Thittato

I could now feel into that there is a big learning experience here about learning to lean into "pure beingness" and being willing to let go of all these identities that I'm filling the present moment up with. Letting go of clinging. Accepting my faith in life. Surrendering into my natural potential. Feeling into the fear that this brings up. Trying to let go of all the escape scenarios. And just being with the present moment as it is. Not trying to figure it out all the time. That constant buzz in my head - that thing also needs some rest sometimes. So I feel I've been taken into some deep rest.

16th session of kayaking Pretty awesome. We were 13 people paddling together today in a bit of wind and waves. Pretty interesting navigating through conditions like that together with such a big group. Men and women of all ages. I felt very lucky. Then I went skating after that, and that was not so fun today. I think I'm not so fascinated with skating as my focus in sports right now have shifted much more over to kayaking and mountain climbing. The kayaking and climbing community also seems much more interesting to me as well. So that is a bit sad - but maybe skating has already served its purpose - which was to build momentum towards these other sports? Too early to conclude, but I was surprised by how little focus and flow I felt today. So I came home feeling a bit heavy and depressed. And I was longing for the cannabis to lift me out of this, because I was kind of heavy this whole day, except for that 1,5 hour of kayaking where I felt totally alive. But then I started smoking the cannabis, and it just amplified this heaviness, so I had to just surrender into heaviness. So probably I meditated for 1 hour on this, and then I did 30 min of ganja yoga. The ganja yoga was awesome, but I still feel a little bit depressed. So I think because I had such a big opening yesterday, then that is why I'm feeling a bit closed today. I was blaming the cannabis today, thinking I was feeling heavy after an evening of smoking. But I think it was the spiritual energetic opening that I had which when it closed again made me feel a bit constricted today. A very strong opening always seems to be followed by its polar opposite when it is closing again. Like breathing. So today I just have to surrender into the opposite of what I had yesterday, but I feel a lot of peace and acceptence in just not being so high today, but more stoned and heavy. So surrendering into stoned and heaviness, and trying to just allow myself to sink into the deep nourishing rest which is found there. So this was a very interesting side of ganja yoga to experience as well. All in all today, I'm more impressed by the yoga in itself today, than by the added effects of the cannabis. So to sum it up - I'm really glad I did yoga today.

A good and long cold-shower this morning. I slept extra long today. So nice to just enjoy the deep relaxation yesterdays ganja yoga gave me. Oh my gosh, that was profound. Yesterdays session was better than anything I've been close to before in ganja yoga. First of all I was doing 30 min of meditation after I had smoked cannabis before I started the yoga, so I was processing the initial hit of the high while sitting still. To me the initial hit usually brings with it a therapeutic effects so that I have to go through some difficult feelings first that has to be expressed before I'm reaching the peace on the other side of working through difficult feelings. It was easier for me to do this in meditation than while my body was moving in yoga, so that when I moved over to the yoga, I was super into it, and not distracted by having to work through difficult feelings. I'm also getting more used to smoking cannabis again, so that I know what I'm going to, and I'm getting more used to the ganja yoga program I'm doing since I have been doing it 5 or 6 times now. I also have very much faith and enthusiasm in this method, so that also adds to the total experience. I also feel that smoking cannabis outside of the context of ganja yoga (or ritualized spiritual use) is very uninteresting, because that is using something that has a very high potential for something that is maybe just 5% of the potential it can reach. Maybe I'm very biased because I was never comfortable using cannabis myself as a recreational user, and maybe these people are getting much more out of it than I used to do, but I suspect most of them use it more as an entertaining distraction rather than as its full potential as a healing medicine. I mean, the initial buzz that getting high on cannabis brings. For me it is always tempting to bypass the difficults feelings that the high initially brings up and rather go into entertainment and stimulation. But then the high will continue to be subconsciusly flavored by this anxiety I tried to escape - and I can continue to stimulate myself above it - which seems to work to some extent - but then I will never know the much deeper peace that this substance can bring. I suspect all these good effects will just continue to increase as I get more familiar with this method. There is always that initial clumsiness when you start out doing something new, but as the habit starts to form one can use ones energy and focus much more efficiently.

