In my Bodhisattva era
There are many ways to get to one's destination. After contemplating if I’d travel by car, train, bus or plane, it was decided that I would catch a flight to Humboldt County in Northern California in early September of this year. The plane ride was rather short following a brief layover in San Francisco, and already the verdant landscape of elder forests were opening below me while I stared out the window as we began to make our evening descent onto land.
A month earlier, after I had quit my job at the physical therapy clinic, I was invited down to attend a yoga workshop at a tiny shala located in Arcata, California by my friend Joey Paz who taught ashtanga vinyasa there. The invitation was a call to a final summer adventure and a promise of rest as the earth was beginning to make its turn behind the autumnal veil and away from exceptionally long days of warmth and light. I was exhausted from the burnout I had experienced from my previous employment and from the long drive back from the place where I fell in love, so the opportunity to rest among the trees seemed unparalleled.
The airport in Humboldt was small being that it was a regional airport, and I was able to make my way out of my gate with ease, then found my way to passenger pickup where I awaited Joey, who I had not seen since he had dropped me off at the Huatulco airport in Oaxaca, Mexico after I had attended his yoga retreat there the previous November. The two of us met at a weekend workshop that had taken place during my yoga teacher training back in the summer of 2021. During this time, I admitted to him about my yoga aspirations and dreams of traveling to Mexico to pursue them. It had been nearly two decades since I had visited Mexico, and Joey, inspired by my tellings of divine inward visions of my future, invited me down to Mexico to attend his retreat.
It seemed that since our initial meeting, he had been inviting me to travel beyond my familiar comforts and out into the world where those dreams were to be found, while at the same time providing a soft landing each time I was courageous enough to fly. This is how I found myself grounding outside passenger pick up after having landed in the Redwood coast near the trees I had been longing to befriend.
He arrived quickly with snacks of nuts and grapes to hold me over until dinner. We drove the short drive to the house where he was staying for the summer before he planned to head back down to Mexico to hold yoga retreats and workshops–which he does every fall. We discussed my flight and my recent and upcoming travels, this is when I declared, “I’m in my bodhisattva era.” What I meant by this was that I was answering a call to connect with something beyond the material realm. There was an interest to pull my concerns away from the mundane of normality and seek union with something greater than me by turning inward, studying sacred texts and traveling. This explanation was not necessary for Joey as he knew all too well what I had meant by my comment, for he too had spent lifetimes traversing the world in search of greater truths. This is why his stay in the Arcata house was purely temporary.
The house itself seemed like a shala: a refuge for yogis, religious wanderers and dharma bums needing a safe place to rest along their journeys. The exterior was draped in prayer flags, and statues of the Buddha sat airily in the garden and patios. The outward expression of sanctity matched the interior as it seemed each corner and shelf held a divine altar for various deities of the yogic faith with offerings of crystals, shells, incense and a photo of those deities. Along one corner, instruments sat eagerly by in anticipation for the next kirtan practice, to devote the vibrations of its form to the Gods. The living room furniture had been placed with enough room to create floor space for gatherings. All around, bookshelves were lined with consecrated texts and the writings of those who had devoted themselves to the teachings of those texts.
I had just removed my shoes and was still taking in the serenity of the space when Joey and I heard a car pulling up the long and narrow driveway that curved around the side of the house. Joey announced that his life-long friend Bryce Delbridge had arrived from Los Angeles. Moments later, we heard “Baba?” coming from outside the open front door. Joey responded to Bryce’s term of endearment with a “Baba!” as Bryce entered the house. The two friends embraced before Bryce and I were introduced to one another.
I had been excited to meet Bryce, who had driven up from Los Angeles to co-facilitate the weekend ashtanga therapeutics workshop along with Joey. He had spent many years devoted to his practice and teachings of ashtanga and yoga therapy both in the states and out east. Similar to Joey's own adventures, Bryce was a veteran in world travel as a means of spiritual practice, like he had long been a bodhisattva too–going to India and sitting in caves with monks after graduating high school or taking pilgrimages to the amazon. Beyond that, Joey had spoken highly of him being that they had been friends since the start of Joey’s own yoga journey which began in Oklahoma. I also recognized Bryce from social media given that the length of his hair and the way that it curled was impressive, almost as impressive as mine–yet not quite–which I would eventually sense that he secretly despised me for, though he would deny these accusations during an argument later that week. I was eager to learn from him as I admired his devotion to healing through yoga and honored his experience and educational background.
