Yoga for Unicorns

The Andaman Islands are about as close as you can get to being at the very end of the world.

“Andaman” derives from the Malay name for Hanuman (Handuman), the faithful jokester monkey god that most yogis are pretty familiar with.  Hanuman apparently landed on these small islands in the Bay of Bengal on his way to Ravana’s kingdom (Sri Lanka), in the famous Indian story The Ramayana.  Marco Polo called Middle Andaman`the land of the head – hunters,’ and there are half a dozen fully independent indigenous tribes still inhabiting this odd, small archipelago.  There are real warning signs all over about how even though you’re at a pristine beach mingling with middle-class Indian families, you should not feed or otherwise disturb the wild (human) life.

It’s India, but also sort of not.  There are crocodiles in those sparkly blue waters; one killed an American tourist in 2010.  You can go Swimming with an Elephant:

Rajan! The elephant you can swim with for five minutes for only $1000!

You can do something weird called “Sea Walking:”

According to my scuba instructor, lots of Indian tourists have something called “water fear.” They’ll pay for a scuba class and end up “swimming,” i.e., the instructor holding their tank and pushing them, at the surface for three days running because they are afraid to descend. The commercial for this enthusiastically touts it as “Something For People With Water Fear!” Yes, with those Capitalizations.

Oh yeah, and there’s also the scuba diving.

You know how sometimes you’ll show up to do a fun-sounding activity with a friend, something that seems really straightforward and that you have vague observer-type experience with, and you find out that there’s way more to it than you could have imagined, equipment wise?  I always think about this when I see people skiing in just their really-warm regular clothes, or showing up for yoga in a loose tee-shirt, no bra, and socks.  Or worse: men wearing really loose short-shorts.

You could wear these?

Scuba is like the ultimate specialized wardrobe and equipment endeavor.  I was gifted a dive watch before this trip, and feared that wearing it would give the wrong impression that I actually knew what I was doing, scuba wise.  As it turns out, bringing your own watch is the equivalent of bringing your own hair tie.  Most of the Scuba Lifestylers had not only their own futuristic watches, but also their own wetsuits, masks, underwater cameras, and BCDs:

BCD is an acronym for Buoyancy Control Device- kind of like a floatie vest to keep you from scraping up the corals and other wildlife at the bottom of the ocean.

Scuba also has a lingo, consisting mostly of acronyms and hand signals.  The “final check” before getting into the water is Buoyancy, Weights, Releases, Air, Fins, or BWRAF.  My first instructor in San Diego explained that an easy way to remember this is that Bruce Willis Ruins All Films.

Imagine Daniel Day Lewis in Armageddon. Doesn’t the movie get suddenly exponentially better?

The cool but confusing thing with the hand signals is that “I’m okay” is making a circle with your thumb and forefinger, rather than a thumbs up, which means “I need to ascend” or “I’m ascending.” When you’re taking scuba lessons, the instructor constantly asks if you’re okay by doing the sign and making an inquiring face; the natural impulse to give a double thumbs-up is the exactly-opposite thing you want to do.  It helped to think of the “okay” signal as an exchange of the Guyan Mudra:

The tip of the thumb touches the tip of the index finger, stimulating knowledge and ability. The index finger is symbolized by Jupiter, and the thumb represents the ego. Guyan Mudra imparts receptivity & calm.

The mouth breathing thing can be really panicky and disorienting; I’ve heard that the first thing psychiatric intake staff instruct a potential intake-ee to do is to close their mouth and breathe through the nose.  In fact, Ujayii is a nose-breath in part because it physiologically promotes calmness.  Closing off your whole upper face while making a “no problem! ”  mudra can be incongruent or wishfully balancing, depending on how you’re feeling.  Scuba feels like the opposite of a yoga practice.  Yoga is primitive, elemental, and gear-free.  All you’re supposed to think about is your breath- how much more basic can it get?

The first rule of scuba* and all the others that follow are essentially to keep divers cognizant of how the breath impacts their physical capabilities.  That BCD floatie?  The idea is that you fill it up when you’re halfway in between breaths, because your buoyancy changes, depending on whether your lungs are full or empty.  You wear a weighted belt to mitigate the impact of the lifting-you wetsuit, you keep your arms and legs level with your body to maintain minimal lateral movement in order to “save” your movements for the up-and-down, where they really matter.  You check your watch, your pressure gauges, your mask.  You “equalize” for the pressure in your body every few meters, while exhaling, after checking said gauges.  You Safety Stop before ascending to make sure that the nitrogen mix in your bloodstream doesn’t adversely impact you.  The whole goal is to move efficiently, conserving air, and being aware of how your body is impacted by each breath you take.

So pretty much, you have about 20lbs of gear on your person, half a dozen digital readouts to keep track of, and all you really can think about is, well, your breath.

How you do anything is how you do everything?

Or rather, you can sort of find the yoga in anything.  Especially when living the Scuba Lifestyle:)

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*The first rule of scuba diving is: always keep breathing.