Food P**rn/ Body Treatments

Asia is a rather spiritual place. Bringing the essential three  (body, mind, soul) /careful here, should I say the four (body, mind, soul, spirit) in balance, is nowhere as easily attempted (plus now and then succeeded) as here, since the birthcountries of Yoga, Ayurvedha, Meditation etc. are all in Asia where I have been travelling in on and off the past year.

I have been really enjoying to focus on experiencing how it feels to treat the body well regarding in what foods it takes in, indulging in traditional massage- and body treatments in one of the many blissfull spas and whitness the effects, this physical pampering has on the whole well-being, in body and in spirit.

Alert- eco-hipster-phrase: „My body is my temple“ actually IS a mantra worth striving for.

Since I´m a sucker for food (Yes, I actually stare at food sometimes like a starved kid from the 3^rd world country) I couldn´t help myself and had to take pictures of most of the meals I had so far (lucky you, I´m not on instagram joining the horribly anoying look-what-I-had-for-lunch-today cult).

Here are a couple of impressions of the menus I have come across here in Bali so far, easily done at home too, btw.:

• raw almond, fig, banana, raw cacao, flax oat soymilkshake
• cucumber, babyspinach, papaya, honey & fresh coconut water shake
• lavender water (spring water with organic lavender aroma)
• ginger, aloe vera, lime, honey, mint + soda
• babyspinach salad with beet, carrot, green onion, tofu, crispy tempe, freshky grilled seeds, with tahini dressing
• fresh fish (mostly barracuda, red snapper) in traditional balinese marinade with local vegetables and rice (sounds simple, is the most delightful barbercue you could ever imagine)

I have been trying a couple of different spa treatments- as they vary in quality (trained staff etc) and in facility (hygiene, flower decoration, service) they offer wonderful treatments, listen to this and try to stay calm:

• Traditional indonesian body treatment, famous javanese lulur: From secret traditional recipes from the ancient Javanese, a blend of turmeric, ginger and other spices are rubbed on the whole body to exfoliate the skin, followed by milk moisturizer, a favorite amoung the locals.“
• Bamboo treatment: „Warm bamboo treatment combination with Balinese, Lomi-Lomi & Herbal massage techniques, this deeply relaxing massage treatment will promote wellbeing, relieve stress, tension, simulate blood circulation and provide an unbelievable relaxing spa experience.“
• Hot Stone massage: It is a speciality massage that uses smooth, heated stones. They are often basalt, a black volcanic rock that absorbs and retains heat well. It is a deeply soothing, relaxing massage. The heat helps tight muscles release.“

Before you go plunder your fridge now, here a some impressions. Kiss on the lips, farewell.

Declaration of indivuality / Bali, you beautiful pearl

Recently I have recieved quite controversal reactions to my writing. I want to make clear, that this blog is for all those of you who care about me and are interested in what I experience throughout my travels, but it´s also a personal journal for my own use, a graphic and literal reminder of my experiences for myself. As you can tell, I don´t really filter what write here, you are welcome to follow this blog and recieve what I share with you. If you feel offended in any way or do not agree with my lifestyle I shall kindly suggest to put your own house in order first, before you judge people around you. If there is one thing we don´t need in this world, it is narrowmindendness and judgement, right? 

There are many different paths to follow and each one is the right one if you chose it for a right and healthy purpose. But make a choice, every day, every moment. Being aware and alert, living in the present- that´s what it is about, in my humble opinion at least.

I decide everyday to live to the fullest. I take any oportunity that comes my way that seems to be enriching my life and giving me a new experience (may it be fun, hurtful, beautiful, ugly, deep, easygoing and shallow, heartopening, mind opening or whatever the case may be). I learn from all those experiences and everything I do is for the purpose of personal and spiritual growth- that may include substance abuse, personal relationships or foreign cultures.

I truly enjoy my travels and love my life right now, I hope you feel the same about yours. It may be very different to mine, and there lies the beauty in it.  Diversity is a good thing, lets start not judging people and their choices, stop hating, start embracing, ya´ll. YOLO. (I´m honestly digusted with myself that I just used that term. If I had used hashtags too, I probably would ask someone to shoot me now.)

... So that was my own little private declaration of freedom. Have to go, busy sipping on an ubudian organic latte.

