Our time in Greece + Sabbatical reading list

Hello!  A little belated, I wanted to share about our time in Greece: 

We had a 2-week window in November, after Vipassana in Italy and before Yoga Teacher Training in India. We originally thought we'd take a road trip thru Eastern Europe. But very early on realized that too much driving is a distraction from our goals. 

Home Sweet Home 
We booked a cottage on the island of Corfu in Greece, knowing that prices were good + it would be quiet in the off-season. It was a disaster. The place was muggy, buggy, with traffic noise, and Karan got locked in the bedroom and had to escape through a window. 

The next morning we cancelled our rental and found new friend Spiros who rented the top floor of his house to us. It was palatial - tons of space to stretch out, big kitchen, TWO bathrooms, huge deck overlooking the mountains and the sea, olive groves, chickens, goats. 

Our own writing + meditation retreat
Thus began our 2-week Writing + Meditation retreat in Achravi, Corfu.  The days went roughly like this:

7.30: Wake
Meditate
Breakfast
Writing in morning 
12: Meditate
Lunch 
More writing/ reading in afternoon
4: Exercise - which involved running down to beach and checking internet for 15 mins in town
Shower
Dinner
Evening ... more reading - no TV, internet or other distraction
Meditate 
10: Sleep!    

Neither of us had ever done something like this before - time fully dedicated to writing, reading and meditation with no distraction. It was wonderful and harder work than you might guess - we fell asleep exhausted every night and were BUSY and incredibly productive. We each fully outlined our books - with detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdowns, character sketches, etc. 

Sabbatical Reading List 
Even though we're traveling light, we have a library of spiritual books with us. I'm working my way through each book, and Greece was nice because Karan and I had time to discuss everything from the Buddha's journey to the meaning of life. You can see the books in the picture here:

From top to bottom, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Siddhartha, The Book of Buddha, Hunger Games (not mine!), Writing Fiction, Vedanta Treatise, Vivekachudamani, and I read Ghandi's Experiments with Truth in Scotland. 

Since I left home 2 months ago, I haven't read anything but these books. And for tv, I have only watched 3 episodes of Modern Family on a flight, and that's it. 

Sattvic Living 
Eastern philosophy talks about the 3 mental tempermants (or gunas) and they are: 

Tamas: lethargy, indolence, sloth, sleep
Rajas: passionate, agitated, frenzied action
Sattva: poised, mature, serene and contemplative

We all have different proportions of the 3 gunas, but the idea is to attain more and more sattva. And sattva was our theme for these 2 weeks. Instead of a rajasik road trip, or a tamasic time hanging out at the beach, we created a sattvic experience. 
 
The situation in Greece 
I learned a lot about the economic crisis in Greece, and I can tell you it's very bad. We were the "last tourists" of the season and people were really open in talking to us.

The money is completely dried up in Achravi. It's a tourist town, and there weren't many tourists this summer. People are waiting 2-3 months to get paid. The whole town is villas on the beach and bars & restaurants in town -- and they're all empty. The locals are not going out for coffee or dinner. People are eating out of their gardens, sharing hand-me-down clothes for the kids, not traveling, not heating their houses in January-Feb when it's cold. The teachers are on strike "every 5 minutes" so kids are not getting a great education. Our neighbors had a huge padlock/ hook thing on their door because in the last 2 years there is crime and break-ins. You ask someone how they are and they answer "horrible" and explain why - they need to work but don't have a babysitter, they need to send their kid to college but don't have money and husband left them, etc. 

I've seen poverty before, but I've never seen a place dry up like this, like a ghost town. It was so strange to be in paradise but never witness a carefree moment - you didn't see someone walking down street enjoying an ice cream cone or young people out partying on a Saturday night. 

I know Greece is in the headlines but it's easy to forget that there are real people being stretched very thin. And based on what I saw in Achravi, I would say the myth of the lazy Greek person is unfair. People are working 7 days a week for little money and would love more work and opportunity. 

So that was our time in Achravi - during which Hurricane Sandy happened at home, President Obama got re-elected, and we did meditation, spiritual reading and book outlining that will hopefully allow us to make a positive difference in this topsy turvy world. 

