Happy birthday Ginny!

Dearest Dancing Queen,

Well I just finished seeing all the photos you posted on Facebook today, of the birthday you spent at your beautiful chacra at El Hueco. It looks like it was a lovely day, full of sunshine and friends. Sky trelissing beans from the garden, you on the porch with your easle and paints. You were surrounded with laughter and your horses, just like you like it.

I have such memories of our time in El Huecu with its one gas station, clinic and small grocery shop - where you sent me to pick up some FiberOne and yogurt one morning when we were out. I remember walking the dirt road as frequented by horses as cars and seeing the expansive views of the Patagonian mountains all around. For a good long while it was just me and those mountains and nothing else. I remember breathing deeply to internalize the feeling and remember it forever.

What age might you be celebrating now, is it 63 or 64? In the photos you posted you look radiant and ageless. I love the one of you and Sky smiling each other, your faces equally beautiful and full of love. So cool she made you a cake. She can do everything. Your daughter is amazing.

I see you said your birthday prayers too, complete with sage and condor feather in hand. I remember when we did that together, gave our thanks to Mother Earth and the sky and everything else. You taught me how to feel truly grateful, to live every moment full of conscious gratitude. I was drawn to yoga because of it when I returned to New York, and when I meditate I still sometimes think of Volcan Copahue outside our window in Caviahue. Often throughout my day I still think of you.

How you liked to turn up the music real loud and dance, even though sometimes you hardly could.

My life right now is very different from the quiet, nurturing, nature-filled days I spent in your presence full of reading, writing, hiking, laughing, drinking mate - and the great big Patagonian sky. Now I am a social media queen, helping startups do marketing in sunny Middle Eastern Tel Aviv - a place so opposite from where you are in every possible way you can imagine. I still wonder sometimes what my life would look like or who I would be if I had stayed. It was something I definitely considered. For one thing, I bet by now I would know how to ride a horse!

But at least I got to take a part of you with me. I learned how to be more fearless, to laugh more, to try to take it easy even when things aren't. Or to at least take things in stride. I learned how important it is to have as many adventures as possible because that's the only way to discover new places and people that will touch and amaze you and quite possibly change you forever. This has happened to me a few times now since leaving New York to travel or for good. These are lessons I try to live by.

For everything you taught me - and remind me when I see the updates and photos you post every once in a while on Facebook - I am grateful (like you) that you are alive.  Happy birthday dear Ginny and so many more.

Love always,
Karen

Friday in Florentine

The streets of Florentine are shiny and dark by the time I leave Studio Naim where I'd come to attend a Jivamukti workshop with the visiting Dechen Thurman (of Robert Thurman fame). I'd been mostly practicing yoga on my own since arriving in Israel and so looked forward to some yogi camaraderie as well as Dechen's guidance. The class is great and I leave 3 hours later in a relaxed yet invigorated stupor - the perfect state of mind for Shabbat.

Outside the rain has already begun. Though still balmy, this is Fall in Tel Aviv (add some more gusts of wind and shave off another 10 degrees and you have your winter - ha). I'd been meaning to get to Florentine for a while. A cross between the East Village and Williamsburg, the neighborhood is classic "old Tel Aviv" - dilapidated yet full of character, as well as some of the city's funkiest bars and clubs. Basically, Downtown to my sister's "fancy" Uptown in North Tel Aviv, where I've been mostly stationed.

On a rainy Shabbat evening, however, Florentine is nothing but empty.  The street lamps are measly, barely lighting my way up the long avenues of Derech Shlomo then Yaffo to Nachlat Binyamin where I turn unto Rothschild Street. There the rain returns, slamming into the back of my jeans and soaking my Old Navy canvas sneakers. In a rare moment of prescient clarity, I'd remembered to bring my pink polka dotted umbrella (digging it out from one of my four suitcases still sitting in my sister's living room) and I huddle beneath it in the wet dark.

Rain on Rothschild

In a well timed text message, my sister suggests I take a cab in this weather. But I like walking and I don't mind the rain and besides my wet dark lonely predicament suits my mood. I've been in one for the past few days because my moods always just come and go at whim and here it is. This time though I've been waiting, knowing its arrival would inevitably coincide with the buzz of my Big Life Transition slowly giving way to the "reality" of my new routine.

