Walking Meditation and Yoga on the Streets of Buenos Aires

by Sydney on September 2, 2010

Drag show at a store on calle Florida, Buenos Aires

After 10 days of moving around, we have finally landed at an apartment in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. It was good to be in one place and unpack, as the stress of packing and repacking children was getting to me.

We went to the supermercado again, only half a block away on foot. We brought our reusable bags and — now that we could cook — loaded up on healthier food, like lentils, fresh vegetables and herb tea. We are, I must confess, addicted to dulce de leche.  I finally found peanut butter at a nearby shop. There are so many different words in Argentine Spanish that I’m not used to.  It’s salsa de mani, not crema de cachauates, as in Mexico or elsewhere. It’s manteca, not mantequilla for butter.

Our apartment is cozy, although a bit in disrepair, perhaps why it was such a good price for this area. But after the yoga farm experience, it’s perfect! The heat wasn’t working, however, and it was quite cold with the incessant heavy rain. Here I left Colorado to escape winter only to come to cold rain and winter here! But I don’t mind the rain – something scarce in Colorado – and spring is just around the corner.

This morning a tutor and baby sitter came. I hired her to teach the kids Spanish and be with them so that I could write, work and have some time to myself. I love my children dearly, but being non-stop around them is intense. I can lose my patience, but I work on it constantly with bringing mindfulness to the moment by recognizing it and breathing, even if by the end of the day I am spent and snap a few strong words at them.  For I do not want to repeat my mother’s abuse she hurled on me and my siblings. For that mindfulness I am grateful.

I’m always amazed that my Krishna sister seemed to effortlessly birth four children, breastfeeding twin boys until age 4, and home school them all while tending house. Of course she had community of the Krishnas, something terribly devoid in America’s nuclear family culture. Same thing with my Mormon friend who, before my husband’s death, was my constant homemaking companion. It definitely takes others and many mothers and fathers to raise children. I find this is the secret to healing our children. How I yearn for community, something I didn’t have much of growing up in east Boulder County during the 70s and 80s without any extended family. Somehow I feel everybody yearns for it on a deep level to quell our spiritual loneliness.

Today I walked in the cold rain and wind and practiced walking meditation at a quick rate. I love not owning a car. You pick up the hurried and stressed energy quickly here, and my mind was wandering to negative territory as my umbrella got caught in the wind and rain. I mulled life. Sometimes disappointment, discouragement and frustration creep into my mindset despite everything. I tend to worry a lot. A Capricorn characteristic, and a sign of vata imbalance.

Street scene, San Telmo, Buenos Aires

Back at the hostel a few days ago, I was worried when our room was not ready because a young woman hadn’t come back all day to check out. “Se desparacio,” the receptionist said. “She disappeared.” Later that evening, our Australian friend, who was returning home, was going to meet us at the hostel at 6  p.m. for a farewell dinner. But she didn’t show. I wondered if young women were disappearing off the streets of Buenos Aires at a rapid clip.  Then our Dutch friend’s car was towed, and when she disappeared down the dark parking garage for a very long time, I got worried she had disappeared, too, and sent our British male friend down to check on her.

“You need to stop worrying,” he said. I blamed it on living for seven years with post-traumatic stress, because everybody eventually turned up and was all right. The hostel girl got lost downtown, we missed our Aussie friend by a few minutes, and my Dutch friend drove up in her car minutes after I sent our Brit friend looking for her. When his Argentine girlfriend showed up she said, “Oh, you are the one who is always worrying. Oh, yes, well I can see how difficult it would be to travel alone with young children.”

San Telmo, Buenos Aires

As I walked, I thought about that it would be best to declare bankruptcy since I have to carry all the debt I incurred during my brief marriage to my ex-husband who declared bankruptcy to get out of paying me back. I think how many people are able to get ahead with business, travel easily for they do not have children or have a spouse to assist them regularly. I am the most reluctant capitalist, however, reality does set in. I left the US to live a simple life and to not have to constantly chase after Caesar’s coins. For I’ve never been good at doing that. I’m much better at giving things away, to my detriment. Still, I believe the winds of change are here and things will never be the same economically in the US again regardless and a new way system is coming, so that people, especially in yoga, don’t have to chant that, “Money is energy and good,” and be complicit in capitalism’s hypnotic spell that they are under.

