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June 26th, 2024

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

“The moment you ache to leave your posture is the moment yoga begins,” Steven Light, the leader of the asana flow I attended this morning, declared as my shuddering shoulders implored my brain stem to release my body from the physiological equilateral triangle of downward dog.  As the remark met my ears, I miraculously felt my shoulders soften and smile.  There was nowhere else my body needed to go.  A blissful moment of Samadi stillness swallowed my urging irritations.  In the blink of an eye, playfulness and humor returned to my moving skeleton.  Yoga had begun.

One mystifying detail that distinguished this class, at Ubud’s School of Unified Healing, against all other yoga education I’ve received in Bali was its absent price tag.  In fact, all of Unified’s offerings are completely free.  Their clean and modern shala boasts a proud plaque at its entrance, illuminating that the school’s founders donated their entire life’s savings to the creation and maintenance of this gratis anomaly.  The winding and overgrown dirt footpaths that my motorbike steamrolled, leading me towards the School of Unified Healing’s silent seclusion in the middle of a sprawling rice field, only added to the institution’s surreal aura of hidden treasure, akin to a desert oasis so lush, generous, and life-giving that its desperate visitors proclaim, “This must be a mirage!”

My programming as a native New Yorker has made me dubious and skeptical of costless offerings: the capital of excessive indulgence and expensive opulence fails to acknowledge that unpaid services can rival the merit and value of top-shelf luxury.  When I returned home from my yoga teacher training in Nepal this past January, I instinctually honored my buzzing hunger to share yogic knowledge by starting a weekly series of free asana and pranayama classes, but my mentors at Fierce Grace Hot Yoga (the Manhattan shala I attended daily) cautioned me to charge.  

Fierce Grace’s owner and matriarch asserted, “You should put a price on the class.  That way, people will know the value of your time.  If you leave a bike on the street with a sign that says, ‘FREE - PLEASE TAKE’, nobody’s gonna take it because they’ll assume it sucks.  If you sell it for five dollars, then people will know it’s not worthless.”

Her suggestion admittedly didn’t convince me to pivot, but, given her status as a seasoned and successful yoga-business owner, I nevertheless reacted to her protective words with private bouts of self-doubt.  When, on my second weekly class, only four students showed up despite my fully-booked RSVP list, my teacher’s warning reverberated through my bones.  Was my intended generosity and egalitarianism enabling others to evade accountability and disrespect my offering?  After all, a free online sign-up can be filled out far more mindlessly and apathetically than a monetary one.  There’s no doubt that, had my classes been sold at a price, even the modest sum of five dollars, then the quantity of website registrations would have mirrored the number of bodies walking through the door.  

Still, although my environment was not built to openly uplift and receive free yoga, I stuck beside my intuition and kept the classes free.  Some weeks were sparsely attended and bleakly discouraging, but I overall remember the experience as a beautiful union of like minds, seeking tranquil refuge from the destructive cacophony of our city.  In fact, I still keep in touch with the frequent attendees.  I bubble with excited impatience every time I daydream about coming home to continue bolstering the supportive coalition of Gen-Z yogis that these free weekly classes birthed.  

It’s no surprise that Bali, with its collectivist culture, utter lack of crime, and politely graceful social norms, is a far more conducive ecosystem for unpaid yoga.  Everybody crossing the School Of United Healing’s threshold regards the space with utmost appreciation and respect.  Its classes aren’t as populated as those at the pricey Yoga Barn across town, but they aren’t meant to be.  Nothing here is being widely marketed; instead, the rare few who simply seek are bound to find.  I’m just grateful to be in the small club of wanderers who discovered such an oasis.  

June 27th, 2024 

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia 

In the dewy, silent quaking of morning, when the golden light of dawn had just begun bashfully creeping into my bedroom window, I’d just snoozed my alarm for the second time, without even opening my crusty eyelids, when I heard Natalia shout, “Etai!! Come out here right now!” 

Curiosity, bolstered by the babyish neuroplasticity and naïveté of my first waking moment, ripped my white sheets off my skin and pulled the strings of my stumbling marionette figure out the door of the bungalow Natalia and I have been sharing since our arrival in Ubud.  Our front porch, a humble platform of creaky wood, was painted in striped sunstreaks.  That gentle glow, illuminating not only the surface of our shack but the atmosphere itself, made visible the humidity, personified through floating dewdrops and spiraling mist, that the heavy morning air upheld.  The natural beauty flooding my immediate vision compelled me to jolt my neck upward, following the sight of the lush vibrance around me to its distant horizon.  

