The Body Building

Seseh, Bali, Indonesia.

Today was my second day at Kura Kura. My morning session was yoga with Satya, the afternoon session was Qi Qong with Sahaj. I was too late for surf class but I have booked my first lesson for tomorrow.

First thing that comes up now is that I feel gratitude. I will probably say it a lot more the coming days: there is no way around it and I certainly don’t want to hold it back. It is very humbling to be on the receiving end when 2 people share their gifts generously. I really hope that I can reward my teachers by ‘getting it’ and integrating it in my life.

It is quite miraculous to see how things start to come together. I am now talking about the work that needs to be done by me on a personal level. When I was in Iraq I received the painful news that my girlfriend was breaking up with me. Then a friend from Israeli revealed himself a healer with very precise guidance. On his instigation I watched a movie about a man starting a tantric journey to heal his woman (but first himself). The movie made me realize that I will never have a healthy relationship if I don’t address the patterns that I still have on that plane and that I needed new tools. India seemed not to give me answers until I coincidently stumbled upon a tantra workshop in my last week there. On the second day I had an experience of rising kundalini energy that somehow changed me energetically which surfaced while working with people in Hong Kong. I wanted to learn more about that in Thailand but was disappointed about the school I found. But I learned to let go of expectations and allowed myself to go to Bali. And now things are starting to fall into place.

I am not in love with yoga. I never had a strong attraction because it doesn’t feed my ego. I don’t think I have the body that is needed to become good at it so why bother?

I do it because I don’t want my ego to rule my world so I push myself consciously out of my comfort zone. Since yoga is more or less exactly the opposite of the sports I like and am good at it seemed like a good idea. Until not long ago my concept of yoga was that is was flexing for skinny people. By trying it I discovered that being in uncomfortable positions could produce very positive feelings afterwards.

Not many people know that yoga is a full-blown spiritual path towards enlightenment. It is very precise and very well mapped out. Our body is our vessel and yoga is there for the purifying and preparation of that vessel to become a container of light.

Now I am not only learning this but also receiving a quite clear ‘diagnosis’ what my personal work is. Most people develop roughly from the bottom up: when the lower chakra’s are healthy the higher ones can open. In my case it went a bit different. To go short: I developed a lot of higher stuff but am still lacking a solid foundation. So the goal is to open up and heal the lower chakra’s. I kind of knew this but it is a relief to hear the final verdict and receive the remedy simultaneously. I would not have found this so easy in any other yoga class.

Another insight is that I always believed that taking care of my body, mind and spirit was enough to create inner harmony. So if I train all of these things, I will get there. For the body I need to develop speed, strength, flexibility, endurance etc. The spirit I train by doing meditation. I never realized that the body needs to be trained in a very specific way to allow the spirit to unfold. In yoga training the body is the spiritual path. Satya explains me how our body is a building and how all the different ‘floors’ connect to the foundation.

I am always looking for blind spots in myself. We find the blind spots in places we don’t want to look or where we think we don’t need to look. That my body would be the next place to practice I had never expected. Body building has gotten new meaning to me.