I became aware of this negative chatter, and I walked quickly but with ease and contemplation. I contemplated my body, my alignment, breathing and core movement. I chanted the Maha Mritunjaya silently as I searched the street signs for where I was going and dodged the ferocious taxis ready to cut me down at every street corner.  I thought of contentment in every moment, something I learned from my Shambhala meditation classes in Boulder. I remembered that St. John of the Cross was tortured by his own priests, imprisoned in a tiny cell along with his own feces, yet he nonetheless said, “Where there is no love I will send love, and there will be love.” I then focused on sending birthday wishes to my beloved. I saw only beauty in the concrete, graffiti and traffic, as I saw the beautiful streets of Buenos Aires as I walked in meditation.

Milonga at Cafeteria Ideal, Buenos Aires

I always follow my heart, and although it has not been easy, I realize things always work out.  I remind myself never to worry or be in fear, because then I can’t help people. So I say, “I do my best and let Krishna do the rest.” Something my Krishna sister taught me. I become very aware of my own mind’s workings. I surrender. What else is there to do? I want to enjoy the journey.

Regardless, everything has made me strong and courageous. I remind myself that my mantra is also, “I am sustained by the grace of Lord Shiva.”  I walked and my mind became silent, and I could witness the people on the street from a different transcendent view. It reminded me of the story of a monk, dressed in only a loincloth, sitting in meditation on the street. A man gave him a blanket, and a few minutes later a thief stole it from him. However, the monk was not disturbed, only amused by the play of life before him. After ending my loop of mind spinning with mantra, breathing and moving my body in the rhythm of walking, my  mind calmed, and the world’s beauty poured in and gave me hope and great joy to be walking and meditating on the streets of Buenos Aires.

I arrived at a healthy little restaurant called Mamarracha on the corner of Costa Rica and Armenia in Palermo Soho. It was great to have granola, fruit and yogurt. I met two yoga teachers. One who had seen the Spanish version of my Storytime Yoga, Teaching Yoga to Children book that I had donated to the Eco Yoga Park. She heard I was in town and wanted to meet me. She brought a friend who was also a yoga teacher, and we chatted for a long time.

I am getting much better at understanding the rapid Argentine accent. I was getting better at using the JJJJJJuuuuhhh of the ll letter, however, they corrected me and said it’s better to have the high Castellano, rather than the Porteño dialect and that no matter what my accent sounds American. Well! They said that’s probably was charged as a tourist at the Eco Yoga Park, too.

We also talked about yoga in Buenos Aires. I had noticed two Pilates studios on my apartment’s block. She said it’s a fad right now, with so many studios. It’s not a fad so much with yoga, they said, which has built up progressively.  I said I had seen many yoga studios around by just walking the streets, and it will stay popular as people realize the benefits yoga brings them. We all agreed how much yoga would benefit people here, to offer relaxation and meditation classes. I’m hoping to take one of their yoga classes soon for my own practice and community. They were very interested in teaching children’s yoga, “los nenes.” I believe an opportunity to do my Storytime Yoga Children’s Mission will appear at the right time to work with disadvantaged youth, and I will hook up again with Programar to assist the poor.

After I am more settled I’d be happy to do a teacher training, I told them. I showed them a Yoga Journal magazine in Spanish that I picked up at a local kiosco to brush up on my yoga in Spanish terminology. I also explained the importance of storytelling to children and its application with yoga and education, even for the poorest of children and families. I said I’d do some Mythic Yoga for adults as well. To help people find a guiding myth in this modern world by drawing on the myths of times past. Mythic Yoga is psychological and somatic, and as Buenos Aires is the psychologist capitol of the world I’m in heaven.

