Once Again.. Alone

So much to see so much to do so I decided to stay in Dharamshala longer, possibly for another month which is until the end of my stay in India as a whole. And I am again by myself. I am not sure if I mentioned that before but I was travelling with a friend from Mount Holyoke for the past week. It makes a huge difference to me having somebody with me. I can definitely say that it can be pretty lonely by myself. In particular in Delhi, I often wished to have somebody with me who I can share experiences with. For the past 6 days I could share my experiences and as everything in life, good things don't last forever.

I am on my own again. At the same time though, there are many people who are traveling so I am meeting new people all the time. And I even have to say that there were times where I wished to have some more time for myself. But this doesn't mean that I am not still by lonely, it's rather a feeling of having tons of people surrounding me that I don't want to be surround by.

Enough of my personal emotional inside, let's talk about plans. As I mentioned before, I was planning to go to a retreat center called Vipassana. It is a meditation center that offers 10 day retreats where people are asked to meditate for 10 days straight through without talking and with only a limited number of breaks. I thought initially, it would be a good idea to do that. I wanted to understand how meditation can help heal mental illness so the best way of finding that out was by experiencing it myself. And as always, I have to go all the way instead of trying to emerge myself in the technique slowly but surely. However, plans have changed. As somebody probably wanted, the Vipassana center is positioned right next to another center called Tushita. Tushita is also a meditation center based on Tibetan Buddhism that can be seen as a lower level of Vipassana. Tushita as Vipassana offers ten days retreats but as opposed to Vipassana the retreats are not solely based on meditation. On top of the meditation, in Tushita I will have sessions of lectures and discussions about Tibetan Buddhism through which I will learn the importance of meditation.

I definitely want to do the Vipassana retreat at some point but right now I don't think I would be able to do it. Let me rephrase this, I would probably be able to go though it because it doesn't matter how difficult and miserable something is, I hang in it but that's not the point. I don't want to go in there just to be able to say that I have done it, instead, I want to truly benefit from it. For this time, Tushita will have to be enough. That's starting on August 6th and goes until the 17th. And if you are asking what I will be doing until then... the answer is Yoga.

By destiny, I am living right next to a world famous yoga center. One of the people living at the same place I am is working there. Another person who I am living there used to work there and they are all yoga teachers. On top of all this, I have talked to a gazillion people who have strongly recommended this course to me. So this is what I will be doing. The reason why I really want to do this course is because the yoga center puts strong emphasis on yoga therapy and how people can be treated with yoga. I still have to find out how it potentially could work. Being a part of it will definitely allow me to get a closer look. And again, using myself as a guinea pig will give me the best and most accurate exposure to understand how yoga can be used as a form of therapy.