While most of everyone that I met during my time in Humboldt was immensely welcoming and interested in me, I was becoming acutely aware of how afraid I was of being seen by others, so much so that there was physical discomfort in my body. These feelings were being heightened around the same time I was launching my YouTube channel and uploading my first video online for the first time in ten years. On top of that, the skill level of my companions yoga asanas was a bit intimidating to me. But their kind and compassionate nature encouraged my rest and practice. And they are both long time yoga instructors so they know how to meet people where they are while supporting their growth. This is what they offered me.
Additionally, my YouTube channel was well received, despite my instinct to go lunar and hide in a shroud of mystery. I was learning in my body that it was okay to be seen, to express myself, to be more solar.
I created a video for this trip which can be found here:
Lost Coast
It was called Lost Coast and it appeared that way given that there were hardly any people on the beach except the three of us when we arrived. Of course, there was a couple there from the midwest who asked us for directions to a souvenir shop–then made comments that we were hippies like they couldn’t believe the cliches about the West Coast were real, and a friend of Joey and Bryce came by to spend a couple of hours with us while her daughter was at school. But Labor Day had been the previous weekend, which meant school was back in session, so the sandy shores remained mostly vacant. Though I suspected it persisted this way for most of the year given the fact that it was hardly ever warm for very long and like the name suggested, the beach was hidden.
None of us minded being the only ones on the beach as we drank tea and savored in the last of Northern California sunshine, though both Bryce and I agreed that it was still rather cold. In particular, I was there simply to rest and forget about the measurement of time, on the wall or on my wrist. As I mentioned earlier, I was recovering from intense burnout that could, at this point, only be cured by quitting my job, and immersing myself so deeply in nature that I forget that I have a body or am a person that can be perceived beyond my imagination.
I mentioned this to the two of them, stating that I was suspecting that my masculine energy was dominating over my feminine energy, or that my pingala was dominant over my ida. And in western terminology, my sympathetic nervous system was so overactive that I was having a challenging time turning on my parasympathetic nervous system. It was here that the reality that, during the previous year, I had been in a constant state of fight-or-flight began to become clear as it had during the first sunset of the summer. I began to explain to them the effects that this was having on my body, from the constant feeling of panic, to the gut issues, the ferocious skin breakouts, and lethargy.
This came from overworking without having anything returning to fuel me, it came from constant output and not enough rest. And after a prolonged period of existing in this state, my body became accustomed to it so much that it felt like my default. I couldn’t blame myself, at one point I was feeling afraid as I maneuvered the pressures of being in my twenties, but I knew now there had to be an internal change so my body could shift into parasympathetic nervous system. They suggested taking on slower and feminine based practices and offered me the space to do this while I was there.
During my stay, I slept in without an alarm, the days were mostly unplanned and moved intuitively and were broken up so that there was a period of tea sipping to divide the morning from the evening. We spent time on the beach and concealed beneath old growth trees sharing stories, and admired the cows in the open pasture at sunset. I reveled in my week of rest, I did not check my phone, or emails, or worry about the future.
At the time, I had put a pause on teaching yoga classes due to moving homes and traveling, while at the same time I was being called to resume my role as a student and continue my studies. The weekend workshop provided me the opportunity to heal, deepen my studies and reflect on my personal practice. I realized that I had greatly contributed to my burnout by having a strict and disciplined yoga practice without days for rest and recovery, sometimes practicing upwards to nine times a week in the winter and spring. While at the same time, it felt that I had nothing to show for it because this method of practice was harming my body. Yeah, I was stronger than I had been previously, but I was also inflexible and rigid. I no longer felt connected to my intuitive nature or my body’s innate wisdom that says, it is time to rest.
