Betrayal and brimming bagfuls of possibility – part 2

Tags

#reverb10, chirping crickets, cultural mythology, Declaration of Future Life Plans, fairy-tales, impatience, India, letting go, Nepal, possibility, Thailand, tumbleweeds, yoga teaching

[Read part 1]

Okay so here we are in part 2 and actually, there isn’t any more betrayal as such to speak of – but for the sake of consistency, the heading stays, okay? The neck is on the improve although not as swiftly as I’d like. So much impatience, one of my finer qualities!

Interestingly, this post works in well with the #reverb10 writing prompt for 5th December (and in Australia it is the evening of the 5th already):

Let go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

Ha! Actually, one of the overall themes of this blog could be “letting go”, couldn’t it? But here with my second brimming bagful of possibility, I’m getting a little more specific with “letting go” on a bit of an epic scale.

So, without further ado (and this is a long-ish one)…

Background to brimming bagful #2

I’ve had this one on the simmer for a while now and I’ve even shared these thoughts with a friend or two. But you’re still getting this pretty early on in my Public Declaration of Future Life Plans. I shall attempt not to ramble.

It’s all connected to thoughts I was having a few thousand ago, right before I read Nadine’s post – which is kinda related!

And here it is… gosh.

I moved back to Melbourne six years ago and in some ways it was the making of me. In others, it was a complete disaster albeit one with a happy ending. Okay, granted: not the sort of happy ending you find in the average Hollywood rom-com. But happy ending all the same.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might wonder how can I say I’ve been given a “happy ending” and mean it? Given I’m almost thirty-nine, I’m single and childless, pretty much broke, my career a minor disaster, my social life remarkable for the tumbleweeds and chirping crickets (except for fucking December). So how can I mean that? Really?

But I do, unreservedly so. Sure, if there was some other way I could’ve gotten to where I am now, I’d have taken it in a heartbeat. But that’s not what happened.

And what I mean by “where I am now” is as follows… I’m pretty sure that for the longest time I lived in some kind of romantic fantasy version of what I imagined life was like. Unintentionally, I wasn’t honest with myself about who I am – just not how I was raised I’m afraid. The kicker is that if I had been, then I probably never would’ve moved back to Melbourne in the first place.

But that’s not the path I took, and what this last five years has given me is an absolutely rock solid case of Waking-The-Fuck-Up – which  is super-rich in life nutrient type of information, and needs unpacking in every facet of one’s collective interpretations of life. Each and every one.

For many years now I’ve had this theory about the expectations of society as our modern-day “cultural myths and fairy-tales”. There’s a whole bunch of unspoken and yet clearly sign-posted directions life is “meant” to take in this white western world of ours. And every part of it marinates in those stories. Absolutely everything from the clothes we buy down to what we’re having for dinner or watching on TV.

According to our cultural mythology, life is meant to look like this: go to school, get educated, fall in love a few times, money is important, get married/a house/children and save a little nest egg for your retirement. Enjoy life, consume, consume, be a good person, get old and chill out til it’s time to depart. The End.

These stories are the foundations of our world and if you don’t tick most of the boxes while ambling along trying to work your shit out, then people look at you sideways. They wanna know what’s wrong with you. In fact, from the time we were adorable little munchkins we were told that people who don’t want these things, who aren’t doing what everyone else is doing in these very (so-called) fundamental ways… well, there’s something wrong with them.

Turns out of course, that I’m one of them. Except guess what? As far as I can tell, there isn’t actually anything wrong with me. Not that there’s anything wrong with anyone else, either.

It’s just that for every generalised version of life,  every expectation defined by how “most people” do it, there’s another way of thinking, existing, being and doing.

Really, I’ve given myself hell over the years for failing to have my life resemble at least one of our cultural fairy tales. Instead I was a no-good run-away, a high school drop out, a teenage stripper, an abortee and all before I’d even turned 21. Then, thinking there was nothing else to do, I left my family behind to live in another state where no-one knew me. For a do-over of sorts, I guess.

