Welcome to Bali
The driver who picked me up from the airport asked what had happened to me because I said I do yoga.
Welcome to Bali.
Within 6 hours I had a conversation that brought up the famed and derided “Eat, Pray, Love.”
As a solo female traveler, I feel judged.
“You see them everywhere these days in Ubud: women of a certain age strolling the streets with that look. A mixture of self-satisfaction, entitlement and too much yoga, with maybe just a hit of desperation,” stated the Lonely Planet Bali guidebook under the headline “That Damn Book.”
I guess I’ll find out when I go to Ubud if that’s really the sight on the streets. I’m hoping I don’t need to hold up a mirror.
I told him the truth, I had had a stressful job and yoga helped.
While I thought the driver’s question was a little presumptuous, I also know it’s not totally off base.
Over and over in my journey, I’ve met people who recently lost a parent.
Some have opened up about it, others I can discern that’s what happened.
More than breakups or job losses, I’ve met people working through their own grief.
One woman at a yoga center in Thailand wanted to learn skills so she could help her mother and sister cope.
Several of the yoga centers have visitors fill out a form asking about mental health issues. Few have anyone trained in therapy on staff but use the principals of yoga as a guide. Focus on the breath and live in the moment. But that leaves a lot of students trying to shut their eyes and meditate only to see images that haunt them.
Yoga takes them deeper inside, but no one is there with a road map.
But like anything, they have to work through it themselves.
I’m not sure who I will meet on my month in Bali. Are women really coming here looking for love? Or are they just on vacation? Or working through something darker?
