Good ol'times

I am at my parents' and just before leaving for Saint-Petersburg and probably for Europe I spent this wonderful cold September day in our Dacha where we used to go every weekend during spring-summer-autumn time (hm, Carelian variant is May-September:) when I was little and also spent some summers. 

It was natural and almost obligatory to grow your own tomatoes, pick berries and spend your vacation in the "dachnik" posture - with your booty up working-working-working and then working on your work's results - cooking jams, making pots with tomato sauce and pickles...



And then in late summer and during the whole winter you could enjoy the fruits of you "wonderfully spent summer". When I was a child I used to think this was too much work for too little joy. Then adolescent I became a follower of DIY and was growing my own cucumbers and flowers. Hard work I remember and... it was normal :)

Then several years in Europe made me a real fan of frugality and there I could see how it was becoming pop and expensive and fancy and alternative - really - "ALTERNATIVE", hippy, cool to grow your veggies. 

And now when I came back for the summer I found myself in the middle of jars of strawberries, freshly picked mushrooms, pappa-grown tomatoes and herbs. AMAZING FEELING - so close, every day, NORMAL. 

So I asked myself - why nowadays so many things that used to be logical for our parents, like growing their own stuff, healing sore throat with raspberry jam, drinking chaga, picking herbs for their salad from outside the door, are so abnormal and high-standard?




THAT should be normal, as normal as it is to go and get a double cheeseburger for 1 euro now...

Geography of our memories...

It happened to you, right? Places where old memories pop up, where you had met someone and now you suddenly turn around looking for that person in the crowd. Right? Well, it's logical - like with fragrances or music. Our subconsciousness just registers some facts that go together and makes our mind remember the "missing" part once we encounter something like that... 

BUT when this synchronicity happens out of nowhere??? Today I was driving my bike in one of the streets of Piter and all of a sudden with NO reason thought of my ex - Sashka, wondering if he'd be in the city. I often try to understand where thoughts come from so I was veeeery surprised to find no logical chain of my mind-work that would lead me to this memory. And the tadaaaam, I got it - the moment I thought about him, I was passing by the place where we had met once just after my jump with the parachute and where my emotions were bouncing together with my heart :) The thing is that the thought about him came BEFORE the memory connected to the place - never happened to me before! 

Apparently I left some emotional imprint on that spot :) Or is it something from quantum physics? Entanglement? Connections? Interesting... (Takashi, sorry for the plagiarism:)

This world is a biiiiig enigma! Definitely!

"Let's fly again let's flyyyyyyy again"...

Sachmo would love the thing we tried today :)

Katya gave me a great present for my birthday... after some time of keeping me curious and excited she finally cracked and I got to know that we'd go and try this new yoga style (new for Russia) called aerial yoga or yoga in hammocks. 

Don't think that if there's a hammock, you'll lie there like a wombat and there's gonna be total shavasana and no work-out! On the contrary! This piece of tissue hanging from the ceiling gives you SO MANY more opportunities for stretching and hanging and ... flying that by the time you lie down flat you're happy you're not a bird. Or not happy. Cause the feeling of freedom and stretch-itude is fantastic!

One of my best-ever shavasanas and one of my best-ever B-day gifts!!!

Breath of Love

Me and Olivier we once crated this phrase to describe a certain flow felt around the heart (and from it). BOL - I still use this word to describe the moment when there's a rainbow in your smile, when you feel you love the whole world, when your chest hurts - so much love there is, when you are ready to hug everybody around. 

They say happiness is a choice. I truly believe it. Happiness can be born, raised and nurtured. You have to consciously, every day, decide you're choosing it. Happiness is not smth that comes itself (it can, but then it's only a temporary thing - depending on someone/something/somewhere). Happiness is wholeness. Happiness is stillness. Gratitude. Faith. Joy. Every moment - no, from moment to moment. David told me once about meditation: "one moment of concentration gives birth to another moment of concentration". I'd say the same about happiness...  second per second...

Bhavatu Sabba Mangalam

Be Happy Be Happy

Vegan? Are you kidding me?