There, I reinvented myself a little and I even almost had that fantasy fairy-tale marriage. Somehow, I sorta landed on my feet when that didn’t work out: found a steady job, got some qualifications under my belt, indulged in my passion for dance as a semi-professional belly-dancer and found my spiritual teacher. I danced. I skied. I traveled. I started my love affair with yoga.

Still, I was chasing a fairy-tale, the one that’s about meeting the “man of my dreams”. Actually I was quite convinced that I’d be attending my 30th birthday party with him (cue the music), this amazing guy who was perfect for me and I for him. He’d look lovingly at me and… it never happened.

I’ve been freaked out half my life about that: not having what I saw others attaining, old friends and new. Even my own sister. Where was MY perfect life with a husband, children, a house and a few cats?

And then… disaster struck. Not only did I not have my perfect life, I didn’t even have a okay one. Not at all.

In terms of normal life, everything stopped. However, cultural mythology runs deep and even though I didn’t want men anywhere near me, I still craved a life partner. Someone who’d love me no matter what and if I’m deadly honest, at that point what I wanted was someone to rescue me from the total mess my life had become.

Sometimes though, you don’t learn the lessons you need most until you’ve been working your ass off for the longest time. Recovery from anything is always a process and 2010 has felt very much like the year in which I’ve finally begun to see myself clearly.

Brimming bagful #2

When do our thoughts coalesce into something that we recognise and own? When do we own up to ourselves about Important Things? What’s the tipping point for that lightbulb moment exactly?

I’m not sure. But in the last few months I’ve started asking myself things like this…

• What if my life just isn’t meant to include meeting the love of my life? I know some amazing older women who’ve never found that “right guy” and instead of being single and bitter, or settling for “good enough”, they channel their energy into other projects.
• What if I’m not meant to be living in this kind of society? The happiest I’ve ever felt in my life has been when I wasn’t surrounded by western convenience. What if I’m meant to be living somewhere in Asia teaching yoga to impoverished women and children?
• What if money and financial security isn’t my path either? While everyone else is busy acquiring property and saving money, I don’t ever seem to be able to pay off my debts. And not because I don’t try! So what if my ideas about what I should be aiming for are just wrong, and this is one of the reasons I haven’t been able to sort out my financial situation?
• What if… my life was meant to be something else? Somewhere else? I moved back to Melbourne out of a sense of family duty and that really hasn’t worked out… what if I admitted that my so-called plans for living in the western world are really more about trying to survive in an environment I don’t feel comfortable in?
• What if I’m just not meant to have kids? As much as that makes me sad, there’s plenty of children in this world to love and take care of. And perhaps that’s part of what I’m meant to be doing with my life anyway?
• How would I even know what else my life could be if I just keep on doing what I’ve been doing?

Good point, that last one!

For the longest time I’ve felt as though I’ve been trying to reconcile what I want and need to be doing with the party line on what I SHOULD be doing. It’d be so nice wouldn’t it, if I could neatly combine the two?

But what if it’s just not meant to be like that for me? Perhaps you don’t believe in any kind of fate, but I do. I feel it in my bones and my heart and if there’s no element whatsoever of fate in any of this thing we call life, I’d be ridiculously surprised.

So, what I’ve been letting go of this year is the remnants of cultural mythology that paints an outline of the life we’re supposed to grow into (or be considered a little odd if not). And I’ve been embracing my oddness, my otherness… because I feel like that’s the best way for me to be of service.

Letting go of all of these ideas frees up a crazy amount of energy and it’s given me a whole bunch of new things to think about. I mean, if living here in a major metropolitan city like Melbourne isn’t working for me, what will? What does work already?

And here’s what I know: yoga works for me. Teaching yoga is some kind of crazy blissful high. Teaching yoga makes me giggle like my baby nieces, exuberantly delighting in the special things that transpire in my classes.

Ah… so taking that a step further, I want more. More knowledge and experience. More study.

