Switching gears: from diving to yoga and one last week back in Nungwi. For this very week I have hauled my yoga mat around Africa for nearly two months. I could (and should!) have practised during those months, but either the room was too small or the schedule was too packed or the company was too good, or [insert other well-curated excuses here].
The leap from diving back to yoga is really not that great: in essence they are both breathing exercises, with focus on being 100% present in the moment. Mindful oxygen consumption underwater is really yogic breathing: deep, slow, calm breaths, with focus on the flow of breath so one never holds one’s breath underwater.
There is a contrast, though: yoga asana is done with no or minimal equipment, whereas diving is mostly all about equipment that facilitates staying and breathing underwater.
Both yoga and diving are about awareness: that of our own bodies’ capabilities and limits, as well as awareness of our own space in this world. With these similarities in mind, there is an increasing number of companies combining diving and yoga, which to a start sounds random but really isn’t.
And so, this last week I am going back to my basics and focusing on breathing above water, enjoying the open-air yoga shala and the sunset. Every night, for seven days.
(Nungwi, Zanzibar, Tanzania; August 2017)
“Just sit”, the late meditation teacher Michael Stone used to say. “Just sit, once a day, every day. That is all it takes”. But what if there are early morning flights? I am not good at sitting at 4.30 am. And what if when I get home and sit, the cats sit all over me – or alternatively break into mutiny on the other side of the door? What if, when I finally sit, I almost fall asleep? There are days when just sitting is fine. And then there are those other kind of days.
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.
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.
(Maya Ubud resort, Bali, Indonesia; September 2016)
Ubud means green smoothie and light reading before an evening meditation class – every day if I like. And getting up with the sun. It took me 5 years’ worth of summer holidays and a Balinese ayurvedic doctor to understand that my natural tendency is to sleep too much. In today’s busy Western world, we tend to sleep late during the weekends when we can. I thought it was beneficial to catch up on sleep properly during weekends. But the dear doctor I consulted told me that with a pitta-kapha constitution I need to restrict my sleep to 8 hours, 9 hours maximum. And that the best sleep I can get is before midnight – to wake up at 6.30 am, right after dawn.
(Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2016)
One hot day we decided enough is enough. Enough heat, enough dust, enough bustle. Two of us hopped into a taxi, and one of us dared a crazy scooter taxi ride out, all the way through the rice paddies and into the jungle. Because (and this is a secret), there is a little patch of heaven hidden in the jungle. Like this:
We threw ourselves down into a hanging bed – and to our delight they had sparkling wine on the menu. What a rare treat on Bali! And so were the lovely superfood salads. And so was the stretching and pummeling also called a “Balinese massage”. 
The fish swam in their little pond. We swam in our bigger pond, where the water spilled down over the edge, and the jungle crept close.
Not until sunset, when the lanterns in the trees were lit, did we get dressed and return to Ubud. And if you cannot muster the strength to leave this patch of heaven (we nearly didn’t), you can dine overlooking the jungle, and check into a room of your own. Yes please. Next time!
(Junglefish spa, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2016)
“Massage is the simplest form of happiness” the sign proclaims. While I disagree and substitute “massage” with “sleep”, I concur that Bali is the place where one can become dizzyingly blissfully happy in the hands of a good masseuse. Not to mention the flower baths and foot washing and clay masks and jamu tonics sipped wrapped in fluffy bath robes, often in the middle of a lush garden or jungle.
(Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2016)
What is your greatest fear? Is it the fear of losing someone you love? Losing your health? Losing something else? Being alone? Dying?
(Photos from the Oregon coast, USA; March 2010)
This blue marble 