Amid
the volcanic crater lakes near the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda, a new
kind of wave is spreading out – a wave of meditation and bliss. Quite a
few members of the community in around this breathtakingly beautiful
region have been practicing Shambhavi Mahamudra and Isha Kriya for the
past several months, and gradually, many more are now joining in. The
epicenter of this wave is the Ndali farm owned by Lulu Sturdy, who
inherited it 14 years ago and moved to Uganda from the UK. Here’s the
story of the blossoming of this silent revolution of self-realization,
in her own words.
Lulu Sturdy. The roof of her vanilla factory can be seen on the left.
All of life is here in our village in the microcosm, rubbing up
against us in a way that I’d only have distant contact with through the
media in the UK. The murderer, the thief, the possessed, the “sorcerer,”
the child abuser, jealous lover, alcoholic, crooked politician… all
I’ve come across just going about my daily (farming) business for the
past 14 years.
But the flip side is here too: people bursting into song, smiling
faces greeting you a hundred times in a day, people with absolutely not a
penny to their names rushing to help a neighbour worse off than
themselves, and sage council through community meetings helping to
dissipate unnecessary feuds – the type that can fester for years in the
West.
Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda
And then Nature herself with a capital “N”; I’m constantly amazed by
our corner of Africa sharing such similarities with Tamil Nadu: the
vegetation, the weather, the trees, the insects – I’ve seen identical
spiders, identical trees, identical flowers. We even have our own range
of mysterious mountains overshadowing the farm and straddling the
equator: the Rwenzori Mountains, meaning “Rainmaker,” perpetually
shadowed in clouds and mist.
This morning, when I opened the glass double doors to our house which
looks out across the round turquoise-green crater lake called Necklace,
and on down to our vanilla curing “factory” wedged into the forested
valley, I was enveloped in waves of Sadhguru’s chanting voice, wafting
up like mist from our factory across the lake. It was exactly 7.55am,
the sun just kissing the frangipani in our garden.
Inner Engineering at Kampala, 2011
Perhaps I should give a little background as to what’s been going on,
on Ndali farm where I live. Three years ago 16 local people – a
combination of people working on our farm with very sparse English and
others living locally – did the first ever Inner Engineering program
with 51 others in Kampala. The following year, 2011, the Inner
Engineering program was offered to 52 participants, 14 of whom were
locals from Ndali or nearby.
For two years Glenn (my partner) and I have been offering Isha Kriya
to Ndali farm workers and to any of their interested friends and
relatives. We’ve been taking it slowly and cautiously, not least, I am
ashamed to say, because we have often got sidetracked by our own work
and our own self-involved issues.
Luckily for me though, other people know better. In July this year,
just two weeks before I learnt that an Isha teacher was coming to Ndali
for the first time, I received a written request from Ivan, one of our
vanilla workers who practices Shambhavi – who is coping with rheumatic
heart disease but doing perfectly well – that a group of them would like
to practice Isha Kriya every morning in the factory, so could they be
given a key to let themselves in?
When Praveen Atmakur, an Isha Yoga teacher from the UK arrived at
Ndali – principally to prepare two beautiful Sannidhis – I decided it
was an unmissable opportunity to do an introductory talk to Inner
Engineering in the factory, especially geared towards local people with
little or zero English. We found a wonderful Ugandan translator, Pat,
who had not done Inner Engineering, but had started following Sadhguru
on YouTube six weeks ago, and on whom Midnights with the Mystic had made
an impression.
We gave all our workers (about 80 of them) the day off and invited
any of those who wished to, to attend the talk upstairs at the factory,
together with any friends or relatives. We also invited the ladies
herbal medicine group we work with.
Games on Ndali Estate before the Isha Kriya session
Over 60 people came, prompt at 8am, all dressed in their finest. The
interaction and general “sparkiness” of the listeners was a joy to see.
Even with my limited mastery of the local language I could see that Pat
was giving a careful and well delivered translation. After the talk we
all played games on the football pitch: frisbee, dodge ball and relay
races – such immersion, determination and competition: I don’t think
Praveen had ever seen bodies run so fast or shout so much. Puffing and
in a good sweat, we all drank sodas and ate doughnuts made with amaranth
flour, grown and pounded by the herbal ladies group. Then everyone
returned to the vanilla factory to learn Isha Kriya.
Now every day, at exactly 7.45am, Magidu and Ivan, Shambhavi
practitioners, lead the Isha Kriya at the factory for anyone who wants
to attend, using Sadhguru’s voice support. There are 30 people in those
sessions regularly, many unable to read or write, let alone speak
English; some having to leave home at 6.30am and walk for one hour to
reach the factory on time; all gradually becoming more meditative. It is
the most precious thing in the world to be a part of.
Isha Kriya in the Vanilla factory, Ndali Estate
And now, as I’m just recovering from the beautiful shock of hearing
Sadhguru’s voice every morning chanting out across the lake, Chris a
16-year-old schoolboy who attended Praveen’s Kriya training, has got
together off his own bat, a group of 12 of his friends between 15 and 18
years old and taught them the Kriya himself. Everyday they are
practicing as a group, at first on the grass under some trees at the
edge of the lake, but now that the rain has set in, we’ve given them the
dilapidated round hut at the end of the garden. We’ve also unearthed a
mini ipod and small travelling speaker so that they too can practice
with Sadhguru’s voice support, in a place with no power source.
Chris outside the hut he’s renovating for his 12 friends to do Isha Kriya
Chris has thrown himself into renovating the hut: repairing the
leaking thatch, levelling the floor, smearing cow dung on it, and white
washing the walls. Now he tells me he wants to plant a hedge of evening
rose because “the scent is good” he says. It is indeed: it is very
heady, and very Isha, and Chris is headed in the right direction. “This
seems to be important,” he said, the very first time after doing the
Kriya, and made the unorthodox decision to miss school for one week to
be able to attend the daily group sessions: that is, until he found his
own, better, solution to be able to practice with the support of a group
of his friends every evening, but still attend school one hour’s walk
away.
Source Link : http://blog.ishafoundation.org/inside-isha/happenings/uganda-yoga-meditation/
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