A trip to Kenya
In February, 2014 I got on a plane heading to Kenya not really knowing what to expect…. as cheesy as it sounds, the one strong feeling that I had was of returning the many blessings in my life and in my career. Do something constructive and positive to the world felt like a good start. But this was mixed with a feeling that I was too small to create an impact of such a change. Actually, that feeling kept me away from being helpful for a long time.
This changed when I joined NY yoga studio Laughing Lotus in this beautiful journey to Kenya in partnership with organization called Africa Yoga Project (AYP). I spent two weeks of Seva (service) around the slums supporting AYP on the on-going 300+ yoga classes offered weekly to kids and women in prison, and also building school desks, shopping for new clothes for kids in orphanages - literally helping out with anything they were doing in their day to day operation.
We were there to give something to them - give them support, help, love and laughters - but I believe deep in my heart that, in this journey, I and all the others that joined this “Seva trip” received much more from this beautiful community and all those wonderful kids; more than we could give, more than we could have imagined. It is an unconditional love hard to explain. There is a level of sincerity in that humility that is impossible to put in words.
I came back transformed, and I realized that the little we do here affects and transforms lives of people everywhere (does not matter the distance). I felt the weight of my own responsibility in every moment of my daily life after that. We are so connected in ways that the eyes can't see, but the hearts can surely feel.
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty”