Letting It Rip

I have been searching for my exercise groove in Bali.

Asher has transitioned smoothly from Oregon to Sibang Kaja.  Immediately upon arrival he bought a mountain bike and, just as in the Applegate, he is up before the sun with a miner's headlamp on his forehead, pumping up hills.  On Fridays he takes monumental rides up volcanic craters.  As an alternative, he runs barefoot, also before the sun rises, around the meticulously groomed Green School football field (grooming means one Balinese man squatting in the sun, pulling out weeds and invasive grasses by hand).

The dance floor is my temple.  Dance, as body tune up and tune in, as prayer, has been the mainstay of my practice the last two years, interspersed with bike rides, hikes into the BLM beside our house, runs through the forest and yin yoga.  Nia with Rachael Resch, exploring the joy of each movement, micro and macro, has been a profound experience for me, reliably spiraling me into deeper awareness,  bringing insights and revelations.  Free dance, especially Sarah Marshank's Embody and the dance events Eden and Ryan facilitated at our house, far beyond exercise, has been for me a communion with self and with community.   In Ashland, every day of the week someone is offering a dance circle.  Not so here in Bali.

A big thing to contend with is the heat.  If Asher is exploring in the early morning hours, someone needs to be home with Sofia.  I like to see her off to school, which means heading out for a walk or a run after 8:30 when it is already quite warm and heating up to a simmer.  I like to explore little paths and see where they lead.  Private property doesn't really exist in Bali, so any trail is a good one.  This week I walked on narrow paths crisscrossing the river, finding flowers and small waterfalls, traversing a rustic but strong bamboo bridge.  I passed an elderly man crossing the bridge; he seemed startled to see me, but smiled and wished me a good morning.  With grit between my toes and mud splashed up my legs, I leaped across rocks and eroding mudbanks.  I ended up walking through a village, seeing grandmas taking care of little ones while their mommas and poppas are at work.  It has been raining often, but this was a bright sunshiny morning and each house had a full assortment of clean laundry hanging up to dry.   On my way back home I stopped by the Green School kitchen to visit my friend Kadek and exchange sweaty hugs; she had been cooking over a hot fire and I had been building my internal fire by climbing out of the ravine in the sun. 

Tuesday mornings a group of Green School moms leave from the school for a 2 hour walk, following the little foot paths through the jungle.  This week we discovered a red pineapple growing beside the road, a wild gardenia, a canal of muddy water, and stumbled upon a Hari Krishna temple in the middle of nowhere.

I am reconnecting with my yoga practice, a gratifying reunion.  Having purchased a series pass to the Yoga Barn studio in Ubud, I am taking classes with a variety of teachers working in a variety of styles, getting a sense of what is available.  From the second floor studio, overlooking an expanse of rice fields, I have been paying closer attention to my breath, twisting happily into contortions, revisiting poses like old friends.  Leading one class was a Balinese teacher, trained in Australia, moving in and out of  Australian and Indonesian accents.  At the height of the class, in the most strenuous pose of the day, this teacher encouraged us to keep our faces relaxed and to smile.  Then, clear as a bell, he said, 'I want to see your tits."  The Indonesian language does not have a TH sound; what he meant was that he would like to see our teeth as we smile.  None of my classmates tittered (couldn't resist).  I held the pose, but found this hilarious and giggled to myself throughout the day.

I checked out my first Biodanza class.  Birthed through Rolando Toro, a Chilean psychologist, anthropologist and poet in the 1960s, Biodanza is an inspired system fusing music and movement with emotional exploration and community building.  I had read about Biodanza while still in Oregon, finding an interview with Rolando Toro before his passing, and felt the authenticity of his work.  I questioned it though, in the yoga studio, with the international crowd grooving to the beat.  It seemed a little fluffy and superficial.  I felt my judgements arise and, with them, the opportunity to pass through the doorway of What I No Longer Have.  That passageway is not particularly pleasant and has to do with my kitty cat Malia, our wonderful home in the forest, the amazing array of organic products at the Ashland Food Co-op, Nia class... I could go on and on, but it won't make me feel good.  I kept dancing.  I did my best to stay open.  Our focus was on yin and yang.  We danced a series of segments exploring our yang, building up to stepping into our warrior power.  I let it rip.  I drew power up through the earth, the roots, the Bali mud, into my limbs.  I growled.  I roared.  Something shifted for me and, sure enough, something shifted in the room.  Having expressed our power, the tenderness of the yin movement was sweet and deep and real.  Total strangers, dripping with waterfalls of sweat, shared dance, eye contact, touch, love.  I thought, I can be here.

An exercise of a different sort:  persevering through the storm.  We went to a first grade party at a colonial style teak house in the hills for futbol (kids vs parents), potluck and conversation.  We were among the few remaining families still chatting at the party when the rain began.    We had all arrived by motorbike and decided to sit out the storm.  It took hours.  So much water fell to the earth that the grassy area that had been a futbol field was now a lake.  The rain pounded.  It got dark.  Finally, in a light drizzle, we attempted the ride home.  We were off to a questionable start on a little dirt road, fishtailing right and left in the muddy debris.  On paved roads it was smoother, though in one spot the terrain was so steep the bike could not pull our weight.  Asher drove Sofia up the hill, I got off and hiked.  South of Ubud parts of the road were still flooded (eventually all the water finds lower ground) and we cautiously made our way through pond sized pools of water in the dark, again and again.  At one point we passed large trucks pulled over to the side of the narrow road, discovering they were avoiding downed power lines.  One motorbike after another drove through the massive puddles, over the power cables, and we followed.  We were past all that and nearly home when we had a direct hit with a pothole.  The wobbly bike let us know that we had a flat.  In true Bali style, the moment we pulled over to the side of the road, a man who had been sitting in front of a shop leapt to his feet to help, knowing exactly what the problem was, and gave us directions to the nearest place that could fix the tire.  While Asher went off to repair the flat (at a hole in the wall shop he would never have found without the earlier directions), Sofia and I people watched at the nearby night market beside vendors frying wonton type snacks.  We were grateful for a dry roof over our heads once we finally arrived home.

More about excess moisture:  We have a stretch of wood floor in our bathroom next to the shower that never dries out.  Yesterday morning I walked into the bathroom to discover a mushroom growing out of the floorboards.  I'm wondering, with all this heat and humidity, if fuzzy green things and mushrooms will start growing out of my pores.

  

The Green School has been letting it rip in the appearance department.  Last week it was Crazy Hair Day and now it is Halloween.  I got wild with pipe cleaners on Sofia and Avishi, our neighbor and Sofia's most constant pal so far.  I'm also including evidence that Asher is tuning in to his feminine side.