Well, one hour after having written the post about commitments I said to myself that one of the topics on the list could be done NOW, I don't have to go for a 10 years delay or try to work my muscles on it... And tadaaaaam, I suppose there are no more excuses for me not to be vegan (I've always been saying that I lack cheese, cause I love cheese, I adore it, I am ready to spread a good piece of cheese over my face, cheese is my everything, but then I realized that I survived almost without cheese in India, 4 months! and I don't really NEED it... Eggs and milk - I don't eat dairy, but I wouldn't say no if it was used by someone else for something they had cooked up for me). The same with my everlasting excuse about eggs - I don't usually eat them but I'm always saying "ehhh, it's ok if eggs are in the pie, right? Just once, just in this pie..." Etc. etc. etc. 

Not that I need to become vegan, but I've wanted to for several years now. When you start being vegetarian for some ethic reasons sooner or later you come to veganism, I think. And I wonder now WHY I didn't switch to vegan diet before. The answer is "lack of motivation" and "tomorrow-i'll-do'it" promises to myself (like the one I had recently: I made a beautiful strawberry cottage cheese pie and couldn't say no to it, and decided I'd start once it's finished... my way of treating reality :)

And now I clearly understood that becoming vegan is a good way of training my will. I'm not forcing myself this time. I just DECIDED. Once and for all... So simple!!! I'm not cheating myself or trading with myself any more (like before, when eating Oltermanni, cause it doesn't have rennet in it...).

I think I'm not gonna be the extreme vegan, I am not going to track all the E-s on the package, thinking if they have animal origins (well, I think Ill just get rid of the E-s in my diet). I'm not going to try to persuade my parents that eating vegan is good for me. I'm not even gonna tell them :). I am not gonna say no to a soap in someone's bathroom if I'm not sure it hasn't been tested on animals. Santi shanti...

I'll take the simple way. A lot of raw food, no substitutes, as much frugality as possible, a good kitchen and a good web-site with vegan recipes :). 

Mamma mia, it sounds much better than I thought, as if a new life is starting!!!

I'll go and celebrate it with a vegan rice milk banana strawberry smoothie :)

Be happy and healthy! And go vegan if you want!

Karma yoga...

Came up to my mind today: conscious parenting is a sort of karma yoga, cause you're devoted to somebody without any conditions and expectations, with pure and self-giving motivation...

10 years commitments

Thanks to my best Katja have just finished a small article by Steve Pavlina about commitments. The main phrase would be:

"While it's perfectly okay to dabble in a variety of interests to discover what you enjoy, if you really want to get good at something, a serious commitment is required. Dabbling is great for experimenting, but it's lousy for long-term skill building. To master a skill, move beyond dabbling and make a serious commitment to your craft."

Steve suggests that one should (while dabbling) choose some exact goals and make them into 10 years commitment. He claims it to be a very helpful system. 

I said to myself WHY NOT? I've always been lacking this inner motivation and will of power to finish what I've started on a good level: I've tried to dive, to learn how to juggle, to speak Portuguese, to play guitar, to enjoy calligraphy, to fast, to make DIY cosmetics, to take good pix, to study history, to settle down in several countries, to meditate, to do yoga. And in most cases my motivation was blown away by the wind of changes, let it be mistral... I know I'm a scanner and I know I am doing best when jumping from one activity to another. But I also tend to be a "drop-it-half-way" exactly because of lack of commitment. Commitment makes your decision grounded and strong. Well, first of all it MAKES YOUR DECISION :) It also makes you set up several small goals on the way and - which is of most importance - to understand WHY you are doing this or that. Not just "ehhhh because it's fun", cause when the goal is difficult to achieve (let's say "be good at playing arphe")  having fun will not be enough on a long term basis. So in order to come where you are willing to come you should have a good "pusher". This can be the commitment you take being fully aware of why you're taking it. This seems to be the best motivation! 

So... for the next ten years I chose:

- speaking perfect Italian, Spanish, Portuguese

- being a master of Tibetan Massage

- being 100% vegan

- learn to bellydance 

- becoming established in  meditation (vipassana, dzogchen, heart meditation)

Some of these thing I started with, but they seem to be hobbies, not smth I am committed to... 

This August I'll turn 30, so in 10 years - on my 40th birthday I'll check this out to see where I turn to be on my path!

