Rocket Yoga. Get There Faster.

Back in my year in India when I was looking for enlightenment one of the toughest part was the goddamn meditation. To sit quiet for a few minutes that’s OK. But for hours! They are saints back there in India, and I’m not. But there are ways to find inner peace, and one of those more active methods is blooming in Thailand: yoga, or more specifically: Rocket Yoga. Get to the fitness nirvana faster.

Larry Schultz? Says something? Argh you ignorant soul. This is Larry Schultz. And Larry Schultz recently brought his Rocket Yoga teachings to Bangkok for the first time. And guess where. At Bangkok’s top yoga studio Absolute Yoga Bangkok. An unintentional namesake of this site. There they find peace of mind by body activity, here by mental work …

Anyway, Larry Schultz has been teaching yoga for 30 years and has influenced yoga practitioners around the world. Bangkokian fellow yoga practitioners felt indeed lucky to have him here. In case you missed this express way to salvation, here’s a short cut. You might wanna give Rocket Yoga or any yoga for that a try. Yoga is booming here. Khun Ben and Khun David, participants at the workshop, sent us this little report with photos by Patrick Thorpe:

Larry’s strength and success come from the 63,000 sun salutes, 9,000 classes and 142 yoga teacher trainings he has been a part of. He is also known as the Grateful Dead’s yoga teacher and traveled with the band for three years.

All of the Rocket routines are designed to wake up the nervous system and feed it the precious prana it craves while promoting a spirit of freedom in the practice. These uplifting sequences have obviously gained global recognition as feel-good experiences that open the body and clear the mind so you’ll leave refreshed, refocused and restored by linking movement to the breath. Uplifting and empowering, they say.

The workshop was aimed at introducing people in Thailand to Rocket Yoga, which is series of asanas drawn from Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga to renew energy and vitality throughout the body. This vibrant routine is called “the Rocket” because “it gets you there faster.”

Apart from that, Larry also made us realize that yoga is not about what we can’t do, it’s about what we can do. It’s good if you can do all asanas perfectly but even if you can’t it’s still good that you have willpower to bring yourself to the mat and learn how to consciously breathe. The beauty of yoga is not only about what you are doing today but it’s also about whether you will come back tomorrow and will be continuously practicing in the next 20 or 30 years from now on.

And yes, that’s Thai model Xanny Disjad practicing at the workshop:

May I suggest you have a look at Xanny’s Secret Calendar 2010. Isn’t yoga beautiful. And don’t miss Xanny’s Artistic section.

Said Xanny about Larry: “A wonderful, charismatic, inspirational soul!”

And said Larry about Thailand: “Thai students quite impress me. They are as flexible as their smiles are beautiful and pure. Teaching Yoga in Thailand is like to be in a yoga holiday.”

For some practitioners, the first ten years of practice may be full of stress and ambition because they want to do everything and try to do everything. But in the next ten years they will learn to understand that yoga is more than about postures and they will start to let their ambition go and practice with more joy.

The way Larry taught and talked in the workshop made everyone (of different levels) feel relaxed. He showed the way he lives his life full of love, happiness, calmness and peacefulness because yoga has become part of his life for the past 30 years.

But you reader who read this far would actually feel much better when you get down to start practicing yoga and experience yourself how it can bring peacefulness, calmness and healthiness to your life. Outch!

Over to you. Get moving. More information on yoga in Thailand right here.