I'm not enlightened

Here I am, updating my blog on a bus from Stockholm towards south, towards Jönköping.  Last two weeks I have been catching up with friends and family.
Our yoga teacher, Swami Janakananda, gave a suggestion: when people ask about your three month retreat, about Kriya yoga, pay close attention how long to reply. Is it 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes? People loose interest. Don't talk more than necessary.
I don't know how successful i was in this. Always trying to bring out all sorts of different elements from the three months. And in a way its boring, because the reactions are so predictable. "We woke up at 4am" - shock. Out of the pool of 1000 things I pick up a few items and that will forever mold an idea of how the retreat was like in people's head.
Sipping a cup of tea from Myanmar (thanks Kairit!), eyes glued on the screen, I'm having a Skype date with my dear friend Nada from Slovenia. After usual "hello"-"hello", "so glad to see you"-"you too", she, with genuine interest in her voice wishes to know about my retreat. I tell her that I have been talking about it lately so much, that im pumped empty and maybe she can start on her side. With no "oh but ..." she starts with her usual joyous voice to talk and I can listen. Its so great to listen. Its all new and interesting, unknown.  What I have done, is done and becomes natural, normal, so not a big deal. (And still I sometimes talk a lot and loud).
And then when its my turn, she asks "Isn't Kriya yoga something that is only transmitted from a teacher directly to his students? You cant know about it otherwise." YES!! She knows! She knows!!! It was so heartwarming for me that she had clearly searched up some information on her own. Plus its like there is a common base. Easier to have a dialogue.
So I wont describe the retreat here in my blog. How was it useful? It was definitely useful both physically and mentally. Im stronger and more flexible  both physically and mentally. Yes, the mental part, that's what it all comes down to. How do you perceive the world, how do you react, where you channel your energy and for start, do you even have energy?
I will give one example. Spiritual truths are often so very basic, so simple, everybody knows them. But when this common truth finally really hits home, its only then, that it can make a difference. So here comes one thing I went through:
I used to wake up every night to go to pee. I could fall asleep straight after that, so it was not a huge hazard. Also, sometimes it has happened to me in the past as well when im in a new environment. But it has passed. But this time not. Im not drinking more or late at night, so its probably mental. When the sleeping hours shrank to six, i was still getting up every single night. Once i woke up and thought, oh let me check what time it is, maybe its time to get up anyway. It was 11pm. I had slept 45min. Then there were couple of nights i woke up 2 times. I thought to myself "oh come on, this is getting ridiculous".
Now its April, the third month. After 30 days of no break, a yoga free day is coming up. Meaning instead of 4am, I can wake up at 7.50. I slept through the night no problem! Next night - pee. After that - pee again. And so on. Until one week later there is another yoga free day coming. No need to pee. So it is definitely mental. I must be stressed about getting up 4am. Well, that did not come by surprise. I was stressed about it and angry and frustrated when the evening class was delayed. Dont they understand we need to get up at 4???? I need my sleep!!!! Why are they so late every time!!!???
And then, maybe only week and a half before the end of the course, i realised - it really is not difficult to get up in the morning. No matter how tired i might feel at some point during the day, every morning when the bell rings, I actually have no difficulty to get up. It has been like this from the beginning. Easy.
So what happened - I began not to check my watch to determine how late the class was in the evening. It did not bother me. Just chatting with friends in the living room, calm, so cool. I enjoyed my new found coolness. Somebody asked about time (i was the only one with wristwatch) - I could answer with a smile, not a smirk "oh, let me check .. its 21.15"
And then it happened - I slept through the night. Not every night, but several nights of the last week.
Is it a lame example? Maybe  :) But i realised how not waking up at 4 is hard for me, but the idea of waking up at 4 is hard. Once I truly realised its only the idea that is hard, I could let go of it. I enjoyed the evenings however long they lasted. I still wonder though, if a bladder reacts so strong to an idea, to an attitude, what other bodily functions (mind included) are influenced?

Outside of fluorescent lighting

Tomorrow I will take an airplane, then a train and then a bus and if all goes well, end up in Hå in South Sweden. I will give my phone away and start a three month long Kria Yoga retreat in an ashram.

I have left my blog untouched for over a year. This will be a kind of exit entry as together with my phone I will also go cold turkey on Internet browsing, skype, emails, movies, facebook, newspapers, you name it.

How did I come to this?

