Flying into Managua looked like flying into any other city in my sense memory. Bright city lights twinkling and busy roadways entering and exiting the city. If it wasn’t for the two men on either side of me who didn’t speak English, I could almost have fooled myself that this plane’s landing was like any other. Then, I caught sight of a very small tienda with the store sign en espanol, and my pulse quickened. Numerous doubts raced through my mind — or maybe just one phrase, repeated over and over like a mantra: I must be crazy to sell all my things and move to Central America with such a small plan. Crazy: loca gringa, muy loca gringa! I practiced some pranayam to return my heartbeat to normal and quell the shaking in my hands. Some deep breathing in and out of the right nostril while chanting silently Om Surya Namaha reminded me that my entry to the land of the sun (as Mehtab called it in the Vedic Astrology reading I had last year) has been as clear a path as one can hope for in this world. Calmed, I struggled with my much-too-heavy bags through customs, and left the airport to meet my friend and his family, and to go to the yoga studio I will be staying at for the next few months.
The studio is beautiful. A divided central courtyard is lush with mango trees, jasmine trees, a large egg-laying duck, y una muy grande tortuga named Snoopy.
Continue reading “La Tortuga and the Power of the Breath”
