in the meantime...

... I have joined a different gym, only for a month, as i couldn´t really commit to a 2-year-contract for a lot of reasons.
... I tried to go to that gym as much as possible, doing all sorts of classes like Zumba, Hot Iron and Step Aerobic.
... I have NOT lost a gramm of that weight I gained and still feel tortured by having to look into a huge mirror for an hour while doing a class.
... I have tried to focus on the parameter of FEELING good, what always has worked - at least for that glorious moment when you leave the gym, freshly showered, and BEFORE you meet your fridge again.
... I have ordered big amounts of protein powder, toying with the idea of going on a diet consisting of nothing else.
... I have had the first one of those protein shakes and kind of started to rethink that idea.
... I have definetely been obessed about losing weight so much I am wondering how I actually got round to finish my taxes, find a new appartment and get all contracts for that settled, take a trip to Hamburg and to my hometown.
... I have decided I will start a new fitness regime in January, when I come back from Morocco, according to my new fitness hero Tracy Anderson.

I guess I don´t need to explain why. I DO feel like 14 posting this. I AM aware that the title of this blog has somehow tangled up with an interim version like 'get going.lose weight. start over.'

But this is my truth just now, I am aware of the underlying mess, but I have the feeling I need to tidy up the surface just a little to see clearer what needs to be done underneath.

3 years and 10 kilos

I had a personal training session in this gym I wrote about. The trainer made a fitness test. The result was that my 'fitness' age is 27 instead of 30. So much for the good news. I also learned that my body fat mass has increased by 10% (since I last measured it 8 years ago).
And I was weighed. I weigh even more than I thought, I have officially gained 10 kilos over the last year. I could feel my heart beating after I stepped off the scale. Only with a yogic breathing technique I managed to calm down my pulse within a few minutes to not screw up the heartrate evaluation that followed. Thank God.
So I have a goal now. I want to lose this weight again. I will not write about weightloss everytime now, as I surely know that it´s not all about it. But the only word I have in my head is: WHY? Why did I repress the perception of my increasing weight as long as I did? And how did I even do it? I will actually have to buy some new clothes. I am still in too much of a shock to not find that horrifying. The only good thing is that I really like shopping.

back to life... back to reality.

so I am back home. it actually does feel like it. although I hadn´t expected it. the once oppressing appartment doesn´t seem to be so small anymore, the relationship not too close, the city not so ugly. so a smooth return to begin with.
After a very sweet welcome day I created my own culture shock by going to an info day at uni and hearing a business studies reading, as I am (apparently, I was surprised myself) still considering to sign up for that subject. It was good in a way, I was relieved I wasn´t the oldest person around (almost though) and I sympathize with the idea of going into a classroom on a daily basis again after so many years. I imagined myself having a routine and actually enjoying it. And it somehow worked.
But I am still not too sure whether it´s the right course for me, whether I shouldn´t rather go for sociology and economics... basically, the day set ALL the thoughts in motion again that I pushed away so successfully over the last two months. What I am gonna study, where/when/how I am going to be able to afford that (or not), whether I will get a job after, whether I will be too old when I graduate, whether I should cancel my trip to Australia to not 'waste' another year... and so on. I felt the carousel starting all over and none the slower. It rather felt like it was trying to catch up on all of the missed rotations during the break.

So instead of returning from the ashram ascetic, slim, relieved, half-holy and with a ready-madeplan for my future, I am still exhausted and stuck. I have got a rough plan, but it´s so rough it gives me bruises. I have a direction, but no definite goal. I feel my roots a little bit more lately, but don´t have a clue where to turn to grow. It´s still all out in the open and I guess I have to let it be that for as long as it takes. Did I mention I don´t fancy that at all?

Trying to embrace the routine idea, I took a try-out aerobics class today at a gym I consider joining. It was good and horrible at the same time. All the people were very friendly, the instructor kind of good (well, bearable, but he made me sweat, so it was ok, I am way to professional to not complain about this and that...), the music was a bit odd but ok, my brand new trainers looked great. And somehow I did too. But I also realized just HOW MUCH weight I have really gained (according to the tightness of my sportsgear) and how great I must have looked years agon when i was still working out so much but always hated how I looked cause I thought I was fat. I wasn´t fat. I am not even fat now. It´s ridiculous how your own brain can trick you and let yourself appear so out of shape in front of your very own eyes...
So I know I was never fat and I am not now. That´s the good news. The bad is, I really need to lose some weight. Yep. Can´t help it. Gotta stop overeating, get moving and get back into shape. I am working on accepting that it´s not gonna happen overnight. I hate that fact. But life is now. The kilos are there but life is too. The only thing I can change is to stop hating myself and allow myself to lose the pounds while loving myself at the same time. I guess that´s the new game. Do you have the impression you have accidently ended up in a weight-loss blog? Well, you might have. Because in the end it´s all just a metaphore on how much we are able to let go, how much we are able to feel rooted (without feeling heavy by eating) and how far our self love goes. Phew. Can someone please remind me that I said this? Soon? Like in an hour or so? Thanks.

My self-love withered extremely when I saw a former colleague of mine who works in the same building my yoga studio used to be. I had just invited myself for coffee (after I had so gracefully mastered the gym class before) in one of my favourite places in this town, and all of a sudden there´s a familiar face. Which means potentially: small-talk, the inevitable question how I am, the pity looks. OMG. I drowned in my coffee mug (thank God I ordered a large one) and hid behind the papers I bought. I felt like in a bad movie. But it worked, she didn´t seem to notice me or at least didn´t talk to me, I even managed to squeeze by her table on the way out without her seeing me. Or me seeing her. Horrible. I hate this kind of situation and there´s no nice way to do it. Not if you´re not on top of things. And there it was again. The lack of anonymousity that I dislike about this town. Phew, again. I just don´t know whether this is the place for me or whether I am right for the place. But like ALL the other current issues it will not dissolve itself today.
Only when I start to breathe, let go, feel good about myself without any outer reason, live and don´t look back. Amen.

what´s next?

just watching my latest favourite tv show, and the episode is titled 'what comes next'. hilarious. there´s several characters that have to start over. a NBA player retiring, a fashion producer selling her company, an unemployed sports journalists trying to get by on producing podcasts. i know, the luxury version of a problem. of course they all live in big houses and drive big cars, i know. nevermind. anyways, the film producer of the posse (who has just made some millions selling a movie) shoots these little documentaries, asking all these utterly lost rich people: 'what comes next?' and i started to wonder. instead of looking back and regretting and feeling sorry what was. what comes next. i don´t know. i know it´s not the end of the world either. i know it´s rather a beginning. i know i know i know. but when does that information sink in completely?
i feel like i am getting it a little more. i am a bit more relaxed. I overeat still but i am kind of relaxed with it. as if i was trying on 'not waiting for me to be skinny in order to start living'. which kind of works and doesn´t at the same time. i enjoy the relaxed feeling. the actual idea of just buying a new pair of jeans in that i can breathe. but at the same time i definetely feel 14 years old again. which was by the way the age i became an anorexic. yesterday, i actually ripped out two pictures of celebrity women of a magazine (so trashy i can´t even tell the name) and was short before glueing them into my diary. what?! yes, i did it. and i still have this image of me in my head in a body shape that i would consider perfect. it might be a little more in the back corner now but it´s there. and it´s gonna be there for a while. and i am going to look at it on a daily basis and keep on dreaming, pretending looking a certain way would really fix things. which i know it doesn´t but the idea is just too tempting.
so maybe i can try an in-between strtegie. doing my thing, not crying over the past anymore, not seeing a concrete future yet. but snuggling into a comfortable place in the middle. with no pressure to go into any direction unless I really feel sure it´s time to go. let´s make it a really nice and comfy sace where i can breathe. and relax. and contemplate. and be. and love. and smile.

one step forward and two back...?

