A Toilet for two - 13 Apr 14

After the memorable plane-journey to Germany which I described to you last week, my first stop in Germany was Cologne for the International Yoga Teacher Training which we offered there in collaboration with the University of Cologne. During that training weekend, I saw something which I had not seen before and never after anywhere around the world: a toilet for two!

We had booked seminar rooms in the Thalamus, a big seminar center in Cologne. When, after a longer lecture, I went to pee, I followed the signs to the toilet, opened the door and found myself in a large, bathroom-type of room in which there was a big washbasin and two toilet seats. I was totally astonished.

I had travelled in Germany and the west for quite a while already and had many times seen one toilet seat and a bidet, an extra place for washing yourself after having completed your job on the toilet seat. But no, this was clearly two identical toilet seats just next to each other.

After relieving my pressure, I returned to the seminar room where Yashendu was currently giving a yoga asana class. When the class was over, it was lunchtime. When Yashendu and I both had the urge to use the toilet, I pulled him along on the way to the toilet I had discovered before. And we had a great toilet session together! We are very open with each other and we enjoyed just having a talk.

When we came back and joined the yoga students again, I talked with a group of them and told them about my toilet discovery. Yashendu and I were always very busy during such weekends and had hardly time to just talk to each other. So we could nicely use our toilet time for this purpose – I really thought this was a good idea!

During this conversation I remembered that this was actually not such a strange idea in India, at least for women. In the morning time you can always see a lot of women going out to the fields together, a pot with water in their hands, to follow the call of nature. They go in groups, do their business out there in groups, sit around in circles and have full conferences. They tell each other about their complete previous day and probably also gossip about the whole town.

I told our students of this habit of women and we all laughed when they told it was a normal thing to do for women in the west, too – they go to toilet together, first one of them, then the other one, and just talk, share their feelings. They assumed that this toilet was made for this reason – because women anyway always went in together!

I really thought that this was a great idea and it should be implemented elsewhere. Unfortunately until this date, I have not found this anywhere else.