Guest Post: Kami from Searching for Serendipity

Hi there! My name is Kami and I blog over on Searching for Serendipity. I am super happy to be guest blogging over here today for Pixie, isn't she fab!? I thought I would share a traveling tale with you all. I love to travel and experience new cultures. So far I have visited India, Ireland, Holland, Italy and Bali. Today I am going to share with you some powerful life lessons I learned while traveling in Bali.

Bali has taught me a lot of things, my time here was nothing short of an amazing string of lessons. You don't have to look very hard for them either, they are everywhere...if you are only willing to open you eyes and your heart.

I will never look at a grain of rice the same way again. The love and care that the Balinese people give to their rice paddy's is unbelievable. They sit in tiny palm covered shacks watching for birds, clacking noise makers to protect their precious grains. All of the water used in the rice paddy's is communal. It's source begins high in the mountains with a generous rain and the farmers up there will dam off what they need in their terraced fields. Gravity is allowed to run its course as all extra water is released to flow down to neighboring fields until the much needed water reaches the busy and bustling city that tries to grow around the rice. Rice is still harvested by hand, each and every single grain. Think of that love and care next time your eyes are bigger than your stomach. Give thanks.

Bali taught me how to smile. The people here are always smiling. And not fake smiles, you know the kind that don't reach a persons eyes? We are talking face splitting, ear to ear, huge, wide, toothy grins. Truly genuine smiles that make you feel special just seeing them. Before you know it you are smiling all day long, you go to bed at night and your cheek muscles hurt you have smiled so much. 
 

My yoga practice here taught me that I am stronger than I think I am. That just when I think I cant do anymore, I only have to try a little bit harder. Yoga also taught me to release any emotions as I feel them, to not store them in my muscles only for them to sneak out later...

Snorkeling in the beautiful warm ocean water taught me to breath. To just float and breathe and not be affraid to let the world pass me by. It honestly is a liberating sensation, to just float, give up fighting gravity, focus on your breath and your breath alone as you  let the warm currents of the Indian Ocean carry you along. I felt privileged to be witness to a whole new world full of tropical fish in every imaginable color, coral of all sizes and shapes, and silence...blessed, golden silence.

Bali taught me to appreciate the little things in life. To pause and give thanks. To breathe deep, and see the beauty in the world and all around me.

These simple yet profound lessons are everywhere really, you don't have to travel all the way to Bali to find them. You have only to open your heart and your mind and let the beauty of life in. Sometimes this is hard to do in the midst of our daily lifes full of errands, chores, and never ending to do lists. BUT TRY!

Here are three simple things that I promise if you do them every day, you will feel the change:

Breathe: breathe deep and long, from your belly not your chest

Give thanks: thanks the heavens, spirits, God, Buddah, whatever you want. But give thanks. Practice an attidue of gratitude

See the beauty: Even in the midst of despair and tragedy there is beauty to be found. Maybe it is simply a smile form a stranger, or a flower growing out of the crack in a sidewalk....it is there. Open your eyes and you will see it

Thank you Bali. You will forever have my heart.

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Kami
http://about.me/kamika