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5/5/2009:

My reflexology/accupuncture advisor pinched my right hand between my thumb and index finger. He asked me if it hurt. I told him yes. He said that I am therefore constipated. I told him I’m not constipated, but he insisted. I guess I could have brought up all my massive post-Thai street food troubles, but I think he would still insist that I’m constipated.

We were doing meditation and Senthil, our main yoga leader, told us to focus our breathing on our heart, as that is where our soul is. He then, surprisingly, specified his claim by defining a soul as “our driving energy.” At this point Maria, a mid-30’s Spanish woman who is one of the 3 women taking a 6-week yoga theory class (seriously, 6 weeks of taking notes 3 or 4 hours a day on yoga theory? what?), raised her hand and said that this contradicts what Senthil’s brother, Ganesh was saying, about the energy being stored in the (some Indian word I don’t understand but that I assume is a body part other than the heart). Senthil explained that this was cosmic energy which is stored in that other part, whereas the soul is human energy and is located in the heart. A subtle distinction, of course, but one worth noting.

At this point I realized that the people around me take this stuff so seriously that, when somebody tells them about where energy is stored, they actually retain that information and are able to employ it to
clarify further nonsense gibberish. They are actually absorbing everything they’ve learned. I asked to see one of the girls’ notes and she had 4 composition binders worth of notes. I would have looked inside but I was afraid of what I would see. There are also 2 girls in separate programs taking equally copious amounts of notes on Ayurvedic Medicine (taught by the doctor described in my previous email) and one on nutrition.

It’s weird because everything that is told to me I don’t even bother to pay attention to when it comes to this stuff. For one, it’s hard understanding what people are saying when they speak with an Indian
accent (Tom, I feel for you; half the time I really can’t make out what they’re saying). Also, when I do understand what they’re saying it’s all spiritual hogwash. Fortunately I’m normally so relaxed,
whether it’s after yoga or my massage (which involves me lying on a wooden table wearing nothing but a loin cloth while they splash insane amounts of oil on me and rub me down in long, sweeping strokes rather than focusing on one area at a time. It’s very intense and very weird), that I don’t really worry about
what’s being said.

Main takeaway though is that I’m having a great time. 3 yoga sessions a day, one massage, one reflexology session, a couple walks, and a lot of time spent reading (just finished Dreams from my Father, he really
is so well-spoken!). 2 days in I’m still terribly inflexible but hopefully I’ll make progress. If not, I’ll have dumped 5k including travel (business class from India to NYC is expensive it turns out), but at least I’ll be able to tell chicks I went to India for a two-week yoga retreat.

-Ariel

P.S. Typing this up took me past 2:00, at which point they shut off the power for the generator that charges the internet, so I had to copy/paste this and place it in a Word file which I hid. Obviously I
don’t think anybody here is too tech-savvy, but if they were using Word and clicked on the “My refloxology” file in the recently viewed section, it could have been bad.

(5/3/2009)
I have come to the conclusion that he is a total idiot. Not too shocking considering that Ayurveda is basically an ancient form of homeopathic medicine, but I was still surprised to see it in action.

First of all, he asks me if I have any injuries and I tell him about my labrum tear. The second I finish he very confidently states “I need you to not do any more heavy lifting for 3 to 4 months. You are 80-85% healed but there is still a 15-25% chance of reinjuring yourself, but if you wait 3 to 4 months you will be fine.” I find this funny as I didn’t mention anything about my recovery timetable and he didn’t inspect me, but hey the numbers don’t lie. Then again, it’s not entirely clear that the values for “percentage you’re healed”+”chance of reinjuring yourself” should add up to 100. But I’m not a doctor. Who knows, maybe it’s a coincidence.

Then he explains to me the basics of Ayurveda medicine. He casually asserts that all things are made of one of five elements: earth, fire, wind, water, and space. He gives me the common sense explanation of this position very casually as if we’re already agreed and this is a mere formality. “You cannot imagine the world without any of these things,” he says and runs through the reasons why: no fire (which he indicates might mean internal metabolism and body temperature), everyone dies. no water, everyone dies. no earth (at this point he indicates he means earth means moss, which both weakens the “everybody dies” claim and starts a pattern of equivocation while thoroughly confusing me as to why he didn’t just say moss the first time), everybody dies. He skipped wind, but i imagine he thinks it’s very hard to imagine a world without wind. When he gets to space and says we can’t conceive of a world without space I’m inclined to bring up Kant’s position on space and ask why time isn’t one of the elements. He notices I have a question and says “feel free if you have any complaints or questions to let me know” but instead of talking about the difference between conceptualizing and imagining I decide that nothing will be gained by actually taking him up on his offer and questioning every single thing he says.

Next up is using a hodgepodge of analogies that don’t make any sense to explain how Ayurveda is all about restoring balance. The injury to my ligament (A LABRUM IS NOT A LIGAMENT, READ A BOOK!) is a textbook example of too much wind (PLEASE DEFINE YOUR TERMS MORE SPECIFICALLY SO I CAN ASSESS YOUR CLAIMS!) and he will counterbalance that by applying earth in the form of herbs (I assume the herbs have moss in them). At this point I zone out as he explains the remainder of my treatment.

