Day 13 is here for #30DaysToFlexy#30DaysToFlexy2017 with #Vrkasana #TreePose When the demon king Ravana kidnapped Queen Sita and brought her to Lanka, he naturally assumed that she would fall for him. After all, other women did. He was handsome (once you got used to his ten faces), strong, and fabulously wealthy and powerful. His palace was a sensualist's dream of beauty and pleasant surroundings. Ravana was not unlike an urbane, highly influential drug lord—repellent, yet fascinating at the same time. He offered Sita one pleasure after another, but she said no to them all. He proposed to make her his chief wife, and Sita refused. She refused to spend even one night inside Ravana's beautiful palace. “I am your prisoner, not your guest,” she said, “and I will never be your woman. Remember, I am Rama's wife and he will find me. And when he does, you will wish you had never even seen me.” “I'm a generous man,” replied Ravana. “Every day I will ask you to accept me. You have one year. After that, if you still refuse, I will cook and eat you.” Outside the palace, inside its walls, stood a grove of ashoka trees. Ashoka means “without sorrow.” Ashoka trees are symbols of love in Indian folk tradition. They are also healers, containing powerful medicinal compounds. Sita lived under the trees, surrounded by Ravana's elite staff of rakshasa women—monstrous creatures with the faces of goats, fish, and dogs; with hair sprouting from unlikely places; and unusual numbers of eyes and limbs. The guards were ordered not to harm Sita physically, but they could use psychological methods to break her down. They told her that Rama would never find her, and even if he did, Lanka, being an island fortress and protected by magic to boot, was impregnable. They advised that life in the comfort of Ravana's harem was a pretty sweet deal, as his hundred satisfied wives could attest. They said that a woman as royal and beautiful as Sita deserved to live in a palace and to be treated like the queen she was, not wander the forest with her exiled husband. "Forget Rama," they said. "Think of all that Ravana could do for you. And it's not like you're leaving here alive anyway," they reminde