The sharply erect stalks of the sprawling rice field directly in front of our home swayed in the cautious wind, rendered translucently yellow-green by the ubiquitous golden sunrise.  Far away, at the plantation’s edge, a forest of coconut palms was colored shiny orange.  The sky was cloudlessly aqua.  Birds squawked.  Geckos bleated.  Dogs barked.  I heaved a sigh of stillness.  The groggy baby within me longed to thank Natalia for showing my malleable mind such a pastoral introductory frame of the day, for this divine impression is bound to linger in my consciousness until I return to my white sheets tonight.  

I opened my mouth to verbalize this gratitude, darting my vision in circles to find Natalia’s figure, the source of the command that had pulled me from slumber, and found her in a staring contest with a praying mantis.  I held my tongue, walking towards the pair of god’s children instead.  The regal insect perched on a mature flower of pastel pink, unshaken by the dawn breeze.  It was the first of its species I’d ever seen.  My heart fluttered with unconditional love as I concentrated on its frozen body.  

When my eyes lifted from the praying mantis’ stoicism, I noticed that Natalia had surrendered from her staring contest too.  Aware that I was failing to catch the liquid flow of her morning spontaneity in my cupped palms, watching it slip away between my fingers, she offered a simple instruction: “Follow me!”  

I was still stripped to my blue plaid boxers, embodying my typical bedtime nudity, but I did not hesitate in galloping close behind Natalia as she descended from our bungalow, turning endless winding corners, jumping through several traditional Balinese-style gates, and tight-rope walking across the stone sidewalls of agricultural irrigation streams.  Once the narrow jungly path of one such concrete canal bank opened up and transformed into the grassy border path of our backyard rice terrace, the skip in Natalia’s step showed no signs of slowing.  Before I knew it, my pursuit of the forest nymph before me found my feet parading through squishy mud, my arms outstretched to find balance atop the rapidly changing elevation of the tiered paddies, and my face alight at the breathtaking perfection cradled by my intimate proximity to the rice plants’ ecology.  

I paused only when crossing blessed pockets of unripe sunglow that penetrated the perforations of the dense tree line, resisting all urges to stare directly into the great luminous orb, settling instead on eyes-closed basks with its waves heating my skin.  With my dirty bare feet grounded in moist clay and the solar panel of my epidermis embraced by bright light, I felt like just another photosynthesizing plant, one of infinite jungle constituents. Whenever I rose from these meditations, I could reliably expect Natalia to either be hundreds of meters down the farmers’ paths or out of sight completely.  I’d hustle, skipping and splashing through the wet earth, until I caught up with her.  

At the end of one of these sprints, I found her crouched before a rice plant in bloom, studying it inquisitively.  The candid organism blew my mind, for I’d never witnessed unripe grains of rice, up close, growing on the stalk.  Seeing this plant’s casual comfort within a buzzing ecosystem of dragonflies and ducks only amplified my reverence for the simply neutral food, which here in Indonesia is celebrated at the center of every plate.  

By the time I entered meditatively still fixation on the rice plant, Natalia had hopped up and continued down the footpath, ever ten steps ahead in her mind and her walk.  As I watched her fearlessly soar above the grass, mud, and silt, it occurred to me that the ill and afflicted woman I’d slept beside in Sanur was nowhere to be found.  Her Ubud spirit radiated with health and abundance.  I smiled as I saw her scoop fertile farm mud directly off her feet and spread it across her eczema-inflamed skin.  She also lathered her face with the black dirt, just for good measure.  When we walked past the rice field’s many hard-working farmers, Natalia, from god knows where, busted out flawless Indonesian chops and conversed with them joyfully.  Her aura of kindness dismissed my worries that the local farmers would disapprove of my near-nudity.  I greeted them lovingly, as if I was fully clothed, and they reciprocated my enthusiasm, to my relief and excitement.  

Forty minutes later, as we finally hopped down from the rice terraces, ending our impromptu adventure, I told Natalia, “I can’t thank you enough for that.  I couldn’t imagine a better way to start the day.  This is why I’m so happy that we’re traveling together.  You’ve edged me out of my comfort zone.  If I was alone, I never would have thought to do what we just did!  You are such a fearless wanderer!  That was so awesome!

“Anyway, I think I’m gonna dip my toes in the pool to clean all this mud off.”

Natalia snorted, “You mean, you’re not gonna just jump into the pool? That’s pretty anticlimactic.”

“Okay, fine, I will!”

The thunderclap splash of my baptism in boxers concluded the morning excursion, or as Natalia would call it, “side-quest.”  I emerged from the pool dripping like a rain cloud, fully primed for a complete day of classes at the School of Unified Healing.  

This all occurred before the clock struck eight, before my phone was unlocked, before I’d put on any garments beyond my boxers, and before the majority of Ubud had even brushed their teeth.  

