Where spirit and science coexist.

Religion is not the same as spirituality. I get it now.

Disclaimer: the products, creators, authors and books mentioned are sincere consumer opinions, from my point of view as a plant based enthusiast seeking to improve life... my way. None of them are paid advertisements.

In the post “how I got here” I mentioned that my journey has not been a straight arrow uni-directional A-to-B situation, but more like a wading between spirit and science, between intuition and hard proof, between feeling and fact; which has been surprising to me, a so-called “atheist” that only found comfort in evidence, data and solid engineering work.

I was always the first one to cringe at the word “God” (or Jesus) because of the mental imprint when raised sort-of catholic: the image of an omnipotent/omnipresent bearded male toga-wearing figure that was tortured and brutalized before dying and that is how we inherited our “belief”. I honestly don’t blame myself or anyone else for never buying into this deal.

Today, I can say that I have embarked in a spiritual practice that has helped me heal… and I -almost- won´t wince at saying this out loud to bewildered friends that have always known my reluctance to Sunday mass, churches, priests and the catholic institution.

The healing of my body started with the healing of my soul. I am sure of this. And the absolute first step that got me through the door was a one trial session I spontaneously took one Wednesday in January 2018.

Yoga is in all fashion now and unless you live under a rock, you are aware of the health benefits that it brings. However, in comes my racing mind: “I´m not flexible enough, I´m too fat to wear leggings, I´m too short to do the poses correctly…”

Thankfully my mental noise was not loud enough to drown the curiosity to “give it a try”. Having located the nearest yoga studio to my flat (as to remove excuses), I booked the trial and went for it without really knowing what was about to unfold. Little I knew that I was in for a life lesson rather than just a stretching-bending session.

Yoga is teaching me to listen to my body, to feel and not to think. It does not matter if the right angle of my left thigh is correct. It does not matter if my hands do not reach my toes. It does not matter if I fall over while trying the goddess pose. All it matters is that I give it a try, to push myself a little, to feel and breathe… It is not important how I look compared to others, but how I feel to myself.

Key to continuity for me was “the vibe” when I entered the studio and met the teacher. If you don’t click, then chances are you are not gonna go back. There is nothing more personal than how a yoga teacher expresses her/himself, so there has got to be a connection right from the start.

My happy place at Rundum yoga, Unterbilk studio. Not sponsored. I just love that place.

My teacher deserves a special mention. I attend her two weekly classes: Hatha on Wednesdays (after work) and Yin on Sunday mornings (yes, 0930am on a Sunday! but let me tell ya, it has become my ritual to provide closure to the past week and ground me with perspective to the upcoming week). The link of her energy to my practice is strong and furthermore, she is helping me evolve and develop continuously. She really did change my life.

Sanja is an extremely experienced teacher, she is an excellent people reader (mind you: a psychologist), an empath always highly aware of everything and everyone in her class, and a good mixture of challenge and understanding, of structure and free-form. But what makes her unique: she is able to sing beautifully while doing the poses. Meaning: oneself is downward dog trying to breathe somehow and not pass out while your diaphragm is squeezed and blood is rushing to your head… while Sanja is singing in sanscrit! Not humming but freaking SINGING! Her voice soars through the wonderful acoustics of the studio and lands on you like a warm blanket on a cold day. True story.

After one year of weekly yoga and having expressed how much the sound of her voice soothes me, Sanja suggested I join her for a Saturday afternoon of something called “Kirtan”. “What is it?” I asked innocently. “Singing mantras to the rhythm of a typical Indian accordeon” she replied. “In which language?” I asked (fearing it would be in German). “In sanscrit” she replied like the most normal thing in the world.

I am a terrible singer, still I always sign up for these sporadic workshops. The first Kirtan session I took was very powerful. I felt my body going into “power saving mode”, yet I was fully awake, somehow “singing” in a language I don’t understand and managing to breathe efficiently through the perfectly timed mantras. My heart rate slowed to around 43-42 bpm! My fitness wrist watch even gave me a freaked buzzing alarm to wake me up. I assume I had a short glimpse of what a trance could look like.

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The thing about my story, is that I tackled my “rock bottom” health with every tool I could access. In parallel to yoga, I also started meditation. I meant business. I wanted to feel better and live happier. It worked.

