Living Every Moment

February 26, 2012 By Leanne Vogel June 28, 2015

To read more on the living series; a selection of lessons I learned in India, be sure to check out living fearless, and living open, connected and vulnerable. So much has changed over the last couple of days. I feel so at home here, I really don’t want to go. It’s hard to believe I’ve only been away from home for 2 weeks. It feels SO much longer, in a good way. India is quickly becoming my home away from home and I have no doubt in my mind I will be returning soon. Many of the people I’ve met and become very close with have been leaving to move on to other destinations. While I’ve been very tempted to follow along with them, I know that my place; at least for this trip, is here at the ashram. But, even the fact that I’d be willing to divert from my pre-planned route to do something completely spontaneous without feeling a ridiculous amount of anxiety tells me that I’m becoming more and more comfortable and confident in myself. I promised myself that during this trip I would fully open myself up to every experience; something I rarely do at home for fear of emotional injury, losing control of my life, and being overwhelmed by anxiety. But I went through with it all the way. I’ve made close friends, I’ve said YES to practically everything, and I’ve lived through every moment. One of the most challenging repercussions of this has been dealing with my feelings of rejection and abandonment brought on by my close friends leaving. Observing my reaction and spending countless hours journaling about it has given me much insight into how I interact with people and opportunities in my day to day life, always keeping things at a distance from myself in case they’re torn from my life. What I’ve realized in all of this is that no matter who or what comes and goes into my life, the experiences that I have as a result of saying YES will stay with me forever and in fact keeping myself away from them just limits the potential connections and life lessons I could be having. A lesson I will most certainly be taking back with me! I have just 4 more days to master my headstand and meditate my face off until I begin my journey back to Canada, and a journey it will be! Initially I’d planned to just head to the Trivandrum airport a couple of hours before my flight, get to Mumbai, hang out in the airport there for half a day, then get to London, then Calgary. Safe, easy, with little risk or opportunity for things to go arise. But I’ve decided to branch out a little bit and go exploring. I know, me? Explore? Alone? What’s the world coming to? I’ll be taking a cab to Trivandrum with a couple of other yogis 6am. My flight doesn’t leave until 1pm so once everyone has been bdropped off at the airport, I’ll ask the cabby to take me to the best place he can think of and I’ll take it from there. I’m hoping to get one last masala dosa, pomegranate juice, and shop for more ridiculously cheap clothes. From there, I’ll hopefully be able to find a rickshaw to take me back to the airport for my flight to Mumbai. My Mumbai flight gets in around 1:30pm on Thursday and my next flight to London doesn’t leave until Friday at 2am. Since I have to go through security and get my bag anyways, I figured I could take a rickshaw from the airport to the Taj hotel. I won’t be staying there, but understand that there are a lot of must-see shops and restaurants in that area. So I’ll head down there for the day, grab some lunch and go peruse the markets, maybe go to a Bollywood film and try to suck up as much of India as I can before I get on another flight! I could type for another 3 days about all of my experiences, lessons, pictures, and plans, but I’ll end here for today (because I’m hungry and want to go grab some lunch! hehe). I hope you’re all well, creating delicious meals, and are enjoying the many guest bloggers that have visited HP so far. Bye for now :)

This entry was tagged: india