We talked about how people are always in crisis here, always stressed. Not just because of the economic collapse of 2001, but that “Argentina has always been in crisis,” one teacher said. We talked about many problems, consumerism and materialism, lots of television watching, the cycles of poverty and abuse and other social crises. What can one do? How can one help the world?  I nodded in uncertainty to solve those issues, but responded that we just teach yoga. A yoga teacher of mine, Anthony Bogart, gave me a wonderful image that I hold dear. If you are an apple tree, you make apples.  So I am a yoga teacher, so I teach yoga, especially to children. And I must remember that by waking around the streets of Buenos Aires centered in the transcendent, peaceful and tranquilo, that is the best yoga I can teach others around me. When they asked why I was here and how long I’d be here I answered that this was a trip of faith. Years after my husband’s death I needed to change, get out of my old world, do something I’d always wanted to do and expose my children to it too.  I mentioned the economic crisis in America, and that there is only so much I can do with my business without working like a maniac and living life out of balance. I said I wanted to spend more time teaching my children, who need me.  I want to serve and teach yoga, and even though I get discouraged, the entire time talking with these new friends was such a testament to the grace of Lord Shiva. All things change. Nothing is permanent, neither my discouragement nor my joy. I just continue my efforts to reside in the moment. And that is all I can do. I have faith. I am sustained by the Grace of Lord Shiva. That is what grace is and I am at peace.

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Blending in as Argentines

by Sydney on September 1, 2010

Feather duster seller, Buenos Aires, Argentina

I had to ditch my capris and my son’s shorts that shouted TOURIST, especially coming from Montserrat and having my legs pocked red with mosquito bites. It’s still winter here, and an Argentine woman gave me the once over with her eyes, so I thought it was time, and that way we’d blend in more.

The kids and I went shopping in Buenos Aires. Clothes are cheap in here, and I got two pairs of jeans for $40 from one of the finer stores here. However, cheap they are, as a stud fell off. But the next day I returned it and the sales girl fixed it on the spot. But then the second pair of pants developed a hole in the pocket!

Now with jeans, a heavy sweater wrap and hat, I look Argentine.  I must, as people on the street are asking ME for directions. However, if anybody asks I say we are from Canada, as there is a lot of anti-American sentiment here so I speak to the kids in Spanish as much as possible on the street.

Young man working in el campo, General Rodriguez, Argentina.

The kids are slowly ditching their American clothes for Argentine ones. Everything is made local. Industria Argentina. Nothing is imported. America could learn about bringing back jobs and manufacturing by making clothes in the US, rather than having Chinese slaves make them and export them to us. I prefer buying stuff at the market, such as at the incredible event of the San Telmo fair on Sundays. It’s hard, though, to find kids clothes. We shall see.

It rained all day yesterday. My daughter and I went out in search of clothes for her. She’s quite a little designer, having always made her own Halloween costumes from scratch from used clothing stores, and was always redesigning her Barbie’s clothes since age 3. So she has specifics in the length, look. I told her we will have to learn how to sew for her precice needs. Sewing is something I learned in Girl Scouts in the 5th grade. It’s a great skill to sew, and quite creative. Many people here sew their own clothes and sell them in the shop windows! Americans would do well to learn these simple skills again. It’s amazing how few Americans know how to cook, sew, garden, build or fix anything. It brings so much satisfaction, and you are not just mindlessly consuming and getting and spending. I’m hoping to have us both take knitting lessons! It would be good for my daughter, as it’s said that for ADD kids, knitting while hearing a lecture helps them remember.

For the rain, and we bought a few paraguas, umbrellas. We ventured into the subway to get to the mall. Learning to be frugal and spend 1.2 pesos each way rather than a taxi cab, and also to use public transportation for the environment. I was excited to see an ad on the subway car for philosophy classes in the city. I’d love to take one. I was also excited that I have slowly been finding healthy food shops that have whole grains, granola or more vegetables, rather than the ubiquitous sweets, white bread, cheese and meat. I also found a gluten-free bakery!

Last night we went to the super market and bought fruits and some sandwhich stuff. There are entire shelving sections filled with different varieties of mate. Also, dulce de leche, a sweet, condensed like milk substance that is so delicious! It’s called cajeta in Mexico. A whole shelf of that, but I couldn’t find any peanut butter! I also bought some red wine, and tell my kids I’m a tantrist and don’t deny myself anything, at least in moderation. I also said that somebody has to balance out duality, since there are so many yogis focusing on the “good” or perceived good and denying everything else that is also Shiva, only to trap themselves in duality, which creates a rather explosive “shadow.”

We bought some colorful reusable grocery bags. Most people here use the plastic bags constantly.  I haven’t seen anybody use anything otherwise. Maybe we will make an impact if others see us using them. They seem a little surprised if I tell them I don’t need a bag and shove it into an existing bag.