i guess it´s time to post. its weird with these blogs. you don´t even know whether anyone bothers to read what you put on it, and still you feel obliged to post something.
i am exhausted. i am pretending i am getting better. but fact is I overeat on a daily basis, enough to keep putting on weight, little enough to not make me sick. my mind thinks all i wanna do is lose 15 kg, my body thinks all i need to do is eat. my heart feels like having a life. and right now i don´t feel mine. i watch stupid tv-series on the internet. i sit alone in my teacher´s office cause I can´t bear to sit with his family on the couch feeling uneasy and unwelcome. not that i am. but i want to get out. i need to leave. i keep forgetting it´s only 2 days to go. wow, now that i see it in writing it strikes me. only 2 days. it sounds so short, it feels like forever. but then, what is awaiting me? a massage appointment and a haircut. that´s what I arranged for myself before I fly back to Germany. to my so called home. and i don´t know whether it is.
so i have to keep up the hope that i will be able to stand somebody touching me in 2 1/2 days´time. and that i´ll be able to see myself in a mirror for 1 hour or longer the day after. modern women´s rituals for a new phase of life. normally that should mean you leave something behind. or you start something new. right now i can´t betray myselfagain with thinking i´d start a new life without overeating. because i still do it and it´s cruel and i have even stopped surfing because i can´t bear myself in a (too small) bikini anymore. so what´s coming up for me? i have absolutely no idea.
there´s no job to go back to. no home i look forward to. a relationship that has yet to be newly defined. a few good friends that might be there to lean on for a while. but they have their own lives to carry on and i have to find my own. but right now, all i realize over and over is: I have absolutely no idea what my life is. scary shit, that is. and the only idea my mind keeps producing is: lose weight, feel great. right.
so at the same time, nothing and everything has changed. i am still fighting the same old demons (or rather not fighting them right now as i´ve lost my willpower to, but i am afraid i will take up the fight again...) and still have no plan whatsoever. everything is out in the open.
"that just means endless possibilities!", my surf teacher said to me the other day."Life is wonderful, isn´t it!" I am just shit-scared.

40 days

the yogic tradition i feel connected to says that you need 40 days to break a habit. I think I have done that. I have broken the habit of believing that this life is not mine to live. I realized I want to live this life for me. I don´t want to live anyone else´s life. I don´t want to adjust (too much) to other people´s rhythms. I want to have my own things, my own days, my own life. And funnily enough i have fully realized this after I have been here for exactly 40 days.

Unfortunately that makes me struggle now to keep up working in this ashram. I feel tied down, unnerved by having to carry out little tasks that seem to bore me now. I don´t want to cook anymore. (Luckily the cook is due to return tomorrow). I don´t want to be available all the time, always ready ro help and serve and jump in when neccessary. I know that´s what I am here for but I feel like I was here for finding out I don´t want to do this. I don´t want to serve all day. I just want to be free. Wasn´t I looking for freedom? Yes I was, and I somehow discovered that I deserve to be free. Therefore I need to have freedom in my days. I have 2 ½ weeks more to spend here. And right now I am not sure how I will manage that.

one day later.

i feel thrown back. or not. i enjoy being in this house again. i do my work without being angry. I feel good belonging somewhere. still i know it´s time to go. but i have setlled here more than i am aware of probably...

living - learning

first heard as a quote from 'Sex and the City', I have always liked these words. And yes, you can learn somethign from TV series, as these words are so true – living means learning. Or in order to be alive, you need to learn constantly. Every day.

I have learned something. And it feels great. I have understood that I am not a child anymore. That I don´t have to be afraid of anyone telling me what to do. I don´t even need to ask for permission to do anything. I am free to decide and DO myself. Terhefore, I have decided that I will act as an adult from now. I will see myself as being one. I will NOT let my inner scared child restrict me. I will just DO what I need to do. I am 30 years old, for any sake, what am I waiting for???

So instead of hoping I might get the chance to go surfing this week, I just said to my teacher´s wife, I want to take one day off during the week, which one would be best? She said Thursday, I had thought so, too, so that´s done. I hired a car from end of next week on to be able to get around here and pick up my very dear friends from the aiport who will come here to stay for a week. I have rebooked my flight home so I will have a whole week before going back to Germany and I can just travel or lie on the beach or surf or shop in Lisbon. Because I am grown-up and I can just decide what I want to do, right? I have already booked my next trip, as I only want to be home for a few days and then head on to London. Two weeks in the big city ahead. Will be quite a shock after having lived here. But I am craving for some urban adventures ;-))

It might all be small things but it was such an act of freeing myself from all that restrictions that I felt. Hiring that car, getting my needs met by asking for a free day. Things that I used to never dare. Because I always thought I will complicate the life of others so I better not ask for anything. Turns out the only reaction I ever get IF I ask for something is: 'Great!' I should really have tried earlier...

I will be here for four more weeks and it feels like time is flying by. It feels like I have only just got here. But yet, I have a good feeling about leaving again. Because I have already understood my lesson here for now. And I am working towards it. I am still really confused and lost when it comes to how my life could settle down eventually in the future and I am no further in any planning of that. But this is only the beginning. There will be much more learning ahead, difficult and easy lessons. And a lot of life to live. Happily.

paddling back

I don´t know what had come over me when I wrote that 'breakthrough'-entry last week. Thank God I wrote the maybe in the end.
I have been addicted to eiter starving myself or overeating constantly for the last 16 years (this is a number I can hardly bear, it´s more than half my life). Let´s substract the good time, which might add up to a year or so, in which I didn´t feel so addicted and actually attained a healthy weight only through eating 'normal' somehow. It´s still 15 years then.
In the last weeks and months, it has been worse than ever. I have these days where I get up and I unconsciously start to put food in my mouth from the first minute standing up. I can tell you, to overeat ( feeling guilty and miserable and disgusting all along) even BEFORE breakfast, that´s no start into a new day at all. That´s a desaster.
So as i have been doing this for a while now, of course I have gained weight. I don´t know how much, I don´t have a scale (maybe that´s a good thing??) . Sometimes I want to know to estimate the damage done. After all, there is a very sure way to happiness: Achieving my dream weight again.
Of yourse I know that´s bull****. Who doesn´t? I know the key to letting go of the addiction is loving myself, allowing myself to feel good about me no matter what. and that´s the crucial point. The 'no-matter-what' part. I suck at that.
I can easily fell great about me when I have hardly eaten one day. Or when i really worked hard without pausing. Or when someone else is happy with what I have done. Or when I achieve soemthing I really wanted. But only until I enter the next kitchen. I will destroy my good feelings before I notice myself by overeating- maybe because I know it´s not the happiness I am looking for in the end. But it´s part of my happiness to feel good about my body and I still (unconsciously or even consciously) prevent that from happening.
Sometimes it seems the addiction is just never going to end. How can I stop when I can´t? When will I be able to not binge anymore at all? When can I allow myself to be independet from the drug 'food' that is killing me?
I have decided to take an extreme measure. I will join my teacher´s wife for a 10-day-liver-detox-cleansing-diet from tomorrow. To get me detached for once. i hope it´ll work. I know that the liver has job to digest feelings, and that´s what it´s about isn´t it? I am hoping for some release and relief. And for a break from constant eating. Since sometimes it helps to have strict rules and to share them with somebody. That´s what they do in rehab programmes, too, right?

Of course I am dreaming about losing enormous amounts of weight in those 10 days, to get over my disorder for good and live happily ( and slim) ever after. I guess I need it to get me motivated in the first place. I will let you know how I do. And my liver.

Falling down and standing up again

It´s so easy to fall into dull comparisons between surfing and life. You try, it´s hard, you keep up, it gives you a little in return sometimes, it can be frustrating, it can be pure joy. After only 5 lessons I can say, I had any nice little parallel existing in my head and thought, it really is good material for writing about it, but only if there hadn´t been so many before me who have done it already.