I only have Natalia, and the gorgeous spontaneity of her healed spirit, to thank.  

June 28th, 2024

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

My three-day tenure at the School of Unified Healing has revealed innumerable truths, but one stands out among all the rest: I know absolutely nothing.  Before coming here, my self-practice was confined by Hatha, Ashtanga, Pranayama, and Dhyana; communing with the supreme soul in this routine way, I was content.  I felt qualified to teach the methods that empowered me.  I felt as though I’d arrived at the equanimously yogic bliss that would characterize the rest of my life.  Although I sought out other perspectives and yearned to travel deeper into my soul, I never came across a teacher that challenged me beyond my dogma.  

Then came the School.  I’ve been wholly unraveled by this experience.  Yesterday morning, I laid, curled up in a ball, with my thumb in my mouth like a baby.  Twenty minutes later, I was thrusting my pelvis frantically like I desperately needed an exorcism.  The day before, I yelled at the top of my lungs as I beat my chest like King Kong.  I then sat in padmasana, with my eyes closed, loudly moaning with pleasure for ten minutes.  Today, I was rendered so dizzy and nauseous by simple hip rotations that I had vivid flashbacks of my traumatically bilious adolescence. One hour later, I furiously chanted Nichiren mantra for fifteen uninterrupted minutes, my sore arms raised above my head all the while.  During the following class, I shed tears of unexplainable complexity as I tightly hugged a thirty-three year-old Romanian woman I’d never spoken to before.  My final lesson this evening saw me violently slapping and punching myself across every corner of my skin, vocalizing ferally with every hit.  

In summation, dark energies that I’ve long suppressed are bubbling up to the surface of my consciousness and subsequently being purged.  The process has left me more exposed and vulnerable than I’ve ever been.  I’d hardly call this therapy fun, but it’s definitely rewarding.  Having the space to examine and disown subconscious clutter that’s stiffened my physiology and barricaded my mental freedom is a true privilege.  Experiencing such an opening leaves me reluctant to reseal my protective barrier, but I will need to find a healthy balance between the two as I re-emerge from Unified’s isolated safety into unpredictable society.  

At the end of each school day, I walk for half an hour through the dark jungle back to my bungalow, so fragile and sensitive that the flapping wings of a bat or the revving engine of a motorbike are likely to startle me to my core.  I’ve formed the curious habit of responding to the frightening barks of stray dogs with fearsome vocalizations of my own.  Is that an innocent defense mechanism or my full-on devolution back to primal survivalism?  I’m watching the difference between those two choices shrink.  

The tools employed by this transformative institution have fascinated me endlessly.  One motif that’s connected all of the school’s teachings is releasing stuck energy.  

This value has most directly revealed itself through the practice of kundalini-awakening Kriya Yoga, a brand of movement characterized by frenetic shakes and spasms.  Focusing on awakening the dormant energy lying in the pelvic floor, guiding it up the spine towards the top of the skull, Kriya Yoga demands kinetic disturbance of stagnancy along all of the body’s meridians.  After hour-long sessions of tapping, rubbing, and pounding the entire surface of my epidermis, I consistently feel an expanded range in the vibrational waves of my body.  However, the liberating gains in fluidity are juxtaposed with a sudden responsibility to cradle the frozen energies now thawed.  I’ve never before encountered a style of physical exercise so precisely cellular.  Dismissing my typical ritual of static asana stretches, adopting this shaking Kriya into my daily practice, will undoubtedly heighten my mind-body connection beyond anything I’ve ever felt.  

Bodily movement aside, I’ve also learned that stuck energies can be loosened using powerful vocal activations.  The wise teacher of my first Sacred Voice class defined the human voice as “the pleasure-filled absence of all tensions.”  Her remark led me to meditate on how various blockages impair the clarity of my speaking and singing, and I agreed that a positive correlation exists between the vibrance of the voice and the pleasure of the soul.  In order to elevate her students’ vocal expression, she instructed us to feign the orgasmic sighs that would accompany a feast of our favorite foods.  To my amazement, without ingesting anything, simply pretending that I had, the unmistakable warmth of euphoria crawled all over my skin.  For the rest of the day, my spoken words, both in dialogue and in the reflective monologue I performed on my walk home, were unencumbered by fear or instability.

