Vibing out in a pool of imagined love - Bali, Part 3
An elderly man flouncing around in a miniskirt; an IT manager belting out kirtan songs; a Danish doctor shoving men to the ground to mount them as part of a fertility dance in the middle of a folk jazz concert. These are the images that distill the spirit of the BaliSpirit Festival.
The five-day-long spiritual razzmatazz for the higher-consciousness community has begun. Gypster-tribal-shaman aesthetic prevails, Ubud’s communal note soars, and you feel you can hug anyone. I meander in and out of yoga, breathing, and meditation classes, or loiter among the food stalls, washing down gluten-free muffins with yogic tea. My method of debauchery.
Most teachers have this self-consciously elliptical treatment of the topic of yoga, saying things like ‘Open your eyes and pull in new dimensions’, ‘Open your heart chakra’, ‘Access the place of tranquillity and innocence within you.’ I don’t know what to do with these instructions., so I’d just love to shout: ‘Could you, please, tell me how?’
And then I find something genuinely higher-consciousness among all the fakery. A kind of hydro-therapy session, called Watsu, performed in a warm, salted pool. The therapist, Michael, holds me in his arms and I mellow into complete relaxation and helplessness, trusting him to float and dunk my body in the balmy water as he wishes. Disturbing thoughts, however, still arise like a great white shark in knee-deep water. But then, slowly, all resistance evaporates, and my mind can’t resist the here and now. He’s twisting and twirling me underwater several times, and I feel like I’m frolicking about in my amniotic fluid. Then I float around by myself, every cell in my body vibrating, and I become a happy infant. ‘What an amazing life you have,’ I blurt out to him. ‘This is the life I’ve chosen to have. Not the one that was given to me,’ he answers with his eyes blazing.
Watsu is better than sex, and as I’m vibing out in a pool of love, I’m at peace with the world and the fakeness of the ‘higher-consciousness’ community.