Since Sunday I can officially say I know how to stand up on a surfboard. Wow. I still fall down a lot, maybe even more often than I keep standing, but my body got used to the movement, internalised it and I got the very much longed for appreciation of my surf teacher. So there is hope. And, yes, I have been dreaming of surfing a pipe. From the first lesson on. I guess it will be a long way to get there. Often enough I cannot yet estimate enough, how hard a wave´s gonna brake or what is the exact moment to press up and jump up standing. But with the ever so slight progress I made in those last two sessions I have the unbreakable plan to be good at this someday. Not like in competitions. But confident to go out there by myself, go with the waves instead of fighting against them and simply enjoy it. Because another maybe much wiser surf teacher said to me: 'You can say you surf when you start having fun doing it.' I might get there evetually, not there quite yet but I can see it, the light at the horizon. And here we are again. The greasy comparisons. All you can say about surfing, you can pretty much also say about life. Because I want to learn to go more with the flow instead of against it. And one thing the surfing really showed me already. You just have to keep trying, doing it, focussing while you do it (otherwise you swallow even more saltwater), and no matter whether you fell or made it to the beach standing up – you just go right back in. And it made me realize again that I have that capacity in me. It re-vived my fighting spirit.

I think my surf teacher smiled at me yesterday for the first time instead of pulling a face and going 'Come on, girl!'. And I really feared he could see me as one of those chubby english or german tourists, who look so uncoordinated as if they had never done any sports in their life. The boys are really pale and always look a bit dumb but are willing to try anything, go out for the big waves way to soon and always have this hectic facial expression when trying to catch a wave. They catch it, then they fall, and they don´t look good doing it. They probably never will. The girls have a different approach. They don´t even get up in the first place. They look like stranded little whales on their boards, helplessly trying to move some water around them, and even when the teacher holds their boards, gives them a starting signal and pushes them into a wave, shouting 'Up!' they hardly manage to press up thier torso without falling. Their bodies look very limp and heavy and useless. But they seem to have fun anyways.Thank God I know now he doesn´t see me as one of them. I was even allowed to go behind the surf (the so called outside) for the first time yesterday. I didn´t catch a wave but it caught me. Fair enough. As I said there´s hope.

the break through... maybe

so I had another consultation with my teacher. I had my first one with him in June, I was petrified then and so anxious he would tear me apart I actually was sick to my stomach the whole day. Until I met him. He was the nicest fatherly loving teacher you could imagine. Confronting, yes. But gentle. And uplifting. Since I arrived here at his house I realized I am constantly expecting him to shout at me or critizise me or be unhappy with how I work. Of course he has never done anything like that to me. And he probably never will because he feels that I am beating up myself enough as it is. I don´t need anyone else on top of me joining that team.

But at some point this fear and anxiety changed, I could integrate the knowledge that he is only the screen on which I project the fear of my father I lived through in my childhood. Very basic psychology. But very effective. Because this seems to be the surrounding in which I can understand, reflect and observe the patterns in which I react internally, not even try to surpress or change them, but just let them work within, relax, lean back and learn that THIS man is nice, and most others will be as well, and that whatever I lived through with my own father has ended. This in now, this is new, this is MY life.

When I got my appointment for my consultation, I wrote down some notes about what topics I want to mention to him. At first I thought I wanted to talk about these family issues. And I told him openly what I had been projecting on him but that I started to let it fall away from me and I feel it changes to the good. It surprised him a little, how much I had feared him, but he appreciated the honesty and I was so happy I could just sit there and tell him my fears without being fearful in that moment. I am not afraid of him anymore. He used to be the embodiement of my deepest fears of being rejected, unwanted, not loved. And I have lost that fear towards him.

So then I thought I wanted to talk to him about my marriage and my eating disorder. Of course I knew he wouldn´t discuss with me whether I should break up or not or what wheight would be healthy for me. But he took it even on a more abstract and metaphoric, yet even deeper level than that.

In way, we continued the talk we had in June and it astonished me a lot how he was able to bring me more to the core. In that first session with him I was so weak inside I had nothing to put against him or myself, I couldn´t even sit upright, or look him into the eyes. But yesterday it was different. I was not afraid to say what I think and feel, I didn´t feel uncomfortable with him being direct, whenever I was ashamed of what I wanted to say I just told him and he encouraged me to still say it and it was such a relief. He/we boiled everything down again to the core issue: I don´t allow myself to be happy, I believe it is fobidden for me to be happy. But there is more. While I am keeping myself away from happiness, I also surpress my greatness. And apparently, my teacher sees a lot of that in me. He thinks that when I was young, I probably had a glimpse of of that greatness, that one day I could be a leader, a spiritual teacher, a healer, a radiant yogini, whatever. Or I could misuse this inherent power and become a 'rockstar', become manipulative and egoistic in my greatness. His impression is my soul wanted to prevent that from happening so it buried my awareness of my own greatness underneath guilt, shame, fears and complexes. It hurt so much to hear him say that to me by that time already sitting so close to me our knees were touching, staring right into my eyes. And I stared right back into his. I wasn´t even looking at him as a person. He was some kind of a medium then, he had put himself and me into a deep meditative state by then and I was able to feel that greatness inside. It sits in my chest, maybe in my heart. But it´s sealed. It´s like an egg with an almost unbreakable shell. Which needs to be broken from the outside (my teacher offered me to punch me just to give it a try, laughing, but we postponed it, after I had a laugh, too) or rather unlocked from the inside, where there is the key. I need to dare and risk to take that key, turn it, unlock it. Open up.Be happy, be great, be inspiring and uplifitng to others and myself.

So again, for a moment, I could feel that egg-shaped thing inside me and I somehow touched it. And that hurt so much. The thought, the image, the knowledge maybe of my greatness hurts. But it also feels so honest, so truthful. And the truth is: I need help with this. I closed all of my inner beauty away so carfeully I will not be able to handle this on my own. I need support and I need help. And this honesty about MY need of hep is the first step. Because I need to let go of the need to be needed, and instead recieve help. Let myself be weak, needy, childish, but let me be me. And if ME needs help, that´s what it is. It hurts but it´s honest. And it feels amazingly good in a way. I am here to be helped with this. I have to choose how I want this help to be. But it is there, available to me, I just need to say thank you and take it.

This feels (again) like a turn-around-point, a break-through, a new start, something is shifting.

I even did an early sadhana this morning, read Japji, did NOT go back to sleep afterwards, but I am awake now. I will have more consultations here, i will work on this, with it, towards me, my greatness, whatever greatness lives within me.

But for now I will put on my bikini (internally repeating the mantra 'unconditional love') and go surfing, embrace this day and smile again. Finally.

the romantic idea of how it´s gonna be vs. reality

So I am here.
It´s a peaceful place. I am in contact with myself.
But is that always nice? No. Does that alone make me happy? No. Do I still have to fight for having a good day? Yes. A lot. Too much.

I go surfing. I meet interesting people. Nice people. But does it help me be a different person? No. I am still me. I still have to fight to change my patterns.

Being here is pretty much all I ever hoped for. And I DO feel good. In a way. This is where I need to be. But it´s not pleasant. I took myself on this journey. I WANTED this. I NEED this. But it´s still a struggle.
I struggle with food a lot right now. That´s the front row of the enemy, my mind. I don´t particularly overeat, but I think I do. Constantly. I feel I am bloated and wobbly and huge. I know I am not. But I have to fight the urge to become really desperate when I look into the mirror. I don´t want to live in this body when it looks like this. I don´t want to hate my body either. It´s 16 years of eating disorder and there is the frequent occasional days of not knowing how to work this out. My body feels best when I eat little with big breaks in between. But that happens to be the exact opposite to what my addiction wants me to do.
So where do I go? Extreme control and self-discipline? Can only work for so long and then I´ll catch up. On the calories. Letting go and just eat? I will die of panic, I get so insecure I tend to overeat to cause me then to be more rigid with myself again. Just not think about it? Great idea. Don´t think about lemons. Now.

Behind these first lines of my inner war there is the thoughts. About being not enough, wrong, ugly, fat, a burden, only good when I bend myself so much I almost break. I can think that in ANY occasion. I can spend days only thinking these thoughts. I have done so. It makes me extremely frustrated to know that I have.