Which brings me to the possibilities. I have a plan you see, and I’m hoping the universe is listening in and will just get on board here! Can we have a little alignment of the stars behind my plan? Ooooh, that’d be awesome, thanks ever so much!

And this is it:

I figure if I work my ass off, I can finally pay off my debts in 2011 (the sad stories of my misadventures with money might just be another post some time!). Then, I figure I’ll need another 6-12 months to accumulate a bunch of cash, but not for doing anything “sensible” like saving to buy a house!

Nope, my theory is that I need to go travelling and studying for a while. What? Just because I’m getting close to 40 I should be settling down and “thinking of the future” (as my father likes to say)?

Ummm, I decline. I decline the fear mongering, and the “be like us and validate our life choices” inference of suggestions that anything else is crazy.

Instead, I wanna hit up India, Nepal, Cambodia and Thailand. Hang out with my Guru for a while. Study with other teachers. Immerse myself fully in everything yoga. Discover more people like me, those who don’t fit neatly into the recommended western life-style.

And then, who knows? I’d like to just teach yoga really, which probably means living on much less money than I currently earn. Thing is, the only reason I need to earn more money is to pay off my debts. I don’t give a stuff about owning “things” as such: there’s nary a flat screen TV at my place and I can’t tell you how badly I probably need new clothes (that I can never be bothered going to buy!).

Bottom line is I could care less about owning stuff. And maybe when I’m 80 I’ll have a different perspective and want to kick my nearly 39 year old ass for being so irresponsible. But right now, I’m gonna have to go with what feels right.

Forget New Year’s resolutions. This is my Grand-Bold-Stupid-Reckless-Awesome-Totally-Kicking-Life-Plan for the next few years. It makes me feel good. And alive and happy.

So… back to that idea of a happy ending. When’s anything really “the end”, anyway? But say I’d never taken that trip to hell and back? Say I’d married the guy I was engaged to in my 20’s, had kids and settled in Sydney. Would I still have been able to ask myself these same questions? Would I have even known what questions to ask?

And as hard as it’s been, I feel that I’m better off like this. Life in disarray and really learning to see what’s important for my own happiness…

~Svasti

I can’t believe it’s not…

Tags

beaches, Clear seeing, Cleopatra the Cat, coiffed, down the wire, eyebrow wax, Game Plan, Hollywood Eyebrows, I can't believe it's not butter, immersion, interconnected energy body, introspection, Kinesiology, kooky, Making of Plans, Retreat, Shadow Yoga, Thailand, Yoga

Butter? Chocolate? Retreat?

Yeah, maybe the end one. There’s been plenty of the first two around, so I know they aren’t facsimiles. Or… is the pun (Fabio included) not actually about facsimiles at all? I mean, today I went for an eyebrow wax and was told the method was something called Hollywood Eyebrows. As though it was something different. But the end result was nicely shaped and coiffed (can eyebrows BE coiffed?) brows, so… you say tomato, and you know the rest.

So. I’m not in Thailand, obviously. Not on retreat, where I wish I was. And at first I thought a teensy little part of me was sulking about that. Maybe I was. But then, this quiet time that’s meant less Svasti posts and well, really, a heck-load of other stuff… it’s not about sulking. And don’t get me wrong – there’s been PLENTY of yoga going on!

How do I put this without sounding entirely kooky? Uhhh, perhaps there isn’t any way to do that. So, ahhhh… okay. The bond formed with my teacher and fellow students means that I’m part of this wider and pretty much always interconnected energy body. I mean, generally speaking ALL people are part of an interconnected energy body, but our group was formed quite intentionally and with a lot of energy, meditation and ceremony behind it.

So, even if I’m not with my teacher and fellow students when they’re together doing a lot of spiritual practice (which has happened a handful of times only since I was initiated into the school), I find that down the wire, I get the the gist of what’s going on anyway. Even if they happen to be half a world away.

Really.

