Yoga, pinky toe and sarcasm.

This place couldn't be a more perfect setting to try out some meditation and yoga. The ocean, crashing against the rocks. The choir of birds serenading (or the cacophony of birds screeching..take your pick). The perfectly temperate weather. The zillions of trees shrouding you away from the rest of the world, except, of course, for the window to the ocean. Then there's Strider - the resort dog that comes to every yoga class and stretches out on a yoga mat while you get your downward dog on. And the food here is so healthy and delicious. Even if it wasn't - the fact that my yoga teachers are usually around when I'm eating is enough to make me pick the muesli and yogurt over the pancakes (and even those are stuffed with bananas, yogurt, dates and palm sugar syrup). Except I didn't care who was watching when I had coconut & palm sugar crepes with ice cream for dessert.

So - to fill you in, I'm spending my first week in Sri Lanka at a yoga retreat, at the southern tip of the island. Every day, it's a 6:30 hour-long meditation session followed by a 1.5-2hr yoga class. Then, a bit of delicious breakfast. A leisurely walk on the beach. Read a bit. Grab a light lunch. Read. Take a nap. Go for a dip (ocean or pool, your choice). Then go for another 1.5-2hr yoga session. Write. Eat dinner. Fiddle around with a stray guitar. Read. Ward of mosquitoes. Sleep. Repeat.

It's kind of ridiculous to be spending all this time and energy on just me. Particularly when you've just spent the summer seeing extreme poverty on a daily basis, and tried, in a very small way, to put your two hands into helping mitigate the affects of it. Yea, no - it is ridiculous - I recognize it. Lavishing so much time, energy and money on myself. So, I'm acknowledging it, and recognizing that I am so incredibly blessed to have the privilege of - even having the option - to invest in something that I think is important for my wellbeing. And the abundance of papayas is just an added bonus.

So far, I'm doing okay with this whole mind, body, spirituality thing. I'm really trying to keep an open mind about this, and trying to go beyond the physicality that is yoga. I mean, sure, during meditation exercises when my instructor tells me to breathe into every part of my body and awaken my cells, in my head I'm saying "hellllooooooooo! How's it going mr. pinky toe? Helloooo ms kidney, looking fine this AM!". I know, I'm a dork even inside my head. And you thought it was just for show.

But overall, even through all the mushy squishy 'feel like water, move your body with the flow of your breath, use your inner eye like a torchlight in your body'…I sort of get it. I doubt that I am fully realizing the exercises my yoga teachers are imparting on me just yet, but at the end of the class, and each day, I feel more centered. I feel more content. I feel more connected and aware of my body. I feel like there's just a bit more of me that I understand and like. I definitley feel more trippy and spacey after each class. As my wonderful yoga teacher said when I told her this, in her lilting, hypnotic voice…"yea..just go with it".

Don't worry people - my sarcasm inner eye is still intact and functioning. And it's looking right at you.

Dip in Dhaka

The week that I left Porto, after a wonderful six-month experience, I remember it rained trucks full of buckets. A friend told me jokingly that the city was crying because I was leaving. But I had such an extraordinary time there - growing, making new friends, learning about myself, flexing my strength in discovering things on my own - that I wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, the city would miss me just a smidge. Years later, I don't want to go back for a visit, because the city has such wonderful memories for me, and I don't want to ruin them with older and perhaps less romantic eyes.

 

This past week in Dhaka - the last few days of my 2.5 month stint in B'desh - it's just been a constant torrential deluge...but I know this city is not crying for me. Dhaka is an intriguing city. It's not that it's a hard city like New York or Delhi. Nor is it a warm city like Vancouver or Cape Town. The Lonely Planet describes Dhaka as a "giant whirlpool that sucks in anything and anyone foolish enough to come within its furious grasp". But I don't think it's that either. Dhaka is a city with a big hearty, betel-paan stained smile. If you can look past the bad dental work, you can plainly see that it's a beaming, genuine smile. It might be laughing at you, or with you, or a bit of both, but at least it's heartfelt. And for a city that has been fighting an uphill battle against poverty, over population and climate change for decades, you got to have respect for the resilience of that smile.

 

So, alas, Dhaka isn't crying for me…it's just giving itself a good rinse in preparation for the next migrant that might dip her toe in the waters.