The snow drenched mountains send their icy whispers down to the valley on the wings of eagles. I approach to paragliders. With a smile on my lips and a chuckle in my throat, I am swept along trance-like by ancestors walking this solo journey with me. It is they who whisper in my ears, “you don’t have to do this all alone, we are here. Remember.”

Storms brewing. Lighting flashing. Thunder banging on the roof. Piercing drops of rain completing the symphony. Wet washing drip, drip … dripping. Sensory overload. I lie awake. Unable to move. Frozen.
“I am not my body.”
“I am not my body!”
“I am NOT MY BODY!”
I can neither warm myself with the numerous bedcovers nor can I rouse my body to leave them long enough to gather the layers required to warm myself enough for sleep. 

Solar geysers lay dormant under unseasonal cloud cover. My 4.30am pre-course wash is as crisp as the air breathed under the door. The limen holds nothing back here. Beautifully packed sari-cloth bags of summer essentials—with only a few woollen inclusions for SriNagar trekking in April—is left mostly unused in the back of the cupboard in my simple monastic room. Half wet on razor cold tiles, I focus on strategic layering of everything warm, including double socks, double beanie, gloves and puffer, wrapped up finally with the wool shawl purchased in a panic on seeing the weather report for Himachal Pradesh before leaving Auroville. Decades-old memories of Annapurna’s Thorong La Pass as the contents of my 13kg backpack decreased in proportion to the increase in altitude.

Morning warm up class of stretches, butt-kick running, jumping jacks, and 10 to 20 rounds of Surya Namaskar witness the gradual shedding of skins both internal and external. My layers of protection lie in a reverse-order pile on the floor as I lie corpselike—Shavasana—integrating this latest death and rebirth.

I walk out of Tara Hall after morning practice as the clouds open a portal—Parighasana—to reveal a fresh white frosting on the looming mountain range overlooking Deer Park Institute of Bir Billing. The night makes more sense to me now. 

The well-curated itinerary around the yoga course in Delhi faded like ink on blotting paper, leaving just a impression from which to recreate something new. The blurred lines plot an accidental orbit into the far north for a while. Climbing doesn’t occur without first finding the faith and the courage to leave the foot and hand holds on a rock face. And in the letting go, I soar. I find my wings in an intensive yoga teacher training at Deer Park Institute and, in the nature of duality, I also find them clipped. Like day four of any ten-day Vipassana Meditation course, I find myself pushing through my desire for the containment and and my calling to fly free … the contortions of both body and mind needing integration days of mountain runs and solitude.

Sound, like water, can carve through rock and bust apart particles of solid matter. Chanting for me breaks apart energetic dark matter for transmutation into sound and ether. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are the sutures that bind me together as the shackles are released from each individual vertebra and pockets of energy get snapped open. I saturate my body until my cells become porous.

Drowning in self, I find more clarity in the creation of membranous boundaries and viscous fluidity as the outer has become a better reflection of my inner primordial universe. I’m not sure if I feel secure so flexible … my rigidity keeps me safe. I hold both the flow and the structure with equanimity; a deeply ingrained understanding of impermanence. I want change … I seek it … a Vāsanā … it seeks me. A subliminal calling into the void of confusion in order to understand.

Just like in yogasana, everything has a counter posture. One without the other causes injury and dis-ease. Like the terror-inducing fulcrum point of a bungee swing, I oscillate between all knowing and ignorance and slowly come towards centre as I become more equanimous about the knowing and the not. Instead of curating the itinerary, I have worked at better managing the flow; instead of flooding the banks, I am building the dams required to contain spaces of guarded refuge without strangling free movement. 

The pitch of my travel chant has changed frequencies now and I am modulating a more harmonious rhythm. Travel plans that would originally last only four months stretch closer to eight or nine, a fitting gestation period for the safe birthing of the me I am becoming; the womb I am being for myself.

The magnificent duality of beauty and breaking has tendrils into attention and intention as my loosened grip on planning sends me free floating to Sahasrara awakening.

Today I walk; my running shoes the training wheels for flight.