There’s energetic stuff that happens, things I feel, messages I receive (not as emails though!) and the general overall tone of whatever’s going on. Then there’s the physical stuff (okay, I’m not quite ready to share all the details about that). BUT, let’s just say it’s all happening again. I thought maybe this time it wasn’t going to be like that and for a while I thought I was right. Because usually the energy that comes out of retreat is BIG and DYNAMIC but this time it seems to be much more introspective. Quiet revelations and deep inquiry that’s blossoming into Something New. Dunno what it is yet, but it’s definitely happening.

And before you say, oh, that’s not necessarily anything to do with your group half a world away, things like that are going on for me too! Let me just add that yes, that’s very possible. All of our retreats are based around specific times of the year, so that astrologically (if you go in for that stuff) whatever we’re doing is supported by the universe in every possible way. So you could say that in general, right now is a huge time of change for many people.

And things have been profound while I’ve been all radio-silence-like. I’ve been doing a lot of Clear Seeing. And Making of Plans. And Realising I Don’t Have To Live In Bolivia To Be Happy. And figuring out a new Game Plan. One that’s gonna make me Happy, without sacrificing myself for others (bad, bad habit of mine!).

So that’s what’s been going on for me, in so many words anyhow.

In other news…

• While it’s not a huge HOORAY but perhaps a HooRay moment… I have finally found some permanent (for now) work. In the digital media industry but quite outside the usual sorts of companies I work for, I guess. Which is both good and bad. Let’s just call it a lifestyle choice, which means it’s not the most highly paid job in the world, but it’s damn-well-stable. And right now, I need a bit of Stable. Actually, I need a LOT of Stable. So it’s good for that, and also for being near some of the more beautiful beaches you can visit in Melbourne (without driving and hour or two south or south-west around the bay).
  It’s good-ish, but not what I really want to be doing. And yet, I don’t feel like I’m selling my soul by taking this job, so that’s an improvement, yes?
• And… still hunting down places where I can set up yoga classes. Not as easy as you might think!!
• Speaking of butter, I think I might have finally perfected making my grandmother’s coconut biscuits. Quite a simple recipe, but awesomely delicious, too. The trick is making sure you cook them not too little, not too long. Juuuust right!
• Miss Kitty (Cleopatra the Cat) has been in the wars and also in my wallet, getting in some kind of cat fight (we think) and had quite a close shave really with a BAD bite in one of her back legs. Poor meow! For her troubles, she was awarded stitches, a drainage tube and the weekend spent at the vet’s practice.
  

  A cone-headed kitty

  She’s been in the plastic cone since it happened. The drainage tube came out last Thursday and this Thursday she has her stitches out and the cone comes off! Thanks Miss Kitty, I really, really could have used that $550 for you know… getting by until I get paid. But whatever! I’m just glad she’s okay now (almost back to her normal self).

• YAY for next Monday! I’ve been paying attention to my intuition which said Get Thee To A Kinesiology Session! So on Monday evening I’ll be seeing Kerry. (Can I have another YAY?) It’s been a while since my last one.
• I am almost back to normal in terms of my desire to write more. The introspection phase is passing, and it’s been wonderful.
• From tomorrow evening I have a yoga-ish house guest staying for two weeks. She’s a fellow Shadow Yoga student and she’s visiting from New Zealand. I offered to billet her because, well why not, eh?

~Svasti

Plans not resolutions

Tags

Ayurveda, dance, decorate, fitness, gardening, Health, Inspiration, joy, kirtan, New Year's plans, New Year's resolutions, Retreat, Thailand, Yoga

I went a little nutty last night. In part, I blame the fluey cold I’m slowly recovering from. But also, I blame that song that is apparently still haunting me on occasion. Haven’t heard it in ages, but yesterday at lunch I wandered into a supermarket to buy some pistachios and what do I hear? Yup. That dang song again! I’ve been hearing it for two or three years now, whenever big change is happening or about to happen. *looks around suspiciously*

I got home and had a sudden fit of de-clutterisation. Okay, that’s probably not even a word. But I’ve been living in my apartment for just over a year now and truth be told, I hadn’t really finished unpacking. My second room which is currently my practice room (I know it sounds fancy to have a room just for yoga and meditation, but it’s not exactly a very big room, okay?), has had crap piled up on the eastern wall pretty much since I moved in.

