This is how I felt everyday at the Eco Yoga Park. It had all the necessary ingredients for the perfect manifestation of this magic, as I like to call it. The food was amazing and fresh from our own garden, the air was clean and unpolluted, the animals were many and there was a lot of spare time. Time I filled making new yoga types like gumboots in the garden or stretching in a hammock. Both served not only as great exercise but also as a sure way to get my soul to smile broadly.
I applied to do a work exchange here that I found through the HelpX website that has volunteering opportunities all over the world. My 4 hours of work per day was usually spent on garden work, cooking, chasing horses off our property or decorating the temple with the mosaic art project. The art was my favourite part as it was my first go at glass work and I just adored the shapes and colors we were forming. To my surprise I still had to pay $20 per day which seemed a bit much considering I was doing physical labour but it did include all my accommodations, food and daily yoga classes.
I spent 7 nights at the park in total but I did leave for a few nights in the middle of it. The reason of my mid escape was mostly to do with the long list of rules that I just couldn't get used to. The place is also an ashram with devotees filling their entire way of life with the Hare Krishna religion. I didn't know much about this group of people before and I certainly didn't know that this place was religious, which may have been a good thing as I'm not sure if I would have come. If you haven't guessed yet I do not consider myself religious. I am very spiritual and I feel a lot of love and respect for Mother Earth. For me it's important to enjoy the moments we are given in this life and putting a bunch of sensors on it just doesn't work. The list of what you can't do here was never ending. Some rules were obvious like no sex, no smoking, no drinking, and no animal products. Others were just surprising like no eating or drinking anything in the kitchen. Everything needs to be offered to Hare first before it enters a human mouth, which means you can't try things. This made cooking challenging, especially for me because I treat cooking like an art form that needs to be tested constantly to make sure its as delicious as possible in the end. With this rule I could live with, not that I would want to but yes it is possible, but the music is what really drove me away. The never ending mantras that idolize Hare during work, yoga and any other time that music is played really started getting to me. Yes some of it is beautiful sounding but I am a person that is madly in love with dance and limiting me to one kind of music is like caging my soul. In the end I needed to express myself and that meant breaking a few rules.
I did get what I wanted out of my experience. I have plenty of dance videos, a healthier body and a very satisfying dose of nature. I appreciate all the unique experiences that come my way and I wouldn't trade them in for a route that I'm more comfortable with. The best things for me are the hidden secrets we discover when we go far out of our comfort zone. Here, we find new passions that we never even knew existed. I walk a path filled with love and with that as my guide I know I won't stray off course. I hope you take some time out of today to do something that is really you. I think you'll enjoy it!
4-15 May 2014
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