The Terrific3 travel blog

As you could tell from my blog, yesterday was not a good day overall. Which is fine. We all have days where things go sideways. When I went to bed yesterday, I knew I wanted to use today as a reset. I had our nanny from 7am to 1pm and decided to use most of that time for yoga and meditation.

So off I went to The Yoga Barn for an 830 am power yoga class by….drumroll…an Indonesian teacher named Wayan! I was so excited that the last 2 teachers have been Indonesian, and that has made me more endeared to the studio. I looked up the history of yoga in Bali recently, and it’s been part of the culture for hundreds of years. Since yoga and Hinduism are intertwined, and Bali is predominantly Hindu, yogic traditions came over from Indian a while ago.

The yoga class was quite good, and I’m happy to say that I can now sit cross legged again after so much yoga. With all the triathlon training I had been doing, and not enough yoga, my hips had become tight. The heat and humidity helps too. I can also do Chataranga, which had been hard for me for a while.

Right after the yoga class, I had signed up for a sacred heart meditation class with a teacher who is also a Reiki grand master and a sound healer, named Kerry Clancey. When I walked in, I did an internal eye roll as the vibe was very hippy dippy—this Australian woman talked about her childhood trauma and passed around these tarot looking cards for us to pick for intentions for meditations, and talked about how the heart had intelligence and the chakras glowed their colors on MRIs…. But, I lay down in a comfortable position and decided to keep an open mind. She played this vibrational prayer type thing in the background as she led us through a meditation and walked around the room ringing her sound bowls and dispersing reiki (as a Reiki master myself, i could definitely feel the Reiki energy). It was pretty incredible—the vibrational prayer, her voice, the singing bowls, and intermittent pouring rain outside and wind blowing through the window. After 45 minutes of this, she had each of us turn to a “partner” next to each of us and make eye contact (my partner was a Chinese male and he really couldn’t make good eye contact; I looked around the room and noticed none of the Asian males had their eyes open). She played a song in the background, “I am light. I am not my past mistakes….” (Powerful song by India Aire, here is the link https://youtu.be/ism8dBjxKvc) and told us to look each other in the eye and say that in our heads. It was quite intense. Many people in the room started crying and tears were in my eyes too, especially as I said that chant. We then all stood and hold hands in a big Kumbaya circle (about 60 people) and sang the chant. By now, I was practically sobbing. Something had come over me and some deep energy had released. The teacher passed out tissues. We then all walked around the room and stopped and hugged the first person we came across. This lovely black woman with the softest eyes gave me a great big hug. The whole experience was so spiritual and moving that I couldn’t believe it. I felt I walked out with a different energy in my heart, and a sense of forgiveness for myself, as I’ve lately been frustrated at myself for not parenting “perfectly,” which I realize of course is an impossible task. Spending 7 weeks so far with my kids 24/7 traveling, with only occasional childcare has been both amazing and challenging, and at times I’ve certainly been irritated. But I let it all go today…and it allowed me to come home and have fun with the kids. I got in our tiny pool at our villa for the first time to play with the kids because they begged me to, and they teased me and tried to get me to do front and back flips into the pool.

When I thought about coming to Ubud, this was the type of experience and energy I was hoping for. I’m glad I was able to touch this, if even for a day, as it was quite special. And as a Reiki master and recently certified Yin Yogs teacher myself, I really appreciated the experience more, as I contemplate how I’m going to use my new found skills to bring healing to people.

I’ll end with a few photos from our family photo shoot last week with Bayu from Flytographer. Every photo he sent us was incredible!