Ayurvedic Flow

This is a place of healing.  And it's surreal.  Far through the KK forest is a sweet little complex with a family that tends to foreigners via panchakarma.  There are all women here - about 10 with just one man - Krishna Das.  Yes, that one.  He hasn't sung a note since we've been here.  I asked him the one word to help integrate the lessons of India into life in the west:  Ram.  And Love.  I can dig that.

I still don't feel that I'm totally here to be honest.  There is the woo woo bird in the morning accompanied by the birds of the surrounding jungle, a snake slithers across the property at times - could be a king cobra, could be a gopher snake, tigers in the jungle that I haven't heard, but know they're there, the honking sounds of cars in the distance water being drawn from the well, roosters crowing and puja bells and low chants in the distance overwhelmed by the mosque's call to prayer echoing through dawn and sunset.  This is India.  I'm back.  And this time, in a jungle in an ashram for one purpose:  ayurveda.

I arrived two afternoons ago after a travelling marathon that ended with three hours in a taxi that drove through hair-bend turns honking and nearly careening into every passing bus and truck on a one-lane road.  Yep, right back to India.  I calmed myself by sizing up his age of roughly 40 and the ease with which he careened past gigantic TaTa trucks with never a tremor.  There's an art to Indian drivers - truly - honking to let you now that you're coming up behind you, or around a blind corner, or alongside a car, or to tell people or cart drivers that they're about to walk into your line of fire.  I remember someone telling me when I first moved into an apartment near Chinatown in San Francisco that rather than fighting the tide of people bustling through the streets, that one merely needed to surrender to the flow like a river.  My ability to walk through Chinatown without getting frustrated greatly diminished at that point.  It's similar in India - the drivers miss each other within millimeters, it seems, but there's an overwhelming flow (with honking)  to the drivers in this country.  It's nice to remind oneself of that when a passenger on these roads.  Nonetheless, to say I was relieved to get out of the car once we finally arrived was an understatement.

This is my second morning here.  Yesterday morning, I met with dr. Ashwin for an interview.  It ended up being a philosophical spiritual physics talk about life and the expectations that we have for ourselves.  He told me that my sadness is a sign of maturity.  That mature people have sadness because they've experienced so much.  And that my diagnosis is something much larger than me that plays into the vast realm of the incomprehenible.  The more disciplined we come to actually relax into the rhythms of the universe, the more able we are to heal our bodies.  He said that this is a healing place for me and that while he can not promise a cure for my MS nor guarantee that I'll get pregnant, 'we'll see.'  The first step is the commitment and you are here.'  I'm here.  I told him that there must be grace in illness and he agreed - everything that happens is divine interplay.  Do I want to surrender to this flow too?  Is that why the Indians handle chaos with such ease?  Is that why a part of me felt at home when I looked at Indians and smiled at them to receive a soulful and heartfelt greeting smile back.  There is a vibrance, a rhythm, a natural flow here that is like nowhere else on earth.  It's very easy for me to say this from my refuge in the jungle, but honestly, even in the airports there was an ease to which we all related that I truly loved.  It felt like my song and I was dropping into the rhythm with my special instrument.

Ive had two treatments thus far.  Two abhyangas - full body warm sesame oil massages and one ??? of hot herb water poured over my body.  It feels like heaven.  The doctor says I need another day of this combinatin to ground down my energy.  Indeed, my dreams are restless and I wake at 3am and then again at 4:30 am.  My dreams re frenetic and plentiful.  Last night I dreamt that I was pregnant with the baby of a professor who was proud to wal around with me and so very in love with me and the baby.  It was beautiful.  The night before, I dreamt that I had a lovely home.  These are nice dreams, and yet I also have this anxiety when I awake.  The sore throat that I wake up with belies the dis-ease with which I sleep.  I wake at least four times a night with an urge to pee and coax myself back to sleep.  This may be just a term of getting grounded.  I look forward to being there.

My first morning here, three of us went to a puja for a woman named Jen at the  Shiva temple.  She had previously asked the swami for a blessing for her travels and he told her to come back the next day for a puja.  And so we went - she brought a bag of fruit and a bag of yellow flower garlands.  The doors to the shiva lingham encased in the inner chamber were open and the shiva lingham was being washed and oiled and decorated with flowers by the chanting priest in yellow.  Fruits and notes and flowers were offered by villagers before they circled the shrine three times and then did three circles standing in one place before prostrating themselves to the ground, rising and awaiting a blessing - some flowers or pepper on the head - from the priest.  The puja lasted about an hour and the priest chanted the entire time.  He blessed the fruit and gave it to Jen.  During the ceremony, I also circled the shrine, including the adjoining one of Sati.  Here was the place where she burned to death because her father would not accept her husband Shiva into the family.  Legends are that she self combusted in deep meditation or that her father threw her into the fire for her insolence.  Shiva was so devastated that he reached into the flames and took her out, reviving her as Parvati - his main consort who had parents that did approve of Shiva.  Anyway, there was the shrine for Parvati in an even smaller chamber but she was more beautifully adorned with flowers and fruits than the lingham.  I gave her shrine special love because of the great power of women to withstand fire and come out stronger and more full of grace than ever.  Jen certainly felt blessed by India on this New Year's Day and I felt like I was in a dream of sorts.  Not quite grounded.

Indeed, the first day I woke up in India there was nearly a full moon and it was Indian New Year.  Whatever one starts on that day is strongly empowered with intention of the universe.  I tried to meditate that evening, but was still so discombobulated.  In fact, I was HERE in India at an ashram to heal and find grace in the rhythm of the universe.  I was participating.  I am here.  Even though the details of meditation in that moment weren't perfect, I was here.  That's what mattters.  Bit by bit, I recapture my practice...of self love, health, meditation, yoga and ealth.  The perspectives of India that I have are so deeply held by me.  I love this country.  I love this place.  There is something so familiar and healing and inviting here.  I've returned to partake and contribute again, but this time I'm learning to interpose them into my life in the west.  Integration.  Ram. Love.