15th session of kayaking Yesterday: 30 min of meditation and then lots of experimentation with kettlebells throughout the day. Today: 30 min meditation 2,5 hours kayaking and in the evening 30 min meditation after I smoked cannabis where is was sitting and just breathing deeply into the effects of cannabis in silence and stillness. This was my preparation for doing 30 min of ganja yoga. Wow. The relaxation effect that I'm sitting in now is so deep and friendly and safe. This is a really profound way of using cannabis. Holy smokes how fascinating doing yoga while high is. Yoga and cannabis is the perfect match. The medicinal qualities of cannabis comes really into the foreground while amplified by the effects of yoga. This makes me even more in love with yoga. Maybe this is what I need to get my ADHD-focus fully into yoga for once. I sometimes thinks that being a yoga-instructor might perhaps be my purpose. I already have a yoga teacher education. And sometimes I teach one-on-one in my job when I'm taking care of a psychiatric patient who likes yoga. That is one the most meaningful things I can possibly do - help psychiatric patients calm down through yoga. Certainly there is a goldmine here. The kayaking today was also fantastic. I'm merging the sensation of flow I'm sitting in right now with all my memories about how it feels to sit in a kayak, and I try to let the flow go into all those memories and melt them into flowing memories where my body is the perfect transition-point between the flow of the universe getting into the kayak through myself as a channel. Some force just wants to get expressed through the use of a kayak. And it is about just relaxing into that impulse letting it do its thing. There is something so intensely Zen about the whole art of kayaking. So I feel very grateful that I can experience it in the context of being a yoga-practitioner.

30 min meditation this morning. Very good sit. Did a little bit of kettlebell exercises after that. Then I went to work. Gosh. I was so fed up today. I've been working with such a difficult patient lately. I'm very exhausted. Fucking psychopath. But now I'll have 5 full days off. Been working too much over-time these last weeks. I'm totally not going to say yes to more over-time in a long time. On monday I worked a day-shift, went home and rested, and then I went back to work night-shift - on top of all the other over-time shifts I've been doing lately. It is way too much doing stuff like that. It is squeezing all the juice out of me - which I would love to spend on other things than crazy violent psychotic psychopaths. We get some patients with some really strong anti-social behavior. But it seems like I can maintain my stability even with such a heavy work-load, so that is very good. These extremly demanding patients - it is always fun to look back at when it is been processed well - and my self-esteem as a social worker is increasing a lot by being challenged this way. It also inspires me to exercise much more, because these people always project a power-struggle on to you based on whether they percieve you as someone they can beat up or not.

20 min vinyasa flow yoga today, and then 10 kettlebell snatches on each hand with a 20 kg kettlebell. Super-nice.

14th session of kayaking Started the day with 30 min of meditation, then I went to work, and after work me and a buddy paddled a river that took us 3 hours to complete. It was super-ultra-awesome. This is my first time paddling a river. I loved the feeling of being carried downstream by the current.

10 sun salutations today, and then 10 kettlebell snatches on each hand with a 20 kg kettlebell, and then a cold shower. Pretty sweet and intense little program.

