I traveled to Thailand with the pure intention to deepen my spiritual practice, to explore different paths and simply to get away for a while. My experiences this summer were incredible. I traveled differently than I ever had in the past. I simply went to one location and stayed put. I rented a house and integrated myself into the local community. I became active in the Agama Yoga school, taking several workshops, two months of intensive Yoga study and practice as well as two 10-day silent meditation retreats. I experimented with fasting and cleansing. I lived simply and slowly.

I set a clear intention that this would be a summer of inner work, that I would not seek social gratifications or female companionship.  Yet one cannot deny the human existence and the powers at play between certain individuals. The most extraordinary element of my summer, and possibly my life to this point was meeting Ingrid at the conclusion of a ten-day meditation retreat together. I could fill this page with all that we’ve experienced and explored together, but as a general rule, I try to keep relationships out of my writing. I must however say that our meeting has coincided with an opening of my heart, with a deep yearning to to be united with someone as inspiring, beautiful and amazing as she is. A wild set of circumstances have collided that have allowed an American man and a Dutch woman to dance on loves stage together.

I find it difficult to articulate my experience this summer, as much of what occurred for me was very subtle – shifts in my world views, my relationship to myself, others and the world. Aspects of my personal experience I once had taken for granted or simply dismissed are now accessible to me. There is a sense of surrender to the unknown ahead, a diminishing need to control the uncontrollable future. I consider much more often what is nourishing me in this very moment rather than in some projection of the future. In a practical sense I have no idea where my life is headed, yet the clarity of simply trusting my heart and intuition is very powerful.

Throughout the summer I weighed a large decision for early 2012 – would I participate in a 90-day Practice Period at my Zen Monastery in Crestone, or would I travel to Mexico to participate in a 90-day teacher training program in Yoga and Meditation? Over time the decision became very clear for me – I found myself longing for time in Crestone, to be immersed in the stream of ancient teaching passed down over the past 2600 years. A teacher’s training program might very well be in my future, but right now my path is asking me to spend more time practicing, deepening my meditation practice more so than gaining an intellectual understanding of what meditation is. Helping others bring meditation into their lives and bring their lives to meditation would bring me tremendous of joy, yet right now I feel the most nourishing way for me to move towards such a vision is to live and practice in a monastic setting.

Ingrid will be joining me for the move to Crestone in a couple of weeks, where we will practice together at the monastery this fall.  In January, I will begin Practice Period and she will travel to Mexico to help organize and teach the Teacher’s Training I nearly decided to attend. You can see this was no easy decision for me! In all I will be at the monastery for at least 6 months, finishing the practice period in mid-April. Other then the desire to reunite with Ingrid at that time, the world is a blank slate, full of possibility.

"I know you’re tired, but come. This is the way."

~Rumi

The morning of Day 1, I performed a Shanka Prakshalana:

In Sanskrit shanka means ‘conch’, and refers here to the intestines, which are as tortuous as a conch. Prakshalana means ‘cleansing’ or ‘purification’; therefore this technique could be called ‘the purification of the conch’. In other Yogic treatises it is also called värisära dhauté (‘the purification through the essence of Water’).

In other words, I drank 6 liters of salt water, then alternated between doing Yoga exercises and going to the toilet. A slightly different version is described here. I performed a Shanka about a year and half ago in Rishikesh with a couple of friends who were taking the Agama First Month Intensive with me. My memory was that it was a lot more difficult the first time! All together I think it took me about 2.5 hours to complete the process, and I wasn’t as affected by the horrible taste of the salt water this time. I added a couple ounces of lemon juice to each liter to make the water taste better, but the reality is you cannot do much to improve the flavor of salt water…

More background on the shanka prakshalana:

According to the Yogic outlook, one of the keys to health lies in the intestines. The physical body becomes ceaselessly and systematically intoxicated throughout the entire duration of life. One of the main causes for premature ageing and senility is the accumulation of poisons in the body through self-poisoning. Every living cell produces toxins. However there is an even more dangerous source of self-pollution, consisting of the poisons which filter through the intestinal walls and which intoxicate the entire body. Even those who believe they are not constipated still have a permanent source of self-pollution in the large intestine. Daily evacuation of the intestine does not exclude the possibility that the mucous membrane of the intestine may gradually be covered by a shell of sediments (generally known as “mucoid plaque”) which become encrusted there and are never removed. There they ferment and rot, and these toxins spread into the entire body. The origin of several forms of cancer is due to the permanent irritation of this intestinal mucous membrane. Cancer of the intestine is one of the most common cancer. However this illness is not the only evil to be fearful if the large intestine is covered with a crust of un-expelled feces. The illnesses which may be directly due to self-pollution are cirrhosis, rheumatism,dysentery, rhinitis, arthritis, neuroses, psychoses, heart disease, skin disease and rashes, foul breath, insomnia, sciatica, anemia, genital infections, piles, gall stones, hysteria, depression, enlargements of liver and spleen, etc. The sedentary life also promotes this self-pollution.

Therefore, the ideal method is shanka prakshalana. Water is simply absorbed through the mouth and reaches the stomach. Aided by certain movements it then travels through the entire length of intestine until exiting from the anus. This procedure is continued until the water expelled is as clean and limpid as when it first entered the body. Depending on various personal factors, it involves an amount of 3 to 5 liters of water.

After completing the shanka, I began my brown rice regiment in the evening. This time around I’m adding a little variety to my 10-day Oshawa. Fortunately in Boulder its very easy to find organic whole grains, so I’m including Quinoa, Buckwheat and a few different types of brown rice. The purists wouldn’t approve, but I think I’ll need the variety in order to get through this on my own.

Like last time, I’m focusing on chewing my food as much as possible, to aid the digestion and retrain my eating habits. I’m meditating and doing yoga daily, going for walks, absorbing sunshine whenever possible. I feel pretty crappy today (headache, bloodshot eyes), but I think this is what happened to me last time. My body is detoxifying and getting used to the smaller quantities. Wish me luck for the remainder of it!

I also wanted to take this opportunity to update you on several fasts I attempted over the past months. I described my initial experience back in June. In late July I participated in a second 10-day Hridaya Meditation retreat. The retreat runs from a Friday to the following Sunday so I decided to attempt two 36-hour fasts from Thursday evening until Saturday morning focusing my fast on Friday when universal love energy is most resonate. I drank only water, spending most of the day in meditation, using my lunch breaks for long walks rather than food preparation. I found both days to be relatively easy – the daytime heat of Thailand helps as you don’t really feel like eating when its so warm. The hardest aspect was late morning, when my body was accustomed to getting its first meal, although this was primarily psychological suffering and once passed I was able to get through the rest of the day without issue. Fasting during retreat was a fantastic experience and I will likely do it again in the future- my body was more settled in meditation, not distracted with digestion or wondering what I was going to make for lunch. I felt a soft clarity that inspired me even past the initial fasting day into the remainder of the retreat.

Now after these two fasts you can imagine I got a little confident and I attempted a third one in late August while I was doing work exchange at the Crestone Mountain Zen Center. Work Exchange consists of hosting large groups, cooking, cleaning, doing millions of dishes and generally being on your feet all day long. Oh and you do still sit 3 or 4 periods of meditation in the morning and evening. Needless to say the time there is quite demanding and after about 24 hours ( I was hoping to get to 36) I felt very dizzy and light-headed. I still had the dinner shift ahead of me and decided to call it quits on on the fast, eating a light meal. While I do think you can do the majority of your daily activities when fasting, keep in mind it may be difficult if you are doing a lot of physical work.

Soon after this retreat I will leave Thailand, stopping over in Europe for a couple of weeks before returning to the U.S. in late August. I’m looking forward to spending my remaining time on the island in silence, contemplating and reflecting on this amazing experience, resting in that profound stillness that pervades everything.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.

