Detox in the Desert

October 2011

The Bedouins were chattering in the background, the campfire was braising and the moon was high up in the sky. I pulled the sleeping back over my nose, just snug enough so that I could still see the stars – although without my contact lenses, the sparkles up above were kind of blurred. With my feet as close to the fire as possible without melting my sleeping bag, wearing three layers of clothes and drowsy from all the joints that had been passed around, I was feeling calm and peaceful. It was good to be away from El Gouna, mingle with other people, do something different.

The past weeks in September, which were meant to rest and recover from a heavy season on the liveaboard in the Maldives and the many travels over the summer, did not render the expected results. It didn’t feel relaxed at all. Instead, I had been feeling bored, unmotivated and frustrated. Although I was doing yoga everyday and making physical progress, I did nothing much else and mentally, emotionally nor spiritually was I achieving anything gratifying. The quality time I hoped to spend with Stefano, turned out to be endless hours on the couch watching TV. There was a lack of energy altogether.

Despite a great dive trip with friends during the last weekend of September (see my previous blog), I had trouble getting out of my sluggish mood. Four weeks into this period of boredom and frustration, I signed up for a yoga/desert trip in the Sinai. Bless Facebook.

Already the Bedouin taxi driver that took me to the beach camp managed to lift my spirits. He talked about his four wives (of which two exes), his seven children and drove me from Sharm to Nuweiba at an average speed of 140 km/hour, only slowing down from 180 to 100 km/hour when dialing a number on his mobile.

Three days in the desert, yoga at sunset swatting away flies every two seconds, watching a young goat get killed, skinned and turned into the best goat meat soup I ever tasted and climbing out of my sleeping bag to find a spot at least 100 meters away from the camp to do a midnight pee in the moonlight was exactly what I needed to get out of my lethargic mood.

Back in El Gouna, I was offered an opportunity to keep up my rediscovered need for activity. Work at the Liquid Park; a huge, inflatable, floating park in one of the lagoons of El Gouna. Tasks and responsibilities: play with kids and adults alike, show them how to swing, jump, flip, slide, balance and run on the park, pull them out of the water, cheer at them when they overcome their fears, motivate them when they are hesitating to jump down, hand out and take back life vests, take lots of action pictures, upload them on Facebook (check them out on the Liquid Park El Gouna page!) and, occasionally, when the manager has a day off, manage the cash box and the bookings.

I earned per day what I used to earn per hour at the bank, but I was outside, I was working with people who were enjoying themselves, I was running around, the colleagues were great and I was having fun. It was the best way to spend the after summer in El Gouna.

Until the day I ignored my age and physical condition and tried to do a back flip on the trampoline of the Park. After three good jumps to get sufficient height, I swung my head and legs backwards, closed my eyes and prayed that I would land on my feet or knees. Unfortunately, God – who I have clearly been ignoring for my entire life – decided not to answer my prayer this time yet and had me drop on my neck. Now, falling down on a trampoline is not a big issue, with the whole idea of it being a soft and bouncy toy for kids. But physicists know better. When you have two legs trying to finish a back flip while your head is not in the air anymore, the legs come to a sudden halt when they too hit the trampoline behind your head. And of course, thank you Einstein, the energy previously carried by the mass of the legs has to be transformed into some other kind of energy, in this particular case into a reverberation through the spine which sounds more or less like 15 chiropractors cracking 15 necks at the same time (or however many vertebrae I have). Auw. I couldn’t move for three days, was extremely stiff for another five and still haven’t recovered fully. Of course I totally blame God for my first real injury ever. Enough said.

November 2011

Luckily I recovered enough to work through the busy weeks of November. We had ten days of extreme madness at the park, as it was a national holiday (Eid Kebir) and tutti Cairo was in El Gouna, enjoying the last days of (real) warmth by the sea. Some kids came to the Park every day, yellow life vests were flying around all over the place, flocks of SUV, BMW’s and other big cars filled the parking from 10.00 till 17.00 hrs. It was great fun. Now the park is about to close down for the winter and it’s time to us to move on too.

Definitely another highlight of the last few weeks is the little rabbit that I had tattooed on my left ankle. They say that tattoos are addictive and I believe it. If you want to know why I choose a rabbit, here’s an instructive link: http://www.chinesezodiac.com/rabbit.php
Photos will follow soon, but right now, the bunny looks a bit scabby so I will let him heal before I put him on public display… And yes, I’m already thinking of what to get next… ;-)

But for now it’s detox time. I’m in the Sinai desert (well, by the beach), in a nice hotel with my mother and several other guests who thought it was a good idea to get cleansed physically, emotionally and mentally. The first two days we were served lots of raw food: delicious fresh and crispy greens, nut & vegetable hamburgers, cashew puree and plates full of other rabbit food. But that party ended two days ago, when we switched to a juice diet. Five times a day, we get served glasses of super freshly squeezed juice: melon/lemon, carrot/orange, guava/strawberry, cucumber/spinach/apple, you name it. In between, we drink a witchy black concoction of herbs that is supposed to clean our intestines of all the gunk we have accumulated over the years and to help us with that, we have been given a DIY enema kit. I shall not expand any further on that topic. In the evening, we have vegetable broth without salt and twice a day we take pills to replenish our intestinal flora. We have one more day of juice fasting to go, and I’m not hungry at all, but I am really craving for something to chew on…

Besides the nutritional side of the retreat, we have yoga and massages to get us through the day, as well as sessions of Emotional Freedom Technique and Emo Trance… So I’ve submissively been tapping on my energy meridians to influence my subconscience and I’ve been practicing on how to soften energy blockages and let the energy circulate to restore a healthy flow. Hmmm, yes… well, I used this EFT tapping to stop smoking. So far so good, but I’ll let you know my final judgement on this therapy once I’ve been through stressy situations, which is always the ultimate test for my non-smoking resolutions… Anyway, spiritual energy flowing or not, I’m thoroughly enjoying myself, getting even more of a tan than I already had after working on the Liquid Park and spending some healthy time with my mom.

And if all goes well, I’ll be off to the Maldives in a week or so… But that story, I’ll save it for my next blog…