“first coffee – then yoga’

We got back to the Netherlands just in time…. Just in time for what?

Just in time for what? The lockdown?! But where do you go, when you don’t have a house? If our flight would have been just two days later I am sure we would have stayed on the island with our Ecotara family. But in times of uncertainty, how do you know what is the right decision and where is the best place to be? The only constant, the only thing we know for sure is that everything changes. Everything changes all the time (it always did by the way) but right now we see it much more clearly.

A friend told me she thinks we’re well prepared for this because we always go to these silent meditation retreats where we just sit and do nothing for a long time. Maybe she is right, and compared to a vipassana retreat this is a lot easier: because there are so many things you actually can do. You can read and write, you can talk, listen to music, eat your favorite food, and so on. But what is pretty much the same that you are stuck with your own mind. I don’t know about your mind, but my mind can go in all kinds of directions these days. But to be honest it always does, it just finds different subjects to think about. That is one thing I have definitely learned at the monasteries during long hours of meditation: Don’t take your thoughts so seriously. They come and they go and they are not always true. Especially the worrying thoughts are not helpful at all.

I know it all very well in theory, but then still I find myself worrying and thinking I’m completely entitled to have these worries, because my mind finds a lot of reasons why my situation is really difficult. ‘Look’, my mind says: ‘you don’t have a house anymore and nowhere to go right now, all the yoga retreats are cancelled, no more work, no more income, all travel plans are cancelled, can’t visit family’ and so it goes on and on.
Now when I return to the present moment, something I have said in the my classes many times… ‘bring your attention back to the present moment, here and now…’ I see that things are not so bad at all. If I look closely at this moment everything is actually very well. I’m renting a beautiful place in Zeeland close to the beach, I did my yoga practice this morning, I’m having nice cup of coffee while writing this, Boris is here with me, all our family is healthy, we are healthy, the sun is shining and there is food in the kitchen. Not so bad at all. Actually pretty good.

So my biggest practice is to stay in the present moment, here and now. Even though everything changes all the time, inside myself it can be more calm and peaceful. And from this beautiful and calm place of present moment awareness I would love to reach out to you and do some yoga together. I will teach more classes for you on YouTube soon. To make sure you don’t miss any of the new classes you can already subscribe to our channel, switch on notifications and you will receive a message as soon as a new yoga class comes online.

I’m very much looking forward to do yoga with you again and I hope to hear from you. Let me know if you did one of the classes online. Here is the direct link to our free online yoga classes!

Sending you lots of love and a big hug!
Stay healthy and in the present moment!
Sophie & Boris

P.S. We have no idea what to do next. I had plans to visit my family and then go to Sweden and to Spain to work and Boris was planning to spend some more time learning how to surf. All those plans and our yoga weekends are of course cancelled. Now we have a place in Zeeland to stay until end of April.* And for now we don’t look any further. We wait and see how things develop and then we make new plans accordingly.

* Well, we thought that we could stay in Zeeland, but just this weekend the news came that they are closing all tourist accommodations. So we packed our suitcases again and hit the road to a new temporary home. What a great practice to accept uncertainty and change, let go of expectations and go with the flow.

The Netherlands, March 2020