The grocery store was a great opportunity for Spanish lessons. The kids are picking it up, and I’m getting accustomed to the unique Argentine accent, in which the ll is always pronounced JJJJJJuh and there is a different word for just about everything here. Even yoga is JJJJuh-oga. I’m very fluent in Spanish, but I can barely understand the waiter or bus driver. Heavy sigh.  But my kid’s little brains are little esponjas, sponges, so that makes me feel good.

Every weekday morning the kids do reading and some writing. I teach them to edit and correct their spelling and punctuation, improve the story with more detail. We upload it to travelpod.com and add photographs. My daughter is really improving. My son is very self-motivated to learn, and has been teaching himself Portuguese for some time now. He looks up amazing facts online too, always learning new stuff. It’s amazing. I read with my daughter about yerba mate today. Quite a healthy drink, even if it’s considered a stimulant by some. Will have to investigate it further.

Last night I read to the kids history and also told them personal stories. I told them the stories of their birth. They absolutely loved it, and there is such a priceless, warm feeling that connects us all with those stories and their telling. I also told them fairy tales. My daughter likes the dark fairy tales, such as The Juniper Tree and Bluebeard. The other day at a coffee shop she asked, “How did Daddy die?” I told her that her father’s business failed and he killed himself. That he was sad and that he used a permanent solution to a temporary problem. He gave up hope.  I figure that hearing these stories helps her process death and the darkness. That’s why I never leave out death in stories, no matter how young the child. Because death happens, and as my daughter was 2 when her father died, there are other kids with the same issues. And I tell them to never give up hope, and that in these fairy tales, you will notice, there is a guide. A way out. We know the ending, and it satisfies us and helps us through.

My son asked, “Do you think The Truman Show could be real?” That Jim Carrey movie is one of our favorites, and in my opinion his best. I said, “Yes. It’s like yoga,” reminding him of the Krishna painting at the yoga farm. How we can get “off the stage” or pierce what this “maya” illusion world is. And find a greater reality. However, I added that we can still be on stage, not have to get out of it necessarily. We can be in the world, but not attached to it or of the world. That way we are enlightened and can do good works. And with yoga, we can let go of fear, let go of worry and attachment, and be powerful in the world, centered in yoga.

I have powerful moments of that realization. Not so much recently, having a lot of stress dealing with the kids, staying organized, trying to get settled, worrying about being robbed or something in Buenos Aires. I’m not able to practice asana, but chanting the maha mritunjaya silently to myself most days keeps me strong. But eventually it comes again. The trick is being grounded and settled in yoga in all the circumstances. I will keep working on that. Realizing the present moment is powerful. My Krishna sister once told me that people only pray to God when they are in trouble. So as Krishnas, they always pray for trouble! Strangely, that can be true. Difficulty puts your smack in the middle of the present moment, smack in the middle of prayer to god, chanting, breathing, dealing. It makes you strong, courageous and fearless. And I am so grateful.

Every opportunity is one to wake up. So we live.

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Stories and Metaphors of the Eternal to Explain Yoga Philosophy to Children

by Sydney on August 30, 2010

Things are never as they seem. Opportunities to teach yoga philosophy to children abound!

We are back in Buenos Aires after a rather interesting experience at the Nuevo Vrindavana Eco Yoga Park in Argentina. At first we openly embraced the worm compost eco toilets, and the cold nights abated with layers of heavy wool blankets. We enjoyed the rustic charm, and how time and the outside world disappeared while on the farm. Every morning an amazing cacophony of a variety of distant roosters, birds, sheep and cows awoke us, as if the whole animal kingdom rose up from the depths to welcome us back to the world. I loved the heavy fog on the morning landscape, the cows and horses grazing in the field of early dawn light. Being so close to nature and animals is a calming and spiritual effect that touches the depths of your being, awakening you to something familiar you had forgotten but could not articulate.