A cold shower, and 30 min ganja yoga, without the cannabis, today. It was interesting to try out the ganja yoga while being sober for once. I have probably done that program 4-5 times now while being high, and everytime I get more and more used to it. Cannabis used to trigger a lot of anxiety for me, so I never really felt comfortable with it, but now, through ganja yoga, I have found the perfect way to breathe and relax into this anxiety, and it seems like a lot of it is already gone. So now I have decided to really come to terms with this anxiety, and going through this program several times seems to be a good way to do it, because that gives me a handle on the whole thing. It seems like the problem is almost gone, but I'd like to really grind it out. It seems like the type of anxiety that cannabis has been triggering for me is some generalized anxiety that I'm carrying around all the time, and cannabis is just intensifying it. Already it seems like I'm even less anxious because of this, so I'm really excited to see that cannabis is turning into a medicine for me, instead of an enemy as I used to think about it. Probably smoking weed in my teens and early twenties and experiencing this anxiety without having the tools for dealing with it was probably not good. I'm sure it amplified the problem. So now I can go back and fix a troublesome relationship with a plant medicine that has had a huge influence on my life in terms of the culture and spirituality around it. And now all the positive things it brought into my life I can appriciate even more without that strong ambivalence I used to have about it. Looking forward to my next ganja yoga session with cannabis. Maybe next week.

So no practice yesterday. I was working a lot. First I did a 7,5 hour day-shift, went home and rested, and then went back and did a 10 hour night-shift. We have a very demanding patient these days, but I managed to handle him pretty well. Then I woke up today and felt pretty inspired, went climbing with some friends, and then we went out and had a beer, and now I'm home again and I just finished 20 min vinyasa flow yoga and a cold shower, and it doesn't feel like my sleep is going to get disrupted by the night-shift I did. The climbing today was really awesome. Well, actually everything about this day has been pretty awesome. I like the transition into fall. And it seems like society is opening up again and people are happy and social around here, so there is a nice and happy fall vibe in town. The 1 hour vinyasa flow yoga I did on sunday is the peak of what I have done so far in this yoga-period. It takes quite a lot to do 1 hour of such intense yoga on my own here at home. Much easier to do longer sessions of yoga when going to a class and getting group-support. So naturally my practice builds up to a peak, and then intensity will fade a little bit before another wave builds up again. The good thing about yoga is the more I do it the less I think about it and feel sort of free from it during the rest of my life. It is like a need that just has to get saturated as much as possible so that one can concentrate on the rest of ones life. Pretty awesome to have this practice going. I feel that this time I will take it really far.

1 hour vinyasa flow yoga today, and then a cold shower. So nice. It is good when my overactive mind has nothing else to say.

50 min classical yoga today, then a little bit of weight-lifting, and then a cold shower. Seems like doing weight-lifting immidiately after yoga works very well. Before I was afraid of loosing the yogic state I had worked so hard to achieve, but I can rather just bring it with me into the weight-lifting. So as I said, yoga is going to continue to be my main-focus so that I don't get side-tracked, but if I feel inspired after the yoga then I can add a little bit of weight-lifting.

And then I smoked some more cannabis, listened to a nice podcast about ganja yoga, chilled out with some really nice mantra-concerts on youtube, smoked some more, and then did 25 min of yin yoga. And that was absolutely amazing. Holy smokes. That went really really deep. Such an intense bodily flow in the yoga. Just deeply feeling into it in celebration and gratitude for life. Yoga is making me into an athlete. I mean if you do exercise every day then you are pretty much an athlete. Becoming an athlete is like a side-effect of going deeper into meditation through yoga for me. And that is pretty cool, because I totally need more embodiment. I had some deep openings in my meditation a few years ago, and to continue to support these openings, it seems like I just need to focus on embodiment a lot. Just really inhabiting this animal body that we have. This is the perfect next chapter in my life: going deeper with yoga. It will help integrate everything else.

30 min ganja yoga today. Wow. So good. I'm really amazed at the level of joy that yoga brings to my life these days.

1 hour weight-lifting this morning, then 20 min vinyasa flow yoga, and then a cold shower. It was pretty awesome to do some weight-lifting again. I've gotten remarkable stronger from kayaking, climbing and yoga. But I don't think my focus will go back to weight-lifting. I will continue to have my main-focus on yoga.

20 min vinyasa flow yoga, and a cold shower, this morning. So nice to get deeper into upward-facing dog. Feels like my back is really opening up when I go deep into it. I love backbends. Yoga and cold showers feels like a really good practice for now.

