meandering

Ah Chiang Mai...

I am settling into life here quite easily. Chiang mai was my home base when I was here six years ago, so it feels familiar and comfortable to me, although there are even more tourist-oriented businesses than before, and it seems a bit more crowded. But it is still lovely. I have a room in a simple guesthouse, right down the street from my favorite restaurant, the blue diamond, in the old walled city of Chiang Mai, where there aren't many blocks without a stupa or a bodhi tree. One of my favorite things to do is bicycle through the little narrow streets and see what I find. It is a small enough area that if I get lost, I can't be that far from my guesthouse. One of my favorite sights that I saw yesterday was a man taking a nap during the heat of the day, with his five little dogs, one of them he was resting his legs on (just like a bolster is used during massage!) I snapped a photo before the dogs started barking and woke him up.


If I ever feel like I don't know what to do with myself, there is usually a temple close by where I can sit and meditate while the monks chant. The weather has been sunny every day, with humidity getting pretty intense at times, and lovely cool evenings that make me snuggle into my silk sleeping sack (something I splurged on for this trip... highly recommend it for you travelers out there!) and blankets.

In Thailand, blind people are trained to do massage and there are clinics where all the therapists are blind and do massage. I have enjoyed a couple sessions with them already, and tomorrow I will get a session from a man named Sinchai. He is also a teacher of Thai massage, which peaked my curiosity because I couldn't imagine teaching and not being able to see what my students are doing. So I got to observe him teaching and see how he feels his student's position and where they are on the recipients body, and was fascinated. He had about six students, and each one took turns practicing after he demonstrated.

I found a lovely yoga studio that has anusara yoga teachers here! (one of my favorite styles of yoga) It's a small world there, yesterday I bumped into a woman who taught raw food classes when I did my fast six here years ago, a friend of a friend, and my friend Mary from Chicago stopped by too! I topped off my yoga practice in the beautiful Thai sauna complete with singing rainbow songs and chants with a new friend, and shortly melted into bed feeling totally relaxed! And tonight, they have a kirtan (yogic chanting) which I am really looking forward to. I've been feeling inspired to stay connected to my Breema practice, and I am doing self-breema in the mornings, and hope to teach a self-breema class at one of the yoga studios here before I go!

I am really looking forward to starting class on Monday with the Thai massage teacher Pichest. Even though I have studied Thai Massage with Chuck Duff, The Old Medicine Hospital, and Asokananda (now deceased), I am ready for a new perspective. I have heard such amazing things about Pichest, that he is really into the meditation aspect, making sure that you are in a good space (mentally, emotionally, physically) before you offer healing to someone else. He is very devotional, as well and expects his students to bring flowers, insence, candles and fruit to offer to Buddha. I also hear that he is quite the character, and can be a bit rough, and very unstructured... but as long as you go with a beginner's mind, and have a good sense of humor, and not many expectations, it can be an amazing experience.

Sending you a bit of sunshine!