Detox Flow

Downloaded Seane Corn's Detox Flow video and practiced to it today. I've done this sequence at a yoga conference before. It was really challenging at the time but I loved it. This time around it felt just as good, but less challenging/shocking for the body, which is a good thing I guess. Apparently even though I barely practice yoga now, my flexibility is still mostly intact... I'm even worried if I'm over-stretching a bit. Makes me wonder if I should be practicing yoga at all or should I work on weight-bearing / strength building exercises. The most challenging part today was actually the beginning where Seane asked students to hold a plank and then lift the knee to touch the forehead. I think my deep core muscles are lacking the strength/training and I couldn't do it at all. Also I could barely hold the dolphin plank. These are specific move/muscle groups I need to work on.

I kind of want to sign up for trial Ashtanga yoga classes in town but I'm too cheap to do it. None of the studios are close to home and I'm hesitant to sign up, fearing that I might not make it to more than 2 classes/week. Feeling so lazy. I was too spoiled in Vancouver with a studio 3 minutes walk from home and with a community of friends. I don't really know how to make friends here... people seem to keep to themselves. Or maybe I'm keeping to myself and am not trying hard enough.

Realizations

I was lucky that I got to have in-depth chats with a lot of people while in India, both the locals and European travellers. Coming back to cold cold Scandinavia, chats with colleagues are kept at a superficial level; making new friends is again difficult. I am grateful to have a roommate to socialize with, but at the exact same time, I wish I were living alone so I could get more quiet alone time with more personal freedom (my roommate doesn't quite get the concept that sharing accommodation with another person doesn't mean that we have to entertain/socialize with each other all the time).

I am still quite lost in terms of what to do about my future. I no longer have ambitious plans for achieving a great career. I just want a job that pays the bills and will let me living relatively comfortably. Compared to my Indian friends in South India, I am definitely fortunate in that I can travel the way I do, and my standard of living is very high. On the other hand, I am kind of jealous of their tight connections with their families and friends, then I remember that these are guys I had been interacting with. The women in India are tied to their housework and children and do not have nearly as much freedom as men. But still, I wish I had a tighter network of friends/community support. I guess that's why I went back - the servers on the beach were always happy to have a chat with the customer who's also a lone traveler.

On this trip I learned that I enjoy being over-dramatic about nothing; I act like a spoiled brat sometimes. I like excitements in life, but I act like the most boring person you'll ever meet at a party. I crave a lot of attention but I don't like to work to get it. I have a tendency to want to please other people at the expense of displeasing myself, and then I complain about being forced to do something I don't want to do. One of my Indian friends got really sick of this and told me, "If you want to do it, go do it. If you don't want to do it, don't go." It's so simple that this advice appears to tell nothing. Yet this sounded like a major wake up call for me. I realized that I cannot distinguish the times when life circumstances do not allow me to make this kind of call, versus situations where I do indeed have the freedom to follow my own desires. I have long chosen to give up my rights in choosing what I want in so many life situations in order to try to please other people, but end up failing regardless. In other words, I am often unhappy because I make myself unhappy. I let other people bully me and I get angry about it. It was a tough lesson for me to learn, but a lesson that made the expensive plane ticket worth its cost.

Major shifts in my internal mental state

I managed to accomplish what I set out to do over the holidays: actively work on letting my mind settle and relax. I did this by buying a way over-priced last-minute plane ticket to India... back to where I was last time. Did nothing but sat around, enjoyed the comfortable warm weather, the gorgeous beach, the healthy and delicious food; the cheap but great massages, the warmth of the local people. No multi-terabytes of data needed to be analyzed; no computer screens sucking my life energy out of me; no foreign Swedish or Japanese culture that I had to learn to conform to (the locals conform to the tourist cultures); no getting lost in traffic and foreign roads this time around. Many of the vendors and restaurant servers remembered me from the last time I was there. No ashtanga yoga this time, though I did sign up for some simple hatha yoga classes with the local teachers. Turned out I don't love the Sivananda yoga sequence, but it still had a effect on me in letting me notice my energy shifts in the body.

As I allowed myself to do next to nothing and just be, I could feel the turbulence within me - both the non-stop thoughts in my mind and the anxious energy in my body - slowly began to settle over the weeks. It didn't happen all at once. The first week was actually really chaotic as I was again in a foreign setting for the third month in a row, but by the third week I began to experience some equanimity within me, despite all the craziness happening around me that was very typical of India.

When I first arrived, it felt like I had traveled back in time to February 2012. I mean there were new hotels, ayurvedic centers and restaurants popping up in every corner of the beach, but the whole atmosphere was so familiar. After a few months of chaos, with all my moves and new jobs and new culture to adapt to, being back in Kerala made me feel like the past few months were only a dream. It was insane when people waved at me and said, "Hi! I remember you from last year! Did you just arrive today?" Even if I go back to Canada now, only my friends would say that, never restaurant servers.

