Right here right now

I never thought I would say this but it is too hot. I long for crisp mornings and fresh air. It has got dramatically hotter here over the past two days and I have been practising yoga like a demon and probably not drinking enough water. I managed to find pattern paper and am going to spend tomorrow cutting patterns. Woooooo hooooooooo hoooooooooo!

Its one of the things you dont think about when you go somewhere on holiday, how does it actually feel to go about daily tasks in the tropics? Shopping for groceries, having to wander across town in 40 degrees and the mid day sun looking for a plug adaptor, what happens on the days you cant justify having your business meetings on the beach.... Its not all fun and games.... (well most of it is and in comparison I would still choose this but you do find yourself longing for the cooler season - its coming).

Today the realisation that has kept rearing its head into my conscious is the question are we all on a path? Have you considered that might be the case for you? Events might seemingly have no rhyme or reason that you can see however they lead you to a place which is absolutely where you need to be?

I realised today that I almost came to playa with a girlfriend in 2008 for my birthday! We never made it, we went to Thailand instead for a pretty hideous ten days of food poisoning and conflict of agenda. Regardless I found myself here in 2010, and since then it has kept pulling me back. I clearly need to be here right now. This seems like more than a coincidence. It has made me wonder if other things have conspired to get me here too... were they just happenstance? or is this my path? Part of my journey? I guess the real question is - does it matter? I am right here right now and I love it - that is more than enough.

Fake it til you make it....

I finally feel as if I have got my blogging voice back. Perhaps as I have felt unsettled, perhaps because so much has been happening and has changed I have felt recently as though I have lost my voice, or thought pattern, or something....Tonight has been the first time since I got here when I have actually felt like blogging.

Its Sunday night. I am sitting outside Starbucks with a venti vanilla soy roiboss latte (possibly the most ridiculous name for a milky cup of tea I have ever heard). Its balmy. HOT. No breeze. I am breaking a sweat just typing. I am on 5th (the main pedestrian drag here), children are running past playing, I can hear about six different songs playing from different restaurants and about the same number of conversations. Its sensory overload in the way you only ever really get in Latin America, which makes it oddly easy to concentrate on this and hear myself (as long as I don't get distracted or bitten to death by mosquitoes it should all be fine).

For the past few days things have been falling into place. Clicking. I am fitter and stronger and the yoga is getting easier. I have more energy. I am inspired again by the things I want to do here. A girlfriend and I are discussing starting a playa bikini line - something fun, simple and bright and cheap enough that you can buy a bunch of different tops and bottoms in a load of different colours. A playa bikini line for a playa girl and lifestyle. I AM INSPIRED. Everywhere I look and everything I touch is getting me excited. I want to start to make some beach cover up dresses - mainly because I have nothing to wear and cant find anything I want to buy. I presume I am not alone. Watch this space.

This week the occupation of wall street has hit the press. Who knew there was such animosity? I know this is a delicate subject but I do think it's one to be discussed especially as its a lifestyle I have rejected for one that is less conventional and more subversive (is that the right word?) perhaps alternative is what I mean. There seems to be a tremendous misconception that everyone who works or worked for a bank was greedy and exploited the system and caused the financial crisis. This is not the case. Most people who worked for banks were largely unaware of the situation in 2008 and have been tarred with the sins of a few. It's grossly unfair. More recently the sovereign debt crisis has been caused by politicians and their poor fiscal policy - not the bankers at all. Its the lack of basic knowledge of the general public that causes them to lay the blame on bankers. Get your facts straight. Understand what happened and what's happening before you protest. It just causes all credibility to be lost and the legitmate points that are being made by these protesters are lost in the banker-bashing speel. It saddens me. Also the jealousy and miserlyness of the general public towards bankers annoys me - most don't live hugely glamourous lives. Most work hard and have worked incredibly hard to get to where they are, dealing in concepts that the majority of people can't and couldn't dream of understanding. They get paid a TINY amount in terms of what they actually earn for the banks and moreover, the money trickles down. I am ranting. I didn't want to post about this. It's very interesting to see it from the outside. Note to self: must work harder at new age yogi detachment.... a LOT harder....and actually why am I so upset and defensive about this? Guilt?

