'Sawatdee Khrab' (i.e. Hello) dear family and friends,

Oh my! It's been over a month since I've sent an update. Lot's can happen in a month, where do I start...

Over the summer I was a festivarian, as I went to every festival that I could find. I continued this pattern by arriving in Chiang Mai just in time to experience the Loi Krathong festival. The Thai's honor the river in this festival by creating ridiculously beautiful flower boats, small Krathongs, which they give to the river. During the small Krathong creating contest a couple dozen small groups of mostly school age kids work together over an entire afternoon to create Krathongs of about the size and shape of a wedding cake. They create them out of banana stalk, for the float, then intricately arranged, layer upon layer, folded banana leaf and flower petals.

This was the heart of the festival, for me, as I got to watch the Thai children exhibit great cooperation, skill, and creativity. They brought the Krathongs, these things of beauty, in to the world, each boat wonderful and unique, out of simple common materials. They then appreciated them for a little while then let them go to the river as it slides past.

As I watched them go through this, it help highlight how much I value the creative process. This is a process that I've seen, understood, and appreciated more and more as I have become more creative. It is a process which goes something like this:
1. It starts with a willingness or interest in exploring the unknown.
2. Gains momentum with a gathering of resources and knowledge.
3. Focuses as an intention is formed.
4. Is sustained by a patient, persistant, and playful following of that intention.
5. Is realized as your creation is brought to life.
6. Is experienced as you share your creation.
7. Is appreciated as you admire what you have created.
8. Is released as you let go of the process opening space for what ever comes next.

But more important that the steps of this process is the mental attitude that you bring to it and maintain during the process. If you can stay focused, balanced, and open throughout the journey you will be ready for whatever comes next. You will be able to adjust and enjoy, find and follow the appropriate path.

It was a great joy for me to cultivate this attitude and experience this process as I expanded and explored during my recent life in Durango. All my recent exploits:
Ballet on Belay (Ariel dance)
High Desert Wanderers (middle eastern music/dance group)
Asa (fire dance)
Cuddle Cave (theme camp)
Kan'Nal (kick ass band)

as well as my past passions:
Dances of Universal Peace
Contra Dance
Intentional Community

are experiences that have helped me learn about and experience the creative process and mind (and I made fun things happen, Ha!).

The rest of the festival was WAY over the top. The large Krathong parade had hours and hours of brightly lit glittering golden lotus flower floats squeezing past throngs of Thais and visitors. Many had elaborately dressed ladyboys (men dressed as women) on pedestals in regal poses. At the back the floats had thick wires leading to a support vehicle that had generators belching smoke and speakers blaring out music. Impressive, but in danger of loosing connection to the heart amidst the spectacle.

The Thais really do know how to create a spectacle. At night the sky was filled with fireworks exploding and paper lantern/balloons rising into the sky trailing sparks. Smoke and pollution and noise everywhere. During the final day there was an internationally televised Thai Boxing event in the public square leading past the moat and gate into the old city. There were many little three minute dramas as competitors tried to dominate each other and the crowd pulsed with excitement at the action. I found my self caught in it enough to sympathize with the 'farang' (foreigner) competitors who were trying to beat the Thai's at their own game, triumphing or failing on international TV.

Finally, happily, the festival was over as I was ready to get to know the normal, hopefully more grounded, pulse of this city. From festivarian I evolved to become a workshopitarian, classaholic, and retreatidite. I can't stop taking workshops! Chiang Mai turns out to be a major center for all kinds of workshops, classes, and retreats in many subjects (for between 3 and 8 times as cheap at they would be in the States), all of which I wanted to participate in all at once, right now. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do them all so I settled for: a 2 week Thai Massage course; a 1 week Abdominal Chi massage course; a 10 day Tai Chi retreat; a 3 day Cranio-Sacral massage course (just complete); a Thai Cooking course; and a couple of Batik classes.

