Establishing My Daily Regimen...

Practicing my Natta Adavu - in Aramandi (half sitting) position

I finished my third day of Bharatanatyam class and can now establish my daily regimen to assist with my muscular conditioning and learning retention.

Needless to say my quads are burning from use. I expected this amount of muscular pain and I know once this pain subsides my legs will be stronger and allow me to sit in deeper positions for longer. These first two weeks will be very hard and physical for me. No pain, no gain, right?

My whole purpose for this endeavor was to establish a practice and find personal discipline in a physical, mental, and spiritual way.  So far, this trip is turning out to create wonderful new life habits. I have been vegetarian while here in India, and while I still indulge in a soda every now and then, I am slowly curbing that habit. That is HUGE for me. I don't deny myself sweets, but luckily in India I don't really find the sweets to be a temptation. They lack the crack as I like to say. Most sweets here are not like the high-fructose corn syrupy heaven we know. If I am being honest I would slap someone for some Skittles right now. Soldiering on...

To give my readers a very basic overview of the learning process and what my daily life will look like for the next thirty days of Bharatanatyam training, I will explain in detail my daily regimen. Some of the language I will use to explain these concepts is a bit dense but the dance/yoga components themselves are quite complex. I will try and explain them in the best way I know how. Apologies if this is all a bit much to read. The action of writing it all down helps me learn and retain some of this new language. I hope it can also make for good reading.

Daily, I wake up at about 7:30am. I get up and do my daily yoga. My yoga regimen is to prepare me for my upcoming yoga teacher training in December. This daily regimen has been sent to me from the Yogis of the program. Its purpose is to condition my body for a more intensive practice, and help me familiarize myself with their yoga format. It's important to note there are many yoga formats, this practice will help rework some of the asana trainings (yoga positions) that differ in the Western yoga vocabulary and help me adjust to this more pure form of asana practice.

For now the daily yoga consists of the Ashtanga Surya Namaskara A & B as well as some select sitting positions of the primary series. Added are some pranayamas (breathing)  and meditative exercises. I do this simple practice for between 30-45 mins after I wake. I have been doing this specific practice daily for a month prior to arriving in India and it is improving daily. Yoga is a daily practice not a stretch or a warm up. It is not about flexibility or athletic acumen. It is about practice daily- discipline. More on that in other posts.

To this daily practice I have now added my thigh conditioning. This is a series of squat exercises I do to strengthen my inner and outer thighs. Bharatanatyam dance is done in a half sitting pose known as aramandi, it is a quite unnatural position to western dancing and requires a large amount of leg conditioning and strength. Once I complete those exercises I review briefly the training from the previous day and work on my assigned shlokas and hastas.  A shloka is a chant or prayer that is sung. There are many shlokas that Bharatanatyam dancers must know. Of all these the Dhyana Shloka is the most important.

Angikam Bhuvanam Yasya 
Vachikam Sarva Vangmayam 
Aaharyam Chandra Taradi
Tvaum Numa Saattvikam Shivam

Lord Shiva Nataraja

In my lessons I am learning all the adavus, which is a series of combination steps. There are many adavus and within those there are up to 8 variations in the steps (note: all steps include differing arm arrangements) and each must be learned at 3 speeds...slow, medium, and fast.  These drills and combo steps are the basic language of Bharatanatyam dance. So daily I review my days previous adavus, get corrections, learn new adavus to take home and practice. In addition to my combination step training, I learn four hasta mudras daily and their uses (viniyogas).  I recite shlokas and learn theory.  I will also learn the all chollus (spoken counts) to the adavus and learn to use the nattuvangam (both block and chime). In time, I will also in time learn an item, or what we would call a dance piece.

Wooden Nattuvangam 

My lessons run about two hours daily. I dance in a single room, no mirrors. The only items in this space are a small alter with the Lord Shiva Nataraja, rugs for sitting, a wooden nattuvangam (small stick and wood block for marking the beats), a single chair, and a white board. There are mounted fans and an AC unit. We use the fans but my teacher prefers for us to learn without the use of air conditioning. She says sweat is purifying and that it is good for exercise. I am OK with this for in December I will be practicing yoga in extreme South India - it will be hot/humid and we will be practicing in an outdoor shala. Getting acquainted with pools of sweat now is an advantage for me.

More on how this practice develops over the next 30 days. Now it is really in its infancy. I feel good, outside the leg aches. The meditation and focus is liberating. It is a start of something new and great. Something I have wanted to develop, something I deserve. I am excited for the changes to come.

Namaste,
Christy