I suppose the whole last year has been paving the way. 2014 was a great year where I was officially a project manager for 3 months, but had handed over the tasks to my successor and considered coming to the office more for social life. Otherwise I continued teaching yoga and when the office job finished, started to do it full time. Except I didn't really.
I had decided to enjoy my refound freedom and do a lot of travelling, try out new activities, put myself in new situations, take up anything that I found thrilling, interesting, fun, useful and/or challenging. Something every month. Almost.
I started off with a 5 day hunger hike in Estonia in April. 1 preparation day and then 4 days in the woods. No food. No tent. Massive bonfires and a lot of tea. Not alone of course. We were about 22 people. My friends could not believe, that there even exists 11 Estonian MEN that would ever do that. But they are real. So were the women. It was such a great group of people. I had not spent so much time with so many Estonians in 8 years. And I took with me the feeling that moving back to Estonia would not be such a bad idea. Interesting things are happening, fascinating people are doing it. Consuming only tea and no food was surprisingly easy. I was always waiting when is the low point coming, but it didn't. I can already say, that in November, when I went on my second hike, it was much much harder.
In May I went volunteering in Croatia and Bosnia. SEFF movie festival. Riding through the scenic countryside of Croatia and Bosnia and showing short movies and cartoons to kids to raise their ecological awareness. 10 days, 600km on a bicycle. It was fantastic! Except maybe first two days when it was pouring down rain. Constantly. I could see first hand the floods in Balkans. Hotel where we left some of our luggage, put them in the celler and then when the river rose 2m, our suitcases were soaked. Good the windows were not open...
In June I took my mum on packpacking holiday to Andalusia, Spain. Seville, Cadiz, Cordoba. My mum was such a sport that when our first Airbnb host took her, hand in hand, to show where the bus station is while explaining non stop stuff in Spanish, my mum just smiled and went along with it. And it was so hot that by the end of the holiday my mums voice altered. She figured her vocal cords were swollen with the heat. It was fun though. And we have a picture of us praying in the mosque in Cordoba, which I could keep only because I managed to trick the security guards by deleting some other unsuccessful pictures.
In July I went surfing in Lanzarote. One week holiday in a paradise where you can just put the key under your doormat when you leave the house. 4th and 5th day of the surfing were really fun. By that time I had made my unique stand up method work and I could actually give a high five while surfing and passing my teacher. Yeah!
Second part of July I took the chance to soak in the sun in Estonia. What a summer. Heatwave of constantly 25+ degrees for over three weeks. With Jana we wanted to go hiking and chose the furthest possible point from Tallinn. It was worth it. Sleeping in random places such as by a private lake or washing hair in the toilet of the cafeteria of the highest mountain in Estonia. Even took a "city break" and went to see a summertour of some estonian pop artists. Great moments. Astrid came to Estonia as well and we rented trek bikes and took off to South Estonia as well. We chose a route where for 5 days we had no shops. Cooking food on fire, canoying for 2 days, taking moments of silence on the river, and using bio-sunblock and extreme 90% DEET mosquito repellent Ben at the same time. Ben was our best friend.
August was a full month of working. Significant for its own reasons.
September took me to 2 weeks camping retreat in Devon, England. A Buddhist meditation retreat where I found myself at 10pm in the hotwaterbath outside, watching the stars. Inspiring teachers, my favourite tree in the forest, amazing blackberries and couple of new friends I made despite the fact that the retreat itself was in silence.
Second half of October I went again to Estonia and before going to the hungerhike, I went to "meet the dark". One week solitary retreat in a room underground in complete darkness. Once you really are able to look straight into the darkness and let it in, something will change they say. There were some exercises I got with me that I had to do which did turn out to be fascinating and revealing...Think back each year of your life and remember 2 most important events/things/situations for yourself. Get them in the right order. They don't need to be big events as such, but most important personally. Start from today, think back year by year until being born or as close as you get and then then come back to the present day the same way.
Once you start remembering, its amazing what images and feelings come up. And once the whole picture is together, its fascinating to see if there is any pattern. I suppose there usually is. I had.
And now I know what is absolute darkness. Sometimes it seems having eyes closed is a little bit lighter. Having no light, no time, no reference of time, I still kept the inner clock pretty accurate. I knew when it is night or day, morning or evening. On the seventh day I packed my stuff and was ready to leave. I had just wondered to myself that it probably is about 6PM when they came to get me, it turned out it was 11PM. So I was 5h behind. The few stars in sky were so bright, that I got dizzy and almost lost my balance. Next day was sunny and I remember having breakfast and just looking through the window and admiring how very beautiful everything is outside. The flowers, the trees, the sky, wow.
Second half of November and December were time for Brussels. I read a book from Marshall Rosenberg "Nonviolent Communication" and tried to put it in practice. It's tricky, but I have seen glimpses of how it can benefit in getting from people what you want and move towards understanding what is really behind what somebody said and getting yourself understood.
I was teaching yoga, enjoyed time with people close to me and had a beautiful reflection of the new year fireworks from the windows of de Brouckere office buildings. Brussels authorities guided the late arrivals to the street where all you could see was some faint glow of the city fireworks in the sky on the other side of the building. But the atmosphere was so happy and energetic and I didn't hear anybody complain. It was a great note to start 2015 with.
Last days have included catching up offline and online with many friends. Knowing that for next 3 months picking up a phone is not an option is the cryptonite for postponing. And I can only imagine how excited I will be after 18th of April to see and hear from people I carry in my heart regardless of where I am.