Then there comes the guilt. That I haven´t saved my parents´marriage. Our family, That I wasn´t strong enough to fix it all, to hold it all together. That I haven´t done everything right, meaning perfect and flawless. With the true belief that THAT would have made the difference.

When I made it through all of these lines, there is the big monster. My self-hatred. Which is the seal on that immense big tub of self-love. It has become so strong over the years, the seal has almost grown in.

But it hasn´t, I know that, I have already broken it. Very shortly. But nevertheless impressive. It was the last day of last year´s Yoga Festival in France. During a meditation, I literally opened my heart. I could see it. From the inside. The immense love that is there. For myself, for the world, for everything. So strong it took me days to recover, it was such a shock to see and feel it. It shook me to the core to see in this little instant that I DO love myself. That I CAN be happy. That I CAN enjoy this life. That I can LIVE after all that zombie-like vegetating as an anorexic, then as a depressed overeater. That I love myself. This miniature moment of complete insight into my core (at least that it what it felt like) changed my life forever. Ever since then I have been searching for a way to cultivate it. My self-love and my being connected to my soul. Because as my spiritual name tells me, that´s my potential. So I want to live up to that.

I pray that someday I will. For today I will have to accept defeat once again.

I guess I have arrived

I have done something absolutely crazy today.
I MADE MY OWN DAY!!
After an early night yesterday, I got up quite early today, did some useful things, went shopping for various even more useful things with my teacher´s wife, and then... I went to the beach. By myself, by bus, first time on my own through this country. Like a normal tourist, I walk on the beach, lay out my towel, strip down to my bikini (thank God it still fits) and lay down for a little sun bath. Wow. Sometimes it´s as easy as that. I have a brilliant time, just lying there listening to the surf, reading my corny book (but loving it) and watching the surfers give their best to impress the ladies around. I am rather not so impressed but a bit shocked by the intensity of the surf and then - it itches. I want to do that, too! I want to be whirled around in that powerful waves like them!
When I first arrive to the beach I need a coke. Not a real one. A fake one. I used to be hooked on diet coke, now I go for coke zero. I don´t know why, I just happen to love the taste of it. Not despite but because of the sweeteners. anyways, i am standing at the counter of this bar, and can already see the tins in the fridge, waiting for the girl preparing coffee to give me some attention so I can mutter some not-at-all-understandable words that have the magic coke in the middle of them. But she just ignores me. that girl wears braces. And dares to serve the bunch of overly hairy and pot bellied guys that are cleary standing behind me first! am i too german or what? I thought the cueing tradition in this country was famous? Even when she finishes the coffees for the guys she doesn´t bother looking at me so I think, well I better switch on the navel now. I will not let that little bi*** ruin my perfect beach sunday. I am sick and tired of feeling wrong and unwanted anywhere. so I just shout my order out over the counter dirctly into her face. she doesn´t look at me still, no facial reaction whatsoever, but she actually opens the fridge and gives me my coke. well done me.
So having won the first fight, i had already lost the second. The sand is just too hot. i tiptoe stupidly trough the masses of perfectly tanned and shaped beach beauties (unfortunately more female examples) till I am close enough to the waterline to settle down. the burn will be gone by middle age. The look is spectacular. This is what I mean when i say beach. Rough waves, turquoise water, surfers to watch, amazing nature around. i am happy just being. And that´s what it is today. I finally am. Here. I. am. Here. And it´s good. Yesterday I still thought, I am wrong, this is all wrong, i am wrong wherever i am, today, this feeling is gone. I have arrived.
(with a little help from a good friend, i might say at this moment, not hesitating to mention that our formerly common favourite band once covered this song of Joe Cocker´s, thank you Maverick ;-))
So I enjoy some hours in the sun, nice little breeze to take off the edge of that sun, going for a short walk, having ice-cream... and on the way back to the bus, i pass again that surf school I had seen on the way out already. That I just went by cause there wasn´t anyone obviously in charge and a sign said the next class is not till next Friday which I won´t be able to make as I´ll be playing taxi driver for my teacher... I am walking by the school again and I can see some really cool guys wearing the school´s logo on their t-shirts, hanging around, being VERY cool... and I walk by and didn´t even have the guts to speak to them let alone ask them for lessons.
Maybe it´s not for me. Maybe it´s not meant to fit into my schedule that i surf here, maybe I am actually not cool enough to even try it, maybe I am not allowed to... be happy. Here we go again. For a second i get so angry, i want to scream, and then I think. Nope. I am not going home like this. I can surf if I want to. i want to live my life and DO things.
So I turn on my heels, walk back to the surf school´s cafe, and hear myself asking the guy at the counter who I can ask about surf lessons. right behind me stands one of those rocking cool guys with extremely well mirrored sunglasses, and I say to him: I want to learn how to surf. He says there´s a class tomorrow at 4.30pm. I say, great can I have a card to check the next classes in case I can´t make it. He goes, here´s my number, call me. Well done me, again. I DID IT. I made my day. of course i can make tomorrow at 4.30pm. It´s not a problem at all. So it´s all settled. Me being here. me surfing tomorrow. me starting to realize again that this is MY life, I decide, I DO, I live. Wahe Guru.

ashram / compost

there are funny sides to living in an ashram. for example seeing your teacher (with beard and turban) carrying half a tree through the garden or going shopping groceries with you down the road (a spiritual master needingmy help to chose the right bundle of bananas? come on!), or seeing him disappear down to his waist in a cisterne he needs to check (of course gracefully holding his beard to the side while doing so). The daily ritual of 'bread-with-honey-meets-voluptous-beard' I know from other teachers so it doesn´t fascinate me as much anymore (although I sometimes have the impression the winner of this unequal fight is not always clear from the beginning, though the beard tends to win).
there are not so funny sides, too. within 24 hours i am confronted with all, and I mean ALL, my issues that try to drown me at the present moment. I am back to feeling 16 again, lost and insecure, a child needing approval of her existence every 5 minutes, a young 'overly-feeling-responsible' woman who tries to fit in so well and not to make too much noise and always expects somebody to shout into her face for doing everything wrong constantly. I am perfectly sure that I have absolutely NO right to be here in this wonderful place, living with this amazing family, and being happy, let alone exist.
Yesterday was a good day actually, I had a lovely time with my teacher at lunch and working in the garden, laughing a lot, first signs of arrival appeared. maybe i was feeling too good. I was facing an afternoon without a task given and I binged. I was able to stop only to continue after dinner. Great. I just don´t think I deserve this. i am not allowed such a great opportunity to grow, to learn, to be me, to be. I really still believe i have to take care of anyone´s needs but mine and need to be a bit plump to not be too sexy or attractive (in case that could make somebody feel uncomfortable). It all boils down to me not loving myself. i don´t see myself as a lovable person, I just don´t see ME at all. sometimes I think i don´t wanna see me.
I have my biggest issues sitting directly in front of me and smirk: my eating obsession or rather the obsessive thoughts about wanting to become skinny again, my overactive desire to make anyone happy but myself. I am not quite sure whether I shoved all this on my back just to make my neck hurt or to eventually throw it on the compost. Cause it´s real heavy stuff. At least that´s what it feels like right now. I will go now and contemplate about composting issues. i quite like the idea.

where´s the rules?

I arrived to this ashram expecing it to be somewhat strict. (I am German after all.) Then I was offered coffee. I still opted for herbal tea though. But there are BIG quantities of coffee in this house. I assume they´re not only for guests. The general daily schedule includes an early morning sadhana from 5.30 am (which is already 'lazy' compared to the traditional 4 a.m.). Turns out, unless there is a group for a training at the house, nobody will bother to do a group sadhana, especially not that early in the morning. These people her have a highly irregular working schedule so there is no way to keep up such an extreme regime. So nobody will expect me to get up at 4 in the morning then? No. Nobody even expects me to do sadhana at all? No. I am expected to do my duties, to work for the house. That´s all. I don´t know yet whether that´ll be a lot of work, but it is always put like: 'you will be working hard'. We´ll see.

