The Physical

I've just been to Paradise and back. The retreat in Bali - at this fabbo "eco-village" resort called Desa Seni (http://www.desaseni.com/) - was just amazing. I signed up for a four-day programme titled "Mind Reset" conducted by Tara Judelle, a gorgeously funny and intelligent yoga teacher hailed from Los Angeles, who is now based in Bali. The experience was amazing on several counts: the location, in the middle of this vast paddy field in Canggu, is breathtakingly beatiful; the people are beautiful on both the outside and inside; and for an urbanite like me, to practise yoga in the open air (in the wild even!) and to meditate to the sounds of Nature was just mind-blowing. I can gush on but here are some photos I took that speak for themselves ...

Views from where the house I was staying in ... each house is given a name and mine was called "Rumah Mandau"; the attention to details given to decorating the space can only be described as meticulous.

Yummy vegetarian food served in the village resort includes this kinda sticky rice pudding.

The Jewel of the Crown for me, though, will have to be the Trimurti Studio:



It's blissful to step into this space to meditate and practise

As the title suggests, the retreat had more to do with the Mind and Tara took us on a journey through what are known as the "koshas", which, in layman terms, are like the different aspects of the Self. In the final class, we set out to search for the "bliss body" that resides in all of us but remains, most of our life time, undetected -- not in our waking hours anyway (more on this in the next blog entry).



The Beautiful people (from around the world)
I practised with;Tara Judelle is the third up
from the left...



Of course, a yoga retreat would not be a yoga retreat without the, er, yoga practice! Tara is a certified Anusara® Yoga instructor, though her vocabulary is not exclusively of that particular genre/method. The emphasis is not so much on the asanas but how we blend poses with our exploration of the koshas. It was both challenging and fun ... and in the warm Balinese climate, I felt my body was more open and relaxed and I was able to achieve one or two poses that are simply impossible in freezing HK studios.

The Physical is merely a (visual/tangible) manifestation of something a lot deeper within ...

Before I move onto the next entry, I have to say I'd have loved to see a bit more of the island but, unfortunately, my former instructor from HK who is now also based out there (and without whom I would not have even known about this retreat) was probably too busy to find time to show us around ~ and the only pointer he gave me, on my last hour there, was that I'd been cycling around with the bike rest down ... Maybe my head needs a total reset is well ...