Como o Yoga transformou nossa viagem..

Antes de começar a expedição eu já praticava Hatha Yoga. Há 5 anos comecei perceber a diferença no meu comportameto depois das aulas, alguns anos depois, no meu comportamento diário.  As práticas de respirações junto com as posturas e a meditação trazem um olhar distinto para o mundo, um olhar essencial de si mesmo, que pode ser simplesmente traduzido em paz.

Quando busquei pela primeira vez fazer yoga queria preencher um  vazio no meu peito, vazio que não conseguia entender o que era e nem de onde vinha.  Mais tarde acabei ficando frente-a-frente com ele e tive que tomar a importante decisão de enfrentá-lo.

Depois que você encontra uma paixão é muito cruel deixá-la de lado. Então no meio da nossa viagem, quando estávamos em Barcelona e tínhamos que decidir qual seria o próximo destino eu só conseguia pensar na Índia.  Em fevereiro de 2014 lá estávamos nós!

Confesso que o choque foi drástico, difícil de se aturar como ser humano. Por diversas vezes queria gritar e voltar para minha casa (se gritasse talvez nem eu escutasse o som da minha voz!). Se você conhece o norte do país deve saber do que estou falando, se não conhece vale a pena a experiência. Na Índia está uma das grandes feridas humanas do mundo. O sofrimento  e pobreza têm endereço.

Nas andanças em busca de Yoga e novas experiências encontramos o Shri Kali Ashram, no sul da Índia, em um vilarejo tranquilo cheio de praias maravilhosas  chamado Galgibaga. A Índia tem seus contrastes!

Chegamos no Ashram com o objetivo de ficar um mês em imersão praticando yoga e meditação, no fim ficamos 4 meses trabalhamos como voluntários e nos formamos professores de Yoga do sistema Kaula.

 Por quê?

A cultura tradicional indiana é maravilhosa e basea-se na felicidade de cada ser, pois acredita que cada ser que habita este planeta é divino em sua essência. E o Yoga tradicional chamado de sistema Kaula busca florescer e alimentar sua essência através do equilíbrio do corpo e da mente. Então, o objetivo passa a ser o florescimento da sua essência como ser. E quando você vive em sua essência é natural ser feliz, simplesmente por aproveitar cada segundo da vida vivendo-a.

Como?

O sistema kaula é uma combinação de posturas (asanas), respirações (pranayamas) e meditação através de uma sequência fixa milenar, no qual cada asana trabalha para o desenvolvimento do asana seguinte construindo a força, movimento e relaxamento necessários para equilibrar sua  estrutura  física, seus sistemas imunológico, endócrino e  circulatório e também os aspectos psicológicos da sua mente.

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O Yoga tradicional ayurvedico, assim como a medicina chinesa, acredita que quando você relaxa você permite que sua energia vital (prana) percorra os pontos de energia do seu corpo causando o equilíbrio natural. No sistema Kaula a meditação acontece ao longo de toda a prática, não somente ao final da sequência, o que ensina  seu corpo a relaxar em qualquer situação, mesmo que não confortável inicialmente, dentro e fora da aula. Além disso, o Yoga tradicional não é baseado na competição, tanto a competição com os outros quanto a competição com você mesmo, pois quando você está competindo é normal você querer fazer mais do que seu corpo pode naquele momento, causando lesões. O sistema Kaula respeita os limites do seu corpo, pois acredita que cada ser é diferente em estrutura, saúde e experiências de vida, então, cada pessoa passa por um processo diferente para chegar ao equilíbrio.

 Depois de viver e aprender tudo isso não dava para ir embora daquele lugar sem querer compartilhar com o resto do mundo esse sistema. Começamos a compartilhar o sistema Kaula como voluntários em Darwin (Nightcliff foreshore) na Austrália, durante 2 meses. No início tínhamos cerca de 5 alunos, e na nossa última aula eram 20 alunos. Para mim essa experiência ligada ao Yoga, mais uma vez, transformou nossa viagem, principalmente, pela sensaçãomaravilhosa de poder compartilhá-lo apenas porque acreditamos nele, de fazer pelo outro sem querer nada em troca e, também, por confirmar que o sistema Kaula é realmente rico para outraspessoas assim como é para mim.

