I want to be as calm as when I was 22.

I want to feel that calmness, that serenity, that confidence.

I remember 4th year of studying architecture, we did two trips (Barcelona and Copenhagen) and I felt very calm.

l knew that I was doing what I had to do and I was in the place where I had to be.

Now I am 40.

• I have a business that has proven to be steady already for 8 years.
• I have enough savings for living without income for several months.

When will I feel confident about money and income?

• I am practicing yoga daily
• The improvement in the last months is noticable, although day by day I don´t feel the difference.

When will I trust myself and know that I can be persistent and do what I aim for?

I have proven myself over the years to have made good decisions, to have built a good and succesful life.

I can start trusting myself.

When I was 22.

• I was doing what I had to do
• I was where I had to be

I was doing it right.

I think that is the key:

Be sure that you are doing what you have to do,

And that you are where you have to be.

That brings calmenss and confidence.

What happens inside the limits of your body is yours.

• Emotions
• Feelings
• Thoughts
• Words
• Hate
• Excitement
• Love
• Anger
• Guilt
• …

It´s all yours.

Nobody can put that inside you.

• Nobody makes you angry. You make yourself angry for something that happened outside
• Nobody makes you excited; you get excited about something that happened

You are not responsible for those emotions, feelings or thoughts.

They can come randomly.

But you are responsible for how you reply to them.

• Someone said something that made you angry?
• That person didn´t make you angry. The emotion came from within you. Be kind to yourself. Your soul is pure, permanent. You don´t need to have a hard time for something that you created yourself. Stop it, relax, let it go and come back to you

Realize that everything outside yourself is a theater that challenges you, that makes you react.

Stay clear.

Stay calm.

Look at what´s permanent.

While Yoga Asanas, Pranayama and Meditation work on the Physical Body and Philosophy works on the mental Body, Tibetan Singing Bowls work directly on the Emotional Body, which can be harder to reach at times.

Tibetan Singing Bowls have been used for healing purposes for centuries and even millenia.

They have been used in Tibet and Himalayan region, including Nepal, Bhutan and North India since more than 2.000 years ago (it could be up to 5.000 years ago).

In those times, monks produced the bowls while chanting mantras and having the intention of making them healing instruments. They were made out of different metals, especially out of iron coming from a meteorit that fell on the region.

Nowadays they are not produced anymore in that way and of course, the purpose of producing them is more oriented to commercial than to healing.

Since every Bowl is handmade, each of them has its own unique sound.

But they all reproduce a sound connected to Ohm, connected to the Universe.

Some say that it´s the sound of the Big Bang, and that is why it goes so deep into us.

Since sound is vibration, it goes into our bodies not only through our ears but through every cell of our body, and especially through ears, palms of the hands and soles of the feet.

The cells of our body have memory.

This memory doesn´t reach only our whole life, but it reaches also previous generations, due to the fact that information goes through genes and knowledge, generation after generation.

The sounds of the Tibetan Singing Bowls make our cells vibrate in that way of the Universe, of the Oneness. They bring up that old memory from our cells and connect us with our own Self, with our own inner innocent kid, with the Universe, with others.

They say that being sick comes from the human belief that the World is dual, that you and me are different, that an animal and a person are different, that yesterday is different than tomorrow or a hundred years ago. Being sick comes from thinking that I should be doing somethind different than I am, or I should be treated in a different way, or I should be a different person. Considering all this makes us think that we are different, that other people are better or worse and it makes us sick, stressed, insecure.

The whole idea of the Singing Bowls is that they connect us with the Oneness.

There is no you and me.

There is one whole consciousness, stable, unchangeable.

God is in everything and everything is in God.

Everything is good the way it is.

This material world is changing, it´s fleeting, it´s unstable,

But the consciousness that lays underneath is there, has been there and will be there forever.

This connection with the Universe that comes in the Sound Healing Therapy, this connection with our inner Self and with others not only brings peace to our hearts and minds but also takes us to a different state, the state of inner peace.

And that heals us.

So they say.

So be it.

A couple days ago I saw at home the magazine El Mueble that my wife bought last summer.

I had never paid attention to this kind of magazines of decoration.

I loved the ones of modern architecture.

But this time something made a clic:

What if this was our home for a hostel?

My wife made two pretty amazing homes in Jaen and Saint Petersburg.

Cozy, beautifully designed, practical.

And I saw this same qualities in that magazine.

Those homes in that magazine are amazing.

Who wouldn´t like to live there, or spend a couple of weeks enjoying the views, nature and coziness of those homes while practicing daily yoga?

From now on, I have a new source of inspiration to feed my dream: Decoration magazines.

Let´s make a beautiful home where we run our hostel.

«French people are like Spanish, but happy»

I heard the first sentence from Jean Pierre 4 years ago and I still agree with him.

I don´t know if French people are happy,

But I am sure that Spanish people are not.

We are always concerned, worried, angry, impatient, stressed.

• We proudly say to foreigners that this is the best country to live in, but we hate our politicians, we hate our coworkers, we hate our neighbours,
• We proudly say that we know how to enjoy life because we go out for a beer with friends often. It´s true that we have good climate and it´s easy for us to go out than in Northern countries for example, but that doesn´t guarantee happiness. We go out for drinks to cover our deep insatisfaction with life.
• We want to think that drinking a beer makes us happy, because we forget about problems.