Love,
Kerry  

Vipassana: 10 Days of Silent Meditation (except when I found a scorpion under my pillow)

Hello everyone! 

First I want to say - I'm in Greece with limited internet but have been following the fallout of Hurricane Sandy and my heart goes out to you all. My family was all affected but are getting life back in order. We're thinking and praying for you all. xo

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Karan and I finished our Vipassana course in Italy last week, and I've finally found a computer so I can share about it. Vipassana is a Buddhist meditation technique taught all over India and the world. I've wanted to take this course for a long time, so that I can get a real meditation boot-camp. Karan did Vipassana back in India ten years ago, so this was his second time. Hard to convey all it's about, but I'll try my best.

Arrival Day:

I guess you would call this Day 0. We take a shuttle from Faenza, Italy to the Dhamma Atala center about 40 minutes away. This morning I have loaded up on food - bread, cheese, chocolate croissant, cappuchino - everything I can get my hands on! 

Leaving Brisighella

At the train station in Faenza, Italy

We arrive and do registration and I give up my camera and book. I'm also supposed to give my journal and pen but I sneak it, I can't imagine going 10 days without my journal and decide that will be my one 'cheat' but actually don't end up touching it. If I had a cellphone, music device or laptop I would have to give that up too. 

I settle into my dorm room with 5 Italian women, that night we get a light dinner of soup and bread, a briefing, and silence starts at 8pm and we meet in the Meditation Hall and get our assigned meditation spots. We sit on a mat on the floor with a cushion. There is some strange chanting, a short meditation and we go to at 9.30. I usually stay up later than that but with no talking, books, tv - there's not much else to do but sleep. 

Day 1-3

Here's our daily schedule, tell me if this is not the craziest thing you've ever seen!

4am: Wake up gong
4.30 to 6.30am: Meditate
6.30am: Breakfast and rest
8 to 9am: Meditate (in the hall)
9 to 11am: More meditation (but sometimes you can do this session in your dorm room) 
11am: Lunch and rest 
1pm: Meditate
2.30 to 3.30: Meditate (in the hall)
3.30 to 5: Meditate
5-6: Tea, snack and rest (you may notice there's no dinner!)
6-7: Meditate (in the hall)
7-8: Discourse
8-9: Meditate
10: Lights out

To me the most astonishing part was that by 9am each day, I had meditated for 3 hours, eaten breakfast and taken a 1 hour nap! What a morning.

The first 3 days we practiced a meditation that focuses on watching the breath pass through your nostrils. Although this seemed boring at first, it helped to calm and concentrate the mind. Very interesting to see what roly poly things the mind does when you start watching it closely! From past to present to future, mine jumped like a cricket all over, but then you keep remembering to watch the breath. Slowly slowly, I could focus for longer. (Then my knees or hips would start screaming from sitting for so long, it felt like 2 golfballs were under my right hip pretty much the whole week.)

Day 4:

Big day. First there was a water shortage in the morning, so during the 4.30am meditation all I could think was "I hope they can still make my oatmeal!" I was still getting used to life without dinner. But water came back in the afternoon.

Also in the afternoon, now that we had concentrated our minds for 3 days, we finally learned the Vipassana technique. "What do you mean, that's not what we've been doing the past 3 days?" I feel it's not right to summarize something that was taught by a serious teacher over 10 days. But it's a technique of self-observation, to learn to maintain mental balance (or equanimity) so that reactions to upsetting events diminish, negativities dissolve, and your mind becomes peaceful and full of compassion. 

An example - on day 3 I went back to the room for one of the sessions when I was supposed to stay in the meditation hall, totally by accident, honest mistake. The assistant teacher came to my room and told me I needed to come back to the meditation hall. I was so thrown off by this! I felt embarrassed, like the teacher was scolding me! Now this is such a small event. But because of the silence and learning to watch the breath and notice reactions in my body, I was able to see how even a small disturbance can throw off your composure. So one way to explain the Vipassana technique is that you learn to maintain your composure (or equanimity) in the face of life's vicissitudes. 