I taught yoga classes to the group of four foreigners and one Argentine yoga teacher, who were “volunteers.” The kids and I helped cook in the kitchen, weed the garden, put mud on the eco-buldings. We ate vegetarian food, mostly deep fried chapattis, bananas and other assorted food from the garden dressed with sunflower oil and flax seeds. My son commented that he liked it here and that he and his sister fight less. They could run around free in the country. I was disappointed that we won’t make cheese or yogurt, as the neighborhing farm wasn’t doing it that week. I did meet the woman who had the organic farm with the cheese, she was very nice and brought her 11-year-old son over. He was home on a Friday because of a paro, a teacher’s strike.

Foggy mornings on the eco yoga park in Argentina

One afternoon, as my son and I walked around the grounds, he asked if Muslims and Christians all lived together here that they would kill each other. I said people are all dying for their metaphors, dying for an idea that they have about god. Even the Krishnas. My older sister, Narada, has been a Hare Krishna devotee for more than 30 years, so I know a bit about this. I explained to him that the idea of Krishna is to help our little minds grasp something that is ungraspable, that god is infinite and beyond all concepts and words. So we have to have some words or pictures to help us see it. This “it” being some depth, something that informs all of creation, like a big ocean beneath everything in front of our eyes. He said he understood. Not bad for a 12 ½ year old. He remembered the Zen story of heaven and hell I used to tell, where the state of mind of anger and wanting to kill somebody is being in hell. And when you are in bliss and love, that is heaven.

Weeding the organic garden

My son always came to the kid yoga classes when he was young, but rarely wanted to come to my yoga classes afterwards. But since I was teaching for the adults, to my surprise, he came. He said he liked it and it made him feel good. He was “rusty” he said. But I said with practice it will come. During class, since it was so cold that morning, I used a Sufi story about staying centered in good or difficult times, and related it to the Bhagavad Gita, which teaches that the sage is unperturbed by loss or gain, comfort or discomfort. He is equal-minded in everything. This is the true sage, true wisdom. So we all practiced in the cold, warmed up with the yoga, and it was great for everybody be together. We were a tribe.

The next day, we went into the town of General Rodriguez where the young women, the “madres,” have a school and live. My kids and I practiced together, and I realize that this was the first time ever that we had done a class together where I was not the yoga teacher, not the leader. It was so enjoyable to just enjoy the class and be with my kids doing yoga. I could look over and smile at my daughter, rather than worry if she was behaving. The kids did remarkably well, and during shavasana it was fun to reach over and touch my daughter’s little hand. I was happy that they knew all the yoga poses, and did them with some ease, as well as little kids can.

Images of nature calm the soul and touch the depths of your being.

Until we start our official online school, the kids’ writing and spelling work is their travel blogs. My son asked, “How do you spell Krishna? Vishnu?” We talked about the different incarnations of Vishnu, who comes to restore order.

Whenever righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases I send myself forth.
In order to protect the good and punish the wicked,
In order to make a firm foundation for righteousness,
I come into being age after age. (4.7–8)

He came first as a fish, then a turtle, next a boar, then a lion-headed man, then a dwarf, then a sage with an axe. Then came Rama, Krishna, the Buddha, and the final incarnation is yet to come, Kalki, who will bring balance back to the world. Personally I think it will be as a woman, as the feminine is badly needed to restore balance, like Durga’s job, and that patriarch cultures have changed mythology to suit their needs before.

Back in the big city of Buenos Aires

In the wooden cabin where we lived, in which one burned down a few months ago, gasp! there was an interesting painting in our room. My kids and I looked at it. It depicted a spiraling stage, marching through time, filled with people in the “Karmie” world. Singers, football players, shoppers, people trying to get ahead in the world. Skulls and bones peer ominously beneath the stage as everyone marches into the jaws of a big clock. Only a Krishna devotee is crawling off the stage, climbing up the stage ropes as Krishna’s blue hands reach to him from above. I explained to the kids that it’s all a metaphor. We are in this “stage” of time and space, duality. Krishna is beyond that. Singular. God, the transcendent, something beyond all this. That’s where we can reside. Where we can identify and find safety and groundedness. Because things change. I explained that we will leave the yoga farm and be back in Buenos Aires. Eventually we will be back in the United States. The only thing permanent is residing in this moment, feeling this breath. I’m not sure they understood, but the visual image was helpful.

