The Yoga of Gratitude with Alanna Kaivalya

Yoga Dharma and a Little Love with Alanna Kaivalya

weld`ing [1]::

weld`ing [1]::

When does one breathe?

Like sip the air so slowly you can taste the colour.

..                                        ...breathe like freedom.

To liberate our souls from bound shackles and unwept memories.

Where we purify our tears in the slow precipitation from elusive illusion to a physical dreamification.

And yes, I mean dreamification.

dream`ificat`ion [1]:; 

             (i)where all those pockets of brilliant imagination unconsciously reside in the depths of your                  heart; (ii)where you take your leap          of faith into a void abyss that bears the fruits of your vigour and passion for life; (iii)where your questions paradoxically are answers; (iv)your aspirations are     synced    in     life; (v) an embodiment of faith` your dreams become reality.

I carve a role for your structure, I breathe when you tell me.

Fused to you I am whole.

I crystallize in your soul.

xo to all. peace.

BERLIN:::!!!

BerliN-

Okay everybody who is reading this::
1) you MUST put Berlin at the very top of their bucket list. Berlin is hands down the best city I have ever been too. I thought it would be impossible to top New York City... but nope its not. Berlin tops NYC by like x1000! It is SO incredibly rich in life! That might make not sense to you, and alot of things in this blog might not make sense to you but I will do my best to explain to you this ECSTASY that I have just tasted for the past 4 days.... even though I feel like my head is still in the clouds (best feeling ever.) 
2)  Go GRAB A COFFEE and BRACE yourself... this is a long post but a good one!  AND LOTS OF PICS!!


okay, lets head off to BEAUTIFUL, BREATH-TAKING~ BERLIN CITY::

p.s. Berlin-ill be back for you.

DAY 1::

Me and Chelsea ( <-- who is the bomb.com! ) head out to Svasta airport. For those of you who have not heard of Savasta airport, keep it that way. It is essentially a homeless shelter in the middle of no where in Sweden... 

 The drive is 2 hours from our town and is pretty straight forward- thank goodness. We arrive nice and early at 3pm with only 15 hours to kill...a nightmare. Period. I wont bother to elaborate. We catch our Ryan Air flight at 630am to arrive in Berlin at 830am.

Once we arrive in Berlin we catch the S-Bahn to an apartment we rented on Air BandB in Friedrichshain. Friedrichshain is a fantastic borough. If you were to compare it to NYC it would be the equivalent of like a “meat-packing” district. It is a very young area filled with artists, musicians, students~ “up and comers” if you will. We buzz our #6 apartment building to be let in and the conversation goes something like this::

9am November 9^th, 2011

“Hi! Is this Samantha's apartment?” -Kirsten

“Yeah...” - a guys voice...

“Oh, um Im Kirsten Hogle... we rented on Air BandB..” -me confused

“Oh shit...” -guys voice..

..buzzer shuts off and door stays locked.

At this point me and Chelsea are thinking “what the eff?? did they forget we were coming?!” About 2 minutes later 20 something year old Samantha runs downstairs in her red flannel Pjs vintage T-Shirt bleached intense blonde hair and tattoos all over to grab us (rad chick by the way!) Check in was apparently at 3pm...no biggie. We grab some keys and continue the journey.

To start the day we head over to Mitte to check out the national Gallery on museum island. Probably not the best choice of museum to start your day when you are running on no sleep.. a little bit dry but still cool to check out! After we got a tip to take a city tour so you can see most of Berlin in a timely fashion! We caught a City Bus tour that took off from Alexanderplatz where the “infamous” TV tower is that you always here about. I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND taking the City Bus tour or Walking tour because it really is the best way to see most of Berlin in a limited time frame. The Bus tour was a hop on hop off so it took about 3 hours and we saw all of West Berlin including ~ Berliner Dom, Reichstag, Brandenburg gate, Tiergarten park, Zoologischer Garten, KiDeWe, Potsdamer Platz and Checkpoint Charlie.

After the tour we headed back to our digs to clean up. We then headed out to a local Mexican restaurant in Friedrichshain that was so delicious!! Being accustomed to the Swedish prices we were stoked to get delicious nachos as an appetizer and vegetarian enchiladas to share with 2 drinks each for $30 CDN! Literally a fraction of the price! In Sweden, that dinner would EASILY have been $75 CDN! By that time it was about 1030pm and we headed up to our digs to crash!! We functioned for 23 hours with zero sleep! We “slept like a tree” (as the Swedes say) in an apartment that pays “cold rent” meaning, MINIMAL heat... for those of you who know me well; that says alot in itself.

DAY TWO::

We woke up at 830am to head out to Hekscher Market where the 8 hour Concentration Camp tour to Sachsenhausen began! Our lovely tour guide, Jessica, was a Swede who moved to NYC to live for 7 years, met her now husband in London, and they have been living in Berlin for 6 years now! She was a wonderful little jelly-bean of knowledge! We took the S Bahn train 35 km outside of Berlin out to the camp and walked which summed up about an hour of time.