Hafiz, from The Subject Tonight is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz,
translated from the Persian by Daniel Ladinsky

My main impetus for taking the course is that as I move into my 30s, I’m beginning to realize my health is not something I can take for granted and is something that needs regular awareness applied to.  There is also the practical matter of being a vagabond with poor health insurance coverage and needing to avoid expensive treatments and hospital stays however possible!

After completing the workshop, my view on what it means to be healthy has shifted significantly. Like many people, I viewed health as simply the state of the physical body- if there are no symptoms or issues, one can be deemed healthy. From a yogic standpoint, physical health is just one small piece of a much larger pie. Homeopathy, and more specifically yoga, looks at a much wider view of the body: including our energetic, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects. Someone very healthy physically may be dealing with large emotional trauma or have a serious mental condition. Such traumas and conditions often do manifest in the physical body, but not always. Another shift is the understanding that I completely own my own health. Poor health manifests from blocked emotions, negative thinking, poor diet, etc., NOT just from the environment and outside.  Why does the same cold virus make some of sick and not others?

There were also simple shifts around approaching suppressive therapies. For example, what do many of us do when we have a fever? We try to suppress it with various chemicals. When we do this, we are actually preventing our body from its natural means of healing itself. Of course, in serious conditions of very high fever or the young or old, suppression can save lives. But for most of us such suppression is not necessary.  As a Western-educated doctor, Mihaiela is not opposed to conventional treatments and would often suggest cases where going to the hospital or seeing a doctor is the best option. What she passionately suggests is that there is a balance to be struck between natural and conventional methods that can provide the best outcome.  The World Health Organization’s definition of health is:

Health is a complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity

They’ve gone on to show that under this definition, a very small percentage of the world population is actually healthy. Are you healthy?

Throughout the week we explored a wide-range of topics including lifestyle, diet, spiritual practices, fasting, therapies and purifications. We experimented with yoga asanas for healing, Qi Gong, basic homeopathic remedies, hypnosis, emotional and sexual healing and held a very constructive conversation on diagnosis, treatment and healing of various kinds. I’m by no means a healer now, but think this subtle shift in perception of health and application of alternative therapies can help both myself and those I love remain healthier in the future!

Back to my fast – it was simple enough. At the conclusion of Yoga class a few days ago, our teacher Kirsten (an avid faster herself), recommended we really give this a try. At Agama there is a supportive community of fasters, with quality advice on starting, undergoing and breaking fasts. There are various types of fasting – juices, fruits, detoxes, rice, water, etc.  A simple, but informative website I have been using is www.allaboutfasting.com. Frankly, doing the 10-day brown-rice fast made it clear to me that I could easily fast on just water, as some of the days during my brown-rice cleanse I literally ate only a cup or two of rice. I decided to begin my fast on Thursday afternoon and continue through until Friday evening (more on why I chose Friday later). The fast was actually quite uneventful. I ate a healthy, small dinner on Thursday, not eating again until Friday evening when I enjoyed a Thai curry with a friend. Many people have the assumption that while fasting you attempt to use as little energy as possible and just sit around staring at the refrigerator. The truth is your body is quite capable of going a few days without food and continuing at its normal energy levels. I anything, I’ve observed more energy in this fast and during my brown-rice cleanse as the body does not have to spend much time digesting food and dealing with a lot of the toxins and other difficult things we ask it to try to digest on a regular basis! The most difficult point was around 11am when I was past my typical breakfast time.  I found my mind wavering to food, but simply sat with the feelings and realized it was just patterned behavior, far from true physical hunger. I went to a 4 hour yoga class and felt absolutely great, eventually eating a meal on Friday evening. In fact, I was quite confident that I could have easily continued the fast until Saturday morning and will attempt the 36 hour version next time around.