My favorite technique of all, though, has been Reiki.  This Japanese word, which translates as Universal Energy, is used to denote the healing practice of transferring Chi using gentle touch contact.  I had the honor of diving headfirst into the art of administering Reiki, placing my hands on the temples, foreheads, ears, necks, and eyelids of several classmates.  As I felt my fingertips pulsate at the intersection of our auric fields, I couldn’t help but smile, breathing deeply as I looked down upon the glowing bodies before me.  When it was my turn to lay on the ground, receiving touch from eight electric bodies at once, I no longer identified with the confines of my physical body.  The separation between mine and theirs vanished.  I saw all of our materially anatomical formations dissolving into the same homogeneous substance.  From that moment on, I understood the full strength of my magnetic field, the power of my touch.  I’ve begun touching the skin of my face, arms, and legs as a casual act of self love.  I even touch my food before eating it, ensuring that my light is transferred into the meal.  

As I write this, my heart beats rapidly in recovery from the dark energies unearthed this week.  I’ve confronted deep fear, shame, guilt, and anger within the safety of the School of Unified Healing’s clay walls.  I vow to continue my explorations of the immensely nuclear techniques known as kundalini awakening, Kriya Yoga, vocal activation, and reiki healing.  Back home, yoga was my entry point into wakefulness, my initial opening, but it’s hardly my final destination.  Excitingly, my path seems so much longer than it did a week ago.

June 30th, 2024

Renon, Bali, Indonesia

As the School of Unified Healing paused its programming this weekend, I took advantage of the break by shuttling down from Ubud to Renon for one last sleepover with Raja before he flies to New York on Tuesday.  This window of alignment found its third vertex when, yesterday, Raja’s mother returned to Bali from a month-long stay in Jakarta, just in time to celebrate her fifty-second birthday.  I was, without a second thought, hospitably included in the action-packed weekend of familial birthday festivities.  In this farewell to my dear friend, this conclusion of our joyful Bali bender that began nearly two months ago, I’ve been embraced as an honorary member of his tribe; the intimately celebratory moments I’ve shared with Raja’s parents, siblings, and nephews this weekend have retouched my mental portrait of his character with sharpened details and colors.  

Last night, as we all shared her chocolate birthday cake around the family dining table, Raja’s mother confessed to me, “I never expected my son to have a best friend from New York!  But I definitely knew, since he was two, that he would become such an incredible artist.  So, it’s no surprise that his work has taken him to America.  It makes me very sad to see him go, but I am so proud of him.”  The nuance of her reflections on Raja’s departure from her safe womb brought the image of my own mother to mind.  I know she experienced the same emotions when I decided to leave America.  Sharing space with another conflicted matriarch, I dismissed the guilt and worry I’ve felt since deciding to embark on this trip that’s leading me away from my family, and instead grounded myself in the nostalgic emotional potency of the moment, so analogous to my last moments in Brooklyn.  The synergy brought me one sliver closer to my own family.  

The following morning, as I groggily emerged from my ritualistic wake-up toilet-squat, I opened the bathroom door and spilled out into Raja’s living room, where his two older sisters invited me to lead them through their first-ever yoga flow.  I jumped at the chance, just as I had with Raja’s father two weeks prior, eager to express my favorite love language.  As the three of us softened our spines, strengthened our abdomens, and deepened our breaths, the morning routines of the house’s nine other inhabitants bubbled around our periphery.  A few times, this activity beelined from the outskirts of our vision directly into our foci, embodied as one sister’s toddler son climbing all over our asana-poised bodies.  We met the interruption with humor and encouragement.  It was an honor, not only to witness the relaxed tranquility of this family’s waking act, but to offer my own enhancement of the ecosystem.  When the sisters rose from savasana and thanked me profusely for leading the educational practice, I felt as accepted and cherished as a long-lost sibling.  

Later that afternoon, lounging by the pool after a stunning birthday lunch of unlimited dim sum, Raja and I assumed babysitter duty, taking his three-year-old nephew on a playful tour down water slides, across lap pools, and into the resort’s other aquatic features.  I relished showing the boy a good time, repeatedly lifting him high above my head, like Simba, as he giggled with adrenaline.  When I balanced the boy’s body weight across my shoulder blades, parading him around the pool as his pudgy heels bounced against my pectorals and his little fingers gripped my curls, I felt the proximity of his heart to my crown creating a soul bond between us.  We were inseparable for the rest of the day.   He held my hand during our entire walk from the pool to the parking lot, receptively echoing all the lyrics I put forth from the global toddler songbook, such as Old MacDonald, Twinkle Twinkle, ABCs, and B-I-N-G-O.  Once night fell, he slept with his head on my shoulder in the backseat of Raja’s car.  

For a fleeting moment, an Indonesian family adopted me, bandaging the longing I felt for my biological parents and sister.  Thwarting language barriers and cross-cultural discomforts, we connected as affectionate members of an all-inclusive global family.  They’ve inspired me to treat all the strangers I come across as I would my own blood-relatives. 

Love,

Etai