Or here's a really simple way to say it: an agitated mind is not a happy mind. Sounds obvious, right? But through the 10 days we were learning that truth in a very experiential way.  

I actually got upset this day after learning the technique. My first reaction was that it was stupid, I didn't like it. But because of silence, I had no one to complain to, no one to express my doubts to. I could only here the teacher saying, "you are bound to be successful." And I got back to work. 

Day 5 - Scorpion! 

Day 5, I'm getting ready at 4am for morning meditation, which I love by the way. Something magical about walking up the hill under the starry sky in the middle of the night. So I'm making my bed because my roommates are all very diligent bed-makers and what do I see under my pillow but a scorpion! 

This is the one and only time I violated silence. I yelped, but that doesn't really count. The real violation is that I tapped my roommate on the shoulder to see - I simply couldn't handle this alone. She gasped, then opened the window. I scooped up the scorpion in a plastic cup (leftover from the water shortage) and tossed it out the window. And then without skipping a beat, we continued getting ready for meditation. 

The purpose of Noble Silence is:

1. To get rid of excess chatter (I had plenty of chatter in my own mind, so the idea is to reduce all the extraneous chatter as much as possible)
2. To cut out your ability to express doubts and complaints (you can always talk to the teacher if you have questions, but not to other students)
3. To allow you to have a personal experience.
4. To create a foundation of morality - if you're not talking, it's much harder to be dishonest

And it helps on all 4 counts, and everyone takes it very seriously. And silence is not just talking - it includes hand gestures and pointing. Even with the scorpion it was clear to see that silence leads to way less drama. 

Day 6-8:

These were mostly great days, with some ups and downs. I settled into the routine, I got the right combination of cushions to help my hips, my appetite calmed down and I got used to not having dinner. I took less naps during breaks and took more walks. 

We started something called "Sittings of Strong Determination" which meant that for 1 hour you were not to open your eyes, unclasp your hands or unfold your legs. This really helped me to stop squirming and fidgeting. 

Day 9:

Ready to be done!!! Antsy. 

Day 10:

Last day! I gave up my cherished morning nap to take a shower and dry my hair and put on makeup, I am so excited to see Karan again and talk again. (Men and women have been kept entirely separate at all times, so I have glimpsed him throughout the week and we smile at each other each night to say a silent 'goodnight' but otherwise we have had no contact whatsoever). 

We have our last meditation in the morning, a receive a closing blessing, and then Noble Chattering begins. I walk out with my roommates and soon find Karan and we're all thrilled to laugh and talk, it was a real celebration. That day at lunch we even had brownies!  

Sala de Meditation Walked up these steps to mediation hall many times each day. I loved this walk.

Conclusion

As I re-read this, I feel I haven't captured an ounce of the experience. This is an outline, but there was a lot of juicy stuff that's hard to convey. It was a fun, funky, truly life-changing experience. I left about 15 days ago and still feel a big shift. I'm calmer, happier, less sensitive, less emotional about every little thing, quicker to laugh, and more secure in my relationship. We both lost weight, too .. but more important I feel emotionally lighter. The teachings were wonderful, and then the intensive experience of putting them into practice from 4am to 9pm was hard work, but powerful.

Karan has written a wonderful explanation on meditation in this "Meditations on Meditation" if you'd like to learn more.

We are now in Greece doing our own writing + meditation retreat before we head to India for yoga teachers training at the end of November. 

Much love and blue skies to all, 

Kerry

Notes from Dhanakosa, Scotland

Hello! Finally I have a chance at the computer to give a quick update of our retreat at Dhanakosa in Scotland. 

Disorientation of arrival

We flew from NYC to London then Edinburgh on Friday, Sept 28. Then on Saturday took a bus to Glasgow, then Stirling, then a smaller bus to Callendar. We sat in a pub in Calledar waiting for a taxi to arrive and there was a dog sitting on a barstool! I was dismayed by how cold it was - definite Scottish chill in the air and I had to wear my warm coat right away. So this combination of jet lag + cold + dog on barstool was a wee disorienting. Then our taxi whisked us to Dhanakosa, which is a lovely Buddhist retreat center on a loch in the Scottish highlands.

