Flying Buddha and the Quixotic Autumn

Hi guys and gals!

Hoping that the spring most of you are enjoying feels refreshing and smells delicious!   It's been rainy here too,  but without the promise of hot summer days ahead.  My body doesn't get it.  

The days are getting shorter, yet the flowers continue to bloom. No comprende. 

I'm looking ahead to only three more weeks of classes,  then finals,  then pretty much straight away headed back to the states! 

May is NZ music month.  Check out any of these guys! 

It's probably a little to early to start waxing poetic about how this experience has been,  so I'll save or for a later blog.  In the mean time I'll take note of a few things of varying interestingness.
In my " Maori health perspectives" class I'm learning about the deep importance of family as am aspect of health.  We watched a fantastic documentary about a Maori family with a genetic disorder.  Through very pressing times,  whanau (Pronounced:pheynow) are the well of strength. 

I'm coming to enjoy statistics more every day.  It doesn't come easy to me,  but the examples we use in classes come from real life scenarios,  which is very cool.  I imagine all the ways I could use stats in my own life. 

As always,  food is a favorite subject for discussion.  Purple cabbage is my choice pick veggie right now.  Oh yeah,  I forgot to mention that carrots are very tasty here: always sweet,  never with that bitter taste.  

Is this paleo?! *flexes arm muscle*

I've been taking action to get stronger.  The Rec center offers a variety of free classes every day,  so despite my urge to hermit away,  I just can't pass up the opportunity for free motivation.  Aside from fitness classes,  I went to a Buddhist meditation and also am acrobatic yoga workshop last week. They were both refreshing and interesting!

Proud to announce I was climbing across the wall race champion! 

The only thing better than doing yoga, is having someone else do yoga for you! Heheheh

Flying buddha! 

Wishing you health and wellness in the most robust sense of the term. 
Love,
Darwin

beginning the treat at Villa Sumaya

Propitious Arrival at Lake Atitlan 

We arrived last night, a boatload of scraggly dagglers,  just in time for a miraculously colorful sunset boat ride across Lake Atitlan. Moreover, a sumptuous dinner had been laid across the tables just minutes before our arrival: Chile Rellenos! 

A number of travel snafus had delayed our travel by a few hours. But it was so comforting to be on the shuttle with 5  friends-to-be.  The simple question "where are you from?" rarely has a simple answer.  Thus, my faith in the sheer randomness of life's journey is restored.  The selfish "should-be's" that weigh down a significant portion of my child - like curiosity of the world ("I should have this job,  this partner, know this and that...") do not serve any purpose. As it is revealed that there is no right way to do this life thing, my worries of striving towards those "should be's" is replaced with enquiry into "how to's". 

It comes as no surprise that I resonated with this observation from Anodea Judith in her book, "eastern body, western mind": 

"without grounding we are unstable. We lose our center, fly off the handle, get swept off our feet, or daydream in a fantasy world. We lose our ability to contain, which is the ability to have and to hold. If we cannot contain, we cannot hold our boundaries and build our inner power ; thus, we cannot mature. Boundaries allow the hermitic seal necessary for transformation.      Without boundaries, natural excitement gets dissipated and diluted and becomes ineffectual. When we our ground our attention wanders and we appear vague and insubstantial.

                                                

The healthy establishment of one's ground is the essential work for the first chakra and the foundation for any further Growth. Here lies the basic rights of the first chakra: the right to be here and the right to have what we need in order to survive." (Anodea Judith)

Ashleigh led a beautiful yoga practice this morning. The studio has three fully - windowed walls which overlook Atitlan. Across the lake, it appears that Taos mountain has transplanted itself and gone under the guise of a volcano.  The element of the first chakra, muladhara, is earth, so some of the prompts I found particularly helpful was to imagine my feet and hands sinking into the mud. The muladhara is located mostly in the pelvis, and is the area responsible for grounding. 

Grounding into lake Atitlan

Often times a deficient or excessive movement of energy through this chakra will be compensated with intellect. It is the chakra of feeling the biological reality of existence,  which  is a great way for me to shift my perspective. Some things just have to be felt to be understood. 

Not 4 days ago, I was sitting in front of a computer at a Kaplan testing center in Santa Fe, duking it out in my brain, running full speed ahead in an attempt to garner an impressive score on the GRE.  It is so refreshing to be in a space where it doesn't matter a lick how well my brain can manipulate numbers or choose the most fitting adjectives (that, if used in real life, would be as useful in communication as gurgling and spitting up soda). What is that saying? From Jack Kornfield,s "Little Buddha Companion book":  “In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?” and from the b-man himself: " Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life." (Taken from fakebuddhaquotes.com) <<<funny site by the way.