Stranded In The Alps, An Earthly Offering & The Magic Of The Ganesh Mantra

(All pictures are either mine, or sourced through pixabay or google images, and are free for commercial use, with no attribution required)

It was September 2015, and I was just over 1 week in to a yoga teacher training course in Tyrol, Austria. 

One morning, during the first yoga asana practice of the day, high winds started to develop in the mountains surrounding us. The wooden framed yoga hall of the Ashram vibrated; amplifying the shelling of howling and gusting. Latched windows flew open, the yoga hall's fire; snuffed out, and the floor started creaking like tired bones, tested by heavy loads. It felt like we were practicing our asana on the deck of a ship adrift to stormy seas.

A central theme to the training was Ganesha: Hinduism's Lord of Beginnings and Remover of Obstacles. Every morning, before anything else took place, we would go to the yoga hall and repeat, for 30 minutes, his mantra: 

The yoga asana was followed by a theory class, lessons on yogic philosophy and then anatomy. During the progression through our lessons, the wind maintained it's persistence; beating a constant thrum on the yoga hall. This was a windy day, but nothing too out of the ordinary, we thought. Just nature doing it's thing.

Lunch time came and 2 yogi friends and myself had volunteered to do a shop run, to pick up some additional supplies and snacks for the group. The nearest shop was 30 minutes drive away, with only one route of access for us: Fern Pass

So, the 3 of us jumped in to the car and headed off. The route is one of the most beautiful drives you can experience; a dramatic landscape, framed with magnificent mountains, stunning vistas, dense forests and beautiful, crystal clear lakes. The air; the cleanest I had breathed for quite some time.

So, with some great music playing, feet up on the dashboard (well, mine were, not the driver's thankfully) and high spirits abound, we enjoyed taking in the beauty of it all. Our car; massaged by the persistent wind, was not deterred, and neither were we. This was just one of those blustery days, we presumed. 

Well, we got to the shop, within 30 minutes, ticked off everybody's check lists as we picked up the supplies, paid for the goods, got back in to the car, turned up the music, and then headed back to the Ashram, for our next lesson of the day.

We must have been about half the way back, before the tail lights of the cars in front of us started turning red in quick succession, and the growing wind started to drown out the music. Our halted car, that now seemed so fragile, was being pummelled by gale force gusts, that were hammering the thin layer of metal and glass, that served as our protection. The mauled panels that we were wrapped within, was all that was stopping us from getting blown away like ants.

Then the trees all around us started falling, like dominoes. 

This was not looking good. In fact, as we were later to find out, we were now in the middle of the worst storm to hit the region in 40 years. 

Thankfully, the eye of the storm passed through within an hour, and for the duration of it's might, we sat anxiously in the car, waiting it out, hoping that we didn't get taken out by a falling tree. It's all we could do, because getting out of the car would have been suicide. Once the mayhem had done it's thing, a relative calm returned, albeit, now set amongst a post-apocalyptic image of it's prior self. We got out of the car.

We were near the front of the queue when the local police turned up and set-up a blockade, but just looking back, as far as the eye could see, it was gridlocked, for miles. We wouldn't be moving for at least 4 hours we were told. It was at this  point that I realised I desperately needed to go to the toilet, and we're not talking about the kind of hygiene break that you can go for, on the side of a road, without getting arrested.  

A quick assessment of our situation established that we were stranded, on the only through road that could lead us back home, and we were surrounded by carnage. 

However, as far as we could determine, it looked like the road ahead was relatively clear, apart from the police blockade which had been set-up about 10 cars in front of us, at the very front of the queue. 

We convinced the only german speaking member of the group to converse with the police, in the hope that we might somehow get some preferential treatment from them;  as if to be somehow magically waved through like royalty. Who were we trying to fool? Ourselves obviously. Not surprisingly, he came back to us shaking his head. In all honesty, we hadn't held out much hope for any other outcome really.

It was at this point that we started reciting our daily mantra together: Ganesha's mantra - "Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha". Maybe the remover of obstacles would help us! It was worth a try, we thought. 

It was more an exercise in wishful thinking, on our part, further installing our practice, and helping us pass the time, but we applied ourselves with full intent nontheless.

Well, after about 15 minutes of repeating the Ganesha mantra, something did start to happen, an obstacle was indeed being removed, but it wasn't the roadblock ahead of us. My belly was now rumbling furiously and I knew it was only a matter of time. I threw open the car door and bolted urgently for the forest. 

Amongst the cover of the verdant canopy, I quickly looked around for any other signs or life, or should I say, more accurately, any witnesses. I identified that the coast was clear and settled at a point of consecration. 

So, in dedicating an earthly offering to Ganesh, I added another log to the forest.

As I walked back out of the forest, and returned to the car, I was met by 2 very happy yogis. "They're letting us through" they excitedly said. 

Still totally amazed to this day, as to how or why we were made an exception of, and allowed to pass through, when all others had to stay and wait, our car pulled out of the miles' long traffic jam and past the police, who politely waved us through, before replacing the barrier. 

We smugly watched as the hundreds of cars, that were now getting smaller and smaller in our wing mirrors, faded away into our distant past. 

How had this happened? Was it my german friend's Obi Wan Kanobi like "You don't need to see his identification" interaction with them, was it our determined recital of Ganesha's mantra or was it my earthly offering? Was it all of these factors combined, or none of them? Had our week's meditation been so focused, that we had somehow opened up a strange alternate reality, only for the gatekeepers (the police) to realise that we were not supposed to be there, hence their waving us through and nobody else? 

Who cares, we were free!

---

I ended up writing a poem about this experience - 

This is a photograph, that I took from our Ashram: looking down onto the Fern Pass, in the valley -

And this is the same photograph; cut, processed and edited, with the words applied -

So, next time you're facing obstacles in your life, why not give Ganesha's Mantra a go. 

In my experience, it really does work!

Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha

-yogi.artist-