While I love ashtanga yoga for the way that it clears my body, it is also a heavily energetically masculine practice—which is why I felt so imbalanced. Giving myself the same grace to slow down and rest as I had offered to my students, I began to feel the resurgence of my feminine energy which had seemed to have gone dormant. I was beginning to soften, to be present, to surrender, flow and trust.
Redwoods
“Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.”
—Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
On my third day in Northern California, Joey and I drove up to the Redwood Forest National Park. On our way there, we ate figs and tofu wraps purchased from the local co-op which we had grown rather fond of and traded talk of our dreams and five year plans. I offered up my perspective–which had become disenchanted with the ways of American life–with its loss of all things sacred. He listened in silent agreement. The drive was rather short and we arrived within the hour after we had left town. I was surprised that there was no entrance fee to enter the forest and when mentioning this to Joey, he confirmed that it was free. We ascended up a long slanted road but the true splendor of the trees were still hard to witness with the roof of the car obstructing my view.
Despite having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, my exploration of the region had never wandered into the Redwood Forest lands. There had been, for many years, a desire within me to see those giant trees sitting so patiently near the edge of the continent. I had, during college, attempted to plan a road trip to visit the trees, but those plans never did surpass wishful conversation and that one evening we pulled up a map of the western states to measure out a route. As life would have it, the way to my destination was this.
We walked up a bridge to make our way onto the trail. Joey recognized a friend from town and the two kindly greeted one another as we crossed paths. Finally, I was seeing the redwood trees and they were becoming ever larger as we went along the footpath. Joey informed me that the trees were over 2,000 years old.
I asked, “Really?” with a childlike wonder.
“Yeah, some of them have been here since the Roman Empire.” He answered.
I became curious about their idleness as they stood with no urgency for any goal in particular. It was then that the illusion of time began to dissipate, like some sort of veil that had been placed on the sky was beginning to slip away and I could see directly into a vibrant infinity. No time existed except for that moment, and to think of time was to measure movement, of light, of tree limbs growing outward or swaying in the wind, temperature rising and falling with the seasons. I was transfixed in the present which was endless. I thought, I can’t go anywhere, I am only here.
Feeling inspired by the photos I had seen on the internet of people hugging the redwoods, I walked up to the base of one of the trees, extended my arms and leaned up against it for an embrace. The tree was so large that Joey climbed up and leaned his body against it and even still there was room between us. I was surprised by how easy it was to rest on the tree, as if it were a bed, as if it were hugging me back, but with the slight slant of the trunk growing north, the angle at which my body rested, and with the help of gravity, I was stabilized in that position. It felt like something of magic.
Things as monumental as these trees fixed my location in space, so that my perception of my own size shifted. I was as small and as relevant as the ants shifting the soil near my feet, I was as big and trivial as the trees themselves. I was a microcosm of a macrocosm within an intangible celestial body.
We got to talking about death as we further surrendered into the trunk of the tree as if we were becoming a part of it. My companion spoke of death with a soft and sweet reverence for it honeying his voice. His words were so beautiful that I felt there must be safety in the ceremony of dying when you go without struggle. If you don’t resist it, would death hold us the way this redwood tree now held me? I knew it must be possible. It was, after all, the death of these old trees that generously fed new generations and made up the entire forest. I was as alive as I was dying. And I thought of my final breath releasing my spirit back into the ethers on the blades of the wind, then my body folding into the earth, and became momentarily unafraid of death.
There was a stillness throughout that forest which kept any pollution of city noise from permeating through, in fact we were well beyond the violent bustle of urban dwelling. Any noise from the nearby highway must have been kept away by the thicket of leaves condensed like a barrier. In preparing for this trip, I had read The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac and was being reminded of a quote that had stuck out to me most during my reading of the novel. In it, he writes, “Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.” The silence pervading the forest grounded me in an instant and I was wholly present and rooted to the earth. We were two yogis wandering the forest, listening to the silence without the noise of intrusive thoughts. It made it so that no words needed to pass between my companion and I for there to be a forced connection, for we were both connected to the earth and therefore one another.
After walking for a long while, Joey found a clearing between two trees where the sun was beaming against a patch of earth covered in clovers. He declared it as a good spot to sit for afternoon tea and laid out a blanket. Like a character from a Kerouac novel, who climbed mountains for the view of the hallowed earth at its precipice and only liked his tea imported directly from Japan, Joey brought with him a tea kettle, a canister with hot water, and two glass mugs in his pack.
