Sloppin' in oil!!!

Hello there,
How are you? How is life? Your heart and soul? As for me I'm doing swell!!!! I am in a rhythem with where I am now. I get up at 6:30 or 7am, I meditate, at 7:30 I am given a delicious breakfast from the woman who works here at the wellness center (well, if you can call it that-more on that later), I eat, do some stretches, read a little go in for my first treatment for relaxing the mind and then I relax, have lunch, have another treatment that I hope is healing my wrists but more feels like pain and being a little beaten up by these cloth balls of fabric filled with herbs and hot milk. Well let me back up, first this center, humm.....how do I describe this place.

The outside is a bright green, nice a clean. walk in it's fine, a little dark, with florescent lights. Then you go into the middle room where the doctors do their consultations, none of it half bad, floors a permentantly dirty but cleaned twice daily, but it's when you get into the bathrooms you wonder. humm.....You see since only a low cast can only clean toilets they don't get cleaned all that well, the walls are stained with years of you don't want to know what. but at least the room where they work is clean and has windows and is nice.

So let me tell you about the massages, I first come in, they aren't ready but they still want me to take off my clothes, they say "change" which means, strip. I sit there waiting for them to get ready then they keep telling me to change until I strip and have to wait for them naked while one of the massage therapist women loves to stare at me. She wants my skin, I think she likes working on me hoping it will rub off, as the Indians here believe light skin is beautiful, they go around each day trying to bleach their skin with this or that lotion-same with thailand. Yikes! How is there health from this? Anyway, I get on this very tall, all wood massage table with the edges lower then the rest for oil, milk and medication drainage and holes at the top and bottom to drain these things from the table. They first have to put a towel under my cute little boney butt as the wood is not condusive to thin people, the women here have an extra layer of padding so they don't have this problem. The great thing about having padding, no pain with the knees while being on my belly or my ankles when they slide them into the side of the walls of the massage table.

Anyway, so it begins that I lay down, the do a 45 minute very fast, rub down to get the circulation going and to rejuvinate the body, after that they place my head under a steel pot that has a large wick hanging out of a hole in the center of the pot. The warm this oil up and pour it through the whole and it lands on my forehead or the top of my head. As it seeps out pouring onto me they jerk and shove my head from side to side trying to get the sides-as I crack up as it's so not relaxing to be pushed around, but I relax anyway. I'm not sure how these women hold a baby, they can be so rough, but they do it with such love, it's amazing. They massage the oil through your hair and in your hair line and on your forehead for 45 minutes and then they sit me up, wipe me up, wipe up the table and then down the 3 steps off the table into the bathroom for one of the women to bathe me, yes she bathes me! Humm....never had this from a professional before, from head to toe, well, except my pink parts between my legs, that's for me to do, she does everything else without embarrassment!

For the second massage they wipe me down with oil first for 10-15 minutes. Then they heat up hot milk with medicine and they put these hot pouches of herbs in the hot milk at first they procede to beat me up with them, pounding away sloshing milk every where in the room! It's great, after the first minute the pouches loosen up and it feels much nicer, plus I have a few less layers of skin from the pouches afterward, what a kick! ;) They even go right up between my legs, I just hope it continues to be warm and not hot milk up there, yikes! So the milk keeps getting hotter and hotter until you can barely handle it and then they squeeze the milk out of your injured areas, then they sit me up, scrape me down with a leaf of some sort to get the milk stuff off, then they lather me up with oil again and off for another bath again from them! Then I'm off to rest until the next meal.

They love to eat 4 times a day here, 8am, 12pm, 4pm, 9pm. They try to feed me that late but I just can't handle it. But the cook is so sweet, it's hard to say no, but she keeps bringing it at 7 or 8pm now as she knows 9 is too late for me.

The women here feel so strong on the outside but they constantly have to have me reinforce if I liked their food or if I liked the massage or did I like what ever it was that they did for me....it's constant validation for them. They get upset really easily and get hurt and think that I don't like them, when I maybe having a bad day that has nothing to do with them. I've never know Indians to be so sensitive but I guess underneith we are all sensitive. I really think about me in this, I watched the movie Million dollar baby the other night-yes they have cable there, and at the end I realized her manager was so hard on the outside and soft on the inside, that is really how I see me, once I know people I let that side out, but otherwise I come across really hard or strong or what ever, a little shell but then once you get inside I'm all soft, so maybe these women and I have a lot in common, funny to see a reflection in the extreme.

The manager, the owners wife, is the only one that speaks english and she is barely starting to grow on me, as she was so matter of fact and business and then changing everything everyday that it drove me crazy. but I see she's just as soft on the inside too, people are funny creatures, aren't we? Yes we are.