Life transitions are exciting. It's taken me some practice but I see that now that I've been through a few. Like setting off for some far off land, they provide a rare opportunity to break out of boundaries and predictable patterns to experience life more... experientially. Since leaving my last job for Central America, I'd had a few months of that and know they changed my life forever. It had been a time full of travel, yoga, adventures, self-assessment and growth. I'd gone to Nicaragua and Guatemala then to Colorado to hike and be with good friends. Stepping out of my routine in New York for a while is also what helped me realize I wanted to move to Israel.

Now that I'm finally officially here, it's time to settle in and make some important decisions about what I want the new "reality" of this next chapter to look like. The adrenalin buzz of being in limbo is gone and on a wet rainy night with so many unanswered questions still looming - and so many suitcases still unpacked - it's easy to feel overwhelmed.

I remember what Dechen repeated as he guided our breathing and alignment throughout the evening. He was talking to all of us in the room but I clung to his words, pretending he had chosen his workshop's theme about connecting with our intention just for me.

"Really think about what you want," he kept saying, offering additional encouragement as we hovered - mindfully, patiently, gracefully - in each pose. "Then think about how you're going to get it. One breath at a time."

One breath at a time. This seemed like good advice. 

On rain and dogs and coming home

Everything is wet now. The wet season has begun and almost overnight everything’s changed - from hot sweaty sun to overcast days with only occasional glimmers of sunlight. Yesterday it rained 6 times and our sunset kayake trip fell short of a sunset - obscured as it was by a dramatic blanket of clouds. (We had fun anyway.)

I am glad to be here to witness this huge shift from Nicaragua’s dusty dry season to its shiny green wet one before I go. Glad also for the opportunity to experience it still here on tropical Ometepe, where I am spending a few extra days away from the Inan Itah “commune” amidst the gardens of El Porvenir, alone again in a private room with a bed that has sheets and a bathroom with white towels (never mind flush toilet). On Chuck’s recommendation, I’ve asked for Habitacion 11 at the very end with windows facing the garden. There is a hammock outside my front door where I can still take a short nap if I want - though I think for a while anyway I am done sleeping in one.

I have worked out an arrangement to teach yoga for a few days at nearby El Zopilote, just 15 minutes up the road. Free morning classes in exchange for meals, including the woodfire stove pizza they serve for dinner 3 nights a week including this one - which will be my last. The yoga “studio” is nothing more than a brightly painted outdoor platform with a mesh screen above for protection against the sun - though not so much the rain. It’s rained twice during each class I’ve taught so far, and always during savasana which felt like perfect timing. The morning rain comes down as a light to moderate drizzle so not too distracting for relaxing the body and finding inner peace. On the contrary.

Kalena

Kalena came with me to class today. She followed me home from Inan Itah last night, after I had returned from kayaking with Tarin and Chris. It’s a hike on to Porvenir from there and they’d (so) graciously offered to accompany me with headlamps on the dark rainy ½ hour walk through the fields and down the hill. Kalena and her sister Lanka, 2 of the Inan Itah dogs, decided to come along. Then Kalena decided to stay. I tried to send her home this morning, pointing uphill through the gate in Inan Itah‘s direction, but she wouldn’t leave. So instead we shared some toast and eggs for breakfast and went to yoga.

It is nice to have sweet gentle protective Kalena‘s company on my last day on Ometepe. She is a loyal one, waiting patiently through the night on the patio outside my bedroom door (tempted though I was to bring her in!) then by my yoga mat in the rain during class. She’s been a welcome reminder how much I miss having a dog, that maybe it will be time for one again when I return home.

After lunch I will walk Kalena back to Inan Itah in case she’s forgotten where she belongs. I’m worried about her running after my taxi (yes I’m taking one this time!) and something bad happening if she’s around when I leave tomorrow or her just not finding her way back on her own. I know sometimes how tricky that can be.

Kalena on the mat

(More final Ometepe days photos here!)

The yoga mural is underway!

After much planning and talk about it, we finally started the mural at La Biblioteca de los 3 Ernestos today. The wall in the small room adjacent to the library of donated books has been primed for days and the kids have been itching to begin.

I’ve been teaching them yoga + art classes twice a week since I arrived in Salinas through Gabriela and James’ grassroots community foundation, Fundacion Aprender. Aprender was the initiative they started when they moved to Salinas and noticed the lack of educational and recreational opportunities for the kids. Las Salinas is a tiny, remote village about a two hour rickety bus ride away to the nearest relative metropolis of Rivas (where it is possible to find an ATM or a pharmacy). Chickens, roosters, turkeys and pigs walk the dusty, dirt roads and most of the families are poor. Education is a nice-to-have and only if families can afford to buy the uniforms school kids are required to wear here in Nicaragua.

