Body/Mind/Soul Healing

Where to begin?!

I guess the reason why I came here to Kovalam would be a good place to start: the Ayurvedic cleanse.

After a few days of getting lathered up in oil and more oil and more oil and yes, more oil, I began to wonder what the heck I was doing.

I didn’t come with any real physical ailments. Not like Manfred from Sweden who came with MS and who in five days I personally witnessed going from hobbling around to walking like an average person after doing the Ayurvedic cleanse:

There are over 500 ‘songs’ that a person can have in their pulse and a good Ayurvedic doctor can recognize that song. The song gives a clear message about where the body is misaligned and from there herbal oils and medicines are rubbed into the body.

When the doctor took my pulse he said that my feminine energy was out of alignment. “I can tell from your face and your pulse that you are in the managerial role at work and you have a hard time letting that go in your personal time. When the female body contains more masculine energy than feminine the body is in a toxic state. Same with a man. When the masculine is overpowered by feminine energy his body is in a weak and poisoned state. This treatment will align your female energy.  Many in the Western world are misaligned in their gender energy.”
Like I said, I didn’t feel any shift for the first few days and I wondered if I was wasting my money and time and then WHAM! yesterday morning (Day Ten), I wake up and my skin is luminous. My mind is so very calm. There is so much space between my thoughts. It’s incredible.

The hotel guys comment on my skin and how clear my eyes are.

“It’s working,” they say.

And it is.

The doctor said I looked like a 100-watt bulb yesterday. Then I had a dream last night about being back in the Bay Area. I was late in missing my plane to India. I woke up and my neck and back were all out of alignment from my DREAM STRESS.

When I saw the doctor today he said, “You are 30% different than yesterday. What happened?”

I told him about my dream. He said that he wants to get me back, in a sustained way, to that clear state I experienced on Friday.

“The dreams are coming up in order to clear you out. It’s like lifting up a dirty carpet. We are cleaning you out but you have to have the dirt come to the surface in order to sweep the dirt away.”

My dreams have been wild and intense lately. I’ve been sharing them with Allen (the hotel guy that reminds me so much of an Indian version of my Balinese spiritual teacher/taxi driver Wayan).

Allen has me write my dreams down on a piece of paper and he meditates on them and gives me his interpretation in the evening when I return from my treatments.

Today he said, ‘I read your dream 15 times Kristin and I think the meaning of last night’s dream is that you don’t want to leave India.”

I think he’s right. Only Bali could entice me to leave this place.

Last week Allen invited me to meet his family for dinner:

He invited me to his humble, love-filled home with his wife, kids and other family members:

Then a day later I met a sweet, sweet Indian girl named Lakshmi whose parents own a shop on the beach and they invited me to dinner:

and then I met another family who invited me for a meal the day after that.

Indian people are incredible hospitable and loving.

On the third day that I arrived I met a man named Antony who teaches yoga in the morning. He had such clear eyes and a solid presence. I felt like he’d be the right yoga teacher for me (there are a ton of yoga places to choose from here).

Since I was waking up super early due to jet lag I decided to use that time to do yoga (I’m up anyway, why not?)

Turns out in addition to being a yoga teacher he’s also an energy healer and -wow- a chiropractor.

He was trained by people in his village. I know, it sounds crazy to let someone trained in a village to work on my neck and back and I probably wouldn’t have except that I met a German woman who swears that last year he completely cured the scoliosis she had in her back for 20 years! Her doctors were amazed and dumbfounded when they examined her after last year’s trip to India and her daily work with Antony.

So every day, for only $6, I get a yoga class (often it’s a private class as I’m usually the only one in the class–it is at 7am which might be why). And I get my back and neck adjusted. “C3 is out today. And C2,” is what he said this morning. “What happened last night?”

I told him about the dream of almost missing my plane.

He adjusted me and I feel great now.

While he’s adjusting my neck and back or helping me into the yoga poses he’ll say things like, “You have such a charming face,” in his deep Indian-British accent.

So not only does my body get adjusted but my ego gets a little lift. It’s a nice way to start the day.

Speaking of men: the men here look into me. They pierce me with their gaze. They are so unafraid to stare. It was unnerving and uncomfortable when I first arrived.

I talked to the doctor about it and he encouraged me to let the looks from Indian men in.

“The stares will help heal your female energy and create a deeper alignment within yourself. It is part of your process. In the Western world people are so private. They are afraid to look, to deeply look, at one another. Not so in the Indian world. We are not afraid to look. Allow yourself to be looked at, Kristin.”

I’m beginning to get used to it. To simply breathe into those stares. And often now I’ll smile at the men staring at me. At the handsome men. Skinny men. Old men. Fat men. Young men.

Wonderful men.

Tagged as: Ayurvedic cleanse, Kovalam