"This must be to much! I thought you were looking to get grounded?" and "How can you handle it all, you must be superman!" you say... well yes, I am superman and, yes, it has been a bit much. However, I decided it would be OK to push hard for a while as these workshops were great opportunities to learn and grow. Happily, I was able to take reasonable care of myself in this process. The activities I was choosing to participate in (particularly the Tai Chi) were grounding and in nurturing environments. Also, I figured that lolling around on the beach with the rainbows afterword will be a great place to settle down, soften, and maybe, finally let myself sink in the divine soup.

I started my coursithon with a Thai massage course at the oldest Thai massage school in Thailand, the Shivagakomarapa (not even close to the longest word I've seen here) school. It was very cheap, about $120 for 2 weeks of instruction, is a well respected and established institution, and Mindy recommended it.

It had a very traditional teaching approach, quickly stepping through a precise series of over a hundred techniques without much pause for explanation or exploration. I was initially a bit frustrated with this approach as I was wanting to know why we were doing these things and what effects they would have on the recipients. A more modern approach (which I was to experience soon afterward) would be to give the studends some base tools and knowledge and then encourage them to gain their own understanding through collaborative exploration.

In the end, though, I appreciated that at least the course was clear (I talked to students in other schools who were lost while experiencing a more 'modern' approach). I also appreciated Thai massage, that it is flexible and easy to offer. It is practiced without oils or creams or large expensive tables (it is done on a mat on the floor), with recipient fully clothed (which avoids some awkward privacy/intimacy issues and allows more contact between practitioner and client). I learned that I want to be a healer, not just massuse (as I am interested in a deeper understanding than normal massage courses offer), and that I've got more sensitivity and body awareness than a basic course requires.

The next week I took an Abdominal Chi massage course at the Sunshine Institute. The Sunshine Institute had a vibrant healing communal atmosphere, much better than the old medicine hospital. There I got what I thought I wanted which, funny thing, didn't turn out to quite be what I really wanted.

Abdominal Chi massage is very powerful healing work involving clearing out stuck connective tissue and imbalanced/blocked energy around the organs (with just touch!). Organs that are out of balance or stuck, as you would expect, can have major effects on our quality of life, effect everyone to some extent, and can even cause death. A practitioner using these skills can save lives.

Unfortunately, the teaching style didn't work for me as it was all over the place. I was left a bit lost, wishing for the clarity of the previous weeks (am I never happy?). I don't have the sensitivity yet to be able to do this work, it is good to know there's a growth path there if I want to take it, and it will be a while before I do.

My last hope for a better match between my needs/skills and bodywork training in Chiang Mai was a three day course in Gentle touch, a form of Cranio-Sacral therapy. This, also, is powerfull profound work. In it the practitioner tunes in to subtle signals that are given by the body through the fabric of connective tissues that surround and link all the structures of the body. If the practitioner discovers an area that might be ready for release they asks the body if it would like to. If it does the practitioner encourages and supports the body in that process.

This time the material was right at the level I needed it to be, challenging but understandable, the teacher was patient and clear, and her teaching method was encouraging but not controlling. This is the direction that I need to go for a while in trying to develop my body work skills and touch sensitivity. The gentle touch approach is wonderful, instead of forcing the body to change in ways that the practitioner thinks it needs to, asking if the body is ready for change.

I wonder... Just after college I decided to go through the full set of ten sessions that is the Rolfing series. Rolfing encourages the body to find more functional pathways of movement and body use. For me it changed my destiny as it helped me find a more stable balanced open aware body that better supported my emotional, social, and spiritual growth. I've had friends, though, who have gone through the series and not seen that kind of transformation. I wonder if Rolfers who use a subtler approach, asking more questions, get a higher success rate?

The teachers of the Abdominal massage course and the gentle touch were both incredible healers. I was honored to receive treatments from each; they both helped me immensely. Back and shoulder pain removed; my neck that's been stuck for 20 years unstuck; a bone behind my nose, that was out of place due to trauma caused by the the removal of my wisdom teeth when I was a teen, released. This highlights how we need to take care of our bodies, I've been relatively good to mine yet I've been holding these things for so long. It was wonderfull to be shown how to let them go and to be near such angelic women.