(If your not interested in info or history on the camp...*coughyourcrazycough*... skip the bolded blue writing below.)

The Saschsenhausen camp was constructed 1938 and little remains. The site has now reconstructed barracks for visitors to visualize how the camp looked. When you enter the camp you enter at the base of an equilateral triangle that is roughly equivalent to 20 football fields. The reasoning for a triangle layout was intended to allow the machine gun post in the entrance gate to completely dominate the camp. Later on, the camp needed to add additional watchtowers to the perimeter for more security.

The barracks were just rectangles that had two sections (left and right) and a central washing station. Roughly 600-800 people slept in one barrack. In the morning prisoners were given 30 minutes to get ready to standard for round-up. Standard was clean nails, done hair, zero dirt with 2 bathing fountains and 6 toilets. If they did not meet standard they were shot or were trampled to death.

Prisoners were divided up into a hierarchy system and assigned a triangle to wear. The lowest prisoners were Jews (yellow triangle), next were homosexuals (pink triangle), then communists (red triangle) and lastly criminals (also red triangle). We saw two of the Jewish barracks- both were reconstructed although one barrack had a single remaining wall. This was absolutely jaw dropping to see how these prisoners lived and the conditions they lived in. What I find even more mind boggling is that in 1992 (after this tour had re-opened as a museum/memorial) there was an arsenic attack on the Jewish barracks by a local Nazi- group. To think that these attack are still present today frightens me and gives me goosebumps. To what degree to people think it is acceptable to segregate and demean people for their spiritual beliefs?

After we went to the camp prison barrack- I know what your thinking.. “isnt the camp a prison in itself?” and yes you are right. Every person is a prisoner in this jumbo triangle jail; but the camp prison barrack would be like the “Alcatraz” of the jail. Prisoners that were sent here underwent the harshest punishments and treatments that the mind can fathom. Whatever you could think of was done. Worst in -30 degree wether, living in a concrete slab, prisoners would be left in isolation with little to nothing left to die. Some would be suspended from posts by their wrists tied behind their backs, known as Strappado.

Outside of the camp prison there were testing grounds. A marching strip is formed to the perimeter of the roll call ground were different experiments were carried out. Prisoners were to march over different surfaces testing pain tolerance, some were forced to march for 24-48 hours testing military footwear, some were forced to march on different drugs like cocaine to see the effect on the body. I feel like this would be a blessing if you were in the hospital barrack. In the hospital barrack, if you were higher on the hierarchy you could have actually been treated for your ailment; but majority were not. Here prisoners were injected with hepatitis to the liver as doctors tested different drugs to find a cure. Prisoners were deliberately given “gangrene” by having doctors insert wood and rusted metals into an open cut to test treatments.

We saw the dugout where mass murders occurred (bullets to hundreds of crammed prisoners in the dug out) we saw the infirmary, we saw the gas chamber, the burial grounds, we saw ALOT and it was ALOT to take in. The most bizarre thing was when we were leaving the camp you could hear an ambulance close by. To have life and death right next to each other is so paradoxical. It is also crazy to think that just 73 years ago; the same situation existed with people content with what was going on inside the camp living next door. Could you imagine hearing the screams of thousands and bullets going off in your back yard while cooking dinner?

I could talk forever about this camp and my experience but I think that is enough for now.


~So... if I lost you, COME BACK! Im done with “the boring stuff” for now~

Post concentration camp, me and Chels hit up the market just outside Herkscher Market. We grabbed a random wrap thing that we think was Turkish! It was wayyyyy to yummy! And then of course...we continued walking. Whats another 5 hours when you have done 6!

(Chelsea I *heart* this picture)

We first caught the train intending to go to Potsdamer Platz, but ended up heading to Potsdamer Hbf. 2 hours later we made it to Potsdamer Platz! HAHA! We finally got there and there was this vibrant scene set up in the centre. It had a whole bunch of christmas looking stands with German treats (sausage included) different jewelry, yummmmmy Gluhwein (hot red wine that is a common thing to drink) and a mammoth snow hill that you can tube ride down! See this is what I am talking about, the LIFE that Berlin has! In what city can you find a snow hill, with hundred of people drinking and chilling around a fire pit coming from a garbage can eating sausage in the heart of Berlin just 10 minutes away from some random market with delicious Turkish wraps!

Post Potsdamer Platz we went and got our touristy Checkpoint Charlie photo-op! We couldn't have been bothered to go inside the museum because by this point it was 830pm and we had been on our feet since 830am.