Announcing all that makes me dizzy and scared already, cause I am really good in procrastinating and looking for excuses NOT to do smth (even if I like it) as soon as there's an effort to be done...

If you have any experiences in pushing your limits and promising smth to yourself, you are warmly welcome to share and to inspire me :)

BE HAPPY!!!

Breeeeath... Be...

Starting a new trial TODAY - 30 days of Kapalabhati pranayama. 30 minutes in the beginning - can't stand more so long, start to feel dizzy or haven't adjusted my diaphragm and  breath, don't know yet...

That's what they say the benefits are:

• - Kapalbhati stimulates pancreas to release insulin thereby helps to control diabetes mellitus.

• - By improving liver and spleenic functions it presents and cures hepatitis (A.B.C), Cirrhosis of liver and Anaemias.

• - If done regularly it relieves constipation, acidity and anorexia etc.

• - Regularize endocrine and exocrine systems

• - Being helpful in regulation of all glandular secretions it is highly effective in azoospermia, oligospermia and fallopian tube blockage etc.

• - It also helps in eradicating cysts and tumours.

• How 'Kapalbhati' helps in relieving backache is explained as:
  
  • 1. Strengthen the muscles of the back and abdomen.
  • 2. Maintain and increase the flexibility of the muscle ligaments and tendons.
  • 3. It improves posture.
  • 4. Increase bone density and strength.

I don't have any of these major problems/ailments, but just want to see if it can help me with strengthening my digestive system (with moving around so much I don't always eat the way my stomach wants it :), purify my blood and I also want to see if I can adopt a practice and stick to it... Recently have been out of my daily routines sooooooooo...

Oh, after the first session I felt really oxygenated and HIGH, like after yoga. But now, 3 hours later am really sleepy (or is it because it's 1.30 AM? :)).

The difficulty is that I haven't found out what to do with my mind yet - it just wonders away superfast... They say I should do tonglen or just breath in +ive and breath out -ive. We'll see tomorrow (morn:)
Be Happy so far!

DIY

DIY is the best concept EVER! You always know what ingredients come inside and it is applicable to everything - life, relationships, scandal, karma, your day, mood, earrings, dress and vegan cakes... Today I have the DIY vegan raw cake only (hoping that with it come day-karma-mood-etc):

For the base:
500 gr nuts (any) soaked for the night
200 gr dates
honey if needed (I don't put it, as the dates give the sweetness)

For the filling:
2-3 big bananas,
1 cup frozen strawberries (or fresh, but here it's not the season yet - two more weeks to wait)
1/2 cup coconut oil

Sesame seeds or grated nuts

Grind the nuts together with the dates (don't forget to take out the seeds) for the base, press the mass into a form. Mix together bananas, strawberries and coconut oil, put the filling on the base and send in the fridge for 1-2 hours. Decorate with grated nuts or sesame seeds.


My first raw cake BTW, hehe...

The pic is not mine, but looks almost the same!

La vie est beeeelle!!!

Almost two months later and:
one more vipassana - in Russian this time, in the rooms where Ahmatova used to stay and rest in Komarovo

One big Russian "vacation" for me and D. - with my lovely parents, great people, massages, presentations, pirogis, pryanikis, snow and sun and SP...

Finland and my beloved sister

FLORENCE and... here's a looooong pause of delight and happy smiles - this city is magic and it was waiting for us!

Then HHing from Fi to Mars.

Now Marseille for one week. Love. Love. Love.

Next Russia and going back to Flo. But I'm living the moment!

Happiness is a choice...

Relax and trust me

I am in Sain-Petersburg and I LOOOOOVE it!!!
Strange feeling as if I've never lived here and I came just to be with my friends and do things I like! We've already been to a meeting with a swami, to an acroyoga and to a Shakti Dance. I am swirling in this positive and supercharging energy and I feeeeeeel goooooooooooooooood!

BTW started giving massage, youpiiii!!!