Feeling at home

I knew we were in the perfect place to start our journey the moment we arrived. Dhanakosa is idyllic - shooting stars, the braying of deer at night, moon reflecting in the loch, mist in the moutains, fall colors in the trees, waterfalls, sheep everywhere, Buddha statues, kind people, warm hearty vegetarian food. The retreat schedule was:

7am wake up bell
7:30am meditation
8:45am breakfast
Talk or hillwalking in the morning, more meditation
1pm lunch
Free afternoon
5pm meditation
6pm dinner
Talk in the evening, plus free time
9pm close the day with short meditation

So you can see there was a loose structure and lots of free time, which allowed me to catch up on rest, go running, take long walks outside, read (I read Ghandi's autobiography, Experiments with Truth). It was the perfect way to transition from hectic NYC life to slower pace of the sabbatical.

Connection  

All of the people on retreat with us were so warm and kind, I was really touched. First of all, they were very welcoming to non-Buddhists and Buddhists alike. And they were so thoughtful in all of their questions - people would ask me how my jet lag was, how my meditation practice was going, about my interest in Buddhism, my goals for the sabbatical.

There were 25 of us on the retreat, and 2 different people came up to me and introduced themselves saying, "Hi I want to make sure to talk to everyone this week and I haven't spoken to you yet." Such generosity of spirit. We all felt like a family by the end. 

A number of people were frustrated by their meditation - when you spend so much time meditating each day and your mind is jumping all over and others are talking about visions of lights and colors it can be a little discouraging! But we were all supportive of each other and it was a new experience for me to be able to speak to others in detail about meditation.

Learnings

3 learnings to carry forward were:

1. Compassionate connection - by asking thoughtful and specific questions as I mentioned above, and connecting with everyone instead of picking favorites and dismissing others. Be open, do not judge.  

2. I am not lazy - even though I wasn't working, I filled the day with a lot of purpose, with reading, exercise (running, hiking, or yoga every day), chores (we all had to help with chores), meditation, etc. This schedule is very different than what I'm used to at home, and not what I typically think of as productive or efficient or ambitious. But the spaciousness is a wonderful and fulfilling path to growth. Instead of doing lots of hectic travel from A to B to C on this journey, Karan and I want to have more days like we spent at Dhanakosa. 

3. Be bold - another friend on the retreat took this away as his big learning and it inspired me too. He saw a postcard with a picture of a monkey jumping from a cliff across a churning river with a fierce look of determination on it's face. The photographer caught an amazing moment where the monkey was soaring over the river. Karan and I put this lesson into practice right away by renting a car after the retreat and Karan taught himself how to drive manual in 30 minutes in the Alamo parking lot - scary at first but also very exhilarating, and he was a pro in no time. We're looking to continue with boldness and decisiveness in our decisions.

4. Bonus learning! This happened after the retreat, while reading a magazine in London. I learned the Danish word "hygge" which is pronounced whoo-ger. It means a combination of coziness, relaxation, comfort and inner warmth - like snuggling up under a warm blanket to read a book on a rainy day. It has no direct English translation but has to do with finding great pleasure in simple activities. I think that perfectly describes the Dhanakosa experience - it rained every hour on the hour in Scotland but it was a cheerful rain and the sun was quick to come out after and I drank 1000 cups of tea as the Scottish do and always felt safe and warm.

Well I know I covered a lot of ground here! We're now in London spending the week with Karan's family and friends and then will move on to Italy for our Vipassana meditation.