10 days of peace

As November switched to December, the prospect of the coming meditation retreat was already making a positive effect. It's something I had been looking forward to since June. The retreat was lead by an Auzzie monk Bhante Sujato. I had discovered him on youtube and from the very first video took an instant liking to him and soon found him to be the most intelligent person I have ever encountered. At the retreat it turned out there were other "youtube fans", who as soon as they heard Bhante is coming to Germany, booked a place at the retreat. Maybe it sounds strange from distance, but anyhow, he came all the way from Australia to give this metta meditation retreat. Metta means loving-kindness i.e. love that does not expect in return.

So we came there to gradually learn a specific meditation method, do practice meditation in the retreat environment where outside worries are minimized and all the conditions are there to help with the practice. Didn't talk for ten days other than was really necessary, no external stimulus such as internet or phone, ate great vegan food twice per day, went to sleep early and got up early. Every morning he gave a guided mediation and every evening a talk and there was a chance to go to speak to him personally for quarter an hour to discuss on anything you wanted to discuss about. I went every day of course :D Well except of one, because I felt I should practice self-restriction. Though the next day I went twice, so not 100% sure if it counts. But ok, I have no meditation teacher in Brussels and questions do pile up in time, plus questions about different aspects of Buddhist philosophy and so on. So I indulged. Sometimes I did think afterwards that perhaps considering that I think he is the most intelligent person I have ever met, I should come up with more intelligent questions...but then came a new day with new questions.

And so I practiced. More and more. And it is amazing how indeed the mind reacts to the conditions its put in. If the conditions are there for the mind to be calm and clear, it does become calm and clear. The biggest obstacle comes to be your expectations. You have had a great meditation and you want it again. But sometimes you just sit there and that is ok too. Once I told Bhante during the interview, that maybe only 20% of the time I feel the feeling of metta that one is striving for when doing the metta mediation.
- "But you have felt it then?" 
- "Yes I have"
- "How did it feel like?"
- "From one moment to another, suddenly I felt all my body was full of warm energy and light. Charged with this energy from fingertips to the toes"
-"Isn't it amazing that you can feel like that, your mind can feel like that with no outside support whatsoever, just your cushion?"
- "Indeed"

So it is. And it is such a beautiful though that these amazing feeling of warm loving kindness it is always present in us, its inherent, but it's just a matter of tuning in to it. Just finding it. Where attention goes there the energy will flow.
And I had some good meditations. And no one can take that away. Things you know to be true by yourself, you feel it is real, it is true, you see the effect. And as a byproduct, a bit more faith arises. Meditation is such a different, unknown world to most of us, though conversely it's just facing up to your own mind, the mind that you spend with 24/7 anyway ... So when you hear and read about meditation, it's somehow obscure, at least it has been to me, still is...but based on experiences during this retreat a bit more faith, a bit more trust has arisen. There really really is something to meditation and to the values of a spiritual path. To be tested further.

Storm before the peace

As from November, things took a tough turn at work. Responsibilities were rocketing and often I had to face situations where I simply did not know what's the best course of action, how to set up a certain workflow or simply how to use a certain IT tool to deliver what was expected of me. So I got stressed. And I realized this is the test of my yoga and mediation practice right here.Perhaps too much too soon as I developed headaches and felt my heart rate elevated every now and then. But there were also days I could take things with humour and felt I'm in the middle of a game, stupid game as it may be, but game nevertheless. But then I let myself get upset again.

When the week was over and I went to practice/teaching Friday evening and then Saturday morning, then I felt like that weight has been lifted from my shoulders, I feel good, I breath easily. How wonderful. Body feels limber, mind feels calm. And my teaching got better in time too, so that was a great relief. Because in the beginning it felt like im failing on both fronts, but I learned. I did not fail in neither fronts, but was pushed to my limits. Though maybe I ought to raise my limits :) Or actually we set our own limits...well its easy to be philosophical about things.

I thought of all the people who are constantly under pressure at work or in their life...how horrible! I mean if they are not able to deal with it properly yet, like me. What a strange thing to wake up in the morning and have the first thought of an email you gotta write or a development problem, that needs to be addressed? But not in a happy, inspired way, but more as a prospect of doom. Nevertheless I always sat down for my meditation practice, even if it was just to see how the thoughts are crashing hundred miles per hour.

