Monday Morning

I found my eastern path.  A friend, Hrimati Fauman, suggested that I try panchakarma with her teacher in India.  I looked into the price - at $40/day, it's quite affordable - and the doctor is highly regarded.  I learned that my yoga teacher, Scott Blossom, and my meditation teacher, Chandra Easton went there for a month of panchakarma with their children.  Their shadow yoga master teachers went there for PK all the way from Australia.  My tantric philosophy teacher, Dharmanidi Saraswati and his wife have gone there for PK from Thailand.  Panchakarma is a cleanse, a detox, a rejuvenation.  It lowers my baseline of toxins that I'm living with, brings back the practice of yoga and meditation and restores my body to its natural balance.  I'm clearly out of balance and before I start copaxone, I'm going to be as healthy as I can then start the western treatment with a thriving body that remembers discipline and follows good health and diet practices.

So...the ticket is purchased, visa application submitted, reservation made.  I am going to the ashram arogyaniketana.com in Karnataka - it's in a forest, unpolluted, isolated, pure.  If Frace is to be found, I believe that panchakarma is the best way to find it, feel it, live it, transmit it.  I sit here this morning with my beloved husband.  This morning, I woke up and clung to him like a barnacle as he slowly shifted into waking mode.  When he awoke, I cried and cried in anticipation of missing him.  'It's our last Monday together,' I wailed.  He smiled and held me.  I knew I was being dramatic, but was so sad to be leaving him for over 40 days.  It's easy in moments like this to forget that the reason I'm going is for my own health.

Now that I've gotten mostly better with some residual 'souvenirs', it would be easy to delude myself that I'll be fine.  And at the same time, the tightness and tingles are like a small army - legionaires- that remind me - 'not yet, not yet - there is work to do' ... and so I return to my health.  I'll bring down the baseline and trust that the practices will bring Grace to all of this.

This New Year's Eve, we went to Mt Madonna in Watsonville.  Baba Hari Dass, my guruji was not present.  He has had a stroke and the onset of dementia.  The sangha did a ritual of farewell for him on New Year's Day.  Five years prior to the day he gave me shaktipat in that very room.  At the time, I was a skeptical litigator who couldn't feel a mind body connection with spirit.  I felt so trapped and angry.  When he gave me shaktipat, I felt light energy go through me and I knew that I could actually tap into something brighter and more vibrant.  I didn't know how, but trusted that if I merged with my pain and kept a strong mind that my spiritual path would unfurl.  Just as he said it would.  And so my path has been unfurling.  Five years later,  it was a complete circle to let him go and thank him within that great sangha.  And my husband got to experience that place and all the love for Babaji - what a blessing to share such a place and feeling with him.  I am reminded to recapture my practice that has languished.  A practice that I first felt possible for me in Babaji's presence on the first day of 2007. He advised in the past that if you've lost your practice, start over as a beginner.

I start over as a beginner.  It's like leaving your home to travel and learn something new.  Its exciting and scary and difficult to leave the things and people that you so love at home.  Yet, I am blessed.  I have had dancing and dining and laughter and hiking with so many lovely friends and family.  I've seen pregnant grey whales travelling south and super pods of dolphins leaping through the air while sea lions jump again and again through the water astride otters feasting from their bellies.  Yesterday, I watched as the wind blew the top of the calm Pacific tides around rocks from on high.  It looked like a zen rock garden with rippled wave around the calm stone.  There is beauty everywhere.

There are great forces that have colluded to get me here:  my mother with her financial support, my cousin with his generous gift of an i-pad mini with which to blog while in India.  He said, 'you're not supposed to write until you're 40.  Now you're 40 and you must write about your life - you do so many interesting things.' And so I will.  Thank you Earl.  Thank you Nancy.  Thank you sweet husband, Matthew Freedman for five zillion wrap-ups to see me through and your undying support.  I love you I love you I love you.