A good and long cold shower this morning. I noticed I was raising my shoulders as I prepared for the cold water, and then I breathed deeply and lowered them and decided to have the attitude of really letting all the cold fully in. Resistance melted away, and the cold water was really nice.

20 min vinyasa flow yoga, and a cold shower, today. Going much deeper into both Downward Facing Dog and Upward Facing Dog these days. So awesome how there is suddenly a new interest and inspiration in poses that seems so basic.

25 min yin yoga and cold shower today as well. I think my goal should just be to have a daily yoga practice. And a daily cold shower. But I’ll just continue like this to build up this habit more and more. The yoga becomes so much better when it is done almost on a daily basis.

25 min yin yoga and cold shower today as well. Yoga is just getting better and better it seems like. Even Downward Facing Dog is getting much deeper.

25 min yin yoga today, and then cold shower. So nice. Feels like I understood the trick with cold showers again. It is about opening up to fully and embracing the resistance instead of clenching ones teeth and just pushing through. I think it makes the whole difference. Yoga and cold showers seems like a really good combination for now ?

And also: 2 hours of climbing yesterday, and two hours of skating today. The things I'm giving the most attention to these days (in no particular order): - My job - Kayaking - Yoga - Skydiving - Skating - Cold showers - Climbing - Socializing - Chess - Being a psychonaut exploring my consciousness through various entheogens (being focused exclusively on cannabis these days) The things I wish I was giving more attention to (in no particular order): - Women - Visual Art - Guitar - Cooking - Family So when this pandemic we are in hit, it seems like I made a re-orientation towards action sports, that seemed to cover the needs I previously had for arts and culture. Maybe because concerts and exhibitons were taken away from us I didn't experience much exchange of energies in these fields anymore, so my focus instead shifted towards action sports, where I could get that sense of creative flow and companionship. I find it hard to let go of my former identity with being someone with artistic ambitions, but at the same time the orientation that I have now in many ways seems more healthy. Maybe I'm less of a "tortured artist" these days, and just more someone who is stoked on life and keen on adventure. It also seems like I have totally given up on chasing women. Which in many ways is healthy because there is less of an empty whole inside of myself that I project some kind of need to be loved, and to love a woman, in order to fill up this whole, but at the same time I'm afraid of becoming too complacent about the whole thing. As my age is increasing it seems like the dating pool I have access to is decreasing, and I'm worrying if this is a tendency that will just continue to increase as time goes by. But at the same time it seems like I'm moving much closer to this idea that one should be happy in oneself before one has a chance of meeting someone in a healthy way. I certainly have a lot of experience with unhealthy relationships and none of that seems very attractive to me anymore. I'm also wondering if I'm loosing some friendships because I don't have much of that "trauma bonding" going on anymore. And I can certainly feel very lonely at times without those people I used to "trauma bond" with. But it also seems like I'm finding new ways to experience deep connection with people. And perhaps, most importantly, there is an expanded capacity for experiencing this loneliness. I can feel into it without freaking out. So on my brighter days I'm thinking that everybody who has gained independence and genuine self-love has had to find ways to be alone without being lonely. Perhaps the best tendency I see in all of this is that I'm becoming less bitter, and more understanding. For instance I used to have a lot of bitterness towards many of my friends, but now it is easier to understand that many of them have lives filled up with stress. I also used to have a lot of bitterness towards women. Why this female agenda towards men? Why shouldn't these accusations go both ways? Both genders certainly have an enormous capacity for hurting each other, so why do we only hear about the way that men hurt women? But maybe we don't. Maybe also women feel a lot of blame and shame from everyone around them. And maybe being a woman is very hard. Maybe it is easier being a man. Or maybe it is not. Who the fuck knows? Anyways. So I try to feel more compassion for the female experience, instead of bitterness, and I can certainly say that bitterness is decreasing and compassion is growing. I think as I'm growing out of my former sensitive "tortured artist" kind of identity, I'm certainly experiencing some new kind of robustness that I haven't had access to before. And perhaps there is something particularly masculine about this robustness that I should be very grateful that I have access to. The most challenging emotion that I'm experience these days is certainly loneliness. But I have my yoga and I have my ability to feel into it - so I'm probably in a pretty good position. My challenges has been way worse. I think it is time to not allow myself anymore to wallow in the feeling of being a victim. I have so many tools available for dealing with the things coming up. Feeling lonely? It is as simple as doing a session of yin yoga and really feeling into it. I shouldn't "run around" anymore trying to desperately stimulate my social network in order to never having to experience these feelings. What about when I'm getting old and my family dies and I'm having nobody around anymore and what if I don't marry and have kids? Well...... What if? Just shut the fuck up and feel into it.