9.30 a.m.
So on my first day today I got up at 7, did some yoga, had breakfast, hung up some washing (in the sun that is unbelievably hot at 9 in the morning) and now i am writing this. I´m sitting in the office, noone here yet, looking at passport pictures of my (beard ´n turban) teacher. It looks somehow ridiculous to force somebody so NOT limited by physical or mental boundaries (that we accept as society) into such a small frame. It doesn´t make sense at all.
Yesterday a feeling of being trapped and tied down came up again (one of my little demons I guess) and today I realize, it probably won´t be like that at all. I might have a strict working schedule, but it all relies on negotiation and communication. So there´s nothing around that cannot be changed. Even to the extent I might find out I don´t want to work here at all, I´d still be able to stay as a guest. So i have to sit now with this: I am free, I chose to be here, I am free to change my status here anytime, but still I don´t feel free. Would I feel more freedom if I had many rules to obey? No, but then there would be something obvious to rebell against. This way, it´s down to me. I can only rebell against myself. Or to put it the other way round, it´s UP to me. I can do whatever I like. I try to look at it like this today. To see whether it fits.

12.30 a.m.
As there is still nobody around telling me what to do (how horrible), I gave myself the task to do some ironing and cleaning. At least now I don´t feel like a total freeloader anymore (are we having a problem here?). It´s way too hot to go outside, it´s lunchtime now and I appreciate my room in the cool basement. The sky is amazingly clear blue and the little white clichée houses contrast against it with pure perfection in the glooming sunlight. By now there are some people working around me, the cook/cleaner, a portuguese lady in her mid-forties (only speaks portuguese of course), who has been cooking and moving furniture for some hours now, not wanting any help, but listening to the portuguese version of xxx very loudly while she does her duties. Did I mention this is so clichée? But in a good way. The other woman around is a young (pregnant) portuguese woman in her thirties, she does some local admin stuff on the computer, but as there´s no landline for the phone or internet available (this house is so much in the middle of nowhere it would have to have it´s own posts and chords, so nobody bothers to invest that much), she uses the only internet connection available right now and I feel pretty cut off. It´s my second day without email, facebook and reading blogs. And I have to say I am not amused about how much I miss it. I don´t necessarily think it (being online) is a bad thing, after all it´s a way of connecting and communicating, but still when you miss something so much after half a day, it merits some reflection. And if I had internet connection right now, I would probably be surfing, writing emails and procrastinating otherwise instead of writing this.

6.20 p.m.
I am finally posting this. And all of a sudden, being on the internet is the weirdest thing ever. As if it was just a stupid idea to send all these thoughts out there. For whom? I hope it reaches somebody. i hope it reaches me.

travelling is dying

9.30 a.m.
so here i am, sitting at the aiport. I don´t exactly remember how i got here. I must have somehow managed to get almost everything done and actually pack my things for the ashram.
I look around and see young couples, older couples, young families with babies, mothers with teenage children. I try to imagine why they are going to their destination. Whether it´s holidays or family visits, if they actually go home from a trip or are going to live in an ashram. Hm, i might be the only one here with that intention. For a little moment, i feel special, then thinking whether i am hooked to that feeling of doing something extrordinary. I have a very physical remembrance of how i felt when I was 16 and went to Australia for the first time. Feeling like a brave adventurer and somewhat heroic and tough.
I feel sad and incredibly happy at the same time. I leave so much behind right now I probably can´t even grasp myself just HOW much it is. I am sad to leave the familiar, the easy life (as in you know how it works), the clearly visible path. It feels a little like dying. As if you had to let something die inside in order to make space for the experience of adapting to a new life.
On the plane I sit next to an elderly German couple and with some irritation I watch them be all excited about their lunch sandwiches being served, being very tense about whether they´ll get the right food, whether it´s been paid for and so on. They are excited like little kids who have been prmised some ice-cream for desert. That they can pick themselves. With a bold glance at their travel documents I read that they´ll stay till 22nd December. Wow, they will definetely stay longer than I intend to for now and I just judged them as being immature over their lunch behaviour.

1 p.m.
I arrive to a hot country. Gosh, it had been so cold and wet at home the last two weeks I had already forgotten it can actually be really warm and I can sweat. I am picked up by my teacher´s wife (she´s also a yoga teacher) and there comes even more memories of being picked up at the airport by my host mum including the anxiety attacks waiting at the baggage claim and having the impression that I am and always will be the last one to get her suitcase only to be able to enjoy sweet moments of incertainty. To make it even better, we pick up her son at a German school where he met some friends for a LAN party (this teenage boy´s dad wears a turban and a very long beard, by the way). After a short drive we arrive at a beautiful house in the middle of nature and I am welcomed by a friendly (and very happily licking) dog. Which would be the next similarity. I can chose my own room, we have a lovely lunch (there´s sweets and coffee around ;-)) get shown round the house and find out that my yoga teacher´s son is not only a computer junkie but also a surfer. Although he thinks with his 15 years his far too old to learn it as he only started a year ago. He probably will die laughing when he finds out I want to give it another shot at almost 31. (At least I find out there´s plenty of surf schools around and I´ll have a chance to take classes there!!)

4 p.m.
It´s an intense day. I sit on one of the terraces and try to realize where I am, feel a little lost and alone and even wonder at one point what I am actually doing here. I am throwing sticks for the dog and can´t believe just how much I feel like being 16 again. And of course not at all at the same time.

9 p.m.
I manage to arrive some more after a 2 hours nap (unintendedly) and a nice soup and conversation with my 'yoga host mum'. It´s nice to be here. I AM in the right place, I think I am just very nervous about the confrontation with myself. Cause I can feel it lining up at the horizon. It´ll be some journey. I am so happy that I have managed to get here after all. But I see ever so clearly what I leave behind. What is dead or maybe still dying. And even if it´s all good to get rid of in the end, there is this huge sadness of loss and grief. The one you also feel when somebody dies you didn´t even know.

it´s done... sort of

the ok from my landlord came today. I will finally sell my studio tomorrow and get the money I wanted out of it. everything will be settled within this week. where´s the relief??? nothing there yet. the information hasn´t arrived in my system yet. it all worked out in the most perfect way possible and still I am only tired and exhausted. My body feels like I am working heavily each and every day, like if I was building houses. I have got a week from now. to do my taxes, celebrate and pack my things. should work out.

the 99% post

99% the yoga studio is sold.
I am consisting of 99% tension.

that´s what I wanted to post yesterday. The tension got better slightly. I will find out about the studio on Monday afternoon. I have been lying awake last night till 3am, woke up again at 7am, wanting to leave the bed but managed to fall back asleep till 9am. that´s not like me. at all.
It´s a beautiful day today, perfect summer sun, and I guess I should embrace it and just pretend everything is normal. I will go out, sit in cafe, have ice-cream (or whatever detox-device they´ll have in store) and relax into it. I might achieve that up to 99%.