Like every other person that has tried meditation and gave up, I had the same internal chatter: “I cannot sit still, I cannot quiet my mind, this is not for me, I get bored, I need something that keeps me moving, there are more productive things to do, etc etc”.

By March 2018 I made a personal commitment to “give it a try” and subscribed to a YEARLY package with an app called Headspace. How? During my plant based recipe research, Madeleine Olivia´s videos mentioned the app and explained some of the features, meanwhile Youtube´s algorithm put an advertisement at my feet.

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Not sponsored: The Headspace app.

It was a cartoonish short animation that I found super cute and not intimidating at all. I found the voice of Andy Puddicombe to be very comforting. Of course, science nerd over here had to Google this guy: He is (or used to be) a Tibetan monk, where he got trained for years and now he wants to help others and spread the practice.

I only felt the effect of meditation when I dove into it daily. DAILY. No way around this. No shortcut. That is the trick. Yes, I felt like an idiot, I felt like nothing was working, I felt like I was wasting my time, I felt like a failure for months… But I kept showing up every single day to my committed time slot. Like the practice tells us: every breath is an opportunity for change, to make it better. I felt this in my bones and just kept going at it. 

At one point, unconsciously, my daily 20 minutes became something I looked forward to, and anytime I skipped my morning session, during the day I felt “lacking” and had to take a few minutes to catch up with deep focused breathing. My body and mind were both actually asking for their 20 minutes of space.

Today (when I´m writing this) it marks 440 days of continuous daily practice and I am so proud of myself for this personal accomplishment.

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About the books.

Reading self-help books in public used to be a shame trigger for me. Let´s be honest: there is stigma about self-help, about not being able to toughen up and “just soldier on” all by yourself. I even got a chuckle as feedback when I showed to people the book “The Art of Happiness” by Howard Cutler about his interviews with the Dalai Lama. It is a beautifully written book that gives you a snippet of what the life of a truly happy non-egoic person could look like. I can only imagine how it felt for a trained psychiatrist like Howard Cutler to have years of his studies shaken by the presence of such grace.

My self-help book stack actually started thanks to the influence of two people that gave me the first exposure to terms like enlightenment and mindfulness. This way Eckhart Tolle came to my life. You either love him or hate him. He has this hypnotic mono-tonal murmur-like voice that can drive people crazy. But something about him clicked with me. I have read “The New Earth” twice and both times it has shaken me to my core. I prefer it over his other works because it has a more matter-of-fact tone and that helps my overly “square” brain to relate and digest. However, now that I -think- am more comfortable with abstract, grey and uncertainty, I will give “The Power of Now” another try. I do like to read books more than once, and each time they strike me differently.

Months passed with constant spiritual input, and at one point I might have overdosed, because I frantically started to look for extremely scientific books (even pre-med books!) to quench my thirst. This is what I mean by “wading between spirit and science”. I cannot exist only in one realm. I need both.

The books that I will without doubt recommend to any audience (spiritual or scientific) are the ones by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber. As “The C Word” documentary says: “he is the doctor, the scientist and the patient, all rolled into one”. With that slogan, how could anyone resist deep diving into his work?

In his books “Healing without Freud or Prozac” and the famous “Anticancer”, you have both: the world of a scientific hardcore researcher, and the world of tender, hopeful and humbled patient twice-struck with brain cancer. His last book “This is not the last goodbye” is a must read for everyone that wants to be deeply moved and change the way you look at the process of dying. He wrote it during the last months of his third (and last) relapse. One thing though: keep Kleenex next to you, it is a unique rollercoaster of hope and leaning towards death, that will take your breath away.

“The promise of sleep” by Dr. William C. Dement, I already featured in the “Breakfast in bed” post, but I need to repeat myself because this book was a reminder that a good night´s sleep is an act of loving yourself, of taking care of yourself. This book was also a reminder that no matter how much data I cram into my brain, I still cannot process all of it, I am still flawed, I am still human. I SUCK at going to bed in a disciplined way and I live in perpetual sleep scarcity. This book is a constant reminder that I will keep making mistakes with full awareness on a daily basis, but that is ok, as I know this with certainty: I am steadfast on my healing journey and one step at a time I will get there…

Be kind to yourself.