He filled up my cup first and offered me the fluorescent green tea. I had never drank this particular leaf before, but already I was enamored by its fragrance as I brought it near my nose, it smelled like toasted rice.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s sencha.” He answered.
Remnants of the leaf sank to the bottom of the porcelain, and as I drank it, I wondered what its shape foretold about my fortune. But I am unable to interpret such divinations and instead I enjoyed the umami flavor tasting of weeds from the sea. Besides, I was content in that moment and I was beginning to realize it was the only moment I had.
I spoke in greater detail of why I had to leave my job so abruptly and ended it with the realization that having left was the exact reason why I had the space to travel as much as I had in the previous and upcoming weeks. “…and now I’m here.” I concluded as I extended my arms out into the Redwood Forest, and every which way I moved my arms, I was completely surrounded by it. We spoke only a little while more about poetry and our literary heroes before we went into a period of reading and writing as if we had just taken a noble vow of silence.
While Joey wrote in his journal, I began briefly reading a book of poetry written by women poets of Japan that had been gifted to me by my writing mentor, John, a week earlier in Utah, then set it down to stare up at the far reaching trees just above. I was laying directly on the forest floor marveling at the experience that I was living which had once been a daydream. It seemed that from my heart, miracles unfold themselves softly and become the field of existence which I get to explore and call my life. It is during astounding moments such as these, where I can acknowledge the power of a divine creator, so loving, and so generously giving me enriching experiences to know greater love through the witnessing of nature and cultivating a deeper reverence for it. Here, I was living in a space of mysticism, beyond materialism, or what we have come to accept as normal. I did not feel complicated by the demands of structures or pressured by the expectation of the grind, I was outside of it for the first time in a long while. This is where I felt that I could reestablish authentic purpose for my existence as everything became so much clearer when I gained freedom from establishment and the need for materialism fell away. Beyond all my desires and aspirations, I am here, truly, to become closer with God. That is all.
“So this is what you do with your life?” I asked Joey and looked over at the forest dwelling yogi.
“Pretty much, yeah.” He answered before we both began laughing. Then he went on to explain, “Well, when I’m not traveling. It’s not lost on me that I live a privileged life to be able to live this way.”
We went silent for a while longer, listening to what I was wondering might be the sound of nirvana. I wanted to wear the moment fully, to let it become a part of my body, for the reverberations to settle into my bones, mark my soul and make it a little lighter. Then I lifted my head from the forest floor where it had been laying for some time and asked, “What day is it?”
𖤓☼𖤓☼𖤓
The sun had long since moved on to rest along some other open spot in the forest, and the chill of the shadow leaning up against us made me so cold to the point where my fingers could no longer write. We spent the next hour or so crawling along the forest floor like house cats following sun sunbeams around the living room to rest in its warmth. Each time we found a new place to rest, whether in a patch of clovers or on the trail itself, we would spread out our bodies in the light for about five minutes at a time before having to get up to follow the sun rays around the forest.
Finally, we gave up on the whole ordeal and collected our belongings before quickly sauntering back up the forest path. Measurable time had slipped away from us, and we had to get back to town for Bryce’s evening yoga class rather soon. If it were up to me, I would have spent all day there until the sun had set well over the nearby coastline, even more, I would spend a lifetime in those woods. And I am beginning to think that a part of my soul is still out there among the trees.
Closing Remarks
I know that I am an extremely dreamy girl, and I have come to really admire this about myself.
I want to end this letter with one of my last journal entries from my time in Humboldt:
“I am supposed to achieve my dreams because they are meant to bring so much light into this world in the same way that the the sun does for the flowers. That is the potency of the magic behind my desires, this is the reason they exist in my heart. The universe is helping me bring these dreams to life, I know that now and I am unafraid, for these visions are divine guidance sent to me as direction along my path.”
—9/9/2023
I hope this has inspired you in some way, and until next time: stay dreamy.
p.s. here is one of Joey’s song that perfectly encapsulates my time in Humboldt.