After six weeks in India, I feel as though I have been drawing water from a deep and ancient well. The experience lingers in me, rich, layered, and still revealing itself. Returning to Canada brings a familiar ease. There is the quiet comfort of what I know: fresh, clean water, vast nature, cooler air, open space, fewer people, less pollution, and a certain gentle assurance of peace. The landscape feels spacious and calm, and my body immediately recognizes the simplicity of this environment.
Yet with that comfort comes a question that arises within me: Why do I have so much?
Travel has a way of turning the mirror inward. I begin to reflect on what I truly need, and what can be simplified. What is essential? What is simply habit or convenience? These questions seem to arise naturally after time in India, where the unfamiliar slowly becomes familiar again, and where juxtaposition is everywhere within me.
Gratitude grows more visible within me.
Appreciation deepens.
For people.
For places.
For the simple presence of things.
The physical journey itself is long, more than twenty-four hours to travel halfway around the planet. I often feel that the energy body and the mental body do not travel as quickly as the physical one. When I arrive home, I usually find myself drawn into long periods of rest, almost naturally settling into an extended Shavasana. In this quiet space, the body drifts into a Yoga Nidra like experience as the nervous system slowly regulates, a reset to this familiar reality.
Soon the perceived contrast shifts to Polarity, a balance of opposites. Once balance returns, something beautiful becomes clear again beneath all the differences. Across cultures and continents, some of the essential qualities of life are universal.
People are kind and generally happy, trying to do their best.
Families matter deeply.
Smiling is a universal language.
People are inspired and curious to create and to grow.
Devotion and spirituality play important roles.
Food is cherished.
Rituals and Celebrations are honored traditions.
In the end, the contrasts seem to dissolve, what remains is shared humanity that quietly reminds me what truly matters. Perhaps that deep well I was exploring was not only India herself, but the deeper well within.
From all of your friends at Yoga by the Sea Wellness Center