Cacao Testing!! Today I woke at 6am feeling wonderful, I took some time to do a short meditation and do some affirmations before climbing out of bed. The sun was showing and the thought of nice weather upped my mood. I decided to experiment with cacao/meditation/yoga today - so I took about 15g of cacao in some hot water and then waited 30 minutes before having my breakfast. Unfortunately the cacao upset my stomach quite a bit and meant that my porridge didn't go down so well. Everybody in the house was up early today and a few of decided to try a few ablutions which included the Netty pot: for cleaning our nasal cavities, the tongue scraper and I tried sesame oil for coating my gums, nasal and ears. After doing all this extra body cleaning I felt great and headed down the ashram to do some meditation. The meditation lasted a long time today and the cacao certainly had a strong effect on blood flow to brain and giving me a sense of peace. I had many insights and realizations about life but realized it was hard to stay at calm as the cacao has a caffeine effect as well making one a little jittery. My stomach also felt woozy so I probably won't use before meditation again or maybe if I do I will put in my porridge instead. I moved into my yoga session starting with sun salutations and apart from my stomach uneasiness the warm-up was great and I was really able to focus and stay in my body. I continued into the asanas and felt strong and driven and was able to relax myself into postures and flex my body even more then usual. I ended up in the ashram for 4 plus hours and felt absolutely no need to finish, I wasn't hungry, my body felt strong and I lost thought about time. I went into self-guided relaxation and was able to achieve the most refreshing and relaxing posture so far and literally could have laid there all day. I decided to finish with a short meditation and found myself in deep peace very quickly and had feelings of a deep gravitational pull on my body (as if I were a heavy rock) followed by a softness and floating effect from the sun that reassured me of my connectedness with the whole. Everyday in meditation and yoga I find new things out about myself and I feel closer to who I really am - it no longer feels like a choir rather my purpose in life. I left the ashram feeling ontop of the world and with the sun shining and my lovely housemates to chat with - what more could I want. After lunch I took the opportunity to head down the dock and gather the few rays of sunshine that peered through the heavy dark clouds. I spent the afternoon lying on the dock watching the boats come in and drop passengers off and watching the ever changing clouds change from light greys to heavy blacks. In the evening I started a new book: Eat, Prey, Love and from the word to I was hooked and spent the evening huddled up in my cold room consuming every word of the enticing story.

OBSERVATIONS:
- Cacao test - great meditation and yoga enhancer but tough on stomach