image source

back to the future

wow, how many time travels can you fit into a day? Just yesterday, I was originally looking for an old passport, I stumbled into my VERY old diaries which I wrote when I was first in Australia in 1996 (for 6 months) and then again in 1999 (for 6 weeks). That´s 14 years old. Meaning: I am officially old.
Anyways, I started reading it last night, I almost made it through the first 4 months in one session (until my eyes started to hurt) and I mean I wrote something EVERY day. So there I was, lying in bed with my boy-friend who I was madly in love with back then. Feeling guilty because I still had the other boy-friend back in Germany, feeling swept back and forth between missing the one and not wanting to leave the other... what a drama at the age of 16! I guess it still would be one today. But reading now how I was even ashamed to write about my feelings TO MYSELF into my diary is kinda cute. and naive. and long time ago. but still, it was me who wrote that and I remember most of what I wrote down then and a lot of feelings come back in an instant, the loneliness, the cofusion, the joy, the outburst of pain and homesickness, the crazy falling in love with a guy who I´d probably never see again in my life but would have married right away if there had been a chance (that was his mum´s suggestion by the way!).
So from last night on, I have been re-living (in portions) my journey I made back then, my troubles to find friends at school, to fit into my host family in which I never really felt home as much as I hoped I would, to literally understand something (you think you learned English in school, just to find out, ha, you just don´t get anything!), to NOT fall in love, to break up again and again (always with the intention to 'just be friends'), only to get back together and falling into it deeper than before... When I got to the part where I said goodbye to my down-under boy-friend, I had almost tears coming to my eyes, I felt a fraction of that unbelievable sadness again, that very physical pain of having to leave him knowing I won´t be able to see him or touch him for years or maybe forever. And then finally breaking up with my boy-friend in Germany because I just couldn´t go back to 'normal' after I returned home home. I wrote a lot about how it was an adventure to live in Australia for this time and I feel a little bit of that vibe coming up again only by thinking about applying for a visa... like when I yesterday went to request a new passport. I was so excited and somehow irritated that the clerk I was talking to didn´t notice that, I actually had to tell myself that of course he DOESN´T know that I am getting the passport to apply for visa for Australia. as if the whole world had to be turning around MY future travel plans. well, I guess it does for me.
so as soon as I returned to Germany in 96 (in my reading), I picked up the sequel and flew back to Australia in 99, only to find out that after a short revival of my love affair he started to absolutely ignore me, stopped talking to me completely and left me on parties in the middle of the night so I had to be rescued by some of his friends to be able to spend the night at their place. Literally the one night (that´s like the 5th night of my stay), we had the talk again about maybe we could marry so I am able stay, and the next day we didn´t talk anymore at all. It must have been the toughest thing I had been through in that respect. I had flown around the world to see the man I was once willing to marry (even if it was a naive dream but still, being with him meant so much to me) and now he abandoned me. I could rely on his mum and sister to talk to, but I didn´t wanna marry them then, did I.
So the 2nd visit down under turned out to be different to the first one but yet similar in its exerience: A lot of drama, heartache, happy reunions, being unnerved by the same things (like my host mum yelling), feeling welcome in one part of the family and not so much in the other... But of course I was different then. When I was there in 1996 I was deeply in my anorexic phase and a lot of my feelings and perceptions were covered by that issue. In 1999, I was rather the opposite and binged on food, but I was much more in contact with my feelings. So having the direct comparison, it felt like a veil had been lifted. And that was an interesting thing to experience. How much my whole outlook had changed.
And that is what I am looking forward to experiencing when I will go back (hopefully) next year: If I have a (more or less) clear vision by now. I think now that I do but how will it feel when I actually look at my life upside-down again?
I don´t worry at all about meeting my ex-boyfriend again (although I am tempted to write to him) or my host family, it is more a feeling of there is this place I need to go in order to find out where I am and where I want to be. As if I had to go to the place the farthest away from where I am right now to either come back full circle or see from an adequate distance where I need to go next. Or where I want to stay. Or where I DON´T want to stay. Who I am.
Maybe I still have an exaggerated naive picture of Australia as a magical continent, maybe it´s stupid to believe (again) I might find any answers down there. But I just know I have to go to find out. Like in that very yogic principle you have to go off track to the point where you can´t go any further to then complete your journey (or at least that one) on your way back describing an 'O'-shaped figure. Meaning 'zero', meaning 'shuniya', meaning the bliss of emptiness, meaning the completeness and beauty and fullness of 'nothing'. Stillness. Sat Nam.

source of image
picture taken by marragem

what a difference a day makes...

...24 little hours... or even less!
we arrived back home late last night after 10 hours driving through the whole of France, at least the last half of that it poured down raining. When I entered the appartment, I half read the mail from the occupational disability insurance (out of stupidity), that obvioulsy does not want to give me any money despite ANY health issues I have ever had or will ever have. I had an instant guilt attack and reality check, felt all the stress of those last weeks (that I have been ignoring so efficiently during all my time in France) coming back over me like a big wave, I felt small and scared and helpless, all in an instant, as if it all collapsed on top of me and I was just buried and not able to move anymore at all. hence, there was a miniature binge followed by more guilt and disgust for myself.
great new start back home. I was so exhausted I felt sick to my stomach at 12.30 pm so I had to go to bed giving in to feeling sedated and drifting into coma.
I got up early again, feeling restless, starting a protein-detox-day and getting it all done. So here´s a short list of what I did today (just imagine I did at least two of these things at once):

• emails
  
• emails
  
• and more emails
• phonecalls.
  
• phonecalls.
  
• phone calls again (until me cannot be bothered to answer it anymore)
• getting my landlord to negotiate with my favoured subsequent tenant for my former yoga studio (who would pay me a considerable amount of money for my investments!)
• applying for my new passport ( and giving fingerprints into a computer... spooky)
• finding out about my new smartphone deals (very important, I know)
• being visited by a former co-worker, who just dropped in ( I was still in my pyjamas, talking to my soon-to-be business partner on my official landline, my sister still on my private one (she kinda lay on the table) and appeared as if she was actually worried about me closing down my studio, but in fact only wanted to find out whether I still had that Pilates equipment she is willing to buy now... (man, she can have it ;-) let all the money flow to me...)
• groceries
• looking after a yoga student I just happened to meet in the street
• being excited, exhausted and confused at the same time

hm, that might cover it. I guess I done enough for a day. since I am still officially NOT working. at least it doesn´t feel so scary now that it might all end soon. i mean my episode with owning a yoga studio and feeling tied down to it. it´s almost done. and today, i can see the freedom sneak around the corner... I can almost touch it. in me. it´s there. big breath.

So it´s almost bed time. I didn´t binge but sticked to my detox routine of probiotics-protein-shakes, some frutis and nuts, which makes me feel very proud. and detaching. slowly.
I got a lot of things done ( I need to keep telling that to myself, I might eventually believe it, too.) and I will take care of more stuff tomorrow. It is ok NOT to have it ALL done today. (see brackets above) I could very cautiously say, I am kind of happy.

dreams

still feeling heavy. feeling horrible to be honest. feel like an ever expanding elephant to be more precise.
anyways, still in France, last day of my holidays with my husband. tomorrow we will go back to our place. i will have to finally take care of selling my yoga studio (I am SO anxious it might not work out...). i will have to do my taxes (for last year). hmm, writing it down, the list of uncomfortable things to do is not even so long... how come it FEELS like it´s endless? ok, so here is the experiment. i´ll now make a list of NICE things I will (have to) do in the next 2 weeks before I leave to live in an ashram for a while:

• I will get a new passport
  
• I will apply for a 'work/holiday' visa for Australia (yipieh!)
  
• I will meet lovely friends for sharing and laughter, coffee, cake and non-alcoholic beer (and that can happen any time of the day as there are no appointments waiting for me. strike.)
  
• I will get a professional reflexology treatment
• I will get a Rolfing treatment (that will hopefully uncramp my neck and the left side of my behind that has been aching for a few weeks now and sometimes makes me waddle around slowly like an old lame duck)
  
• I will go out for Sushi and cupcakes ;-) (hopefully with enough time in between those two courses to not feel sick afterwards)
  
• I will sell stuff on eBay that I really want to get rid of and make some money on the go
  
• I will research more opportunities for pursueing my plans of going to London, Portugal, Tel Aviv, the Himalayans, Australia.... and where-ever else comes into my mind
• if I had the time I could even go to amsterdam and/or London to stay with friends...

have i realize yet that this list is just soooo much longer than the 'horrible' one? no. could I please acknowledge that now? hm. well. no. why i am i still doing that to myself? i gave it all away, all the obligations and responsibilities, there´s probably as much as 2 short talks and the writing of an invoice left to do and that is all I cling to and stress about? oh my God, it´s the last thing I am responsible for, how could I even dream about letting go of that??? Ahrg. Grrr. Pffff.