Actually, a million things happened on this trip.. tons of drama, even some heart breaks and tears. But the peacefulness I felt briefly at times among all the craziness and the heart-felt openness / friendliness of the people... these were exactly the reasons why I recklessly threw away my hard earned money to travel back to where I was 10 months ago. I really think the yogis who travel all the way to India should take time to have a break from the yoga classes and try to just experience India for what it is.

Goal for the holidays: try to relax

Hot yoga has been really awesome. I really love the strengthening aspects of it, and the heat.. sweet sweet heat (plus the asana sequence of course) warm me up internally and externally in this perpetually snowy weather. When a pose is held, the pose actively makes me tense up everything, so that in rest poses, I relax and let the blood circulation rush to areas where I normally permanently hold tension all day long. In a yoga class when I lie on the floor I can really feel that it is one of the few moments when I am relaxing as opposed to most of the other moments during the day. I'm lucky that the studio happens to have an American teacher with amazingly well enunciated crystal-clear instructions that kicks me in the butt and gets me through the two hours trying my best. The other day the tram was delayed 20 minutes due to too much snow and I went to a class with Swedish instructions instead. I didn't understand a thing, but it didn't matter. The teacher had a voice meant for gentle hatha or restorative yoga. I couldn't hold still for most of the challenging balancing poses. I guess manner is everything for a Bikram teacher, Japanese ham sandwich or not (I'm pretty sure that phrase got taken out of the Swedish instructions). In the moments of savasana in class, I felt pretty close to total relaxation. But I still miss my yoga studio back home in Vancouver dearly, as it is a really special, heart-warming space with lots of compassion and care.

One of day of "work" and it'll be holiday time for moi! Was still really uptight the second last day of work because every day I don't feel like I get enough accomplished (most of the time I'm just figuring out how I should do things rather than actually doing things). As I mentioned in the title: I need to try to actively make myself relax over the holidays before I die of cortisol overload!

Still not mindfully settled

Back to Europe, just in time for the Nobel prize buzz. It was very exciting seeing newly minted Nobel laureates who have dedicated their life to science to humbly describe what they did to deserve this prize. In addition, a public discussion forum was held, with something like 50 prominent scientists, many of whom were past Nobel prize winners, to discuss about the future of genomics. It was a very exciting event. Sadly though, in a lecture hall packed with people (mostly young, bright-eyed students), I knew not a single soul in the room; not my boss, not my colleagues. I found out later that my Swedish coworkers no longer get excited about Nobel prizes. Maybe they got used to it since this happens every single year. They are also not all that enthusiastic about their (science) jobs either, which seriously dampened my uplifted spirits for the rest of the week.

I've only been working at my new job for a little over two months, but it feels like I've been at this for a long, long time. I still feel like I am completely under-qualified and shouldn't have been hired for this job. It feels like I've learned a lot over the past 2 months, but I don't learn nearly fast enough to master my tasks. The coldness and darkness gets to me. I do notice the gorgeousness of the city every single day on the way to and from work (parts of the city looks like a fantasy white Christmas land), but I am also hit hard by a severe sense of loneliness that I don't have anyone close who shares my sentiment. It feels like the people here appreciate the job, health, and human rights securities provided by their government, but they are sorely  lacking in feeling a sense of passion about anything in life.

I am also having trouble dealing with culture differences and socially awkward scientist colleagues and  roommate. I am feeling totally out of place and insecure at the moment. Too many people around me also feel insecure. We can't really read each other's intentions because our background cultures are so different. It's probably just a culture misunderstanding, but I feel like some people I have to interact with every day just seem overly polite about the most casual things and totally rude at other times. If it's one person then I can dismiss him/her off, but I feel this way about 3-4 people around me, which makes me start to doubt myself, whether I'm the one who's acting all socially inappropriate and being impolite. I'm just completely off my center and unsure about every thing I know. It's like I made a huge mistake coming here. But I don't think I will feel any better getting the same kind of job anywhere else in the world.

Hopefully I will be able to ground myself over the Christmas vacation. It's pretty sad that I feel the desperate need to take a break only 2 months into my job, but the perk for coming to work in Europe is that I get an obscene amount of vacation days. I should put them to good use and try to save myself from feeling completely lost and confused.

p.s. I signed up for a hot yoga class, because I needed to heat myself up from the persistent coldness that's with me at all times. Boy did it feel good. Will slowly find my way back to Ashtanga when I get the chance and find the right studio.