Fasting has both physical and spiritual effects. A short list of beneficial effects (from allaboutfasting.com):

• Rest the digestive system
• Allow for cleansing and detoxification of the body
• Create a break in eating patterns, while shining a spotlight on them
• Promote greater mental clarity
• Cleanse and heal "stuck" emotional patterns
• Lead to a feeling of physical lightness, increasing energy level
• Promote an inner stillness, enhancing spiritual connection

Physically, the concept is simple: During a fast, the body takes the opportunity to eliminate a lot of toxins that have built up over the years. The toxins are predominantly stored in fat and mucous cells. When you fast the body will naturally initiate the healing process, first eliminating these foreign entities. It can be quite unpleasant (a.k.a purification process) and people experience symptoms such as headaches, fever, nervousness, diarrhea, etc. On just has to realize these are signs of the body healing itself and continue with the fast! On such a short fast as mine, I didn’t notice any dramatic changes, but on a longer fast these are things to surely look out for.

On the spiritual side there are also a number of benefits. The school here derives most of its teachings from Indian Tantra and therefore incorporates a lot of Indian and Hindu ideology.  Although almost all major religions incorporate various forms of fasting – Christianity, Buddhism and Islam all immediately come to mind, Indians seem to have a very close relationship to it and its not unusual for lay people to fast at least one day a week or during specific times of year. In the Indian system, fasting on specific days aligns you with certain universal energies and depending on your path, you can choose the best day to fast.

I chose Friday both for the resonance with universal love energies and also because it is the day of the week that the majority of traditions fast and you can the align with this collective energy.

The experiment will continue!

     OM shanti shanti shanti

The Lord is enshrined in the hearts of all.
The Lord is the supreme Reality.
Rejoice in him through renunciation.
Covet nothing. All belongs to the Lord.
Thus working may you live a hundred years.
Thus alone will you work in real freedom.

Those who deny the Self are born again
Blind to the Self, enveloped in darkness,
Utterly devoid of love for the Lord.

The Self is one. Ever still, the Self is
Swifter than thought, swifter than the senses.
Though motionless, he outruns all pursuit.
Without the Self, never could life exist.

The Self seems to move, but is ever still.
He seems far away, but is ever near.
He is within all, and he transcends all.

Those who see all creatures in themselves
And themselves in all creatures know no fear.
Those who see all creatures in themselves
And themselves in all creatures know no grief.
How can the multiplicity of life
Delude the one who sees its unity?

The Self is everywhere. Bright is the Self,
Indivisible, untouched by sin, wise,
Immanent and transcendent. He it is
Who holds the cosmos together.

In dark night live those for whom
The world without alone is real; in night
Darker still, for whom the world within
Alone is real. The first leads to a life
Of action, the second to a life of meditation.
But those who combine action with meditation
Cross the sea of death through action
And enter into immortality
Through the practice of meditation.
So have we heard from the wise.

In dark night live those for whom the Lord
Is transcendent only; in darker still,
For whom he is immanent only.
But those for whom he is transcendent
And immanent cross the sea of death
With the immanent and enter into
Immortality with the transcendent.
So have we heard from the wise.

The face of truth is hidden by your orb
Of gold, O sun. May you remove your orb
So that I, who adore the true, may see
The glory of truth. O nourishing sun,
Solitary traveler, controller,
Source of life for all creatures, spread your light
And subdue your dazzling splendor
So that I may see your blessed Self.
Even that very Self am I!

May my life merge in the Immortal
When my body is reduced to ashes.
O mind, meditate on the eternal Brahman.
Remember the deeds of the past.
Remember, O mind, remember.

O god of fire, lead us by the good path
To eternal joy. You know all our deeds.
Deliver us from evil, we who bow
And pray again and again.

     OM shanti shanti shanti

This is the whole of the Isha Upanishad which Mahatma Gandhi said contains the summit of human wisdom. Translated by Eknath Easwaran in The Upanishads (Petaluma, California: Nilgiri Press, 1987).

I wake early, meditate, do my tapas (spiritual commitments), read, and enjoy a nice breakfast of fruit and tea. I am practicing Hatha Yoga and Pranayama with a teacher and class each day from 12-4. I’ve progressed to level 3 at Agama and am very fortunate to have the wonderful and talented Kirsten as my teacher. She is a true Yogini, very inspiring and dedicated to her students. Her emphasis is on meditation, stillness, and deepening. I feel an affinity with her aspirations and style and am extremely grateful for her teaching.