Lots of love and hygge,

Kerry  

Final Packing List for Big Backpacking Trip

I packed and re-packed 3 times before getting it right. Now I'm happy. Here's my packing list:

Bottom row, left to right:

- 1 scarf
- 1 pair gloves
- 1 spork
- 1 platypus water bottle
- 1 headlamp (thanks Dad for fixing it)
- 1 baby bliss travel hairdryer
- Sunglasses and regular glasses
- 1 down jacket (Exofficio)

2nd row, left to right:
- Supplements! Medicine!  Cipro, GiMicrobx, Vitamin D, Probiotic, Multivitamin, Aleve, Intestinol, and a homeopathic jetlag pill. Not enough to last the whole time, just an assortment of my faves.
- Camera with built in USB, battery charger.
- Backpack cover in case it rains
- Silk sheet
- A stuff sack for dirty clothes
- 1 rain poncho

3rd row, left to right:
- Shoes: flip flops, 5 Fingers, Toms. That's IT for shoes. And I went to 5 stores to find the Toms today ... Urban Outfitters has best selection and most sizes if you're looking.
- Journal, Ghandi's autobiography, passport, wallet.
- Toiletries, including: makeup, nailclipper, tweezer, deodorant, toothpaste, retainer, floss, lots of Carley's soap, razor, small hairbrush, Dr Bronners. Just the basics but still heavy.

Top row, left to right:
- Small travel towel and small backpack
- Packing cube filled with socks, undies, bras, bathing suit
- Packing cube for shirts: 2 tshirts, 1 tank top, 1 nice silk shirt, 1 long shirt, 1 Victorias Secret supermodel hoodie that makes no sense to bring but I love. Karan was ruthless in helping me cut down on shirts.
- Packing cube for pants: 1 hiking pant, 1 pair jeans, 2 pairs yoga pants (1 long, 1 shorter), 1 pair leggings, 1 black dress. Karan wouldn't let me pack shorts! He is strict.

Not pictured: I might squeeze in a small purse, a hat, and I'll wear a light Lululemon jacket to the airport tomorrow.

Total weight: 22 pounds!!!

A few people have asked, my backpack is a Gregory Jade 60, size women's xsmall. (Size has mainly to do with your height/ torso as I understand it.) I used this bag for my Siberia trip and it was great - it's small so you can't overpack. The link I found shows the price as $249 but that sounds high to me, I thought I paid more like $150. Anyhow, the guy who sold it to me told me many have used it for hiking the Appalachian Trail so I figured it was sufficent for my needs and it is.

Also - I got an REI membership for $20 and have bought everything possible at REI. With the membership, they take returns for life, no receipts needed, no questions asked. 

The Texas hitman who inspired my career in holistic nutrition

Oprah's Lifeclass is looking for stories about how a change in thinking changed your life, and I submitted this story about how a Texas real estate developer who hired a hitman to kill his wife led to my career shift into holistic nutrition. People often ask how/ why I shifted my career from marketing/pr to nutrition and this is part of the background story in 2000 characters or less for Oprah:

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After college I worked in Public Relations, and one of my clients was a cranky real estate developer in Dallas. One day I emailed an editor at Texas Monthly about doing an interview with my client, and he said "I can only do it if he's willing to talk about what happened in 1987." I had no idea what happened in 1987, but after digging on Google, I discovered he had hired a hitman to kill his wife during a nasty divorce, was caught in an FBI sting operation (in which his wife had to fake her death) and there was even a made-for-TV movie about him!

I was appalled, but my mom told me to get over it. The unspoken thought pattern being passed down from my mom was that "work is work." It is not meant to have meaning or purpose. So what if you have to do PR for a criminal? Keep your head down, be grateful for your paycheck.

Well, I wanted more that that from life. I decided to retire the thought that work can't be in alignment with my values.

So I made a life-changing decision: I committed to doing work that matters. I created a new way of thinking that I could do work that makes a positive difference, feeds my soul, and is in alignment with my values. 

I enrolled in holistic nutrition school, and I am now a certified nutrition coach. I work with the top integrative doctor in New York City. Each day I sit with patients and help them to resolve their health problems in a natural way. I support people with getting off medications for high cholesterol, arthritis, reflux, anxiety, depression, etc. I help people to clean up their diet, lose weight, gain energy, heal their pain and take a whole new direction in their life.

I LOVE my work, and it all sprung from the change in thinking and leap of faith that I could choose work that matters. Choosing to change my thoughts has transformed my life!

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If you'd like to submit a story to Oprah, here is the link.