Facing uncertainties in life

I only have a few days left here before I head back to Europe. I'm filled with very mixed feelings. The nature parts of Japan provide me with a great sense of peace. Tokyo downtown (Shinjuku, Shibuya, etc.) brings me rushes of excitement and literal headaches at the same time. I quite like my colleagues here. They are more outgoing and sociable than my colleagues back in Europe. However, people here are quite stressed out, whereas coworkers in Europe are a lot more laid back. Since I get easily influenced by other people's stress levels, it is much healthier for me to work in Europe than in Japan. At a social level though, here in Japan people rush to help me out if I am in need of something, and it is very easy to find people to hang out in the evenings and weekends as most of the guys at the office are single. In my European office, most people have partners and children so I am on my own after work hours.

It's not like I get to choose to stay here anyways, but I felt like I made some friendship that I would like to keep, but I have no idea if I'll ever meet these people again. I don't know when's the next time I'll get sent here and how many of the coworkers will still be working here by next year. There is so much instability (not all bad ones) that I'm struggling really hard to stay centered and grounded. All the yoga philosophies and calming techniques that I've been studying over the past 2 years have come in handy to help prevent anxiety attacks right now. The asanas really are secondary to breathing and focusing techniques at the moment. There is so much uncertainty in life, even when times are good. I have a few really good friends who keep reminding me over the phone, Facebook and email to stay grateful and surrender to the impermanence of life. Learn to let go of the control freak tendency and try not to panic when I don't have total control of how my life will turn out... I've done what I can to get me onto a good path. The rest will unravel on its own... try not to be too anxious about it. Definitely easier said than done though.

I have a lot of friends who have stable jobs, are married, have a house and kids. I envy how settled they are (don't need to figure out what's the next country they'll need to move to get the next job contract), but at the same time, I know that I'll be unsatisfied with the jobs and the life that they're living now. I guess I'm greedy and want both stability and constant excitement in life.. I don't think life works quite that way.

I need to learn to be braver about life and about the unknowns ahead of me.

Self-conscious

Before I came to Japan, I told my friend from high school who lives and works in Tokyo that I would be here for a month. He mentioned that we should hang out, but I hadn't heard back from him. A couple days ago he messaged me and asked me if I want to go to pick vegetable on his friend's farm in the mountains this last weekend. Of course I couldn't say no to that: I couldn't wait to get out of the concrete city and into the countryside for some fresh air and nice scenery.

Japanese maple

Gorgeous view of the mountain and open-space, something not found in Tokyo downtown

I had no idea my friend currently works at one of those massive American corporate companies and this was actually an unofficial company trip for his colleagues from Tokyo and from offices abroad. I was the tag-along sloppy academic. The Japanese girls were so put together and dressed so nicely that I felt self-conscious the entire weekend. I've been living out of the same suitcase for the 2 entire months I just feel all the clothes I own seem smelly, worn-out and wrinkly. I mean I do my laundry every week, but my clothes just constantly absorb all the odor on busses, in trains, and in restaurants (smoking is allowed indoors in Japan. Also, because I was told that I was going to a farm, I just put on my old jeans and t-shirt and headed off to meet up with my friend. I didn't realize girls in Japan are dressed nicely at all times, even when going to farms. Everybody brought one of those carry-on stylish suitcases with nice change of clothes, and fancy full-sized carrying bags (made in France) of skin care + make up products. There I was with my old camping backpack and minimalistic toiletry gear (tooth brush, tooth paste + something to wash face with, and maybe a lip balm). I felt like such an inadequate female.

I must have appeared to be very stand-offish the entire weekend because I was super conscious the whole time of how badly I smelled and looked. I felt ugly and dirty next to them; I just left my long hair loose as is (lots of fly-aways), while their hair were all neat and pretty, with bobby pins and fancy hair clips. I admired their fine autumn leather boots while my trail runners that I've been wearing every day for months reeked like I haven't taken them off for hundreds of hours. It doesn't help that they all seem to carry very nice smelling hand creams (from L'Occitane) that they re-apply constantly on their hands throughout the day while I had nothing. I tried really hard to enjoy the scenery, but the anxiety of inadequacy was with me the whole trip.

When I checked the photos just now I actually looked okay (but probably still stinky - no way to double check that objectively). My skin was healthy enough that I didn't look unbearably horrible next to girls with full mascara + carefully powdered faces. However, inside my head I felt like a mentally disturbed woman for the past few days, shameful of  myself and worried I've shamed my Chinese ethnicity as well.

I guess this is what happens when I get sent to a country without knowing before hand what the local culture is like. Doesn't help that scientists (students and profs), both male and female, tend to be a lot sloppier than the average population, regardless of nationality. I definitely have a lot of mental and spiritual work to do. Being in Japan definitely exposes (too?) many shadow aspects of my mental state.