Self-Observation Without Judgment

Dear Friends-

I am here and settling. The journey of acclimation has been inspiring and spiritual. The people here are supportive, loving and they smile at you when you pass them. Kripalu itself sits up on a mountain in the Berkshires and when you look around you see green everywhere. The building inside is serene, the windows are always open so the air blows in and down each stairwell there are huge inspirational quotes. Please enjoy the pictures I've included. I'm still trying to take it all in. I live in a dorm with 3 girls and it's about a 10 minute walk from the main building where everything happens. At night, I can't even see the hand in front of my face walking back and find myself wanting to run there instead. I heard a story about a bear hanging out around here but I'm choosing to not believe it for my own sanity. My little flashlight hardly gives me confidence. My schedule is interesting.....I got assigned to the most humble of jobs here; the dish team! That's right folks, I'm getting down and dirty. At first I was struggling with it but now I'm really settling in and actually like it. I have trusted the universe to get me here up to this point and I can't stop trusting now. The dish team consists of a team of 5 people (also all new volunteers from around the country) and my attire is as follows: shorts and a t-shirt, rubber anti-slip grippies for my feet, an apron and gloves. I decorated the gloves with inspirational quotes instead of just putting my name on them. One such quote is "wooo-hooo." The dish team is responsible for washing the dishes everyone uses. It's kind of like an assembly line of sorts where we each have a specific job that depends on each team member. If one person is slow, we are all slow. It's extremely fast-paced and I love how it challenges me in ways I'm not used to. I am able to really be mindful and spiritual in completing a needed task with care and intention. I also love the fact that I can expend my energy, work in a team and practice finding the divine in the mundane. My supervisor is awesome and is also on a spiritual path, I'm sure I will learn much from him. Yesterday I was asked to take a wet towel and wipe down the buffet line and then go back and wipe it with a dry towel and all I could think of was karate kid. ;-) I'm sure my mind will empty doing dish duty and perhaps I can build more consciousness in action. After all, "yoga is skillfulness in action." -Bhagavad Gita. The hours of dish team also suit my intention for coming to Kripalu. Despite my bewildered gaze up to the universe when I got this assignment thinking, "huh????"... I now understand the reason. The dish crew only works 3 1/2 days a week from 1:30-8:30 compared to all other jobs at Kripalu which are about 35 hours a week and at least 5 days. The reason being is because it's such hard work. For me, this works out perfectly because I have more free time to engage in the classes and opportunities Kripalu offers. Every morning I have attended an educational holistic class for example, "yoga and nutrition," "healing the chakras," "healing arts: positional therapy," "mindful meditation"...which are free to volunteers not working when they are offered. I also have fallen in absolute love with yoga dance. If you can picture it, there's this huge room with high ceilings and big stained glass windows where the sun peeks in. It has a big statue of Shiva at the front and drapes of linens that hang from the walls and blow with the air that comes in. They essentially blast music and an instructor teaches a class where you bop around with a scarf, dance in groups and do free style moves all to release and clear your energy blocks. I have done it almost every day I've been here. LOVE IT! Yesterday was yoga dance to live drummers and I felt like I was at Broward House on a Wednesday night. Kripalu offers a teacher training for yoga dance which I may consider during my 4 month stay. Other educational experiences I will be taking here are weekly Tuesday night educational workshops on the study of karma yoga, which all volunteers participate in. There are also weekly reading and hiking groups which I plan to attend. I also can pick 2 weekend workshops to attend for free while I'm here and pay half price for as many as I want during the 4 months. I am in the process of selecting wisely. There are about 60 volunteers and about 30 new ones. What is super awesome is that many volunteers come with their own knowledge-base and set of talents so we're all in the process of disclosing those and trading services with each other (for example, some are nutritionists, herbalists, artists, angel card readers, reiki masters, photographers, yoga instructors etc.) Perhaps I can offer a women's nurturing group here for the volunteers. :) I have also spoken to the program manager at Kripalu and they are linking me up to a Kripalu faculty member specializing in holistic and healing arts for possible mentoring. I am putting my Medusa-like antenna's out there and feeling like a sponge, I'm soaking in as much as I can. I am blessed to have this opportunity and even more blessed to have supportive friends/co-workers sending me positive vibrations. Everyday I have intentions and am consciously bringing myself back to the now and present moment where everything is purposeful, joyful and beautiful. Swami Kripalu is the yogi guru who began Kripalu back in the day and there's a quote by him I've been hearing a lot around here: "Self-observation without judgment is the highest form of spiritual practice." My observation has just begun...stay tuned