Ashrita's Record Blog

We were in trouble. It was a beautiful day in May and Bipin and I were in Budapest, Hungary. In 10 minutes we were to attempt Guinness record for raw egg catching in front of thousands of kids. The guidelines for the record were quite simple. Two people stand 16 feet apart and one person throws raw eggs at the other person who tries to catch as many of the eggs in a minute without breaking them. The current record was 71 eggs and Bipin and I had done more than that in practice in New York, so we thought it would be “over-easy”. But our confidence was “cracked” when, just before going on stage to make our attempt, we did a trial run. Bipin was throwing the eggs as normal but, for some reason, when I tried to catch the eggs, they exploded in my hands, and I was being “shelled” by raw eggs!

We tried using different batches of eggs, but the results were the same. For some reason, Hungarian eggs are not as strong as American eggs and, in front of national TV and a few thousand kids, I was about to get egg on my face, literally! I remembered that my mentor, Sri Chinmoy, taught me that through meditation it is possible to surmount any problem. After a brief meditation, an idea popped into my head. I ran over to Parimal (one of my Hungarian friends) and asked if he could find us a couple of hundred organic eggs in a hurry! I hoped that organic eggs might have stronger shells.

With these eggs though, Bipin and I had the horrible feeling that we were “poached”. We climbed up on stage and took our positions. Looking out at the enormous parking lot in front of us, we could see the expectant look on the kids’ faces—thousands of ‘em. Read more....

One of the many things I love about the Guinness Book of Records is that I can almost always find some new event I have never seen or heard of before, and this inspires me into new frontiers of exercise. I’ve derived hours of fitness training and fun from such discoveries as star jumping, orange nose-pushing, frog-jumping, can and string-walking and upside-down juggling. It is truly a joy practicing new events and experiencing my progress from day-to-day and week-to-week. As my meditation teacher, Sri Chinmoy, says:

When my heart sings the song of newness,
My life becomes the dance of fullness.

Recently, the Guinness people began posting a database of records on their website, and it has been a goldmine of inspiration for me. Okay…some of the new categories are silly – like the record for the fastest time to blow a postage stamp for 100 meters. Other categories sound silly, but are actually quite difficult– like the record for jumping the longest distance on a pogo stick while juggling 3 balls. This seemed tailor made for me so I decided that I would try to break it, and I wanted to do it on Easter Island!

It has long been a dream of mine to visit Easter Island, but finding the time to go has been a challenge. Part of the mystique of Easter Island (called Rapa Nui by the natives) is the fact that it is so hard to get to. The island is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 2200 miles off the coast of Chile and is the most isolated inhabited spot in the world. For most of my record-excursions, I plan on 3 or 4 days including travel time, but Rapa Nui required double that. This year, my annual Christmas retreat this year took me to Columbia, South America, and this 3 week sabbatical afforded me the opportunity to make a side-trip to this remote island. Read more....

My spiritual Teacher, Sri Chinmoy, teaches that the inner life and the outer life must go hand-in-hand. Whenever we do something outwardly, if we can touch it with our spiritual effort,  we can accomplish things way beyond our imagination!

I could be accused of being consumed with record-breaking, but really, for me, it is much, much more than that. Breaking records has become an important part my own spiritual quest. Inwardly, the process of breaking a record requires me to go within and depend on the Divine Grace. Outwardly, whenever I break a record, I get tremendous joy and inspiration and hopefully I inspire others as well - or at least make a few people smile! 

So, I am always looking for new ideas for world records. Sometimes, I’ll go through the Guinness Book and some record will jump out at me. Often, I’ll return to an earlier record which someone else had subsequently broken. And sometimes, an incident in everyday life will give me an idea for a new record that has never been attempted before. Enter the lunge! Read more....

I get tremendous joy whenever I visit Italy, a joy that starts weeks before I embark on the plane! About a year ago, I was about to head out to the airport to pay a visit to my Italian friend Priyadarshan who lives in a beautiful city an hour north of Verona. Because I tend to get restless sitting still on long plane trips, I decided to expend a little excess energy by sneaking in a quick run. At that time, I was training to break the Guinness record for the fastest mile run while balancing a milk bottle on the head, so I decided to do my run with the milk bottle. I quickly cycled over to Jamaica High School track, but was disappointed to find the 10-foot high gates locked. Normally, I would have headed over to another track in the neighborhood, but because I had very little time, I just hopped the fence to get my run in.

I love running with a milk bottle on my head. Although it is silly, it still requires a high level of concentration. Well, after a couple of laps, along the fence at the far side of the track, I heard what sounded like a dog running alongside me! I could hear his dog tags jiggling and his loud panting. I was running alone inside a gated track, so I imagined the dog had to be running on the outside of the fence, and he had to be large since I could hear him so distinctly. Of course, because I was concentrating on the milk bottle, I couldn’t turn my head to look. On my next lap around the track, again I heard the dog but this time my curiosity got the best of me. I took the bottle off my head to investigate. I was shocked to see that the dog was actually inside the track running alongside me. And it was no large dog. No – it was a tiny dachshund! Read more....