But problems are still there after the beer.

What we are missing is that way of living life and work without concern, not thinking that we have problems, but knowing that that is our life, full of challenges that we are ready to overcome.

I include myself (of course) under this Spanish mindset, I am not an exception here.

So,

When I notice that I am concerned for no reason, running around ´kinda´ worried (or see people like this), I try to slow down my mind, breathe slower and realize that nothing is going wrong, that everything will be fine, that life is beautiful while we are here.

We can also enjoy it just like French people do 😉

When you look on Instagram it seems like you have to love everything you do and you have to be passionate every moment that you do everything.

It´s not true.

Sometimes it´s hard and you don´t feel like doing what you are passionate about.

But you have to keep doing it.

Emotionlessly if necessary.

Recently I had the hardest week of training in 4 months.

• I had important pain in the shoulders
• I was out of my routine, with guests at home and travelling often
• I was having bad nights of sleep

It felt like a tremendous effort to start my yoga practice each and everyday.

Even, when I started, almost all the time I wanted to stop.

But I kept on.

I kept showing up.

Without energy, without will.

That´s when I remembered some things from the past:

• When I was a teenager I swam everyday 2 hours/day in a team. It didn´t matter if I was tired, if I was busy, if I didn´t feel like. I just went everyday to the swimming pool
• When I was studying architecture at the University, I went to classes everyday and I studied at home everyday. That´s how I became an architect. It didn´t matter if I felt like studying or if I was tired. I just kept on doing it

In these two cases I had a commitment, with a team or with myself. I had to show up.

But when I am training on my own it´s easy to give up or not show up.

Because I have no commitment with anyone else.

That´s why I need a commitment with yourself or with god.

Having a commitment with myself and with god, I have to show up.

There are no excuses.

• If I am tired, I do my practice
• If I have pain, I do my practice
• If I don´t feel like practicing, I do my practice

I keep doing my practice anyways.

Emotionlessly if necessary.

Because there are only two tools to liberate us from ignorance:

1. Daily practice
2. Detachment from sensory organs

So keep practicing.

«If you have pain and you take 2 or 3 days rest of practicing yoga, when you come back, pain will be back»

«No pain, no gain»

Khartik, Nirvana Yoga Shala

Finally muscle pain came back.

That means that I am training properly.

When pain is here, I have to keep training. It means that the muscles are growing in strength and stretching.

Training with muscle pain is hard.

It hurts.

Then the battle with your mind starts all over again, with a new reason to quit.

But you have to keep up.

I have been training for the last 2 days with big muscle pain in the ribs, it´s hard, motivation is low, I have trained maybe 70%, but that´s better than nothing.

The body is getting stronger.

Welcome pain.

A couple days ago, the Show Luzia from Cirque du Soleil made me cry twice.

With the tears came two thoughts.

1. We are all together in this. We are all trying our best.

2. We are a beautiful species

I don´t know if thoughts come first and then the emotions or the other way around.

In both cases it happened at the end of each part, when all the participants came into stage, with loud music, singing all at once. 

I feel the effort of them,

I see the beauty of their souls,

Which in the end is the beauty of our souls,

Of my soul.

Thanks for that, Cirque du Soleil

A couple weeks ago a friend asked me to help his nephew with geometry.

In that moment I felt that it would be too much work. I already had my work online, my daily practice of yoga and my interest for meditation with singing bowls. Apart from that, I am a father, who has to take care of the house and of the family.

Still I was not sure about what to decide.

I asked close friends an family for advice.

My wife said:

«Take it, you´ll activate your brain. In Russia we say that resting means changing the activity.»

I liked that.

But I got convinced with the philosophy of Yoga.

Just do your duty, without expectation. Get liberated and help others get liberated.

So just do what you have to do.

Help someone.

My work,

My practice of yoga,

Me taking care of the family…

Everything is very individual, very isolated (very selfish), very egocentered.

I decided that it was better to get out of my bubble and help someone.

A couple weeks later, I am very satisfied with the decision.

Not only I am activating my brain, I am also exercising love, by helping someone with all my heart and knowledge. And I am very proud of him, he is getting to understand concepts.

I have been practicing yoga 6 days a week for the last (almost) 3 months.

• Almost everyday a full session of Ashtanga Yoga Series.
• Almost everyday, at least, 2 hours of yoga.

Still my mind keeps tricking me.

Today,

While practicing,

I was cold, it was cold in the flat and I couldn´t get warm.

I didn´t start to sweat and I was considering the option of stopping, even after about 30 or 40 minutes (around Purvottanasana) .

I was thinking things like:

1. «Why do I need to practice everyday?
2. «Today I ame at the seaside with the familiy. Why don´t I just go out for a walk and join them?»
3. «See? I´ve been practicing for 3 months straight and still I didn´t get anywhere. On top of that, I am not that good. Look, I want to stop today. Let´s get out of here.»

Then, suddenly, I realized it.

It was my mind tricking me.

Again!

Then I decided to not listen to it,

I decided to just do what I had to do.

Continue with the practice.

Push a little bit until I started to sweat.

Then everything started to flow again. I felt motivated and enthusiast, I flowed from one asana to the other, I enjoyed Vinyasa inbetween and finished with upside down postures which I enjoyed.

The feeling at the end was great, as usual.

P.S. Your mind will keep tricking you forever.

Just do what you have to do.

Keep going.