Here, now

I find myself thinking momentarily of my mother, of how I should call her and tell her my news. The realisation is fleeting, as always, before I remember that she is no longer here.

I am left with a feeling of warmth within as I see my progress from her point of view. Wherever she is, if she ever could know, she would be looking down at her daughter, grown up, finally fulfilled. Yoga teacher. Chef. Gardener. Healer. Sharer of truths.

I take a group through a meditative yoga class, every move flowing with the breath, blurring the lines between the mental and the physical as we inhale, extend and exhale, surrender to gravity.

But how could I ever explain to anyone other than a yoga teacher how it feels to close a class?

I could say it is like coming down from a hallucinogenic trip. My students, dragging themselves up from their final resting posture, pulling themselves from within, hair tousled, eyes closed, swaying to their own rhythmic breathing. Me, colours swirling, noise muffled, re-surfacing from my zone to realise the sun is shining and the birds have been singing all along.

My daily reality is becoming more and more dreamy, the edges of my mind becoming blurred.

At long last, I am me. I feel myself reaching into all those new roles, played with the solid step of inner guidance.

Echoes of those previous journeys ripple out through time and space and wash back over me in my new expression of myself. An old healer looking at my palm, comparing it to her own. An old man waiting for me, calling me a shaman he must teach. A voice telling me to study energy, another telling me to go to the lake. The labels cease to fit as the energy begins to flow in its own gush.

Every morning in front of the volcanoes I heal. Myself, the lake, anyone else. The dog or cat on my lap. Bathed in the ethereal light of the lake, I beam this energy out in hot, white lines. With my mind I focus positivity to flow through the lives of those it hits, and I feel my core searing with heat as I do so.

Who knows what I am doing, if anything. But this feeling is strongly, purely, positive.

I am not weird, I am not special. I just channel life in my own way. The purpose finds the owner, provided the owner allows space for that purpose to rise.

As the clear note of the singing bowl hums to close out meditation I dive back into my body, pulling on my skin like a glove, my soul peering out through the eyes as I realise that here, for now, I am three dimensional. Here, for now, I am happy.

Buds bursting

I look over at Felix and his frizzy blonde locks, bobbing as he laughs from his cross-legged seat on the ground. Under his overalls squirms a kitten, running lumps through the material as it tries to fight its way out.

The kitten has been brought here from the neighbouring village, on a motorboat, in someone's pocket, to kill the rats.

The rats have been brought here by the recent addition of human food to this land.

The humans have been attracted by the unusual flatness of the terrain; hard to find on the shores of Lago Atitlan but a necessity for an eco-village.


From the almost-whole shack - the only building on the land as of yet and the base of operations for Green New World (GNW) - the future seems tiny with long-distance perspective. But it is growing, fast.


GNW, a charity focused on providing much-needed help to the ailing lake, have just purchased the land and are finding their feet. Through them I have already helped with a basic-level sewage project for San Marcos, stopping at least some of the raw effluent from running into the lake. Now, I find myself on the side of a mountain, observing the fetal stages of a proposed eco-village. Like many in the area, it hopes to set an example to the locals by providing easy, green solutions to traditional problems such as farming and washing.

Right now, they lack even basic facilities.

Without these, much-needed volunteers are repelled. Without volunteers, the project struggles.

I don't have long but I want to help. I lay stones for the kitchen floor and cover myself in clay in a long day of digging and hauling in the toilet pit. Once in use, the toilet will be kept dry with sawdust to allow decomposition. Once full, the pit will be closed off. Unbelievably, after two years, a full pit of sewage will turn to rich compost that can even be used to grow vegetables. Such a simple idea, and yet the lake is about to go toxic from hundreds of years of human waste settling on the bottom.

We drink creek water through a clay filter and I try to understand where it all went so wrong.

I realise how much I love the simplicity. There is no electricity and our only music is the whisper of the wind through the avocado trees. We eat from the forest floor and piss amongst the coffee leaves. I haven't seen a mirror in days.

In the silence of the forest I find my retreat.

Although I'd originally planned on committing a month to a meditation centre, I realised quickly that organised spirituality is exactly the kind of practice that I reject, no matter how good the intention. Instead, I practise yoga underneath a morning mist that breathes lightly over me, fishermen my only observers, paddling dugout canoes with tender strokes.

Sitting here, the view of the lake sparkling between the trees, I understand that it is nature, pure and simple, that gives me my truth.

The trees whisper an ancient language. The bees fly lines of interconnection. The rain washes webs of oneness, united and yet barely noticed by those who are a part of it all.


The earth speaks to me in musty tones, humidly rising warm through my being.

I resonate.

Shifting Sands

One afternoon we sit in a giant tree.

We climb up to the palm of its branched hand to drink our way through four caguamons (1.2L beers bottles) and watch ants march up flaking bark.

Our tree becomes the perfect place to see through the shimmeringly hot afternoon. We bite into sun-warmed mangoes, burstingly fresh from the ground and watch an iguana flick along below us . When it becomes cool enough to move we jump down, bidding the day farewell with a swim in the crushing surf.

The time to leave has come.



We walk down the beach to stop in on James, swinging under candlelight in his blue terrace hammock, watching the stars through a palm-fringed window of sky above. We cook dinner there and eat in comfortable silence, listening to the crickets and the waves.



A month's study with Mazunte's Gandalf has taught me basic herbology, massage and a kind of energy healing that leaves my hands burning. I am glowing from my bi-weekly treatments and Michael is glowing from his experience as my guinea pig. We've spent a good few days covered in aloe vera, waving the spiky branches around like tentacles and moving stickily yellow and monster-like over the beach.



Yesterday I worked with a girl called Cristina. She has tumbling, shiny hair and a baby called Miguelito with a face to melt even the most intolerant of hearts. Together they are the image of Mary and Jesus- there is a light between them that will never come out in a photograph.



Cristina is the same age as me, but if I can achieve just half of the peace that radiates from her I will be content. She has travelled Mexico for the last ten years, learning indigenous methods of healing. While I am working with Cristina, Miguel thumps on a tambor and gives himself hysterics that bubble from his toothless smile and turn his eyes to happy slits.



I would like to learn more from Cristina. I feel a slight sense of loss as we say goodbye and forget to exchange email addresses. But the winds are moving us inland. Our month by the sea has joined us back together, after our stressful four months apart. We are ready to start the real travelling.

The road behind Mazunte leads to the mountains, seen from the beach as grey silhouettes against the sun. They call to us with cool breezes. While the sunrise over the beach is ethereal and makes me glad to be alive, it burns a hole in the day, forcing us to listless shade between 11 and 4. Activity is squeezed like toothpaste into small dollops at either end of the day. Even at night, a walk slickens sweaty sheen over darkened faces.

We will miss this place.

In the morning we leave on the first collectivo out, balanced on the back of the public pickup truck with tongues hanging out like dogs.

To the mountains.