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Um dia ainda quando estava no Ashram, na prática da tarde, eu entrei no estado meditativo profundo, mistura de sentimentos e cenas passageiras que não se traduziam em nada, mas era uma viagem interna para algum lugar que eu nunca tinha ido antes, um lugar pouco explorado e com medo de ser encontrado. Depois que voltei, a partir daquele momento eu sabia que eu estava me descobrindo aos poucos, que esse vazio dentro de mim podia ser preenchido, e nos dias seguintes descobri que poderia preenchê-lo com perdão e amor. Sim, somos seres errantes, mas somos divinos e quando aceitamos este fato é impossível não querer amar sem limites, essencialmente, a nós mesmos!  

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John Lennon’s Semi-Sensical Poetry and Prose, Illustrated with His Charming Drawings

Subtle critique of culture’s hypocrisies, wrapped in bewitching gibberish.

There is something singularly heartening about famous creators with secret talents, about discovering such little-known delights as William Faulkner’s Jazz Age artRichard Feynman’s drawingsMarilyn Monroe’s poetry,Rube Goldberg’s political artLiberace’s culinary zestHans Christian Andersen’s sketches, and Flannery O’Connor’s cartoons. Among them, unbeknownst to many, was beloved Beatle John Lennon.

In His Own Write & A Spaniard in the Works(public library), released to commemorate Lennon’s 70th birthday with introductions by Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono, collects his offbeat poetry and prose along with his charming drawings.

Lennon’s whimsical, semi-sensical writings fall somewhere between Lewis Carroll and Gertrude Stein. He has a particular penchant for unusual wordplay, inventing nonsensical twists on familiar phrases — “a goodbites sleep,” “one upon a tom,” “all of a surgeon” — inevitably leaving the reader to wonder whether there is a deeper meaning, perhaps a postmodernist or surrealist message, or it’s simply linguistic gibberish for the sake of diversion. Paul McCartney writes in the introduction:

There are bound to be thickheads who will wonder why some of it doesn’t make sense, and others who will search for hidden meanings.

“What’s a Brummer?”

“There’s more to ‘dubb owld boot’ than meets the eye.”

None of it has to make sense and if it seems funny then that’s enough.

Still, underneath the amusing and often perplexing writing lies a subtle undertone of cultural commentary on society’s hypocrisies. Take, for instance, the beginning of “Nicely Nicely Clive”:

To Clive Barrow it was just an ordinary day nothing unusual or strange about it, everything quite navel, nothing outstanley just another day but to Roger it was somthing special, a day amongst days … a red lettuce day … because Roger was getting married and as he dressed that morning he thought about the gay batchelor soups he’d had with all his pals. And Clive said nothing.

To Roger everything was different, wasn’t this the day his Mother had told him about, in his best suit and all that, grimming and shakeing hands, people tying boots and ricebudda on his car. To have and to harm … till death duty part … he knew it all off by hertz.

Lennon’s intentional substitute of “harm” for “hold” paints a portrait of the dark side of marriage and all the pain that can live under the hood of this cultural institution masquerading as pure bliss (which Susan Sontag so grimly termed“an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings”), and his use of the word “duty” calls out the misguided mechanism by which dysfunctional marriages continue “to have and to harm” (perhaps, as Sontag observed, because such arrangements are “based on the principle of inertia.”)

Or take this short poem, titled “Good Dog Nigel”:

Arf, Arf, he goes, a merry sight,
Our little hairy friend,
Arf, Arf, upon the lampost bright
Arfing round the bend.
Nice dog! Goo boy,
Waggie tail and beg,
Clever Nigel, jump for joy

Because we’re putting you to sleep at three of the clock, Nigel.

Much of it, however, as McCartney points out, is simply fun — which is more than enough.

THE MOLDY MOLDY MAN

I’m a moldy moldy man
I’m moldy thru and thru
I’m a moldy moldy man
You would not think it true.
I’m moldy till my eyeballs
I’m moldy til my toe
I will not dance I shyballs
I’m such a humble Joe.

In His Own Write & A Spaniard in the Works is weird and wonderful in its entirety. Complement it with Yoko Ono’s equally delightful poems, drawings, and instructions for life.

The Day I Realized I Forgot to Travel (and How I Learned to Remember)

There was a time in my life that I forgot to travel.

I was a recent university graduate working hard at my new job in the advertising industry. Long hours turned into longer days, which became endless weeks and quite suddenly, it was a new year already and my office manager was telling me I had a pool of unused leave days that were about to go to waste if I didn’t take some time off.

