How Bali still helps me in the fast-paced Dutch urban life.
Dance, dance, dance (the importance of playfulness)
Although the winter sun is out, it’s cold and stormy. But inside the holistic health studio, around the corner from my new house, it’s cosy and warm. The scent of the fresh and soft Ayurvedic massage oil calms my nerves and senses. Intuitively I chose the Pitta (fire) oil for the massage, and I can totally imagine I indeed need to balance al the fire inside of me (read: al the ‘action’ and ‘doing’ around moving to a new house while working full days at a vibrant content management interim job).
“Walking barefoot around our kitchen garden, picking wild herbs and flowers”
Prioritize nourishment
While the warmth of the hot stones relax my muscles deeply, I drift away to a state of total relaxation. Soft sounds of birds chirping in a rainforest come from the speakers and take me back to the energy of Bali. My wooden house in the midst of the rice fields, the warming sun on my skin and walking barefoot around our kitchen garden picking wild herbs and flowers. My whole experience of living there was such a nourishing one. The made-with-love-food and fresh fruits, the daily coconut with a bamboo straw, the attention for details, rituals and beauty that come so natural to the Balinese people. The sounds, the vibe, the smells… They nourished all my senses deeply.
Picking fruit and flowers from our communal kitchen garden in Bali
Me and my friends helping the gardener
The jungle-view from my kitchen in Trinity Gardens Ubud
“I started to understand that living a full live to me is much more about resting in the fullness of my humanness (and sometimes very human-mess)”
My humanness and human-mess
There on this island full of paradoxes, I could let it all go: the whole rat race, all the ‘I have to’s’, the pushing, the striving, the need to be(come) someone, the need to get better, higher, lighter, the need to DO things all the time (as our society encourages and mirrors us as ‘normal’). I started to understand that living a full live to me is much more about resting in the fullness of my being. The fullness of my humanness (and sometimes very human-mess). Knowing that this is good enough and all I ever really have to ‘do’. Knowing I am good enough. And from that relaxed and playful inner space: dare to follow inspired action when it arrives (and move mountains when the time is right. From that place of self-love, not from striving).
“I finally remembered that life asks of me to meet and allow the present moment as fully and as softly as possible, every time again”
Cause when will it then ever be enough?
Even many years of personal and spiritual development had unconsciously turned into ‘hard work’. It always will when it comes from the place of ‘not good enough’, even though I wasn’t aware of this at the time. Cause when will it then ever be enough? I needed these years to turn into a conscious and aware human being, to get to know myself better, to remember things that I forgot and open channels that I had apparently closed to protect myself as a sensitive and highly empathic child. But at one point the continuous ‘seeking’ for me got tiring, to say the least. I realized it’s all about integration. Integrating parts of ourselves, of our essence, back to the whole. So I let go of seeing ‘the spiritual’ as the holy grail in life. It’s an integrated part of me as all parts of me are, my creativity, my playfulness and also the parts of me that I don’t like so much. In Bali I finally remembered that life asks of me to meet and allow the present moment as fully and as softly as possible, every time again. And move from there.
My house in the midst of the rice fields at Trinity Gardens Ubud
A reminder of playfulness during a walk in the rice fields
There it was: my joy!
The laughter of playing children outside bring me back to the holistic studio and the warm oil on my skin. I smile. In Bali the environment was so supporting for this whole process of letting go, but being fully back in the fast-paced urban life I have to remind myself to come back to that inner eye of the storm. Every now and then I totally fall back into the inner struggle of ‘I have to’s’, and right there I lose my playfulness and creativity. The massage in itself and the laughing children outside remind me to come back to that playful and soft space within. That creative place. That place that got lost a little within the intensity of moving to a new house…
Full of joy I walk back to my former warehouse with a bottle of the Ayurvedic pitta oil in my bag (for much needed self-care and a little daily reminder). I happily hug and kiss my flower-artist man in his atelier & shop on the way home and as I turn the key and open the door I know: I AM HOME.