Here I am in my beehive style bangalow in Goa, India on my break between classes and lectures of a yoga teacher training course I decided to take.
When I signed up for this, I thought I knew what I was doing. I was looking for some meditation time, some yoga practice and more spiritual knowledge I guess. I was looking for a place and time and especially the means I guess to help me center myself, bring me back to my innerself, hoping it would help me in my journey and this constant struggle I've been going through trying to figure out what I want and what is happiness.
I'm just over a week into the course (which lasts 4 weeks) and so far all I found was pain! And a frog in my room...
Jokes apart, I think I might have taken a step way too big for my legs coming here. And even though yoga is all about acceptance - I will not lie, I'm seriously struggling.
For starters I'm physically not fit enough for this, which doesn't help because I get easily exhausted and sore. On top of that the daily meditation, breathing exercises and asana practices are having much more powerful effects on me that I would have ever dreamed of. And more often than I wish, I find myself very emotionally unstable and frustrated.
So as we finished the morning practices and lectures today I came back to my room thinking whether or not this really made sense. When I took off all I was looking for was a chance to step away from the hectic life I was leading, relax and enjoy myself. And I thought this course would help me lead into that direction.
But it does not seem to be doing that at all, especially the relaxing part of it!!!
It is however taking me further down that very slow and painful path of self discovery - and in an unvelievably high speed.
And here is one of my first realizations.
I thought that by just escaping the lifestyle and environment I was living in, I would automatically get rid of most of the things that bothered me.
But it's not that simple.
True that I don't have to care now about what is happening to the FTSE indices and share prices of different companies. Nor does it ruim my day if some world leader made a negative statement about the economic outlook or a rating agency decided to donwgrade the sovereign risk profile of any south European countries.
I don't have to worry about if and how that can potentially impact the market and the company I worked for and have an agreed speech with top management about how to answer that question.
I don't have to care about ANY of these things that I believed were my sources of stress.
Yet, I still feel somehow stressed and tense. Biggest proof of that being that my neck and shoulders continue as stiff as they used to be when I was working in the office.
Now who can explain that?!?!?!
I've spent some time over the past couple of days thinking about it and I still don't have an answer.
Maybe we internalize the stress so much to the extent that it becomes usual to live under such circumstances. And when the "original" sources of stress disappear, we find new ones to replace them so that we can remain in a "comfortable" and well known place.
Or maybe we just have that stressfull characteristic innate to us.
I don't know.
All I know now is that things will not get sorted and better overnight as I had hoped it would.
And that getting out of our comfort zone - no matter how bad and stressfull that comfort zone may be - is extremely difficult.
And in this particular case also quite physically painful too!

Letting go is much harder than it seems

I never thought it would be easy, but guess I never thought it would be so hard.
It's very difficult to explain and I'm not even going to try to put my feelings into words because I know it's gonna sound pathetic, won't make sense and will not adequately reflect what it should.
But I'll give you something easier to see and understand, which is very real, as an example of it all.
My suitcase!
I initially was planning to bring a suitcase I had at home and a relatively large carry on - after all it's things I need for the next 6 months or so.
Then I started realizing I didn't really NEED anything, and I should be practical and bring along with me as little as possible.
So I picked a small backpack as my carry on and bought a convertible backpack to be my suitcase. For those of you who have backpacked before, mind you this is actually a big backpack, fits 80 liters.
As I started emptying my closets and boxing things to go into storage, I separated the things I would initially like to bring along on the trip. At this point I already knew that as little as I managed to separate I would have to cut it down and re-pack a few more times before taking off.
And I did.
But my mistake was that I never really tried fitting everything into the bags until the very last minute. And on the morning of my flight, guess what?
I had too much.
In the rush of the moment, I panick packed. I opened up another box to go into storage in which I just kept throwing things randomly, while I secretely prayed that I wouldn't think of those items at some point in the trip and regret not having brought it along...
Of course, I still didn't manage to fit everything and a small foldable bag that was supposed to be only used towards the end of the trip as I started accumulating new stuff I would get along the way, left the Netherlands full...
I looked like chaos in person when I got to the airport.
But checked in the backpack and the yoga mat (forgot to mention that earlier) and still had my purse, a backpack and another bag with me as carry on.
Arriving in Dubai, after I picked up my checked in luggage I felt like one of those bag carrying donkeys. And trust me it was pretty heavy to carry all those bags around.
I drove to the hotel determined to unpack and repack everything, leaving a good chunk of it behind.
Tomorrow I leave again to India. Will once again have to do the bag carrying saga.
I unpacked and repacked.
Guess how many things I managed to get rid of?
A small mirror and a little free sample bottle of eye cream...
This time, there was no panick packing. I just really NEED everything.

So you're thinking, what does she have in her bags that is so damn important?
The answer is not a lot actually. And I do know I don't need half of the stuff. But I just cannot bring myself to let it go.
Not yet at least.
So long story short:
I decided to be patient, and give myself some time and space to get used to this "new lifestyle".
Eventually I'll learn to let go. Either by overcoming the psychological barrier. Or by being physically exhausted of carrying so much weight around.