Sound familiar? Sadly, it’s not that uncommon for a lot of working people to not make full use of their annual leave days, some even see it as a sign of dedication to their job, and boast about how little leave they take in a year. For me, every unused leave day represented a lost opportunity to go somewhere and a step down the slippery slope to being stuck in the rat race. When did I start becoming one of those people? It was just a much-needed wake-up call, that I had to do something about it before it was too late.

Jac in Fushimi Inari

What lies down that dark path of not travelling?

So it wasn’t much of a Eureka! moment or a thunderbolt life-changing epiphany – I quickly realized that I didn’t need to make a drastic change in my life – I often marvel at these inspirational stories of other brave folk who chose to walk away from cushy lives to pursue their dreams, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I was pretty happy earning a steady paycheck and being around my friends and family, I just needed to figure out how to work more travelling into my current way of life.

The problem really boiled down to the fact that I had always travelled with someone else, whether it was family vacations or trips with my friends, and that I usually left the planning and details to them. My lack of travelling in recent years was partly because I couldn’t match work-holiday schedules with family and friends as easily as before, and without a trip planner to push things along, I had been content to just let time go by.

Jac in Liwa Desert, UAE

Why trips with friends rock – You just don’t get such epic photos without your friends around!

It was then I made perhaps the most important decision – that no one was responsible for my time but me, and i had to take charge of my travels. Instead of waiting for people to help me out or for timings to miraculously match up, i had to be the one to move everything into the right place.

The only ways to surmount that was to plan way in advance, or go on my own. The thought of solo travel had never really occurred to me before, but the more I thought about it, the more plausible it became – I was a healthy sensible 20-something year old adult, if so many people can do it, why can’t I? I had to try at least once in my life to see whether I could do it or not – a thought which is now a motto I live by.

The opportunity came when I landed a new job and found I had a week free before starting in my new role. With such short notice, there was no way to find someone else to come along with me so I decided to go on my own – I booked a week-long trip to Seoul with no agenda other than to explore the city.

It was quite an experience being completely on my own, in a foreign place where I didn’t speak the language. I found myself free and untethered, wandering at my leisure, going where my mood took me instead of where someone decided we should go. I stayed in touch with family and friends through the occasional email, and I made new friends in unexpected places, by speaking up when I would usually remain quiet. I learned that I valued my privacy most and I could live with shared bathrooms, that I really did like looking at old buildings and scenery, but was quite happy to compromise on good food with a convenient cheap meal.

Jac in Seoul

Making my first friend overseas and bonding over touristy things in Seoul on my first solo trip

Cliched as it may be, solo travel is a the quickest and best way to figure yourself out – what makes you tick and what you can do without, and I wanted to learn more. It’s also freeing – I could go where I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted, without worrying about what anyone else thought. My next resolution then was to take at least one solo trip every year – I’ve since spent a week in Vietnam, taken a jaunt to Munich, and visited Dublin and Prague, all in the name of personal adventure and self discovery.

My friends often express envy at my travels as if they were something extraordinary, but all I can say is that it comes down to making that choice; that I hold a full-time working job like almost every one else, and if I can enjoy a life of fulfilling travel without having to give up much of my current lifestyle, there’s no reason why you can’t either if that’s what you’ve chosen to do! It’s why I created The Occasional Traveller in the first place after all.

Jac in Munich

You get creative in taking selfies when you’re travelling solo!

Many people might not have the luxury of that choice due to their circumstances, or some simply just don’t prioritize travel the way I have, and that’s perfectly fine too. But for those yearning to go somewhere but haven’t already done so, my only advice is to just go do it – if you really want to, you’ll find a way to make it work!

Right now with the new year and a new set of leave days, I’m making plans for my next holidays, some with friends, and some on my own. I’ve had an inkling to try longer term travel, so maybe that’s something I’ll plan for in the long run. One thing I know for sure though – I’m never forgetting to travel again.

BIO:

Jac The Occasional Traveller

Jaclynn Seah is The Occasional Traveller, a Singaporean girl and deskbound wanderluster with a full-time job, who hopes to remind other working professionals like herself to get out and travel more. Find her over at theoccasionaltraveller.com or on FacebookTwitter and Instagram

Jaclynn Seah <theoccasionaltraveller@gmail.com>

 

 

Via The Planet D (an amazing travel blog of a couple traveling the world for many years)