So I sorted the things I needed to throw out from the stuff I needed to find a place for. I was ruthless! There’s a couple of pieces of pseudo furniture in there, too: a small filing cabinet and my little sewing machine bench/table thingy. Plus a box of books and a whole bunch of other stuff I’ve simply neglected to assign to a cupboard or other storage spot. And I do have plenty of that, at least!

After several hours (where did the time go?) I had much less stuff in my practice room. The filing cabinet has been re-homed and I think once the books are gone, I might just have to deal with my sewing machine living in there. I’m cool with that… I’d also managed to free up some space (as yet unused) in the wardrobe in my bedroom and I even found more clothes and daypacks I don’t need that I can donate to charity. Somewhere along the line, I ended up with a lot of daypacks!

All of this has to do with one of my plans for 2010, so it’s good. Very good. I’m not trying to like, distract you here. Or myself. In fact, last night I was very focused. Not bad for a recovering sickie.

Anyway… like I said a couple of posts back, I don’t really like the word “resolution”. It’s too loaded and generally speaking, when people make New Year’s resolutions they often don’t last.

So instead, I like the idea of New Year’s plans. I figure if I can work out what I want to do, I can make a plan. And plans are things I can put it into action. Also, a “plan” sounds more like something I intend to do than a resolution.

And really, it’s kind of exciting because like many things for me right now, it’s the first time in years that I’ve even thought about making real plans for myself! Ending up in yoga teacher training last year was a bit of a happy accident – it’s not like I thought it through.

But this year… I feel like I might just have possibilities.

And so without further ado, I present my current list of plans. Some things will change for certain. They always do. But for now, this is what I’d like to make happen in 2010:

• Daily practice – yoga, meditation & pranayama. It’s time to build and explore.
• Continue with group personal training sessions for cardio fitness and being social.
• Build my jogging up so I can once again do 5km easily.
• Start teaching yoga classes and continue throughout the year. Current plans are to approach HR at my work and see if I can run a class in our boardroom. For starters.
• Continue studying Shadow Yoga (which might be the next YTT I take on). Next week, I’m doing an immersion: 5 mornings in a row of 6am classes. I can’t wait!
• Retreat in Thailand in October/November – It’s the final retreat in a seven year program we’ve been doing. Yup, seven years of spending 2-6 weeks a year in retreat. Except for last year, when we had a bye.
  Special note: this year is open to non-students. We just started doing that last year. If you’re interested, let me know and I can send you some information.
• Investigate all different kinds of yoga – I want to experience as many different styles and teachers as I can! There’s always my Guru and everything learn with him. I love Hatha and Shadow Yoga, but I want more! So I’m going to visit a range of studios to see how other teachers do it, and what else might resonate for me. To kick things off, in February I’m going to the Mark Whitwall weekend that Nadine Fawell is organizing.
• Get an MRI for my shoulder – that dang bike accident is still bothering me and one of my friends in Sydney very sensibly suggested I get an MRI. I simply don’t think of those things…
• Find a local Ayurveda doctor – I’ve tried a couple down in Melbourne but haven’t found one that I really like. Yet.
• Lose weight – seriously all the yoga, cycling and personal training I’ve been doing has not helped me lose weight. I tend to think it’s a side effect of depression and I know if I keep up the consistency, it will happen. But for now, umm… still working on that.
• Learn to cook better – I don’t have a great attitude about cooking just for myself. And I don’t think of myself as a good cook. Those things have to change. I’m thinking of cooking courses, and simply inviting more people over for dinner. I have cookbooks and perhaps if I create situations where I need to cook for others, it’ll start flowing a little easier for me?
• Travel before or after retreat – maybe see more of Thailand or go to Laos or Cambodia?
• Date/find a boyfriend – doesn’t have to be the love of my life, though that’d be nice! Just y’know… some practice would be good!
• Get real with money – It’s not something I’ve been great at, but I’m on a saving/cost-cutting adventure where possible. Less eating out, less erroneous spending. More saving money so I don’t end up broke the other side of retreat.
• Get more joy in my life every day – finding more ways to invoke happiness for myself. The following points are all directly related to this! Not that some of the above mentioned aren’t. Especially yoga, of course.
• Stay involved with the kirtan group – I love what’s happening there.
• More involvement with the writing group – I haven’t been to another writing group meet up since the first one. Shyness is part of it. So was having almost every weekend taken up by yoga teacher training!
• Do a bike maintenance course – learn how to do more than just fix a flat tyre for myself!
• Course to learn to write a novel – I feel like I need some structure and support there.
• Do some dance classes and/or head out to some salsa nights – I love to dance but it’s been a long time since dance was a regular part of my life. That soooo has to change!
• Decorate my house MORE – including framing some prints that’ve been waiting for EVER, re-staining my bedroom furniture, making some curtains, and decorating my practice/yoga room (hence the de-clutterisation, folks).
• Experiment with gardening – I’ve only ever grown a few herbs and this year I’d like to try growing some veggies. Cherry tomatoes, lettuce, snow peas etc. Nommy things to eat. 🙂