Back in Friedrichshain we grabbed a quick bite at Berlin Burger. It is this amazing tiny little diner that looks like a dive on the outside that has the BEST veggie burger!! Seriously. You Edmonton-ians that know about Blue Plate Diner- its better. In fact the following night we went right on back for round two!

OKAY LETS WRAP UP THIS DAY (atleast thats what you are probably thinking..)

~if i lost you.. COME BACK! THIS WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF MY TRIP!... (read below)~

SPREE PARK!!! By eleven we get back to our apartment and our tenant Samantha is having people over! Initially me and Chels are sooo bagged and thinking..are you for real?? But in the long run AWESOME! The guys were going out to a dubstep bar and the girls were heading to spree park. For those of you who do not know about spree park it is right by Treptower. It is this errie, creepy as heck, straight from a horror movie, never go there late at night! abandoned amusement park. It has been in alot of movies~ the most recent one being HANNAH. The owner, Nobert Witte, of the amusement park was a drug smuggler who got caught smuggling 180 kg of cocaine into Berlin. Now in prison, Berlin wants to keep the park “alive” as an attraction. Even though it is bizzare and crazy scary- there is this strange mystical beauty behind it. So we boogie the apartment at midnight pick up a 4 dollar bottle of wine and head to the park. If you have any intentions of checking out Spree Park, make sure you pick up the wine- you will need it, most likely all of it. Just saying. We have to walk through this pitch dark park for about 15 minutes before arriving at the gates of the park. Its the quiet that gets you, its just that quiet. At what point during the day, can you hear each step? Can you see and hear each breath? Can you feel the quick beat of you heart!? After jumping the ginormous entry gate and Samantha tells us to be quiet because of the guards- awesome, thanks for mentioning that now Samantha. Essentially shivering in my boots Iam latched on tight to Chelsea as we parade through the grounds. We walk along the railway track and there is this little pond in the middle with these creepy swans. They are scattered everywhere throughout the park. We spent about 40 minutes too long inside of the grounds.. ;) I was scared to sh*t doing this but now looking back loved it!

By 230am we are back at our apartment and PASSED OUT!

DAY 3::

Out of the aparment by about 9 am we headed over to Alexanderplatz to check out this free walking tour. For those of you wanting to go to Berlin, do not use expense as an excuse not to go. You can do SO MUCH for free, or for really cheap! Most of the sightseeing you can do on your own taking the train around, if you want more in depth details then you pay for a tour (going rate is still dirt cheap about 11 euros.) The walking tour, however, was going to alot of places that we had already checked out so we peaced. We headed to the East- Side Gallery and got some wicked pics! There are 105 artists that have paint on this wall- and it is wild to see the cultural unification in art from the prior chaos that Berlin has experienced.

We toured the Berlin Zoo for a few hours...

And we attempted shopping with no success...

....we found success at Berlin Burger...

...then we went back to "our" mexican restaurant for some delicious drinks....

except for this one...

Its so long for now Berlin....

 ...but trust.... I WILL be back.

preferably not looking like this...

::the RiveR hoRse.

Yo Yo everybody!

I just got back from Berlin last night!  Most alive city I have seen, so full of life and I have left feeling inspired.  I will blog about Berlin with some wicked pictures probably tomorrow but for now here is a piece I wrote while in Berlin.


...an unrequited love~ and a soul that is still searching.

xo to all

Love me like the river horse.

Lets leave at dusk.

            You know,

To the edge of the world,

            ...you know.

Let us live. Lets sing ourselves to sleep at the tip of reality.

Unexplainably, creation graced us with each other. We are somewhere between music and meaning unearthing our secrets, promises and archives that were buried years ago. We will love one another so extraordinary that we emanate spirit in the voice of our neighbours.

Let us wallow in the deepest caveat of each others being~ sequencing heart and lips the same.

Fossil barrel bodies, we still exist as one an unfathomable 55 million years later.

Together we run faster than the human foot that poaches our passion, dancing a blood sweat beat to freedom. Breath in breath we will trudge the depths of the oceans.

Once we love like this we be to be. We are in the purest form of our nirvana~ our home-made ecstasy.

i will love you to the essence of my being; like the river horse i give myself to you.

For now,

my river horse still searches lost.

Bound to a tangible earth. But I know he will find me..

..in the deepest caveat of his divine DNA.

::Zulu warriors preferred to be as brave as a hippopotamus, since even lions were not considered as brave. "In 1888, Captain Baden-Powell was part of a column searching for the Zulu chief Dinizulu, who was leading the Usutu people in revolt against the British colonists. The column was joined by John Dunn, a white Zulu chief, who led an impi (army) of 2000 Zulu warriors to join the British." [63]

"John Dunn was at the head of his impi. [Baden Powell] asked him to translate the Zulu anthem his men had been singing. Dunn laughed and replied: "He is a lion. Yes, he is better than a lion—he is a hippopotamus." [64]