Chaos and inner peace?

At 5 AM on Friday morning the phone beside the hotel bed rang and a cheery voice said, "good morning, ma'am! It is your morning wake-up call time!" As we scurried about, showering and packing, we received 2 more wake-up calls, but by then we were already wide awake and full of anticipation: today we would take the train to Rishikesh.

The train station was like a human tornado. We had been warned beforehand that we needed to be assertive or we would never get on our train, but it was still a shock to most of us to be caught up in the river of pushing hands and voices and smells of a massive number of people all urgently going somewhere - invariably in the opposite direction as us. We were flushed through metal detectors, our bags X-rayed then untangled from each other and reloaded on backs and in arms. We were shoved this way and that, while also doing our share of shoving, calling out to the members of our group who fell behind and hurrying as fast as we were able to make it to our train on time.

It was both physically- and emotionally-challenging because - while we hauled roller suitcases up and down stairs and suffocated in the reek of sweat and dirty concrete- we passed whole families of beggars, their "homes" the soiled blankets spread on the floor, their only possessions the layer-upon-layer of clothes they wore, their cardboard and newspaper communities a bleak contrast  from our clean and relatively-safe neighborhoods back home. We came to India with the expectation that we would see poverty and filth, yet our first day in Delhi had been "no worse than New York City," as Nancy said. The train station was a different world completely.

For good or for bad, we didn't have much time to consider the problem of poverty and inequality. We didn't have time for much of anything as we raced to catch our train, buffeted by bodies all the while. Like in Harry Potter, there was nothing to identify our platform as the correct one (in our case "32c"), yet it was commonly known to everyone around that that's where we were. By the time we squeezed through the packed doorway onto the train, most of us were as pumped with adrenaline as football players on game day.

In Hinduism, mountains are considered to be the dwelling places of gods, a concept that many of us can relate to, emotionally-rooted as we are in the Rocky Mountains. Our destination, in the foothills of the Himalayas, is even more sacred because of its the source of the streams which form the Ganga and Yamuni rivers. Hardiwar, the place where our train ride ends, is one of the seven most sacred cities of India, and the town of Rishikesh, a bumpy 45-minute ride away, is a place of worship, contemplation and the starting point for pilgrimages.

This is where we will stay in an ashram, spending our time deepening the relationship with yoga that we've found through Inner Connections with classes, chanting and exercises in pranayama (moving energy with breath). An ashram is a place of silence and relative seclusion, and the tradition started thousands of years ago as a place for monks to study the "supreme science," the study of the Self. The ashram we are going to is based on the teachings of Swami Rama and the Himalayan tradition of yoga. It's a place where they are combining ancient teachings with modern scientific study. We will be woken at 4 AM every day, which sounds rough, but - considering that we only have 3 short days to study thousands of years of spirituality and science and history - will probably be helpful!

To see pictures from our trip, please visit the Inner Connections Yoga Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Castle-Rock-CO/Inner-Connections-Yoga/294275506729

About Inner Connections Yoga
Inner Connections Yoga, in Castle Rock, Colorado since 2002, is a place where the ancient traditions of Hatha yoga are brought into the experience of our modern lives. John and Jeanne Adams, the studio owners, help their clients to unite the interconnecting aspects of body, breath and spirit, and also connect yoga enthusiasts in a supportive, friendly community. Every year, Inner Connections leads a group yoga trip to an international location. Past trips have included Brazil, Fiji, Honduras and Costa Rica. For more information, please visit www.InnerConnectionsYoga.com.