Another month on Koh Phangan

I haven’t written in my blog in ages. No excuse, except I hate typing on my little keyboard.

I have been on Koh Phangan since January 18th. I will leave on March 22. I have finished my Level 2 yoga with Agama. I have to be honest, I didn’t enjoy it at all and it was a real struggle to finish. I was ready for the intensity again, but we only had class 3x a week. The teacher really didn’t teach, we viewed a video of Swami. I could have done the same thing by distant learning over the internet. It has been hard to meet people here as the island and classes are so spread out. Besides, I am one of the oldies. There are only a handful of us compared to the hundreds of 20-30 year olds! I just haven’t fit it. But………..I may consider spending more time here in the future. I could actually run a massage business and live and work here 5-6 months a year.

On another positive note, the island is beautiful and I am getting use to relaxing. I love walking on the beach and wading out to a sandbar and just enjoying the simple pleasures of life. I have gotten into drinking fresh coconut water! This is the island’s main economy besides tourism!

I took a weekend Experiential Tantra Workshop which was loads of fun but a little awkward! I am now taking 10 sessions of Chakra Balancing. It’s given by a Thai woman, and mostly I’m receiving some pretty rare body work. I feel amazing, after being pretty darn depressed for a few weeks. Today I learned how to use a pendulum. I’m so excited about this. It’s scientific magic! Basically we are an energy based universe. Everything is energy. Pendulum work is a way of connecting with your inner self, your innate intelligence. All living matter has ability to sense beneficial or destructive energy. Animal’s sense danger, plants shrink when hostile people walk near them. Our nervous system is like a cosmic computer. But most of us are not in tuned enough to recognize what answers the nervous system gives us. Our mind is like a big radio or television receiver and transmitter. A properly trained person can concentrate on thing, person, object, thought, etc, and becomes in tune with it. The person touches the thing on its own frequency. Nerve cells begin to vibrate in resonance to it, and this vibration has a frequency. The nervous system then translates this quality and causes the appropriate agreed upon movement in the pendulum. You can get a yes or no answer to just about question using the pendulum. They say it takes a year to a year and a half of practice to master it. I am already doing very well with it just in the first day. And have asked it some questions. Maybe all this yoga has done my pea brain some good! Hehe All kidding aside, I have always had a good intuition, but using the pendulum will make it even stronger and more accurate.

I leave the island on the 22nd and will spend a few days in Bangkok waiting on my visa to return to India. I plan to spend a few days in Mumbai, and maybe even do a little massage work there too! Then I am taking a Pranic Healing Workshop for a few days in Bangalore, the IT capital of India. I’ll end up at an ashram near Mangalore, to do a “gau seva”, servitude to the cows for a month. This is a highly spiritual experience! I’ll shovel cow shit, bath, feed milk, massage and meditate with the cows. I want to practice my new learned Pranic healing skills on the cows too! They say it burns bad karma to serve the cows and it helps with psychosomatic disorders and calms the minds and nerves! It’s going o be a hot dirty job but I am really looking forward to it. I know, people think I am crazy! I got so attached to the cows in Rishikesh and I felt a real connection. They would almost fall over when I massaged them.

Then I have a 3-month program lined up at Osho Meditation Resort in Pune. It is an intern position where I will live, work and learn about meditation. Osho was quite controversial and had some wild ideas. Like using dynamic movements, music, dancing, yelling, laughing, and screaming to get the energy out of your system so you can then be at peace and still to meditate. The program I’m on teaches you how to integrate work and play. We were taught early in life that play is one thing and work another. This program teaches you how to be playful in your work! The program radically changes our approach to work and life. I am excited! I will learn new things and the resort will put me to work utilizing my skill sets.

So that’s about 4 ½ months of my 6-month return visa to India. My family and friends ask when I am coming home? The truth is, I no longer have a home!