Friday 27 May 2005

Doing Yoga netis at the Brahmchari asharam

I had never thought that dogs can eat grass. But that was before, we had Brando and before I started taking him out on morning and evening walks.

Evening time in India is Gaudhooli in my mind, the dust raised by cows coming back to home from pastures lit by the rays of sinking sun. In our park, the evening time is kukur-pakhana time, all dog-owners are out with their dogs, no matter if it is raining or snowing. Coming back to vegetarian dogs, I felt amazed to see Brando munching green grass. Nadia explained to me that it is some mechanism for him to clean his stomach since it would make him vomit. So, if he eats lot of grass, that means we must search in the house for his vomits, to clean-up on the next morning.

Eating grass to vomit reminds me of going to Dhirendra Brahmchari's ashram near Gol daak-khana in Delhi in the early seventies. The yoga classes started around 5 in the morning. I used to go there by bicycle from Rajendra Nagar. There we had to do the netis - all the different techniques for cleaning the body. The first neti to be learned was that of vomiting for cleaning the stomach. Everyone there drank a few glasses of tepid water and then cheerfully vomited in the round space delimited by a low wall. Just watching others vomiting made me feel a wave of nausea initially.

Do proper vomiting beta, Bhramchari ji's assistants extorted. So fingers in the throat, I used to go ga-ga-ga, till tears came out of my eyes, trying to vomit. However, with practice, things had got much better. Just standing near the vomiting place, a quick contraction of tummy muscles, brought out every thing inside my stomach in a generous bout of vomit.

There were other netis to learn like taking strings of clothe, putting them in one side of nose, taking out of the other, swallowing the clothe-strings, meters and meters of it, and then bringing them out again (probably by mouth I think!). I never came around to doing those other netis, never progressing beyond the vomiting neti.

Just writing about it, has brought a bit of nostalgia for healthy vomiting. Wonder if I can try it again one of these days, may be when I am alone at home with only Brando (who I am sure would approve!).

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1 comment:

nawed said...

i put a search for pakhana and your blog came on dogpile search. i look for interesting anecdotes involving defecation. we are going to introduce yogic exercises to control bowel related problems.
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