So thinks have been clicking into place. I am starting to get a life here. Meet people. Feel like I belong. I am terrified of putting down roots until I have established the business though and a clearer idea of where I want to be and how things are going to work. Its actually interesting to observe. It seems like the more I am able to detach from things the more things work out. Better than I could have planned or thought of. Have you ever noticed how when you have let go of things, be it relationships, or expectations, the people come back to you, or situations work out? And some how faking the detachment doesn't work - I find this last point especially annoying as I am REALLY good at faking detachment about a situation.... even though I still REALLY care about the outcome. Reality check: perhaps I am not that good at faking it actually, perhaps and more likely, my friends are just kind to me...? (Answers on a postcard please.)

Today a person came back to me, or started to. A relationship that ripped me to pieces, spun me around, wrung me out, like being sucked under in the surf in a white out, so that when you eventually get out it takes a long time before you can figure out which way is up, how to breathe again, how to stand. One that dominated my life for two and a half years and caused so much destruction it beggars belief. I have moved on. I love the person. I care about them still, but actually for the first time, I am so happy with my life I don't mind what happens next. I am ready just to let it happen. This is huge for me. Detachment. It's beautiful.

And thank you to all my friends who are generous with me when I fake it.

Standing on one leg with my arms in the air - balance?

I am not just standing on one leg with my arms in the air here.

I seem to be distilling here. Stripping back the non-essential bits of me. Hardening in some ways and softening in others. Perhaps I am just getting back into balance? I am certainly calming down. Worrying less about nonsense.

Its hard to know what to write about. So much changes here on a daily basis. So much is still fresh and unusual. I really need to figure out how to post pictures on to this. It seems to be the season of the white butterfly here these days. They have been flying everywhere for the past two days and seem to cluster, like blossom, around a red blossomed tree that lines the streets here. Then for some reason they die. These pure white corpses on the road in stark relief. They look so pure somehow against the tarmac.
(I mean clearly they die because they procreate, but it seems so sad that the life of something so lovely is so brief.)

Its funny but the yoga practise is changing me and more interestingly perhaps the foods I am craving. All the foods I usually crave I no longer want. Cheese - errrr - yuk. Coffee no thanks. Sweet things - not that interested actually. Instead I want vegetables and rice (which I used to HATE).... What is going on?

I am meditating. ( I know). Once a day. One of the things I love about playa is you can go out to a Ministry of Sound night and Hed Kandi on the same night and then get up and do yoga, meditate and listen to the gita on the beach.... It seems like such a contradiction and so extreme but perhaps this is what balance really is? Or at least one way of starting to find it again....

INTERNET NOT WORKING - NIGHTMARE

Hot nights

Its a hot night in Mexico. I should be studying some asanas and reading about heart opening, instead I am posting. I wonder why I am resisting?

Its hard to find my writing groove here too. I see so many things on a daily basis that I could write about, but its all so diverse and different its hard to know where to start. Perhaps its a sign I need to go internal to some degree and try to write about what's going on with me, but the truth is I hardly know myself. The yoga practise picks me up, stretches me out, turns me upside down and spins me around my centre so much I find myself barely able to walk let alone be able to string together a coherent thought process.

It has struck me today that for the first time in my life there is no real plan. I am not sure how I feel about this.

Its all relative....

I am sitting at Starbucks typing this as the wireless at home isn't working. I have felt very frustrated and hard done by as a result. Deeply pathetic - actually I have been frustrated and in a bad mood all day, I think because of the yoga a lot of my emotions are coming to the surface. I am certainly starting to see the physical differences caused by the regular practise.

