The Healer Wayan in Ubud, Bali

Welcome to Bali! This one is for you Nadine! The entire stairway is lined with frangiapani (plumeria) and I'm holding a delicious bundle of lychee fruit!

A gorgeous statue on the terrace on top of our hotel amongst the rice paddies!

Beautiful Balinese dancers at the end of a performance at a temple

Bali...oh, my goodness, this is a sweet, sacred land! I was welcomed into Bali by one of my best friends, papaya juice and a 1 hour massage for ... (if you are one of my clients, stop reading!) ...$8! The people here are so open, heart centered, kind and devoted! We awoke this morning amongst the ride paddies and climbed the stairs to a platform by the small pool to greet the day with Sun Salutations. As we sipped tea, a man walked around the Inn with a basket full of red hibiscus, placing offerings and gorgeous decoration all over the carved stone statues and altar boxes. Arlisa had already set up an appointment to see Wayan who is the healer written about in Eat, Pray, Love. As fortune has it, I was able to get an appointment with her at the same time. Several days before I left for this trip, my stomach was getting really bloated and there was diarrhea. Not so fun on the airplanes... I was beginning to ponder if I got parasites in Guatemala.
Wayan seemed quite tired at 1st. She said she didn't sleep well last night and mentioned something about a bad spirit. Ari, the young woman helping Wayan, grated fresh tumeric on a banana leaf board and made us a healing drink with honey and lime juice. After we filled out our intake forms, her young assistant held our paper up to the altar individually, with incense, offering and prayer. She read our bodies by looking into our eyes, palpating our breasts, knocking on our abdomens, feeling our knees and looking at our palms and nails. She diagnosed our ailments, prescribed different Jamu (herbal medicine) and then asked us why we had come or if we had anything she hadn't addressed. She had already recognized my stomach and digestion and I had a slight fever, so she wrapped some plants on my forehead. My temperature was normal in a few minutes. We asked her about vegetarianism, raw food eating and pregnancy. She said raw food is fine, we just have to chew our food really well and she was a vegetarian when she had her babies.
Then her young apprentices took us upstairs to scrub our legs and faces with betel leaves. The heart energy in this place is amazing and we had fun laughing and Ari made fun of Arlisa's laugh! She is a rascally one! We laid on the massage tables for what seemed like a vibrant eternity of various healing hands, warm bottles of water rolled down our backs, fresh garlic held on the moles on my face, fennel oil rubbed on my belly. It was truly a state of loving Bliss topped off with a meal made with love! Luckily, we felt we had no other place to be because we were often sitting around in between the various steps having no concept of what was happening next and when.
Our days have been so amazingly rich with experience...there is so much to share! We are still in Ubud, which is really a fast paced little city, but life is filled with intention and joy. Each business places offering out front (flowers and a little cracker or rice). When the women are blessing the offering, they dip a frangiapani flower in water and splash the water on the offering in prayer...atleast that is my interpretation of what I am seeing. Their attitude of gratitude is incredibly inspiring! To put the icing on the cake, there are raw food restaurants!! We have been savoring organic salads, veggie juice, banana cacao coconut smoothies, raw pumpkin soup, spring rolls...it is over the top! I have never had the opportunity to go to a raw food restaurant before, so to have this beautiful food prepared for me is such an appreciated delight!

Green juice, coconut water and raw pizza!!

Last night at the Namaste book shop, there was a gathering to watch Oprah and Eckart Tolle discussing chapter 4 of his book A New Earth. It is wonderful to see him while he is sharing his graceful wisdom and one of the tips I liked was to use a common occurrence such as the phone ringing to remind you to be in the present moment. Every time you hear the phone ring, let it ring 2 more times and take that time to simply be in the present moment, then answer the phone with presence! Another was to become transparent. If there is something happening that you think in your conscious mind should not be happening (like a baby crying), instead of trying to stop, resist or change what is happening, see yourself become transparent...see the sound flow through your transparent body. It can actually be fun and perhaps the baby will feel your peace and stop crying! Following the show, 2 people offered Deeksha, which is also known as the Oneness Blessing. (Hi Gia!!) I had heard of, but never experienced it. From what I could gather, there are 2 angels (in their human bodies) in India passing on this blessing and teaching others how to transmit this energy. He said that a lot of our energy is at the back of our brain (which is our primordial, survival, reptilian brain). This energy transmission helps bring the energy more into our frontal lobes to create a deeper opening in the heart. The intention that came into my consciousness before we began is To Live in Truth and See the Truth in Others even when they are not acting out their Truth. This deepened as the energy opened to See My Truth! All donations went to the local orphanage.
I must depart-we are taking a trip today that I'll share about when we return in 4 or 5 days! Warmest Blessings to you...Feeeel the Looove!! xoxo, Kelly Ordway