Bending The Body and the Mind in San Marcos, Guatemala

March 22 - April 15, 2008
San Marcos, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

If you need to see where Guatemala is, click on the interactive map here!

The small town of San Marcos is a mostly quiet, mostly pedestrian town with an esoteric and somewhat adhesive vibe to it... not adhesive in the sniffing-glue-kind-of-way, but in the way that people just simply tend to stick around longer than expected. Almost every morning is gently greeted with a serene view of three volcanoes and a range of mountains that define the horizon along the perimeter of Lake Atitlan. I decided to come here for a healthy break at Las Piramides where they teach yoga, meditation, and esoteric studies. After years of university education exercising only minimal parts of my brain, and after many more years at work spent acclimatizing my butt to the unflattering shape of a typical cubicle office chair, I was eager to begin a month long physical and mental rehabilitation with yoga and meditation. Ironically enough, meditating hurts both my butt and my mind! The course completes with 5 days of fasting (blended fruits and veggies allowed) coupled with 5 days of silence and structured meditation.

At Las Piramides, I stayed in pyramid number 13, which is an especially important number in ancient Guatemala since much of their traditional calendar system is based upon this number. Settling into the Piramides, I have come to know many amazing people from various parts of the world interested in collaborating in a healthy and peaceful world rather than support the consumerist, political, and unnatural world that we have become accustomed to. Yoga has proved to painfully point out how inflexible I have become over the years, and is also giving me hope of recovering lost flexibility and awareness of my body. Metaphysical concepts have proven an interesting challenge to my logical engineer-trained brain, and have provided a stimulating and interesting view of reality. It has been a long time since I have used my brain this much... certainly not at work, and certainly not at university! Meditation has definitely been a challenge to bring a calmness and degree of organization to my typically overactive mind, and also to bring an awareness to my breath. Since San Marcos is clogged with hippie-esque gringos, there were many opportunities to take some courses of interest including shiatsu massage, reiki, medicinal plants, and even a stained-glass course out of recycled materials and volcanic rock.

Here is an example of my typical day in San Marcos:

• 6 am - wake up and walk down to see the sun's fresh rays illuminating the lake and splashing across the volcanoes
• 7 am - hatha yoga for an hour and bit, breathing and stretching myself silly
• 8:30 am - grab a fresh fruit (wow) breakfast and a shower if I feel so inclined, typically not at the same time
• 10 am - metaphysics class, essentially a philosophy course on perceived reality and aspects beyond typical physical world, including incredible correlations to science such as quantum physics.
  
• 11:30 am - go find some lunch, take a course, or go and sit along the rocks by the lake
• 5 pm - meditation, in attempts to slow my scattered brain down
• 6:30 pm - join people for dinner at one of the local restaurants
• 9 pm - get ready for bed!
  

Other noteworthy things include the fact that I sort of spontaneously decided to become a vegetarian for a period of time... somewhat because the kitchen at the pyramids is vegetarian-only, and quite possibly due to the unappealing scrawny half-feathered chickens roaming at random through the piles of garbage around here. After about a month, I surprisingly have not yet had any serious meat cravings! Usually at night I have to attempt to ignore the horribly out-of-tune and horribly unselfconscious screamings from several competing christian churches, simultaneously shrieking 'songs' over the city with their megaphone karaoke systems. If it is not the churches, it is the incessant barking of the rampant wild dogs in town I must attempt to ignore instead, but quite often it is both. On one occasion, there was something I could not ignore with earplugs... a 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Guatemala and shook my whole pyramid solidly for about 30 seconds! This is something I had never experienced before!



San Marcos. This is my little #13 pyramid that I sleep in during my month yoga and meditation course.


San Marcos. Although goods have been inflating dramatically in the recent months, this bundle of beens, onions, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, carrots, and zucchini cost me the equivalent of 2 dollars Canadian!


San Marcos. A view of the three volcanoes surrounding the high altitude Lake Atitlan. This is the view I get every single day!


San Marcos. This is the other view I get everyday, where the steep hills run almost straight into the lake!


San Marcos. This is my Shiatsu course I am taking with a couple other people from the Pyramids!


San Marcos. They call this Karma Yoga, where we help clean up the town a little by picking up garbage and plastics that are strewn around haphazardly.


Chichicastenango. The Sunday market is one of the largest in Central America and likely one of the most colourful from all the textiles that are sold everywhere.


Chichicastenango. Graveyard in Chichi a short walk from the market where people were performing mayan rituals at the graves.


San Marcos. Morning yoga posing with Amy!!


San Marcos. Morning yoga posing with Nina.


San Marcos. More morning yoga posing with Nina, looking out to the volcanoes on the other side of Lake Atitlan.