“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler who is foreign.” -Robert Louis Stevenson

I returned to Germany from 2 weeks in Asia.

Back from a place where I felt very foreign, to a place where I still feel somewhat foreign.

Yet even though I was an outsider in Asia, I was extremely welcomed.

The people were so warm, always smiling; most of the greetings involved hands in prayer and a small bow.

I still find myself doing it.

The first week of my trip took me to Bhutan; the second, to Thailand.

I flew via Dubai, Bangkok and Calcutta, and I couldn’t get enough of all the different cultures and ethnicities I encountered during this journey.

The week in Bhutan was arranged by my yoga teacher, with a group of 25 very international people.

I used the trip as an opportunity to disconnect with the outside world (similar to how Bhutan itself has been until recently), and to connect more deeply with my own thoughts and experiences as they happened (you know, living in the “now”).

As the trip was five days, I had the idea to devote each day to one of the five niyamas.

The niyamas are one of the limbs of yoga: guidelines for a yoga practitioner to bring more awareness to her life.

The niyamas are the following inward reflections/observances (and how I interpreted them):
Sauca – self-purification (choicefulness in food, emotions, thoughts you let into your body)
Samtosa – contentment (freeing your mind of expectations)
Tapas – self-discipline (sitting with the heat that makes you uncomfortable)
Svadhyaya – self-study (reflection and awareness of the self)
Isvara Pranidhana – surrender to something greater than ourselves (we might not understand it now, but everything is for a reason)

Over the next five posts, I’ll take you along on my journey through Bhutan: five days in a land that is unfamiliar to many…a land that feels trapped between heaven and earth.

Let’s go…

Source note: While in Bhutan, I read Beyond the Sky and the Earth by Jamie Zeppa. It gave a beautiful description of the country, and much of the information on the country’s history that I use comes from her book.