I started writing this post on the plane as I finally started to make my way back to New York. My departure was so bittersweet. I was so excited to go home and see friends and family I have missed, but sad at the same time to leave so many great people. Where do I begin? I ended this journey exactly where I started, in Tasmania at Bikram Yoga Tranquil Point with Ben. Looking back on the past few months I\’m overwhelmed with what I have gained professionally and personally. What was planned to be 3 month trip turned into 6 month journey and is still not over!
It\’s hard to find words for how grateful I am to have made the choice to just get up and go. I left New York 6 months ago on a leap of faith, really without a clue where I was going or where I would end up. Let\’s just say I have been critiqued in my life for living at times \”without a clue\” and probably have caused my mother a lot of worry along the way! I have tried to change it. I realize now it\’s who I AM and apparently I function best that way!
Had I never taken the leap to do this I wouldn\’t have the amazing new friends and memories I now have in my life. There are so many people I have met along the way that I can never repay for what I have learned from them, for the friendship they shared. I can wholeheartedly say my life is so much richer for now knowing each person I have met along the way…every friend, student, mentor, massage therapist, coffee barista, all of them!
I have talked in past blogs about the emotional release a person can experience in certain yoga postures or the stories of tears shed during the intensity of Bikram Yoga training. I would joke how it never happened to me and where are the tears!! The tears did come. I was leaving on a Friday from New Zealand. I started crying on the Tuesday before and didn\’t stop. Choking back tears when I taught, on the bus, on the train, shopping….everywhere. I tried to pass it off as allergies when I could. I didn\’t dare get on the plane without my sunglasses on and a handful of tissues close by!
I honestly couldn\’t tell if they were tears of sadness or joy. Living so minimally for 6 months without many possessions and not carrying the weight of living in a \”rat race\” made me cherish the smaller details of life that get taken for granted all too easily in life. Time to have coffee with a friend and wholeheartedly have a conversation. Time to meander through the supermarket, instead of buzzing through as just another check point on an endless list. Time really just to enjoy life. I had to change careers, strip my brain of what I thought I should be doing and travel to the opposite side of the globe to find that again!
It seemed going back to Tranquil Point was exactly what I needed to end this part of my journey. Complete peace and quiet. No technology. No magazines. No coffee. Completely no distractions from letting the last 6 month, whirlwind soak in. A place where I could really feel what was going on. F.E.E.L. A scary, scary, little four letter word people don\’t do enough!
While I was there I read the Alchemist. A story of a boy traveling far from home in search of buried treasure, only to learn at the end that it was right under his nose in his hometown. I suppose it was a bit coincidental I picked up that book. I didn\’t realize it when I left New York, but I am in search of something. I don\’t know what. I still don\’t know. What I do know is sometimes the uncertainty of the road less traveled can be a little scary, but it is my own responsibility to write my own story. To be the writer, producer and director of my own path in life. To that I say DREAM BIG AND DREAM OFTEN!
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