beautiful lies

On the yoga retreat I attended, we had a practice, to tell a randomly chosen person, the lies we have told in our lives, that have bothered us the most and the least.

After walking a few kilometres, and sharing our lives, we came to the conclusion, that the lies we tell other's are usually split into two types, 'white lies' to protect the feelings of others, and the 'self-deceits' which exist to protect ourselves, to strengthen the lie we live.

Personally, I think that we overuse white lies, I think we would live much less in self-deceit, if people around us were more honest to us, instead of worrying "will it hurt his/her feelings". Although I have no idea how to change this, normally I'd go with the "practice what you preach" thinking, but if I'm the only one doing it, I will come across as an asshole.


HAHA, almost got you there, I'm too blunt, I will tell my honest opinion of things, and I wish others would treat me the same way.


My pair for the practice was an older woman, she told me about the times she cheated on her partner's, and how it made her feel afterwards when coming clean or taking the lie to the grave.
What she, and I learned, was that the hardest part was accepting the behaviour oneself, realising that one is not the person one thinks;
And the anxiety from the insight that "Even I don't live up to my own values".

Does this mean that the moral principles we live by, are wrong, if we time and time again break them, or are the values self-deceits themselves?

How "we wish we would be", or "how we wish others would perceive us"

This can be thought upon from many perspectives, maybe the values one has is not one's own. Maybe they are inherited from family, or the culture one grew up in.

How many of us are even aware of the values that seem to control us? In many ways the remind of the so called 'social norms' that most people seem aware of, yet, if you ask them to list them; They are usually incapable of it unless someone breaks one of them.

I think this is a topic that should be discussed more, because, after all it often takes another person to open our eyes.

yoga, and doing things on impulse pt2

Another interesting thing was the anonymity of the place.
I'm bad with names, but even so, people just used each other's first names, nobody really told their occupation etc, since it wasn't relevant for the occasion.

So the discussions felt like back in the internet era I grew up in, people just spoke with each other, so my version of smalltalk worked.
I'm aware that my definitions of small & deep talk is 'weird', but nonetheless, it worked to just speak out whatever what was on my mind.

But after a few days of doing that, one could start figuring out their jobs etc, based on their perspective in different things I talked about.

It's kinda sad, but.. at least old people seem to appreciate talking with me, I wish more people in my own age would do it.. But, better than nothing.

Was these weird things we had to do, like me + some random person, and we had to tell the other one about small things we appreciate in our life.

My pair told me like "I've never spoken about these things with another man" (he was like 50-60 years old)

So I asked him like, "As you're about twice my age, at what point did you start appreciating the small things in life?"

This opened the floodgates, was rather amusing, how one well formulated and guiding question did that.

On the next day, it was a similar one, except this time, we had to tell about different lies we've told during our lives.

For my part it quickly went into an 'thinking out loud' how most of the lies we tell, are self-deceit.

Overall the yoga retreat was an interesting experience, I know that I wrote earlier, that I most likely wouldn't attend one in a while again.. I changed my mind on this, I could do it, if it was a different themed one.

yoga, and doing things on impulse pt1

Last saturday my dear yoga teacher messaged me, that "going to saarijärvi on an yoga retreat for a few days, you free? Got an extra ticket"

Well, my first reaction was "no, sounds troublesome", but considering I have my self-regulatory rules about yoga, that says "unless I got a proper reason, I should always do it"
So I changed my mind in an instant and agreed to it.

Soon I was on the way to Suomen joogaopisto that's in this idyllic place in Saarijärvi.

It wasn't until I sat alone in the evening outside, that it hit me "This is gonna be weird, but interesting"

Since I've never thought that I'd go to this types of things, as I didn't like summer camps really as a child.


The yoga style was "integral hatha"
Which is something I've been doing for a couple of years, currently my yoga has been rather lacking.

But it was an interesting experience, and I generally like to train it after a break, because it forces me to listen to my mind, instead of going on muscle memory.

It's fascinating when the body is like "let's do it like we did when I was practicing daily, but then I notice that I don't have to it, it's enough with less.
It may sound mundane, but for me who generally do everything to the extreme it's rather weird feeling to not do something to 100%, and instead listening to my body.

The retreat was from saturday to wednesday, but I had to leave a half-day early, as I had an appointment at Huutoniemien sairaala for the autism/adhd diagnosis that has been undergoing for about an year now.

It felt weird, to go sleep 21-22, waking up at 6, doing a morning practice from 7 to 8:30 before breakfast, but it's a nice start to the day, even if the pace of the class was rather slow for me, I would had prefered a more energizing workout.

The days had different themes based on the 'yamas'. On sunday it was 'ahimsa', so as I wasn't feeling so great in the morning, I didn't attend the meditation and pranayama class. I felt somehow guilty, and that I was disappointing my teacher who invited me, but that's the idea kinda of ahimsa, to not hurt others or oneself, to listen to what the body want's instead of what the mind thinks i ought to do.

In the sunday evening I was feeling really weird, wasn't sure why. Until I realised it was the lack of listening to podcasts, so once I did that, it all felt good.

As most people there were beginners in the style, and the focus was as an introductory course to the style, I didn't attend many of the non asana classes or pranayama ones.
Since when it comes to me, I rather sit by myself and do the breathing and meditation exercises.

Overall it was okay, I'm not sure I'll be attending one in a while, but I know that many of my friends one enjoy it.


For me it felt like I was a documentarian there, observing some type of social experiment.
For an example, the breakfast was meant to be in silence, people adhered to the rule, but when the teacher left, it was hilarious to observe a group of 20 mostly in 50-60 years ago, starting to talk and whisper, like we were 7 and in elementary school.

I really enjoy observing these different ways group's of people act, how easily some can just listen and follow rules etc without questioning them.