancient India. Throughout India several training centers were founded by the government as well as private organizations.

As far as meditation was concerned, I loved the different postures of yoga meant to cleanse and strengthen different parts of the body. In addition, the gurus taught the techniques of breath control which help the body’s immune system to be strong, stops aging b retaining energy reserves. The health benefits of Yoga are limitless. They advised us on proper diet as well. While we were learning Yoga, we were sent to a school of yoga located near Benares, in North India. Monks were in charge of that school ran it efficiently.

We were woken up by four in the morning and we used to go for exercises after the morning ablutions. We were given bland but healthful breakfast of fruit, chapattis made out of small grains such as maize and quinoa. Their tea was made out of the holy Basil leaves. It was green in color and the flavor was captivating. It helped in getting rid of constipation and gastric breathing problems. Lunch too was made of fresh vegetables and a lot of fruit was served. There was no dearth of leafy greens like spinach, cabbage, green peas or mustard greens. Sometimes, they served us with lintels mixed with some green leafy vegetable and tomatoes. To our hungry stomachs the food was like nectar. The vegetable and fruit produce was by the inmates as well as visitors like us. Apples, pears, guava fruits, grapes of all varieties, papaya and melons, bananas and custard apples, pine apples and berries grew in plenty in the school’s orchards. We were served a big bowl of mixed fruit after every meal.

Between breakfast and lunch, our time was filled with various chores in and around the ashram. We used to work with the inmates of the school in the gardens in various ways. We used to dig around the big trees, plants and creepers so the water could be sapped by the vegetation. We cleared the clover and other creepers of no value. Weed picking was another major task. I could see that keeping the garden clean without any weeds was not an easy job. What was special about the whole thing was, we used to enjoy the job and never had a reason to grumble about it. We were never forced to do anything that you don’t want to attend to. Suppose you want to work in the library or in the book binding workshop, or learn the art to book keeping or carpentry, instead of working in the fields and orchards you are allowed to do that. Freedom to choose the job was unique to the school.

I met many foreign nationals at the Yoga school. I was overwhelmed by their enthusiasm for, and anticipation of learning