Yeah, so that’s sorta it for now at least. There’ll be edits, new additions, deletions and I’m sure, things I haven’t even considered yet. But it does feel good to be starting the year with some idea of what I’d like to do with myself…

~Svasti

Yoga retreat notes & good news

Tags

Depression, Happiness, Homa, Mudra, PTSD, Reincarnation, Retreat, Sanskrit, Thailand, Yagya, Yoga

Feels like an absolute age since I wrote a post, but actually it’s only been a week (didya miss me or what?).

I’m finally back home after a very wonderful break. Got in last night, actually.

And I realised, last week was the first time I’ve actually stopped doing stuff (non-stop) for six months – since I got back from Thailand.

There was the Great Job Hunt for a couple of months there… then a month of schlepping a long distance commute once I actually had a job (bus plus two trains) to work every day, from my parents’ place in Suburbia-Urbia to the city.

Then there was the house hunt, then moving, Christmas, unpacking for a good two months and finally… a week of bliss, hanging with some of my very good friends, studying things I like studying. Ahhhhh…

There, in a large double story house in western Sydney, we had little to do but hang out together, focus on our studies, meditate, do yoga, cook, eat and swim. Very relaxing…

Did I mention I was surrounded by people who love me? People who’ve known me for years, fellow students of my Guru? [grins]

So, besides relaxing, what did I accomplish? Well…

• I’m now confident, when faced with a page full of transliterated Sanskrit, that I can pronounce (most of) what I see. I can break it down, sound it out and figure out how it goes together. I can work out the meter it’s chanted in too, for the most part. I even know the meaning of a bunch of said Sanskrit words.
• I can perform puja with sixteen upacaras (offerings). I’m not 100% brilliant yet… but well on the way.
• Not to mention yagyas/homas (fire ceremony) – especially with my brilliant new sruk and srva (offering implements) carved from Jack fruit and all the way from Bali (brought back by one of my friends). They’re cool – the sruk is ‘female’ and the srva is ‘male’ (photos to come).
• Oh! And you should see my mudras (ritual hand gestures)! I mean, really!! We learned around twenty or so… and lemme tell ya, it aint easy. Fingers are generally pretty stiff (mudras are yoga for fingers) and given my entirely undiagnosed dyslexia… well, when you’re trying to work out which finger connects with another… hmmm, it can be challenging. But by the last day, I’d finally conquered ‘denhu’ mudra (cow mudra) – the most complex of the lot!
  And before you ask, photos of mudras will be later this week…

Now, for the news!