I stomped home from the beach - if you can stomp in flip flops (?) - to get my laptop to bring it down here. Before I went into the house I saw noticed something I have seen before but today was the first time I processed it. Outside my apartment block there are three bins, comparatively small for the size of the building... the same size as the domestic ones people have on their drive way in the uk.... and they are nearly always empty. According to the useful information provided by the property company they are emptied daily. This afternoon I saw a poor looking man going through them. This is the second or third time today I have seen someone from another part of town rooting through them. He was pulling out anything that looked remotely edible and any cans he could find - they get tiny amounts of cash for all drink cans. It was a hard and fast reminder of the disparity here between the well off and the poor. Its very easy to forget. Playa is a nice, albeit americanised, seaside town, its affluent, and safe. Its easy to forget how poor some people are here. I am never going to look at those bins, or for that matter my rubbish and what I waste and throw away the same way again, let alone feel hard done by because my wireless isn't working.

Change, once it starts to happen, happens in a million different ways...

humbled.

Blogging has fallen by the wayside since I have arrived here. It would be easy to pretend its because I am too busy but thats not the case. Don't get me wrong. I have been busy but I think the real reason has been because I have been brought up, close and personal, with a lot of feelings and emotions I usually try to ignore and deny.

The yoga is changing me. I am fighting it. I am changing notwithstanding. It seeps under my awareness, somewhere in the sweat of the practise it gets into my pores. I feel it softening me. Its the best way I can describe it. I am calmer. I am learning how to detach from a thought.... not easy for me. I am becoming kinder. Really kinder, not just trying to be kind but actually being it. I am not sure if this makes sense. Its the only way I can describe it.

Everyday in yoga I witness a miracle happening. It's not something anyone could ignore. One of my fellow students on the teacher training had a stroke two years ago and was paralysed down the left side of her body, completely paralysed. She comes to class everyday, twice a day and practises with us. She stands with the wall on her left as she is still not able to support herself and she practises. She trembles. Shakes. Modifies the poses. Slowly and with deliberation she moves the limbs on her left hand side into position. Actually, she grapples them. They resist. She fights harder. I dont think I ever understood the meaning of determination before I saw her practise. Its awe inspiring. She is younger than I am and beautiful. One of those girls who before her stroke would have been intimidating. She says she looks back on it now and says that she needed to be humbled - no one, especially not her deserves what she is experiencing. She humbles all of us everyday. We stand by her in class shoulder to shoulder all of us anxious, wanting to help, afraid that she might fall or hurt herself, but all we can do is watch. Just to be completely clear on the extend of it, she can walk - slowly and dragging one leg - I suspect this is fuellled by pure determination rather than anything else. She can walk upstairs to the studio, but it takes her half an hour. The other day she fell over in class. BOOM! She was on the floor. Ellen rushed over. Terrified. G, the student, looks up at Ellen overjoyed. Ellen is shocked. G says its the first time in two years she had FELT something on the left side of her body. The numbness is retreating.

How can I not change when I am witness to this?

I watched a class for the first time this week and fell asleep through most of it, but woke up at the end when everyone was in Sukasana - corpse pose. It was the friday night class, my favourite one, its a consolidation class, everything you do in the week seems to slide into place within your body and make sense in this class, it always feels very calm and tranquil at the end. This friday night, instead of lying on the floor with everyone else I got to watch. The lights were dimmed, and a roomful of strangers lay with their arms outstretched and hearts skyward. All different. Each with their issues. All with their worrys and concerns. Yet for five minutes all completely vunerable and at peace. It was amazing.

I confess I came here rather cynical about the yoga and what it can do. Everyday that cynicism retreats. On Friday night, I sat there and watched everyone rest and cried like a baby. I am not a cryer - its just not who I am. I couldnt help myself. It is one of the most amazing and beautiful things I have ever seen.

I am incredibly lucky to be here. The miracle of my life that is mexico and yoga unfurls itself infiltrating my heart, asana by asana, guitar chord by guitar cord.