People came and went here. They were mostly young. The Australian teacher on 8-month holiday. A lively young British man who has been traveling for six years. He gave me the scoop on growing dreadlocks, which he had and has since grown and cut off. He said it got really heavy surfing. There was the Argentine yoga teacher, who gave me a wonderful neck massage with juniper oil to relieve  terrible headache I had one day. And then the Dutch woman and has been in Argentina three years. She has a little dog, Nikita, who has an underbite, a lot of personality, and  follows her everywhere. We all clicked and piled into her car in the afternoons and head to an ice cream shop for some dulce de leche and to use the internet.

The Krishnas preach their dogma a lot. All of us foreigners started thinking there was something wrong at the farm. Tons of wasps showed up in our cabin and I felt that was a bad sign. I wondered why this big yoga farm was so abandoned, in disrepair. I heard that the person who runs it isn’t such a good person. Not so Krishna as you would believe. I asked him why my rate was so much than the others. Turns out he was charging me as a tourist! It was very clear that I was here to volunteer, teach yoga, teach yoga to children, garden, serve. I don’t come to pay to work! Espceially when a nice, warm bed in a hostel in Buenos Aires is cheaper than this place! The website said as tourists, you do things like art, yoga, Tibetan bowls. None of that was offered, nor mentioned that it was only seasonally offered! He said they only accept three volunteers during winter. Nothing about that on the website! I felt insulted, taken advantage of. There were five others here as “volunteers!”

All of us foreigners thought it was beginning to be a creepy place and didn’t trust the person who ran it. One young man, a true devotee, seemed to be the only one doing all the work around the farm. We all felt he was being taken advantage of too. The foreigners helped me book a hostel. So much cheaper than a hotel! I’ve learned too how expensive it is to get money out of an ATM, and they limit how much you can withdrawl each time just to get fees!  I confronted the person who ran the farm about how misleading it all was, but they had locked the gate! So I figured to pay and get out! We all left and are now in a very comfy hostel in the heart of Buenos Aire’s theater district. We have all been hanging out as a tribe. I love the community and my kids love the other foreigners too. It takes a village! Sadly, they are all moving on soon. Our apartment is ready September 1.

All in all, I learned to live completely simple. The very basics. And after living basicly in a run-down farm, ANYTHING would be better. To start all over. I don’t need all those consumption comforts of my old life. I don’t even have a cell phone anymore! I did borrow the Dutch lady’s phone to call a taxi. People wonder how to make a living as a children’s yoga teacher. I say, cut down your expenses and discriminate between your wants and your needs. You don’t need much to live, and by turning off the television that outer image that does not connect with your real experience begins to dissolve.  The spiritual life comes flooding in when you get rid of so many material issues and activities that are time and energy-consuming. Things the US economy forces you to participate in to survive. Like a car, a phone bill, having a lot of shoes or things to lug around, wash and take care of.  Without all that stuff and cluttered activities you can just live and be centered in yoga.

This all has not been easy. It is quite stressful to deal with children in a foreign country. My daughter is a bit sad that she won’t, for her fifth grade year, be in school back home and be able to participate in a science field trip called Cal-Wood. She misses her friends. One night, however, coming back from the internet café with all six of us piled in the Dutch woman’s car with her little dog hanging out the window, she slammed on the brakes as  a herd of white and brown horses came running across the road in front of us in the darkness. A young man on horseback took up the rear, with another boy on a bicycle behind him. We saw these amazing creatures charging in front of us, the car’s headlights lighting up the horse’s wild eyes.

I asked my daughter, “Are you still sad that you won’t be at Cal-Wood?” She smiled.

We bought some  handmade wooden puzzles of South America, North America and Europe at the Recoleta fair. The kids loved putting the puzzles together. We are going to the exploratory science museum here in a few days.We are still working on our writing, blogging, reading history. It’s a little hard to do asana here at the hostel, but once we are settled into our apartment in a few days, things will change a lot.

The journey continues. I am sustained by the grace of Lord Shiva.

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Falling off the Healthy Wagon, and Kids Do Learn Yoga From You!

August 25, 2010

Ok, so all that healthy eating went out the window when we left Montserrat for Buenos Aires. All ritual disappeared and airport food is insane. White bread, ham and cheese. That is what people survive on. And after traveling for a full 16 hours and missing a connecting flight because of weather in Miami and [...]

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