Saraswati Ahmsa Vana

This was my last days on Saraswati Ahmsa Vana. The last 3 weeks have been a so valuable experience to me. I spend this time with so amazingly warm-hearty people, some of them I had to say goodbye to already. Everything that people do here is done with dedication and love. Living in the city as I do, being caught up in hectic and stress most of my days and meeting people that are mostly unhappy and desperate for sense in their lives, being here the last weeks made me reevaluate my values.

I spent my days usually with physically hard work: composting, feeding and weeding plants, planting trees, clearing out jungle and paths… but we also did a lot of  fun stuff such as drying bananas, grinding chocolate beans, making paper and getting a tour through the farm and chewing all the leaves we found. A couple of days I went to Tena to help out in the school, playing with toddlers and teaching English. I was usually so tired that I fell asleep in the hammock or on the bamboo mats after lunch, before we had another activity going on in the afternoon. The most peaceful moments were the early mornings. Daylight usually woke me up before 6 am, which was also the time when people started chanting and playing instruments on the roof terrace. I loved to open my door (the bookshelve) and stay a little while longer on my floor mat listening to the chanting and drum playing. It was always so beautiful that I felt paralyzed. I didn`t dare to move but just wanted to soak up all the beauty of it to hopefully fill my heart with it so it lasts a long time once I cannot listen to it anymore. When Bhaga sang, I stopped doing whatever I did because his beautiful voice and the vibration it caused went directly inside of me. So did Kedarnath`s drumming, and the combination of the two of them in this gorgeous surrounding of the farm made me cry not only once.By 6.30 people were awake and Pablo pulled us into consciousness with his very special yoga while the sun came up. Three extremely special people that made all the difference to that beautiful place because they were the place.This couple of hours in the morning were my favorite of the day.

Since my departure was coming closer and closer, people have made a huge effort pleasing me in any possible way. We spent Saturday night trying out our new chocolate making machine (basically a juicer) and poured our first pralines! We started the procedure with roasting chocolate beans, peeling them (6 people two hours!), and grinding them. The ground chocolate then went through the juicer, but it took a while and a mess, lots of additional coco butter and panela to get it into the liquid stage. Altogether it turned out to be the longest evening that we have been awake in the 3 weeks I spent there, but it didn’t hold people back from getting up before 6 am to make pancakes for me for breakfast the next morning. The last yoga session was great (as every single one of them!), because the highlight of that morning was my first full head stand! My flexibility and strength improved a lot within the last weeks, and I will try to keep up the daily praxis. I also joined another Sunday adventure before I left. We went to a waterfall hike, which was absolutely amazing. We spend some hours crawling and climbing up rivers and waterfalls, taking some showers underneath them while climbing. It was so beautiful. The goodbye was sad. I reflected and learned so much during the last three weeks, met so many special people and enjoyed so much peace and happiness, it`s hard to let go…