Cold shower, and then 25 min yin yoga, today. It was amazing how much it helped to bring more mindfulness back to cold showering. It helps a lot just taking a few deep breaths while the water is still hot to prepare for turning it cold.

13th session of kayaking Started the day with 20 min vinyasa flow yoga, and then I did a cold shower. This time I was much more present with cold showering again and that makes it so much better - I mean the whole point of it, as I see it, is to breathe into that point where resistance melts away and you reach a relaxation response and the whole thing just becomes very relaxing and enjoyable. Later in the day I went kayaking again, for approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes. I was spending much of that time just exploring a big bridge I paddled to. Interesting how much variation there is in my paddling technique. There are many different levels to how much I get into the groove. All the way up to the bridge there was pretty much just resistance and not much flow going at all. But on my way home, when it started to get dark and I felt a bit in a rush to get home, I was getting into a much better groove. I think much of it is just about surrendering into it and trusting the process. The level of flow I get varies a lot. When the flow is good my technique feels perfect, when the flow is not so good my technique feels crappy. It is the same with everything. Meeting it with fresh eyes again and again. It never measures up quite exactly with the previous experience one had with it. One has to warm up again and tune into the flow of the day. Not the flow of yesterday. The quicker one is willing to let go of ones preconceived notions of how it was supposed to be, the quicker one is able to tune into how it is. This is something to become more aware of in my yoga-practice as well. And in everything.

12th session of kayaking. I'm calling this my 12th session, and instead of dividing the 11th session into 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th, session, I'll rather merge those sessions into the 11th session, since they were all part of one camping-trip and that's more how I count these sessions. So I visited a buddy in another city, and he had two kayaks there. We smoked cannabis together the whole friday evening and talked a lot about various philosophical and spiritual topics. When we woke up on saturday we started preparing for the kayaking trip, and then we paddled to a beautiful island. After having explored the island for a bit we found out this was a pretty awesome place to smoke a joint, so we did, and then we sat in the sun for a while and then we went and did some yoga on top of a small mountain with a great view over the ocean and the horizont. And then after a while we started paddling back home again. Oh my god, that was so beautiful. Because of the cannabis I was getting so deep into the soul of kayaking. It almost felt like I was accessing the collective consciousness of kayaking and like we were channeling some mystical eskimo experience together. Totally awesome and beautiful. It was so much fun playing around with my paddling technique in this state. Like I was relaxing so much more into it. I could just let my body be totally relaxed, and then sort of let the spirit of paddling work itself through me. Like a mood running through you and then you let that mood be expressed throught the paddling. Seems much better, when doing kayaking high ("highaking") to start out sober and then paddle for a while until you reach a beautiful destination, and then to reward yourself with a joint there. Being high can easily bring up insecurities, so it is much better to already be warm and in the groove when doing it. Perhaps that is something to try before Ganja Yoga as well - to first do a sober session of yoga. That would be like clearing out the first layer, and really preparing the ground for going deep with Ganja Yoga. Anyways, so today, when I came home from having spent two nights at the place of my buddy, I did 25 min yin yoga. It felt like the perfect way to round off such a great weekend.