As you progress in the levels here, the emphasis shifts from knowledge to practice, and I’m loving it. We’ve had several classes of nearly three and a half hours in length, holding asanas for as long as 10 minutes, practicing sublimation techniques, breathing exercises and meditation. I often feel like I might float away when I walk out of the hall. Agama Yoga is an incredibly transformational practice and it’s so beautiful to watch both myself and others open and explore their true nature, remove blockages and fears and journey down the road of realization together.

There is a growing awareness of my subtle body (prana-maya-kosha). This is the one you can’t read about in any school book and science will deny its existence because they cannot measure it. Yet we all know it’s there, and countless sages have spoken and taught about it. You first have to work on modifying blockages at a gross level in your physical body, removing toxins like alcohol, marijuana, caffeine, and focusing on diet, sleep and general lifestyle improvements. Then you have a platform for exploring the intricate energetic phenomena that is our subtle body, a body so much wider and expansive than our physical one. In many ways its like being an infant and learning to use one’s body for the first time – often stumbling and running into things, having difficulty navigating in the world. Yet as I practice more and more with this, there are new pathways opening to me, new ways of knowing myself and being in this world. There is a feeling of coming back home to a true self, not the one we have been taught or believe that we are, but the one that we actually feel and know that we are. This is the body connected with prana (the subtle life force that pervades everything) and begins connecting us with everything else.

Agama is a tantric yoga school – and there is incredible insight into the sexual energies, raising and subliming them towards the ultimate desire of the union of consciousness with its own luminosity, wherein all appearance is recognized as your deep, blissful nature, or true Self. Tantra focuses on the polarities of Shiva and Shakti, their interplay and communion. Last week I participated in an event known as a tantric transfiguration. I first got together with the men to learn how the event worked – after some time we entered a dimly lit hall where 40 women were sitting in a large circle. The men all took their seats and we began. The women were wearing a dress based on their element (earth=yellow, water=blue, fire=red, air=white). All of them looked incredible. The men remained in their seats, the women traveled around the circle. Every three minutes a new woman would appear before me, present her mudra (often a very provocative gesture indicating where her energies were), then I would take her hands, seat her very close to me. We would sit facing each other, staring into each other’s eyes without blinking or looking away for several minutes. I’m not sure exactly how to describe what was happening – but it was powerful. In those few minutes you could see and feel so much: openness, love, rigidity, pain, longing, hurt, passion, confusion, questioning, seeking, wanting, denying, on and on and on. When is the last time you stared into your lover’s eyes for three minutes without moving? Imagine doing this with 40 (mostly strangers) people without stopping. Something happens. From what I understand, transfiguration means to see another as a sublime manifestation of the Divine, to go beyond the limitations set by human personality, to embrace in the consciousness sphere all the perfect aspects manifested or yet unmanifested which lead love spontaneously to elevated, superior levels.

I spend a lot of time alone- focusing on what’s right in front of me. Cooking my own meals, reading and watching spiritual movies. I’ve been careful about my social life here – one can easily lose focus on practice, engaging in the almost nightly events or constant distractions of being on an island in paradise. I’m no hermit either, I enjoy company and have found a small group of people whom I really enjoy spending time with, discussing the simultaneous beauty and suffering of this spiritual journey together, our aspirations and fears. One relationship in particular has actually changed the course of my life and has been a deeply moving, opening and incredible experience. One bestowed with grace, wonder and love. I could fill pages with more about this and the discoveries occurring within me but these words are more appropriate for a private conversation.

Time to go.

The diet didn’t have the miraculous effect of clearing out my friendly parasite and it’s becoming clearer that a true fast along with a shankhaprakshalana will be necessary soon.

That’s it for now – I’ll surely be attempting this diet again, let me know if you want to join me next time.