My yoga friend and I checked in to paradise. She is swimming lazily around in the infinity pool overlooking a river. The cicadas are playing, and the river, too. Swallows hunt for bugs between the trees in the sun. I might give the Balinese Jamu health tonic another chance to become a friend of mine.

If this trip could have one spiritual theme it seems to be a first kick towards a goal of wellness and health. While here I have become aware of how my injured mind has injured my body. I have needed time to slowly get used to living with the pain of the past, and to stand up with its weight. Now I need to learn how to walk, despite of the past. It is not about “letting go”; rather about “living in spite of it”.
Yesterday night at a Tibetan bowl meditation session we conducted a heart-opening exercise, offering up all the pain and anxiety in us and replacing it with something positive. Letting the first thing that enters be acknowledged. I gathered all the hurt and the memories and the anxiety from every limb and vein and tried to push them out of my body if only for a second. From somewhere deep within me, the word that floated up to fill that vacuum space was “health”. Health of the body and of the mind. If the mind is ill, the body suffers, too. I realized I wanted to become healthy, in every possible way.Some time ago my body put a stop to both a beloved hobby as well as an activity my mind was pushing my body to do. I used to run 10-12 km every other day for years, until my knees literally told me to stop running, according to my ayurvedic doctor. I ran them out some time ago and needed surgery in one knee. No running anymore, possibly never.

My body was wise. I should have listened sooner. But now I practise yoga asana, possibly the best way of listening to my body. And I have heard its wish to become healthy again. I will listen.
(Maya Ubud resort, Bali, Indonesia; September 2016)