I am in the zone right now. Monday the 7th is nine days until Meg Townsend and I fly to Costa Rica a few days before our group who will all gather at Blue Osa on May 19th to begin our 7-day Wholebeing Journey. We’ve been finalizing the program we will do each day and though you may not be going with us I wanted to share some of what we’ll be doing there that may resonate with you.
It took me a few months after my first trip to Costa Rica in 2015 to realize something significant had happened during my time there. I woke up to how good life can feel. I woke up to the pleasures of the sensory experiences of life.
In my day-to-day life in Philadelphia, I lived in my head. In Costa Rica, the sights and sounds, smells and tastes demanded my attention. Each was a richer wave of awe: the tiny iridescent hummingbirds and neon tree frogs, the smell of the ylang-ylang flowers, the howler monkeys whooping in the early light of morning and the sweet, tangy taste of passion fruit.
I’d forgotten that I have a body and the physical senses of sight, smell, taste, sound and touch for the purpose of experiencing joy in life!
We have a body, not as a decaying cage to rage against, but as a landscape through which our connections and responses to other living things travel.
This delicious buffet of sensory experiences was offered not by a movie or social media or an over-priced admission ticket to a concert or theme park ride. Mother nature offered all of the delights. For free.
These multi sensations pulsing through my body began to deliver me to a place of quiet and softness that I had almost forgotten. There was a lightness in my body like when I was a child. One morning I sat watching two kittens chasing each other and tumbling around together in this playful dance, merely for the fun of it. I realized that was what I had been doing the last few days, playing, enjoying every sense of my body for the fun of it.
Somewhere along the way, I had become a dreary, serious adult seeing life as a series of problems to be solved. I had forgotten how to play. The simple joy that came to me when I got out of my head and into the sensations of my body felt so good.
That morning my friend took this picture of me with one of the tiny kittens that I befriended. Later in the day when I looked at my photos, I did not recognize myself. Who was this beaming girl with a REAL smile on her face?
I realized how much I’d been missing. Life offers sight and sounds and smells and tastes every day. I, like Dorothy, took a long adventure to realize I could have found similar experiences at home. The beautiful crepe myrtles and tulips, the array of greens in the grass and new leaves on every tree that spring is offering and the melodious birds singing outside my window at dawn are all there for me. For free.
Over the next few weeks, I have prepared posts to dig into each sense as we will be doing on each day of our journey in Costa Rica. I’m writing these ahead of time as I have promised myself to be as media free as possible while I am there.
My invitation for you is this. Can you begin to LOVE what life has to offer that is all around you? Can you fall in LOVE with your body, the one you have today, with all its miraculous capabilities, that allows you to see, hear, smell, taste and touch? Can you practice breathing and moving in every yoga pose this week to hone your awareness of all of your senses?
Spring has so much to offer, no matter where you are.
Are you awake?
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