I have been in Ubud now for a couple of days and I am overwhelmed with the beauty. Bali is 90% hindu, yet the religion here is a very special form of hinduism, influenced by animism. Ancestral culture and the traditional believe in spirit and ghosts is still practiced here in everyday life. Sacrifacial offerings for example are to be seen everywhere. They put flowers (mainly frangipani, champaka and lotus) in a very lovely arangement into banana leaves and put them infront of the houses, on the street and infront of all the many shrines and temples. The scent of flowers is in the air, the sound of dabbeling water from fountains is a daily soundtrack.

These past days I stralled down the market, bought shitloads of presents since they are selling the most wonderful essential oils here and I hiked through the ricefields which are to be found everywhere outside Ubud, the scenery is unbelievably beautiful! Of course I got lost in the jungle and went off track- I find that flaw of mine becoming a quality though since I get to see things I would never come across if I stuck to the roads and paths suggested. :) I totally enjoy being alone for a while. Not talking to anyone and just following my gut where to go is meditative to me. Pure piece and bliss. On my way through the rice fields I met a couple of farmers who turned out to be the sweetest people. I like to get to know people on a different level, talking to them not for economical reasons („buy this, very cheap my friend, special price for you!“) because to me this is getting to know the culture and the country I am in. In India for example I ended up talking to one of the girls selling jewelry on the beach- I turned her down but offered her to hang out with me anyway, she ended up telling me about her life and how her parents arranged her marriage when she was 14 eventhough she is secretly in love with another boy. It´s just those stories of those individual people I love to hear, that is much more worthy to me then any sightseing one can do.

Psychedelics and Trance

Goa, you are quite something. I came there for the Yoga teacher program and left with a new found respect for trance music. Since my ankle was still strained I unfortunately couldn´t participate in the yoga course. In the beginning I was pretty frustrated because the YTT was the actual main-reason for me to go on this journey in the first place, but now I feel like it wasn´t supposed to be and maybe there will be another opportunity coming my way to do the course, who knows.

I love music and I´m a sucker for electronic music, trance though, was never something I enjoyed or even listened to. I went to my first psychedelic trance party at club west end (it´s actually a huge villa in the middle of the jungle, 2 levels and open air) and I didn´t like it too much. Being sober, trance to me sounds like machine gun- schranz, it doesn´t catch me in any way. It´s cold, aggressive and way to fast. I like proper techno and oldschool house music. You can only imagine how  trancy 140-160 BPM make me feel then. But I have to say, there is so much more to psy trance then it seems to be- at least when you´re on acid. We went to shiva valley, swallowed a paper and that night I „understood“ trance (it´s like reading some foreign language riddles and understanding them for the first time). Once I´ve taken the LSD my brain opened up to another frequency and my body instantly knew how to move to the music now- which it definately did not before- and a whole new acoustic world opened up to me. Its almoust like, all these psychedelic melodies and sub-rhythms are hidden and once you´ve taken the acid they are revealing themselfes and the music starts to sound so much more three-dimensional, even soft and tribal.
Since I was intoxicated I didn´t really trust in my power of objectice judgement when I felt watched by that indian guy. At the end of the night it turned out though, that he was really stalking me, following me around wherever I go etc. Lucky me my friend took me home, the freak even followed us on the scooter on the way back. 

So Goa didn´t let me go with a yoga teacher certificate but gave me a new found love for rave festivals and psychedelic trance music. 

Monkeys want bananas

I arrived in Goa 3 days ago and instantly got sick. I had a fever, was freezing although it´s crazy hot outside, slept for 20 hrs a day and havent eaten in 4 days either. Maybe I´m biting off more than I can chew and ask to much of my body sometimes, since it´s giving me such clear signs to slow down all the time.

My whole body felt so sore because all I did for the past 3 days ( and actually the whole flight from BKK to goa with an over night stay at the airport) was sleeping in very uncomfortable sleeping poses or hard matraces. I´m used to move and practice, so now I feel like I need someone to literally pull my limbs out of my body. Today was the first day I could actually walk without my legs feeling like weak spagettis so I went for a walk and found an ayruvedic massage place. OH wow that was exactly what I needed. I am a very bodily person and I´m a true believer, that our body gets depressed when It gets not enough physical attention. So go on lovelies, at least give each other a big hug. :)