Maybe i should also focus on what I finally SHOULD feel responsible for:

• be happy
• travel as much as I like
• work as much as I like
• be happy
• be happy
• be happy
• be relaxed
• be relaxed
• be relaxed
• be faithful
• be faithful
• be faithful
• be ME

( i really like this little list game. i´m a tru pitta ;-))

this list is so much longer! it wins! doesn´t it? doesn´t it?? well. no. again. nope.
it seems this is my landmark right now. I keep clinging to the thought that ONLY as soon as I have sold my studio, I will finally feel the freedom. That only then I can finally ALLOW myself to feel the freedom. That it is absolutely natural I cannot feel the freedom now. But that THEN, there will be the big relief, the solution, the happy end... Getting the vibe this might not eventuate? yeah, me too. as I think I posted earlier, the only freedom is the one you have inside yourself. so I honestly say a prayer to myself that this time I will not trick me, but that this landmark will bring me freedom. Or more precisely put, lets me see the freedom that is there already. I am serious. I pray for that.



source of image

feeling heavy

one of my teachers said to me: 'you eat because you can´t take your own lightness. you´re so awake you´re trying to put yourself to sleep.' of course he is right. whenever I want to escape the intensity of life, whether good or bad, I find myself eating or at least craving for food even before I realize what is going wrong. Over the matter of years I have learned to not fall for the cravings totally but to see and sense the emotions lying underneath. sometimes as a prevention, sometime as a rehabilitation, sometimes as a lousy crutch at the end of a horrible period of seemingly never-ending addiction.
During my phase of letting go of my previous life as an overly correct and dutiful yoga teacher, i couldn´t help but give in to the cravings for food. There just simply wasn´t a chance. so all I could do was watch how I ate, gained weight, became more uncomfortable in my own skin from day to day, with a slowly rising fear that it could never end and I might be even heavier than I ever was in my worst days. with a little bit of a difference. i realized at some stage that yes, I disliked the physical change I had made having put on at least 5 kilos, but I feel different. I caught myself feeling good inside my body. oops, how could that happen? I gained weight, for any sake, I should be punishing myself and feeling guilty and horrible until I at least lost a good part of what I gained! What´s wrong with the program? Is it broke??
I guess it is. I guess I broke it. good, isn´t it? hmm, yeah, but scary. I could actually be happy. just like that. no physical strings attached. come on, being happy is always connected with some amount of weight loss, isn´t that a natural thing? How did that change?? What went wrong??

I must have learned to love myself a little bit more. As simple as that. I would still like to lose some weight ( and I guess it´ll just happen when my eating habits relax again, that´s what happened over the last years) but I just don´t beat myself up about it anymore so much (only a little sometimes for a trip down memory lane). I must have understood on some deep level that in the end it doesn´t matter AT ALL how I look or how much I weigh. I am allowed to be happy, love myself and be loved, no matter hoe I look. after long years of fighting against that demon, I am finally preparing to say goodbye and let go of it. And as I posted last time, letting go always involves some pain. even if you let go of an addiction that once wanted to kill you.

but I was going to write something about the heaviness. without the negative connotation that we give to that word and feeling, it is also a word for being earth-bound, secure, nurtured. and for me it still symbolizes a lot of that. when you have been anorexic and felt the power of that disease that can actually put you to death and lets you only survive in the biggest deprivation bearable, you know how it feels to NOT be on earth but slowly drifting, insecure whether you going to live or die and deprived of food, love and life. So in order to rebalance that experience, I sometimes feel I have to live with that 'a little too much' for a while to also have that experience and then settle back to the golden middle. or at least that´s what I hope for.
and as long as it takes i try to relax into my heaviness, see he good part of it, let me feel the contenment inside me (despite the non-approved outer appearance) and just live. That feels very good for a start.

the pain of letting go

someone once defined that letting go has to be painful. no matter what the object of letting go is. whether it´s a material thing, an emotion, even a lethal addiction. letting go means having pain.
I guess I have worked the first 30 years of my life towards letting go of a lot of things: self-destruction, inferiority complexes, fear of life, anorexia, obsessive overeating, feeling responsible for my parents and the world (instead of myself), depression, obsessive working out, panic of losing security, anxiety about living an unhappy life without any meanig to it... and so on.
This year´s yoga festival was a lot about letting go of a lot of these things. finally. still, for the first 3 or 4 days, I felt so miserable I couldn´t figure out why. I was crying a lot, in the evenings before sleeping, then again at 4 a.m. before even getting up to visit a toilett. I was sad. I let it go. All that pain and suffering I used as a dear crutch for so many years. Not that it had enabled me to walk properly. In contrary it only made me stumble through life even more. But I knew it was there, it was dependable, it was secure. Secure to keep me alive, but unhappy.
The biggest fear of letting go for me is always the anxiety there might exist a big vaccum that cannot be filled and then (like a black hole) sucks in the universe and destroys it as soon as the old crap is gone. One of my teachers said: 'Nature doesn´t like vacuums, you know that.' But isn´t it allowed to be afraid of what nature will fill in the gap with?? 'So what if there isn´t a big black hole but a bright light?' Hm. Interesting idea. and then you finally get the point. It´s a construction of your fear. You KNOW there is a bright light. You ARE the light. You have just so much gotten used to put yourself down that you didn´t have a concept anymore of yourself being light. I was at the moment to understand it in my mind a while ago but on the festival, I understood it in my heart. (God, that sounds cheesy. awful. life is cheesy sometimes in the same extend it can be cruel and unfair. it still gives me a hard time to accept that...)
so I try to relax into letting go of a lot now. the main thing being, I et go of having a plan. being a true pitta person, I need plans, lists and concepts. at the moment I only have some travelideas, but no fixed plans yet. I feels new but for the first time it feels good. I feel more free than I have ever felt since childhood. The letting go part is still a little shaky, but the pain becomes smaller and less dramatic. *big sigh* I will let go of typing this now (only for today) and see how I feel with that. wahe guru.

what was it all about again?

I can´t believe this is the same life. when I read the last post from not even 2 weeks ago, I am astonished in what state I was back then. somewhere on the way to france, I must have forgotten what I have been so stressed out about.
With my close friend B. I was on my way to a Yoga Festival in the middle of France listening to 90s DJs music and dancing in the car. We decided to take a break after the main part of driving and stay one last night in civilization before entering the realm of spiritual bliss and dreadful smelly bathrooms. So we stopped at our favorite budget hotel chain we had discovered two years ago on our first trip together. When we lay in bed at night I was excited about arriving on the next day. But I had already left behind all the drama of those last endless weeks. I had already forgotten how I had sleepless nights wondering if anyone would give me any money for my studio, whether I will be able to sustain myself or be supported enough financially whilst not working... and here I was, my mind in a perfect repression state of relaxation, on a road trip with B. and my credit card that looked like it will pay for almost anything for the next 100 years.

The next morning the energy had changed. The excitment had been exchanged for some kind of reluctance and we discontentedly continued our journey. the closer we came to the festvial ground, the bigger the resistance grew. we had learned int he past 2 years that going to an intense yoga festival is a big process of letting go and cleansing, and anyone who was ever confronted with the potential lethal impact that the odour of physical results of letting go can have, will have a vague idea when I say, sometimes it is hard to bear.
so instead of going straight to our destination, we stopped again in one of france´s famous shopping malls including a 'hypermarché' which should satisfy our desire for consumption in advance for the whole week. Equipped with an over-sized shopping-cart we travelled our way through endless shelves and freezing dairy zones, shopped fruit and veggies, decaf soluble coffee and long-lasting milk (important survival devices on a yoga festival) and the inevitable accessoire, a pink beach bag. not to mention a new beautiful scarf at an 'esprit' store (was half price), an emergency white pants just in case the yoga gear in the suitcase doesn´t last in the end (it was also half price) and some lovely necklaces and matching earings (2 for 1) that just went too well with my outfit for not taking them.
When we left the parking space, the car was so fully loaded I could feel the weight when trying to accelerate.