Then he asks me if I have ever heard of Vata-Pitta-Kapha body-typing. I tell him no and he explains that each one of those words indicates a different element or combination of elements and he would have to ask me a bunch of questions to figure out which my dominant type was. To get a sense for what I’m dealing with, here is a link:

http://www.indiaoz.com.au/health/ayurveda/bodytype.shtml

I then was asked a questionarre like for one of those personality tests, except for with an even greater disconnect between the information presented and the type to which that information corresponds. So my thirst, being “surplus” as opposed to “weak” or “inconsistent” is, of course, a Pitta sign as Pitta comes from fire and an aspect of water. My belly button,being moderate instead of deep or swollen, marks me as a mixture of Vata (from space and air) and Pitta. Most questions were unrelated to each other and only offered me 3 options, rarely all 3 exhaustive of the possibilities, but each of them would indicate one of the 3 types. So I had a 30-minute interview that went like this:

Doctor: Financially, are you poor, do you spend on luxury items, or are you rich?
Me: Um…both of the last two
D: So Pitta and Kapha!

D: Your chest, is it expanded, round, or indented?
M: You tell me
D: Expanded. Kapha again!

D: Your speech: slow and monotonous, rapid and unclear, or moderate?

Anyway, I’m done breaking this down. I’m 15 parts pitta, 11 parts vata, and 8 parts kapha. I’ll let you figure out what that means.

-Ariel

P.S. Only 14 more days of this!
P.P.S. I suppose this doesn’t really matter because I just want massages and yoga training so I don’t really care what herbs the guy feels he has to put in my food. And it’s likely that the justification of the medicine is insane but they’ve backed their way into effective treatments despite this. But when I’m taking shots of disgusting, sludge-like herbs on the doctor’s orders it’s hard to keep my hopes up.

My yoga retreat had a distinctly prisonesque vibe to it. A substantial amount of time was spent discussing how slowly time passes and what everybody was going to do when they get home. The typical answer was normally either “eat chocolate” or “get a manicure/pedicure” as everybody else on the retreat (with the exception of a 28-year-old Norwegian girl) was at least 35 years old and female. A simple vegetarian diet with controlled serving sizes (except for for me, I got to get seconds of everything, which led to a lot of longing looks from the people who were there on the weight-loss program and often went days without eating anything but pure ghee) combined with a ban on alcohol made everybody pine for the luxuries of their native land.

My list basically involved Momofuku, scotch, and sushi. Anyway, now that I’ve done the day I come out, I’m back in the states. NYC to be exact, but I’m going to D.C. for 2 days, Martha’s Vineyard for 4 days, LA for 2 days, and then Vegas for the 40k NL event.

I’m going to be randomly posting stories from the trip as the mood suits me, but in the meantime I’m going to post a few emails that I sent to some friends from the retreat to give you a sense for what the trip was like. I’m going to spread them out as I don’t want to overload you all with tl;dr post after post. I will preface them by saying that the decidedly negative tone I have wasn’t at all representative of my overall experience and that by the time I was done I made some good friends and had two of the best weeks of my life. With that said, I’m not going to edit the emails at all. Hope you enjoy.

Oh, and here’s a sweet hand i played today. This was about 20 minutes into the match. it’s a pain in the ass to read this HH because the converters don’t seem to work w/UB hands, but here goes:

Stage #1432525110: Holdem (1 on 1) No Limit $100 - 2009-05-19 18:38:10 (ET)
Table: VERNON ST (Real Money) Seat #6 is the dealer
Seat 6 - MIKEVICKISGOD ($24,637 in chips)
Seat 4 - TODOALATAQUE ($21,330 in chips)
MIKEVICKISGOD - Posts small blind $50
TODOALATAQUE - Posts big blind $100
* POCKET CARDS *
Dealt to MIKEVICKISGOD [Jc 9d]
MIKEVICKISGOD - Raises $250 to $300
TODOALATAQUE - Raises $1,100 to $1,200
MIKEVICKISGOD - Calls $900
* FLOP * [10d 3c 2d]
TODOALATAQUE - Checks
MIKEVICKISGOD - Checks
* TURN * [10d 3c 2d] [Qd]
TODOALATAQUE - Checks
MIKEVICKISGOD - Bets $2,150
TODOALATAQUE - Calls $2,150
* RIVER * [10d 3c 2d Qd] [Ad]
TODOALATAQUE - Checks
MIKEVICKISGOD - Bets $4,500
TODOALATAQUE - All-In(Raise) $17,980 to $17,980
MIKEVICKISGOD - Calls $13,480
* SHOW DOWN *
TODOALATAQUE - Shows [Qc Jh] (One pair, queens)
MIKEVICKISGOD - Shows [Jc 9d] (Flush, ace high)
MIKEVICKISGOD Collects $42,659 from main pot
* SUMMARY *
Total Pot($42,660) | Rake ($1)
Board [10d 3c 2d Qd Ad]
Seat 4: TODOALATAQUE (big blind) HI:lost with One pair, queens [Qc Jh - B:Qd,P:Qc,B:Ad,P:Jh,B:10d]
Seat 6: MIKEVICKISGOD (dealer) (small blind) won Total ($42,659) HI:($42,659) with Flush, ace high [Jc 9d - B:Ad,B:Qd,B:10d,P:9d,B:2d]