Gratitude

I went to bed last night with an intense feeling of gratitude. I started this practice in San Francisco as New Year Resolution. Before I fall asleep I would go through the day and acknowledge all nice, positive things that happen to me and I was grateful for. A quick scan through a day. It could be a real small, tiny thing or serious of things that made me feel good on that particular day. Believe me, as shitty as your day could be there is always something brighten then the rest of the day. Don’t wait for big invents, changes, a year break with round the world tour to happen to feel good about your life. Find your happiness in your daily routine. I can ensure it’s there! Anyway this practice was great and helped me a lot to appreciate even more my time in SF. However somehow it fade away until yesterday.

Today is a last day of our retreat, so the boys have decided to go out last night. In yogin world “go out” means go for a vegetarian pizza which is already extravaganza as there is cheese in it, so a break from a vegan diet. No alcohol of course and back home at 11ish as there is a meditation at 7am. It’s not like anything else is forbidden, but if you take your practice seriously you do feel a difference. Yoga is all about a clear body, clear mind practice. We girls have decided to stay in to make the chocolate ice creams. No sugar, with real cacao beans and frozen bananas…so good!!!! Papaya ice-cream with fresh fruits were on the table as well. All natural, made in less than half an hour….so good!!!! What happen afterwards was just a magic.

9 girls have decided to go to swim in the ocean. “Skinny dipping” is a new expression I learnt yesterday:) It was about 10 pm, so dark with the first quarter moon and lots of stars. Beach is few minutes walk from us so cheerfully, after the right amount of ice creams we went out for our adventure. The ocean was so kind to us. The waves, which recently have been so huge that enable you to swim during a day, came down for that night. The water was warm, gentle and just perfect for our swim. Imagine 9 completely naked girls goofing around in the water. Paradise for any man to watch ha ha We dive to find a plankton that glows blue under the water when it’s dark. It’s there! We sang, we did a water half-moon pose, Dirty Dancing routine…just so much fun and lightness was in the air.

When I was laying in my bed, I scan my day from start to finish and I was grateful for every single minute. Maybe I did not appreciate enough each moment when it was happening, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve acknowledged the magic of that day in the evening not on my deathbed if you know what I mean.

We continue a celebration mood through day but that’s not an end of my Hridaya Yoga journey…

As mentioned before I rent my cabana for a month so for another 2 weeks I think. Very early  I recognised that this is a perfect place for me to dive again deep inside of me. “when student is ready, the teacher appears” kind of thing. If you ask me what is my passion? I would tell you I have passion for life, passion for people but more than anything I love self-discovery any type of practice. I love taking off layers, after layers and look through them. I don’t think it’s common but I don’ t care. I said I wanted to be free. Freedom for me it’s life without self-inflicted suffering, the drama that we created in our mind, assumptions that we often made what people feel, think about us. What he, she said or didn’t say, did or didn’t do…whatever. We cannot read in other people minds so all scenarios that we are playing in our heads are only imaginations, and our pure assumption. I’ve been working on this for a while now and I made a tremendous progress. I cannot change anybody, but I can change the way I react towards an events, actions, words of others. I choose to stay balance and continue to work on myself.

On Friday I’m staring 10 days silent meditation retreat. Yes, you’ve read this right – a silent retreat. For 10 days you stay in silence, and deal with whatever your mind wish you to deal with. Actually you aim to shut down your mind, and open your heart. You still surrounded by people, it’s not like you locked anywhere. You can go out if you wish but…you don’t talk, you minimise input/noise of life, maximise output/true self I guess. It’s 6 hours of meditation a day, one lecture, one yoga class and all from 7 am until 9.30 pm. If you want to read about it here you go Click me! In this case you won’t find me on FB, you won’t find me here. I’m removing myself from any distractions of modern world just to be with me. I cannot imagine any better gift I could get myself or anybody else then this. No expectation at all…wish me luck!

ps. I bet you expected 9 naked, gorgeous girls in the ocean pictures. well, no!:) Instead I will share pictures from 3 different markets I visited during my stay in Oaxaca city. These were in towns outside so my day trips. I’ve never got a chance to write about it so here it go. Enjoy!