Then, while I was up there, only logging on once a day or so to check emails… I got the email I’d been waiting for.

I was accepted into a certificate level Hatha Yoga Practitioner training course!

Hooray!!

The course can be done as a one year certificate, but it’s also the first year of a two year Advanced Yoga Teacher Training course.

So, it’s a step towards my goal of attaining yoga teacher qualifications, which is important in a number of ways.

Ideally I want out of working in my current industry. Actually, I’d be happy if I could do that part-time and then teach yoga and belly dancing part-time as well.

There was a time, many years ago now… where I made a decision. I abandoned my hippie/arty lifestyle in favour of earning some decent money. I’d struggled on not much money for a long time and bit the bullet.

It was the beginning of working in the corporate world. A place I never felt very comfortable, but which afforded me all kinds of opportunities – study, travel, and finding my way into my current line of work.

I’m part way there, having left the realm of the corporate world (with no plans to return); I’m now working in small business as a consultant.

But having emerged from the worst (I hope so anyway) of my depression and the deathly grip of PTSD flashbacks… I want to make another choice.

Happiness.

I want happiness. I want to do work that speaks to my heart and soul, and that’s aligned with my spiritual path. I want to love my job, not just like or tolerate it.

Because I’m tired. Of doing things for other people, putting my own needs second to other things and people. Y’see, if I’m happy, then I can serve others so much better!

Life isn’t meant to be so hard. We create our own suffering, feeling we ‘have’ to do certain things. Because society, family or friends expect us to. Because we’re told that’s how life is.

Well, I say screw that.

My theme for 2009 (if I had such a thing, and I don’t really) is something like taking the reins. Taking control, cutting through the bullshit, and bringing more peace and joy into my life.

Coz damn, regardless of whether there’s such a thing as reincarnation, we only ever live one life at a time.

I’m determined to be of service to others, to bring my external and internal worlds into alignment.

And regardless of whether anyone else is, I’m planning on being proud of the life I’ve led…

~Svasti

Resurfacing…

Tags

Retreat, Spirituality, Thailand, Yoga

Why hello!

My last night in Bangkok before flying home and I thought I’d pay my blog a little visit. Thanks to those who’ve been coming to read it whilst I’ve been away.

Until I’m safely back home, I wanted to share this lovely view with you – its the view from our yoga hall towards the east. The cloud cover over the mountain is the most beautiful thing, revealing and obscuring the massive size of it. The view is something that looks like a movie set, its so perfect.

So, I’ve been on retreat for four weeks and many things have changed. Many remain the same. And I’ve had a week of absolute joy in both Bangkok and down south on an island called Koh Semet. I have much to tell, many insights to share.

But for now I beg of you to enjoy the view I’ve been breathing in for the last month. I hope it brings you some inspiration as it has for me.

Namaste 🙂

~Svasti

On Sabbatical

Tags

Meditation, Retreat, Sabbatical, Thailand, Yoga

Namaste!!

For the next 5 weeks I’ll be overseas on my yearly yoga retreat, and possibly not getting the chance to post very much.

I still have so many stories to tell, but right now I have other things to take care of. It seems I’ve been doing alot of things for other people for the last few years. And its time for me to take care of me. If I  get the chance, I’ll sit down and type up the varied stories percolating within, waiting to take form in prose and poetry.

I’m going to a very remote part of Thailand. My yoga school formed a company and bought some land there to create a retreat center for our purposes and its very much not a commercial venture. Its located in the far north east of Thailand. There’s no address, no running water or electricity – just a dam and bucket showering. We do have some bamboo huts apparently, but its camping and roughing it all the way (yeah!). And plenty of fruit trees. As well as meditation and yoga, we’ll be working to build a few more of the structures we need – there’ll be a group of at least 50 of us yogis and yoginis.

So please enjoy the previous posts I’ve written til I next get some time to find my way back to a computer.

Hari Om!

~ Svasti