NO.2/ Wisdom teachings
Deep love is born from understanding.
- Buddha
In the year of 2018, as I had freshly graduated from my M.Sc. degree of clinical and health psychology, something profoundly shifted inside of me. I just dedicated 4 years of my life to the studies of human consciousness and mental health, yet I had no clue how to truly embody what I had learned. Except for visiting a couple of regular yoga classes, I felt I was spiritually starved. This quiet voice deep inside of me was telling me that this was not quite what was meant for me.
Even though I found work in research at the university that I had graduated from and had a “bright future” on this career path ahead of me, I made a decision that seemed very bold at the time. I couldn’t ignore the internal longing of my soul any longer that has been whispering to me for a while to go on a quest for more depth and meaning in my life.
And so I used my first paychecks to travel to India, leave everything I knew behind, and join my friends on a silent meditation retreat in Bodh Gaya, the place where - sat under a Bodhi tree - the Buddha reached a state of full enlightenment. There, amidst a group of friends and like-minded seekers from across the world, I sat in silence for days, and finally began to look deeply into my soul for what felt like the first time in my life. It was there that I realized how much more there was within me that wanted to be discovered, to feel seen, and to be expressed.
A week of silence and deep insight meditation practices led by Dharma teacher and psychologist Radha Nicholson helped me shed layers of my conditioning that had been so familiar to me, I almost didn’t realize I could exist without them. Opening my heart and looking at the pain, the vulnerability I felt and all the grief, I slowly began to soften - inside and outside.
Right after coming out of the retreat, I continued on my own and traveled to a different corner of the country to start my first 200h Yoga Teacher Training. Earth Yoga Village was an eco-conscious yoga school in Palolem, a small village located between the jungle and the beach. There I really started to practice the embodiment that I had been so desperately looking for. And it was there that I began to understand the influence of the moon’s cycles on me: my mood, my body, my wellbeing and my spirit.
To be continued…
