Eat, Pray, Qi and Gong

Almost a month after leaving for my adventure, I have finally arrived here in Ubud last Sunday at my oh-so-anxiously-awaited retreat center. I am not going to lie to you, but I was freaking out when I woke up on Saturday morning in Melbourne, realizing that I was going off on my own once again. Yes, yes, I know that's what I do and have done for the past six years, but it still scares the crap out of me every time I take off!

"What the hell are you doing Des", was all that kept going through my mind during the entire time until I arrived in Kumara at ONEworld retreats. Shortly after I had settle in my room, my thoughts shifted to a "You are completely out of your mind!", which is partially true and I am sure Reef and Joe are nodding their heads right now, but here I was.

I'm not going to start describing this place in detail since the title of my blog, "Calm Coconut Consciousness", sums it up quite well; It's very calm, there are lots of coconuts (plants that is) and since it is a retreat involving cleansing, Qigong and yoga, we are working on our consciousness on a daily basis.

I felt quite out of it the first two days and was still freaking a lot, yet here we were, a group of 11 strangers, having found their way to Bali in search for..... Well, we are all sort of still working on that part actually.

Our group is made up of one guy and 10 women, including me, from places all over the world. Knowing me, some of you are rightfully thinking now that I was not particularly stoked when I saw all the females floating around me. However, to my surprise, everyone is truly amazing in their own way. The age range is somewhere between 16 and 50 something and everyone comes from a completely different back ground. There is a mother and daughter couple from Sydney (Marion and Isabelle), a hypnotists from Sedona (Susan), a youth worker from Canberra (Aimee), two girls from Brisbane (Sian and Melinda), a mother of two from Perth (Donna), a hairdresser from Milwaukee (Carly), a tax accountant from Alberta (Mark), another girl from Perth (Zoe), and Mark Ament our retreat leader, originally from Colorado, with his wife Gabrielle from Austria, and Aurea, their 15 month old daughter, who is one of the most beautiful little creatures I have ever seen in this world!

Our day starts at 7:30 AM by waking up to one of the Balinese staff members ringing a bell outside of our rooms. Shortly after getting up, we head to our daily Qigong session at 8:00 AM in the yoga room, overlooking the beautiful, rich Balinese vegetation of green goodness all around. Qigong and I haven't really become mates yet, since we have been struggling the past three days with each other - extremely. Qi means "energy" and gong "work", which literally translates into "energy work". This practice has been around for over 4000 years to cultivate health, vitality, and longevity. "Perfect!", I thought at first until about 10 minutes into the first practice and I started getting pissed off at Qi and gong all at once. You are supposed "feel" all the earth and sky's energy moving around you Mark guides us through the different poses and exercises. For me, quite frankly, all I felt was my stomach growling since I had been up for 30 minutes already and there was no food in sight. I was really tempted to go up to Mark and say:"So how about we let the "energy" sleep in a bit and eat breakfast first?". Being patient as always, or sometimes, I decided not to become frustrated with it, even though I seriously just want to scream out loud as soon as we start. I have now, on day 3, settled for constantly watching the clock tick until we finally get to go and eat breakfast at 9:30 AM, which will lead me to our diet regime, another tiny little thing I didn't really put too much thought into when signing up for this particular retreat. I shall tell you ALLLLLL about it tomorrow, but one thing I will share with you already: Eat, Pray, Poop will be the title for that one...