Downshifting

My university friend moved to the countryside 6 years ago. All of a sudden she decided to abandon a flat in Moscow, brilliant perspectives, money and career and settle down in the middle of nowhere, in an old Karelian house with no tap water or heating. Everybody thought she was crazy - bathing in a spring in the middle of winter, being alone for days, 80 km from Petrozavodsk, her, who had always been very social (I'd say socioliser), comfort-loving, ambitious and city-girly, all of a sudden she found her peace in that village that'd stay empty for several months a year. In winter it's perfect as you can jump from the sauna directly into the snow dunes all naked without thinking of neighbors staring at your red butt :) here I am by the way, all steaming and freshly baked:

I love the place, specially in summer. It's clean - really clean, air-water-soil-energy-everything. CLEAN. And nourishing. And giving you some space for feedback and reflection. For breathing in-out. Just for re-connecting with nature. Imagine living in a wooden house with a "Black" banya (special type of Russian sauna that is super-healthy wealthy and wise), faaaar from pollution, noise, people (first of all PEOPLE - this layer of collective consciousness disappears and even the transparency of your dreams changes...). Being frugal - berries, veggies and herbs, mushrooms and local dairy products, everything organic without being certified, everything breathing love and care, made or collected with your own two hands, cooked with affection and charged with prana. I love this way of life! Now being back to my parents' flat I feel how I cleaned and charged all my channels there, how life was NOW and meaningful, and how normal it is to live like that, though for many people it would feel strange and extravagant... It's like eating fresh carrots instead of a carrot cake for me now!

Well, let's see when and where I will do the same! Hm, though I have to discuss the "snow-bathing" option with Mr.D. :) may be we can change it into sun-bathing on the sea-side hehe...

Love is what I love making...

Today's talk with John inspired me on this post. Thank you, dearest John, for your wisdom and support!

I want to be Love. Nonono, not IN love... I want to be love itself. You've met those special people, right? Those who embrace you with their heart, who connect with you immediately, no matter the age, the topic of the discussion or sense of humor. Their eyes are full of light. Well, all their being is full of light. Children... they are like children under twelve months! I want to be one of them. This is my Ascension Goal (if you are interested in that, listen to Inelia Benz). I feel that this is why (probably) I came here. To love. To love kindly. Yes, yes loving kindness is my aim, my dream, my wish, my first item on the manifestation board! This is a yoga of love, this is what Fredrick Lenz was talking about - the yoga of acceptance, of non-judging, of inner dissolving in the universal Light. You actually become this Light. And stay childish. Open. New. Every day, with every experience, with every person. You see THEIR Light as well, because YOUR Light connects to it. You merge. With this Light and with the Truth. With your Higher Self. And your heart opens and yearns for this love to flow through it. And then there's no good nor bad. Just BEING. Just LOVING. Just ACCEPTING. 

This is what I am working on now. Though Mr.D. says I've already been there and I  came to this lifetime to do the jnana yoga. To meditate and to differentiate. Possible, as they say in India. Possible... but my heart whispers that I am right :)

Nostalgie...

My life is a big dream... This very life is a dream itself. And me as a higher consciousness is watching this dream right now as if it was a nice soap opera. Emotions, feelings, pains and pleasures, "dream" dreams and worries, loves and separations - all that is a part of a higher scenario. This light of God or Universe just decided it (he/she/them) wanted to experience something called Yana Shulzhenko and downloaded itself into me, my body, and my life. For a BIG and IMPORTANT purpose. Interesting... I understand it on the mental level but I still can't really experience it outside of my meditation, i.e. in real life (what is real you might ask... meditation and entering somewhere deeper than I can explain seems  to be more real than the "real" life sometimes!). Thus my heart often jumps when I see people, remember places, check out some old photos. My emotions go hoolahooping and I want thisthatandevenmore, not being impeccable and basically trying to attach to my old me, to remember how it was when I was all flower-power free-hugs jumpy Janka-bananka. It happened today, when I all of a sudden discovered those old photos from Gothenburg 2008, from Marseille, from Barcelona. I love that time - that's when I was the happiest the longest (if not counting NOW). That's when my heart was open - somehow I opened my spiritual heart without really doing any practices - I was just working with a boy with autism. Funny hein? I saw those pics and my heart went boumboum and I became all hyper and jumpy again. I became Janka. I liked it! I REALLY LOVED IT actually. But then I understood that I consciously can be THAT kind of me, just because every single personality feature can be applied to me if I decide it! Really. It's not as impossible as it may seem. I think during those vipassana retreats some solid and basic parts of me just dissolved and I became kinda blank, and now it's time to just play with this blankness a little, so I want to come back to my childishness, to my "hard to live easy" life, to lightness and light itself, but consciously this time... Without being dependent on this highness, on this state of hypersuperjumpy mood. Just being happy, motivated, joking, smiling, not-so-serious, little crazy. Will start with a new hair cut, I suppose. Something like this:

Nothing will really change. Because there's nobody to be changed - I am already everything I was and gonna be. But still...

So please, have a dream! In this very life. 

Hakuna Matata

And Happy New Day! 

Post-India

It's been one week since I arrived in snowing Petrozavodk, my native town in North-Western Russia. It's lovely to be with mamma and the family. To have hot shower whenever I want and not when the sun warms up water (or doesn't warm it up at all, which is more normal), where the streets are white and the tap water is drinkable, where brown bread is available on every corner and where fresh fruit juices are 100% safe and I don't have to ask the boy to wash the cup before poring my portion in it, where the cars stop politely when you cross the road (on a crossroad, which has been a rare thing in my life for the past 4 months), and where there is no honking AT ALL (if you've been there you'd understand)! But (always there's a BUT) i definitely miss everything else that one can't find here - Ganga, heat, babas, children, homeless dogs, fresh papayas, dust in the air instead of snow, thalis and chapatis, temples, buddha boys and monks, banoffee pie and ginger-lemon "sex on the mountain", samosas, elephants and monkeys, Himalayas, Himalayas, Himalayas, Tibetan bread, chowmein and momos, incenses, flowers, banana trees, women in sarees and men in turbans, rickshaws and crazy busses more more more...
But all that turns out to be SO superficial! What I got there is that overall meditative state, that new attitude to life, that happiness which has nothing to do with joy and excitement. Or have I just established myself in it? It was dormant like that cobra on the street, and a magician, let's call him India, woke it up, and now it is there dancing :)

BE HAPPY!

Here are some pictures of Delhi, the last stop before snowy Russia: urine and rose water, babas with long orange dirty kurtas and youngsters in Adidas and Calvin Clein (original, just to let you know), velorikshaws and BMWs on the same road, 1000-for-a-meal restaurants close to 20-rupees momo stalls, clay huts and Indian's prime-minister's several hectares property in the middle of Delhi, Crematorium with queues and Humayun's tomb of marble surrounded by a huuuuge garden, lovely art-galleries and street artist of mehandi, Lodi park with Indian beau-monde - ladies in saris eating hamburgers, speaking Hinglish to each other and just after - Pahar Ganj and its bazaar - stinky, shouting, noisy, colorful, in layers, in circles, in spirals. I was told it would be "violent" for my senses... Well, I've lived in big cities before, so it was not so bad. The only thing that was obvious for me was that your level of awareness drops drastically and it's really difficult to be inside with all this stuff going on around. But I liked Delhi the way it is: expensive, fancy, poor, broad, colorful, exhausting and exhausted, never asleep, cultural, delicious, enormous, shifting, astonishing with its 11 296,85 hab./km², special coaches for women in metro, 8 000 tones of garbage per day, "green" buses on natural gas, 11% of Muslims, 175 patrimonial monuments and 5 universities. I need one more vipassana to digest all that...

Some more of Varanasi

Here you are, the rests of Varanasi folder. I am too busy to write now, so just telling you the story in pix...

On the streets, getting lost. El.boxes, bzzzz. Was almost flattened by bulls, now one fobia more...

On Ganga. Laundry again...

Yes, they also need a bath... Two of them were running after me later, brrrr  

No Shooz

Religious or not... Ganga is THE place

Parked in the house (yesyes...) and outside a kindergarden

Shiva, Ganesh and more... 

More of South Indian, that's probably the best cuisine of India for me... Here vada...

 This is a street where people usually drive... hm, better than Marseille :)

On the market

Back to Ganga again

Welsome to FRIEAND

I am trying on David's superglasses