A strong feeling of sadness was slowly creeping up on me approaching the festival venue, and on the last break with our lunch of carrot salad and tabouleh, I hardly managed to get the food down I was so anxious. So we took a deep breath, turned on the music really loud, and finally made it to our destination: a week full of yoga and confrontation, sun and music, beautiful friends and intense emotional releases amidst a huge crowd of roughly 2,500 people experiencing more or less the same. congratulations, you arrived in the land of pain and pleasure.

to be continued...

taking a break

being a burn-out, the common advise everywhere is: take a break. ah. good idea. never thought of that before. it´s ridiculous. i am a yoga teacher unable to take breaks and relax. but that´s how it is just now. it´s exactly like telling an addict to just live without the drug or an obsessive eater to just eat less. come on, just relax. well, i am trying. i am going on my holidays in a couple of hours and a bit like a junkie I am still here typing, oh, I can still go for a run, get this organized, write another email... I mean there will be no computer for more than a week. I gotta work in advanced. ops, forgot, I am incapable of working and on an official break. I DON´T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT!

the next 10 days or so I won´t have a choice and I will report after how it went down. missing my blog already.

freedom

the last days were all about freedom for me. although I stopped working more than two months ago, I never felt I actually had. I still had to organize people to cover classes for me to keep my yoga studio running, attend health appointments for my broken down psyche, inform all my students and clients I will quit (it is as if you´re actually quitting to 100 bosses... and I only did it in writing) and take care of finding someone to take over the studio and compensate me for at least a part of my expenses that I put into it only a year ago. And a not too small a task it was to keep my distance, to not be invaded by nosy people who relentlessly kept asking about what was wrong with me, even if I communicated on ALL channels that I´m not willing to talk about it (not to mention it´s noone´s business, but that´s too subtle a thought for a lot of people). Well, and integrating such a decision is actually quite heavy physical work, too. So, it turned out I might have quit my official job, but I had not all quit working, being busy, being responsible, being stressed. I was often even more stressed as I was when I was still doing my teaching.

Little by little, I could let go of small parts of all the tension I was still clinging to. To be honest, they were so small, I didn´t feel the difference. I can only see that now, looking back how things evolved over the last weeks. And even when I came to a point when pretty much everything was taken care of, I noticed, in a way, I don´t even wanna let go! How crazy was that? I went through all that pain of the decision to leave behind the life I had designed for me over the last 5 crucial years and prepared to drop it all, heal, and start over; I stopped working and managed my calender to be blank for whole days, but still, I was tense, stressed out, attached to my duties, caught up in my mental game of 'I-have-to-take-care-of-everything-for everyone'. So I WAS free, there were no obligations anymore. But I didn´t feel ANY freedom. Because the only freedom you can have is inside yourself. What a horrible lesson.

I used to travel a lot to afar countries with the (in retrospect) very clear intention of getting away from everything, everyone and myself. And to be free. I did never realize I never did find freedom anywhere. Not on the nicest beaches, not in a school routine down under, not between volcanos and glaciers, not in a tent nor in a nice hotel. I have always been and still am intrigued by the idea of finding solutions in the outer world. Buy this, be happy. Get slim, be bliss. That would be so much easier than that work-loaded 'relax. have faith. be happy.' I got from my beloved yoga teacher. I guess I need a few more learning opportunities to get there.

So before I made a few courageous steps into that direction, I had to walk some steps backwards, as if to do an inrun. I got more and more stresses, I was even convinced I needed an anti-depressant, I started bingeing on food again, I dug out every old mind pattern I could find to drag me down (and I have a good hidden stack of those in a bottom drawer in the back) and keep me as small, as dependent, as needy and as suffering as I thought and felt it is necessary. Which means very. I hated it. I gained weight and that alone would have make me feel miserable enough. When everything is (or feels) out of control, it´s such a great strategy to just focus on eating (or not-eating) and your body weight and obsess with that for a while. (Maybe secretely hoping that everything else will blow by eventually and take care of itself.) Not that it every worked out for me. But does that mean I can´t believe it will one day?

I somehow mangaged to peel myself out of that shell more and more in those last days and I finally can sense something like relief and the sight of fredom on the horizon. I will go on a 3-weeks-holiday to France tomorrow and to a Ashram in Portugal for at least 2 months from September. So know I have time to relax into the outer freedom and allow myself more to embrace the inner freedom as well. Cause that is what counts and that´s the only thing that can heal and nurture me now. I am finally breathing deeply again without a lit cigarette in my mouth (also a little freedom) and I am starting to realize I am all free. in this life, in me. cool.

I quit.

I quit my Yoga studio yesterday. I had my own studio for a year now and I gave it away yesterday. there´s still stuff to figure out (e.g. who buys a hundred yoga mats, belts and blocks...) but it´s the first step after a long struggle to let it go.

I quit working as a yoga teacher abour 2 months ago. It was horrible. I wasn´t able to work anymore, there was nothing I could give that wouldn´t mean for myself to bleed and suffer. but still I beat myself up for being weak and being a loser. it took me weeks to understand that I am allowed to make this decision. that I don´t have to suffer for anyone.

I quit living the life I thought others expected me to live. or even I epected myself to live. I dared to stop earning money, letting go of all responsibilities (working on that part) and to start to listening what I really need and want. Maybe that´s a first. I guess it is. At least this consciously.

As soon as I stopped working, I started to smoke again. After 5 years being a non-smoker! I just needed the dramatic gesture. I just didn´t know how to breathe deeply anymore (this coming from a breath-loving yoga teacher) without some nicotine guiding the air into the depths of my lungs. But I quit that, too. After too many (wonderful) evenings with a friend contemplating about life with (non-alcoholic, yes I´m a true party master) beer and way too many cigarettes, I decided it´s time to quit again. I quit before, I never wanted to smoke again, none of the cells in my body wanted this crap inside me anymore, so I quit. I mastered 2 days so far. There´s no cravings, and I am glad that not yet another obsession has slowly crawled back into my life.

Speaking of obsessions. I haven´t quit all of them. They are fighting insinde me for so many years now I guess they just got used to the game. It´s hard to imagine them not doing that anymore, but that´s my big learning task for now. Lettting go.
I have had an eating disorder from early age on, after losing a lot of weight I gained much more after and I am struggling ever since. on the outside with my weight (and excepting my body as beautiful) and on the inside (allowing myself to live and therefore to eat). there have been good, bad and worse times, but I am afraid I have never been happy with how I looked and felt. due to a more or less yogic diet I lost quite a few kilos over the last years, having achieved a healthy weight of 57-59 kilos, I am a tiny 1,61 m woman. only to find myself fall back into old patterns of bingeing and feeling horribly guilty, only compensation that feeling with more food. and yes, tomorrow I´ll be strong again, tomorrow, tomorrow. tomorrow still is tomorrow. So I have gained at least 5 kilos, which doesn´t sound too dramatic (even when I type it here) but it feels enormous and it´s so frustrating to have gained all that back... I feel like an elephant. I know I don´t look like one but I feel like one. My clothes hardly fit me anymore (thank god it´s too hot to wear jeans, and thank god for all the lovely wide dresses on the market) and I freak out by the look into my closet. In one of my very dearly loved self help books I luckily happened to find many years ago, there is this sentence: You cannot 'feel fat'. Fat is not a feeling. But I KNOW it is. And I KNOW I´m not the only one.

So here I am, a 30-year-old yoga teacher who dropped everything apart from that excess weight, but I did drop my job, my financial existence, my business, my career plans, my pressure to go on and on although I wasn´t able anymore to do so ...
And yes there is something else I didn´t drop. My will to live and to finally find my way to be relaxed, faithful and happy.

I will keep you posted ;-)

my first post ever...

welcome. nice to be read by you. thanks for investing some of your precious time in this. feel invited to take part in my journey, which has yet no destination to go to, but an eager motivation to get there. this will be about the past, present and future. about me, my life, and everyone´s hope to be close to oneself, and all the rest. looking forward to this!