So I have no idea if this Ayurvedic stuff is working but hey I get bathed in milk and oil everyday and get bathed, so what can you say for $34.00 a day, yes the price is double, don't ask, it's India! I'll see if it works in another week or so. I'm here until Friday and then I'm off the the Sivananda Ashram for Yoga, meditation and Ayurvedic medicine. I'm excited about being their, the photos are gorgeous, lots of greenery, lakes, etc in the area.

There is only garbage scattered around amongst the palm trees at my place, an unused well, a deep hole where water gathers doing no good, a fire with rice cooking in it all day smoking up the back yard and a great place to do laundry, but no real view or sitting places. Though I'm not to be outside in the weather, under fans or in a breeze for doing the work I'm doing. Lot's of rules with this work and I have to find them out as I break them as there is no for warning, but at least I know now what I know!!!! : )

The commercials here are crazy, they show women in 2 piece bathing suits, which I've never seen an Indian woman in, I almost blush when it comes on as I'm in mixed company of people that don't see that stuff. Then this commercial for a mens cologne comes on like Vio and it says "makes nice girls naughty" and shows photos of women having their men with fruit and whip cream all over then or stamping the guys chest, as if whipping him with a stamp in a library, it's odd, but who knows maybe it sells, it stuck in my mind. One of my favorite commericials if for their holiday packages and the tune is something like, you happy, me happy, we happy. It's so cute.

Anyway, it's nice here, I'm calming here, having to relax as their is nothing else to do. I can't leave the place, well except right now as I had to go to the ATM to pay them and thought I'd write you!!! I miss you, I miss my friends from Amma's. OH, I almost forgot, my last day there was fabulous. I'm so bummed I forgot my recorder. I got up that morning to rain, but it stopped so I could do my yoga on the roof and have my chai anyway. Then I had breakfast, at lunch time us girls got together and with the ukulele and guitar sang in perfect harmony Ring of Fire and they insisted I sing Crazy one or two more times as they loved to hear me sing it, hit the high notes. I'm so sad I don't have it recorded but I may have one more chance to record with one of my friends at Sivananda, won't be the same but still, it's still recorded.

Then that evening we all three got together for a see ya later ceremony, it was glorious, the most special thing I've done in so long with close girlfriends.

I won't go into all of it, but my favorite part I'll share with you and really encourage everyone to do this with their friends as it's so powerful. After calling in the energies of the North, East, South and West, and telling our reasons for being in India and what we've done or been through in the past 4 months and let go of things and places our goals. Then the most brilliant thing: 2 at a time told the other one how they saw them, how amazing they were, smart, beautiful, creative, talented, communicative, loving, mothering, passionate, brave, courageous, you are so child like, I love that you touch so much, hug so much I need that, inclusive, how they wanted to be like the other or how their should be more people like them in this world...it went on and on.

Just think, when was the last time you told someone all the wonderful things you loved and saw in them and had them sit there, couldn't say anything but thank you and had to receive it, maybe cry, maybe laugh, but receive it how they could do it best. For me I felt like a little girl all giggles and it's be most I've received in one sitting and it was fabulous. There was so much I could tell you that I loved of what they said and how shocked I was in some of it, but to hear how inclusive I was to the point of one of them saying "you insisted I sit with you at your table as you knew I was new and wanted to include me with your friends. There needs to be more people like you in this world". How lovely to take it in, bathe in it and hear it. I really recommmend it for everyone to do, even if they can't fully receive it or you. How wonderful it would be, I forget so often but hopefully I'll remember more now.

By the end of it we felt so full, so filled up with love and light by giving such a gift and receiving such a gift, how lovely! None of us wanted to leave the next day. It's like all felt like we first really connected and didn't want to let it go. But two of us left anyway the next day and it was sad, I missed them a lot but you somehow get back on your feet when you have too and move on to the next exciting thing in life. And my exciting thing is healing, healing here and then next to Yoga and meditation. I'm excited to see my girlfriend down there if she's still there.

So I'm sure there is a ton more I can say. But I should probably sign off now.
Know that I love you and think of you often. Do something exciting everyday, even if it's small. Are you living full out, celebrating life as much as possible in each moment? Maybe an hour off work early and runnning your toes through the sand would do you some good, or going to tea with a friend just to talk about nothing, but to laugh at life. I am laughing more at life now days, thank goodness! Getting lighter with it and seeing humor in life in each moment of being human, even if it's the after effect. Know that we are to enjoy this journey in this body, we only have this body once, so lets not look at the future but what's before us right now!

I send you love, hugs, giggles and a GREAT BIG SMILE for your day, week and year, Love, Heather