Recognizing I'm yet to learn how to deal with stress, I did what I thought was the second best thing - to pay attention to what the stress inside me is doing to me and also to see if i can catch concrete triggers that cause the heart rate go up and  feeling of resentment come up. I hope I learned something at least. January, when things pick up at work again, will be the test for that. Finger's crossed.

I want to make you sweat...

Sweat 'til you can't sweat no more
And if you cry out
I'm gonna push it some mo-o-ore.

Ahh the classic from the 80s, UB40. 

:D:D

Today that was my goal, to make people sweat. To make them push more, kick more, pull more and stretch more. Today was my first time to give a Bikram yoga class. Well yesterday evening Astrid was so nice to volunteer as well, so we turned on the heating in the living room and I gave her a quick class finishing at midnight. 

Today was a small class, around 8 people. It was a morning class, so not that many people. Evening class can have 35 people.
My teacher Sameer told me, that he is quite tired, so he rather go back to his room to sleep. Anyway I might be more confident in the room without him. Ok, there might be some truth to it, let it be like that. Last pointers and I enter the room. 

I closed the door behind myself, greeted my students, stepped up on the podium and thought "Fuck!". I will really have to do this. I'm really going to give a class. And so I start speaking. First mistake during the second set of the first breathing exercise. Oh well... lets keep it going. How can I turn my voice more confident? Lips are drying, mouth is drying...I have forgot my water bottle. The room is 40 degrees and I have no water and I have to keep on talking... Actually I should be teaching, but i think it the beginning its more speaking, saying the dialogue ("Teach, don't repeat the dialogue" as one of the experienced students told me after the class. Ouch! But well deserved remark and I will get better...one would hope so).

Class goes further. From one posture to the next. There was one exercise I got completely lost what is right, what is left...I cant even remember how I handled that... but then after that it was ok again. Finally, 55min from the start of the class, there is a 2 minute break. I could get out of the class and go and get my waterbottle.

Sameer was standing outside the door "You forgot your water, didnt you". He said he has been listening outside the classroom, Im doing ok. Just keep it up. Ok, I enter the room again. Easier part left now, just half an hour. Wind removing pose, spine strengthening series. I saw I was running out of time a little bit. But then if you only have 8 people and you tell them to turn around and sit on the mat in Japanes style, but nobody has done it yet, you cant really go further yet...I add some motivational speech. Great. Almost over, almost over. Keep the instructions flowing. It's done. It's over. I thank everyone for their great class, namaste, and escape the room my head held high.Deeeeep exchale.

Sameer was there, straight behind the door. He confirmed again that i did well for the first time. He had to leave now to give a yoga class in the European Commission, so I could not get further feedback on my class just yet. I know it was not great, but I'm proud that I managed to get through it and did not get discouraged.I want to get to be a good teacher.

Next week I have 3 classes, unless Sameer will tell me, "Ene, listen, thanks, but....would you mind continuing your yoga practice as a student in the back row, thanks!"

Couple of students thanked me for the class though. One said I was killing him and this is music to a teacher's ears.

Banana chips

I felt a bit weak as I ran over Place Lux to catch a bus 38 to Avenue Louiza where I go for my yoga practice. So I thought I better get a small bite before entering the strenuous 90 minutes practice. I stepped into the little shop on the way to see what they have got. They had quite a wide selection of nuts, dried bananas and that sort of trail mix. I had taken a scoop of banana chips of some 100g, put them in a bag and on the scale and tried to figure out how get the price tag. Shop assistant came to help me out and suggested that I can put other type of trail mix in the same bag. After he heard that this is all I planned to have, he said immediately, that I can just have it.
- "Oh, then just take it!"
- "Really? But.."
- "Yes, yes, just take it. It's a gift. You know, you are new customer..."
He went on asking me where I am from and welcomed me to Belgium. He was from Morocco himself so I welcomed him to Belgium as well.

Halloumi and Tea

It was a dinner party with a variety of amazing food e.g. pizza made by an Englishman and complimented by an Italian (that's how good it was!) and a choice of red vines and white wines and what not. So everyone was walking around with a glass or had it deposited it in an arm’s reach.  

I was talking to a Cypriot guy in the kitchen who was frying Halloumi and explaining me how it is a Cypriot dish with protected origin like Champagne. While I was fascinated by this new information his eyes zoomed in on a teamug on the table “There is a teacup on the table, it makes me nervous!”  That was said so innocently, yet sincerely, I had to smile “Yes, it’s my teacup. I’m on an alcohol-free month”.

“Alcohol free month!?!” a shadow of disbelief ran over his face as his nose took a shape of a raisin.

“Yes!” I smiled and took a big sip of the wonderful Korean tea.