So Aprender got on that, offering family outreach, counseling and support to increase school registration and attendance. They helped get the kids uniforms. Then they built Salinas’ first library full of books and magazines in Spanish and English. It’s become a place where the kids can go to get help with their homework, use one of the five donated computers, or take really interesting classes - like mine! (Or Natalie’s - who teaches hula hooping to the older kids on Tuesday afternoons.)

It amazes me every day that I am here what Gabriela and James have done and continue to do, between building their permaculture farm and running Aprender. Thanks to a new grant they just received, Salinas will soon have a sports field. Thanks to a group of surfers passing through who wanted to help with money for supplies, the library will soon have a latrine. But - with the exception of the two full-time librarians Aprender can afford - Gabriela and James handle most of the fundraising, outreach and logistical coordination of all the projects themselves. Being around them is an inspiration, not to mention amazing lesson in getting shit done.

And so soon, too, the yoga mural will be done. The kids spent today rendering their yoga poses of choice on the white wall in pencil then painting them in with bright tempura colors. The poses line up pretty nicely on a windy road that leads from La Bibioteca all the way to Salinas’ hot springs, just like it does in real life. Some of the poses are levitating among the clouds and the butterflies, some are miniscule and some towering. After all my preparation and planning the mural nothing like what I'd imagined. It's beautiful.

--

You can click here to see pictures of the kids and our yoga mural in progress!

To learn more about Aprender or find out what you can do to help please visit the site - or just let me know :)

Prana Shakti, Popoyo Beach

I taught my first yoga class at Prana Shakti today. Gabriela and James had to go to Rivas so she asked if I would do it. Simple as that. She’s never seen me teach but we both studied at Integral Yoga and she’s seen me practice so it’s nice that translates into implicit trust. Prana Shakti is her little yoga studio on Popoyo Beach. Sometimes Gabriela teaches at the hotels or with private clients nearby but Prana Shakti has a set schedule that she advertises on Facebook and on paper flyers taped up around the town. The studio is but a wooden shack on stilts. There is a little brick room below with a small kitchen and bathroom but when she lived here she lived in the room above. That’s where the deck is and the wide window that opens up to views of ocean blue and breeze. It is like doing yoga on the beach but without the sand.

To get to the studio Natalie and I decide to take the kayake down river to the beach then walk. We could bike but the kayake would get us there much faster. It’s not the first time we’ve kayaked together and while the two of us in one kayake is a tight fit we manage to make it work. I squeeze in first (engaging my moolah bandah to ease down without capsizing - by now an inside joke), then Natalie squeezes down in front of me. She paddles, manuevering the kayake expertly down the optimal path miraculously emblazoned on her brain. When the tide is lower finding the best path becomes tricky and I pitch in paddling against the river bed with my hands. Still, using the kayake is as nice a commute as any with fish jumping all around, beautiful birds flying and hunting, and lots of laughs.

The class itself is small - as classes on a surfer beach in a small rural Nicaraguan town are wont to be. It is just me, Natalie and Kai, our surfer friend who lives down the road four months out of the year when he’s not running his business in San Diego. This is only his second class but he seems committed. It is another hot hot morning in Popoyo and by the second sun salutation we are all dripping sweat on our mats. Natalie notes it is like doing Bikram. Every once in a while a breeze swoops in to cool us off, but not enough. I do an especially long sivasana at the end and skip kapalabati.

On our way back after class Natalie and I jump into the ocean. The waves and undertow are always a little daunting but the water is always perfect - just the right combination of sun-drenched warm and Pacific refreshing. We dry off as we walk down the beach back to the kayake, picking up interesting shells as we go. It is about 11 am on a Friday morning, another good day in Popoyo.

Savasana in a giant crater lake

I am lying on my back on a raft in Laguna Appoyo. The waves that seemed so innocent from shore are much rockier now that I´m here, dashing my silly delusions of meditating in their midst.

So I am trying savasana instead, pressing my entire back body against the raft while opening my heart center to the sky. This is easier. Imaging a wave (how aproppriate!) of warm energy rolling up my body. Starting with my toes... the soles of my feet... the tops of my feet... making its way up my legs and my torso and all the way to the crown of my head. My skin is still wet from the swim out and the raft damp beneathe me but the water is velvet warm and the sun hot up above.

I repeat the words I use to teach savasana silently in my head and feel grateful I can do this almost on autopilot. My first savasana in a giant crater lake. My very best one yet.

Gazing at the savasana raft