The day before yesterday I was invited to partake in a beautiful Cacao water ceremony at the Maori carvings on Lake Taupo by my friend Jules Bright.  It was a stunning ride out on the Fearless with several lovely musicians who had been invited to join in a healing ceremony for the earth and each other.

The wind was strong as we were heading out and the waves were up a bit with lake water spraying over the boat but as soon as we turn the corner on to the carving the sun shone and the wind dropped and it was absolute heaven.

The ceremony involved releasing that which no longer served and was holding us back and offering healing to the earth as well.  It was beautiful.  I had never been to a ceremony quite like it before.  The musicians played and everyone sang along.  I knew none of the songs but I hummed along.

Three little ducklings swam up to the boat to see what was going on…motherless and curious.  Gorgeous.

Once the ceremony had ended most of us jumped in to go for a swim. I felt like an adventure so I decided the most fun thing would be to climb up the rope ladder up the mast and jump into the lake.

Sometimes I forget I am not 20 years old and light and lithe as I was back then.

So my 40ish year old body decided to climb up the rope.  I got about a quarter of the way up and turned around and tried to figure out how I could launch my body safely into the water without getting hung up on any other ropes.  I realized I needed to go down a rung or two. I turned around and right as I did the rope gave way and I fell down and my belly caught me on the next rung.  Seriously I fell straight down but my big beautiful belly literally grabbed the rope for me so that I wouldn’t fall and break anything important.  Had I been skinny I would have bounced down the side of the boat…however had I been skinny the rope might not have broken either.  I had to laugh and then flung myself less than gracefully into the delicious water.

I was bruised and battered for the experience but thankful that I didn’t slip and bang my head on anything or break anything in the process.  The water was amazing and the swim was fantastic.  There is nothing I love more than an summer swim.  After seeing one of the 20 something girls jump in topless I thought…fark it me too I love swimming without being held in so I pulled the girls out and had a lovely swim.  I was diving down and seeing if I could come up on the other side of the boat (I couldn’t  get that deep) so I swam to the other side with boobs a bobbing to realize that a tour boat had just pulled up on the other side of the sail boat we were on and people were there taking pictures of us like we were some sort of a show piece.  The fact that there was a beautiful Maori man standing naked on the boat might have had something to do with it as well.  I kind of flung myself on to the side where they weren’t and giggled like a school girl.

After their boat left I swam back around and climbed up and put a top on feeling exhilarated and slightly silly.

We had a beautiful wholefood organic vegan meal on the boat and then sailed back to shore.  Stunning day.

Then we went to hear Xaviar Rudd play at Wanderlust a yoga / music festival.  His music was beautiful and so were all of the people.   Felt like a Boho Barbie convention with Top Knot Ken smiling and jamming out.  Fit healthy happy 20 somethings, and some fit older girl gangs of yoginis partying together.

After the concert we met up with my sister, I got to hang out with my 4 year old niece and sister and brother in law who had come down from Rotorua to meet us.  Brilliant day!  Harper and I jumped on the Trampoline and played catch at the holiday park we were staying at.  For the record I forgot how much energy it takes to jump on a trampoline.  Wow! That is a work out!  My sister says it looks like I have dropped a bunch of weight.  Not sure about that but I feel better than I have in a long while.   We ran a fair the day before this adventure that normally would have knocked me on my butt and I was recovering from a cold I caught flying back from the states.  We were down several staff and I normally am a write off afterwards even when I am healthy but I was pretty perky all and all.  That is a huge change for me this matters more than any weight loss…it is energy gained instead.

We got up super early for several days.  Once for the fair, the second time to drive to the boat.  But the last two days we have just gotten up when we got up.  I feel that when I do that I lose momentum.  There is definitely something to be said for this early morning routine.  Planning on starting that again tomorrow.

 

Oh and while driving home my friend Kerene sent me an article about Chakras that I found incredibly interesting and it hit on somethings that I had been feeling all along through this research.  #1 I don’t speak Sanskrit so how would I be able to really know what a chakra was from a research stand point except to get translated versions.  I know from reading the Tao te Ching’s translations that this is fraught with misunderstandings so the only thing I can really do is just go inside and use this as a simple template.  Do I believe the current understanding of Chakras to be the divine truth?  Not necessarily,  I think the only thing I am certain of is there is a heart chakra and a gut chakra and a spirit chakra because I can “feel these”  I have had a broken heart. I have felt sick to my gut going to a job I didn’t want to go to feeling powerless to change things (I eventually did).   So I am still going to use the Western understanding of Chakras as a template for the exploration just taking the more dogmatic assertions  with a grain of salt.  The article if you are curious can be found here: http://www.tantrikstudies.org/blog/2016/2/5/the-real-story-on-the-chakras

Photo credit – Arterium