Crazy Goa! Noise, dirt, noise, colours, noise. I knew India would be a challenge since it´s my first time here and I´m completely open for radical experiences. There is one thing though I can´t handle- the indian men and their way of treating women. They are watching me like a piece of meat and not even make a secret out of it. Blowing horns, bawling, staring at me like I´m an ufo that just landed on their planet. At first I turned into a defiant streak and strolled down the streets, making direct eye contact to every person that came my way and stared at me since I assumed, my confidence would scare them away. Well. It didn´t. Covering up my body in saris from head to toe and looking submissevely on the ground to avoid any interpersonal connection is not a solution either, because it´s not in my nature to do so. I hope I will figure out how to deal with this rather soon, because it makes me feel very uncomfortable, even eye-raped at some point. I totally understand that this is not a beachy place somewhere in Thailand where people walk around in their bikinis all day long. But I won´t make an effort to hide my feminity just to feel „safe“ and a little more invisible to those men either. Actually they remind me of a monkey chasing a banana. I don´t want to be your banana though, dear indian man. I will never be a banana, and especially not yours!

Letting go

This week has been sort of an emotional rollercoaster for me. When I strained my ankle I was forced to slow down and take it easy regarding my practice and bouncing around through my days as usual literally speaking which was a piece of work for me. My body healed quicker then expected though (I´m sure all the support and caring from so many lovely people here did some magic on the healing, too!)

I was still glad that I „had“ to extend my stay on the bay. She just seems to not let me sneak out every time I try and I am more than happy to follow her demand since this is one of the places for me that make me want to stay „just a couple of days more“ and then a couple more, and more...

It takes some time to really get comfortable all around and settle in, make this actually a home. And when that is succeeded, its impossible to leave.

So this week seemed to be packed with the lesson of „letting go“ and „not having expectations“. Last time I was here I partook in an Ayahuasca-Ceremony and although I had a lot of respect before doing it and I was actually scared as hell to do it, it turned out to be one of the most sincere, profound and fulfilling experiences I have ever had in my life. (true dat, I´m such a drama queen but it´s actually just like that.) They say, Ayahuasca is the mother spirit, working on the mind-area, Peyote in contrary is referred to as the grandfather, focussing on the heart-area.

When the opportunity was presented to me to participate in a Peyote-Ceremony this week, I took the chance. It did not turn out the way I wanted it to, but I guess that´s exactly what my lesson was supposed to be. (so, yeah, no further story about a hallucinogenic experience at this point, sorry babes).

Some personal situations showed me to stick to my truth and actually speak on it, even if it wont make a difference (but it always does) So after being a cry-baby for 2 days, wallowing in „why do I travel alone and why am I so lonely and why am I the saddest girl in the world“ I decided to turn it around into something positive and communicated my thoughts and feelings to the people they referred to. Weight/off/shoulders/big time.

- Oh hey, world changing news- I cut my hair. I´m such a unicum now, I have an undercut.

The Bay of love

Travelling last summer I was blessed to be situated on the beautiful and wonderful island of Koh Pangan, Thailand. I had an amazingly intense time here and when I decided to go on this journey I instantly knew that I would have to come back. I won´t be talking too much about the bay of love as it feels like it´s one of those special things you can´t put into words without missing out on the essence of it.

So I packed my stuff, took a boat and returned home. Since the first time here was something sacred to me I told myself to not expect anything and just go with whatever will be, but still I had a little spark of anxiety that my first-time-experience would be crushed (yes, I know, it´s getting cheesy now and might sound like this is the promised land where honey and milk flows in the ocean and immortality grows on trees...but, let it be, I just love it).

After a couple of minutes after I arrived I instantly ran into Jason, one of my favorite people here (I love you J!)  and many more of the fam are here too.

I practiced yoga everyday and felt my body getting stronger and more flexible each day. It felt great to wittness the physical changes so quickly. Well, then I thought since I´m so zen now and super trained and wise I can also get up and go party (!). So I did. In the morning I had the brilliant idea to jump off a cliff into the ocean, strained my ankle and had to go to the hospital. The crazy boy took care of me and made sure they wont amputate my foot or something like that - (he also made sure I was nutritionally in balance by feeding me free candy on the surgical table, thanks B). Everyone here is being so helpful and supportive, I could not wish for more. Hopefully I will be able to do the yoga teacher program as planned. However, for now, all I can do is sit around, eat too much of the most declicious food and have faith in my ankle to heal as quick as possible.