The gentle touch course was held at the Niasuan house, which was where I finally found a home in Chiang Mai. For the first three weeks I had been jumping from guest house to guest house (in Thailand 'hotels' are high end expensive, guest houses are low end reasonable) in the tourist areas near the old city, not quite finding what I wanted. It turned out that what I was looking for was a simple cheap room ($7/day) that had it's own bathroom with hot shower, a near by sanctuary where I could practice, and a stable community that I could get to know (any connection I made in the old city would tended to disappear just as soon as it appeared them as people moved on).

The sanctuary at the Niasuan house was a beautiful fourth story roof top garden. Surrounded by a chest height wall, partially covered at one end by a pro-panel roof and at the other by shade cloth, separated from the normal city life by thirty feet in elevation, with plants everywhere, a small outdoor kitchen, sitting area, and plenty of room to move, it was a great space.

It was also a great example of a pattern of space use that I had read about, but not experienced, as I researched the kind of space that I would like to create and live in in intentional community. I had advocated for flat roofs that could be used as roof top gardens in Earthrise, the intentional community that I had been involved with (and left dieing), in Durango. Unfortunately, this was one of many things that I tried to share with that community that were not well received (which is part of why it died...). <Sigh> Ah, well, it was good to experience and appreciate a successful example of this pattern.

The most important activity I engaged in in Chiang Mai was a 10 day Tai Chi intensive, also at the Niasuan house. Unlike all the other activities, where I had some external goal, the main focus of this retreat for me was internal, it was all about self care.

I managed to keep focused on this intention (once it became obvious that romance would not be part of the picture) by not sending any energy in the social direction. While the others in the retreat were spending lots of time going out to eat together, generally talking about things that did not interest me, I was practicing playing my didjiflute, the hadjira (a tambourine with a bendable head), learning new poi moves (Have you ever seen a poi tangle? Well, they are ridiculously hard to do well, but if you do they look pretty cool), or napping in my hammock. Thus, I made great progress in all of these practices in the unscheduled times of the retreat.

The scheduled times were filled with: learning the Tai Chi form; practicing sitting meditations, walking meditations, and Chigung; and listening to lectures on Taoist philosophy. The form itself is just 8 movements repeated 4 times on the right side then again on the left side. I appreciated this because it is very short and simple, making it easy to learn and practice, and it is balanced between the left and right side (this is something I try to do with all of my physical activities). Unlike other forms it doesn't travel much, which also makes it easy to practice (you don't need a football field to do the form, just a 1.5 meter square mat).

The meditation and Chigung were great as well. After many days of this I was finding and opening all kinds of energy channels that I had never felt before. I also had more energy to play with. Whenever I closed my eyes there was this tumultuous world of energy racing around my body that I was trying to encourage, understand, calm, and focus. Rosemary the Gentle Touch teacher said that I am like a balancing act on a high tension wire, rather than on a slack line. Time to work on those slack line skills.

More important that the particular activities, though, was the fact that I had made the commitment to maintain a daily practice. The process of developing this form was exciting enough to me that I was willing to get up early to do it before other things distract (the pleasure of more sleep has always in the past had a stronger draw). What a good practice, choosing to be excited to start the day!

So, in just the first month, and just 10 days of retreat, I've managed to achieve two of my main personal growth goals for this around the world journey: finding and following a daily practice; and getting a handle on my sleep habits. If I find a way to becoming more intentional with my eating habits in the next month, by the time I get to India I won't have anything to do. I'll just stare vacantly at people and ask them to abuse me so I have some anguish to recover from.

OK, I admit theres more to life than self healing and growth, once you've healed you own hurt you can start hurting others, right? Or is it, once you start hurting others you can hurt your own heel yourself? Mph, I'm confused, it must be getting late... Where was I?

Well, phew, I've shared what I wanted to share. I'm headed to the International Rainbow gathering tomorrow just an hour south of Ranong. Finally I will make it to the beach, I've been resisting it's siren call for to long.

Damian (Greek meaning - spirit, or to tame or subdue... any comments ladies?)