Practice, coconuts, chai, and a midday nap—first real day in Mysore, India complete.

Each time I come to Mysore it feels like there is another layer of things to let go of. It’s a process that sheds what feels like an infinite amount of layers. Sometimes there are physical shifts, but more often it’s subtle and spiritual.

Every trip is really a descent into the inner world and this trip is just beginning.

Almost every person who seeks the depth of practice here in India is on a sincere quest for the deepest truth. While it may be tempting to judge ourself by how many poses we do or how deeply we go into certain asanas, the more we practice the more we realize that none of that matters.

What matters is what’s in our heart.

There is a hunger for true spiritual knowledge that burns within the heart of every yogi. It is a thirst for the waters of inner peace and a yearning for rest amidst an often unstable world.

Perhaps more than anything, Mysore is a place of refuge and shelter, a safe space to explore and experience parts of yourself that you normally keep hidden. But here, thousands a of miles away from all that you know, it’s just you, exactly as you are.

You’ll go through whatever you need to go through. But one day you’ll wake up to most basic and liberating truth. The simple fact that who you are is enough, that you’re okay exactly as you are, that you don’t need anything to complete yourself.

Make peace with yourself, your whole self, what you’re proud of and what you’d rather bury deep down.

Accept yourself and you will accept your whole world.

~

Author: Kino MacGregor

Editor: Katarina Tavčar

Photo: Agathe Padovani/Instagram