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The Moksha Ashram, Rishikesh

  That afternoon, our teacher for Chakra Healing is Swami Nanda. There are only seven of us in the class and we all sit on cushions around a central circle called a mandala that’s decorated with fresh flowers and candles and small statues of Hindu deities.

  The air is lightly perfumed with essential oils to inspire our pranayama – deep breathing.

  Swami Nanda presses her palms together and bows her head.

  ‘My soul honours your soul. I honour the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honour the light, love, truth, beauty, and peace within you, because it is also in me. In sharing these things, we are united, we are the same, we are one.’

  Everyone replies saying ‘namaste’.

  And I realise and appreciate for the first time what the word ‘namaste’ actually means.

  I’d just assumed it was a cover-all greeting, but her words truly resonate with me. They carry the most beautiful expression of human acknowledgment that I’ve ever heard. It brings an actual tear to my eye, as I reflect on how it perfectly encapsulates how I felt about Jon and me being soul mates. It also touches on my fear that I might never have the chance again to truly feel that way about another soul.

  Consequentially, Swami Nanda has my complete attention as she goes on to explain to us all about the essence of Chakra Healing. She tells us that there are seven precious elements or chakras and that chakra is a Sanskrit word that means ‘wheel’.

  ‘The seven chakra wheels are perceived as whirling invisible energy portals between the mind and the body. They are located along the central line of a person from the base of the spine “root” to the top “crown” of the head.’

  She draws our attention to a poster on the wall depicting an outline of someone sitting in lotus position with seven circled areas aligned along the spine to the head. The circles are around the tail bone, the groin, the diaphragm, the heart, the throat, the middle of the forehead and the very top of the head and each chakra has a Sanskrit name and a specific associated colour.

  ‘Our first lesson in chakra healing is understanding that in the same way blocked arteries can affect our wellbeing, blocked energy channels — or bandhas — in our chakras can often lead to psychological or physical illnesses.’ Swami Nanda explains.

  Okay. I can imagine blocked arteries and blocked channels but whirling energy wheels?

  ‘Blockages in our chakras can be caused by external forces and physical trauma such as injury, grievance, grief, pain, and discomfort. Imbalances can be caused by us holding onto emotional shock or disappointment, leading us to store up emotional toxins which accumulate to obstruct our energy life force or prana. This can lead to feelings of depression, anxiety, and lack of purpose and meaning in our lives.’

  This certainly strikes a chord with me as I know how deeply I feel my grief over losing Jon.

  I’m pretty sure that every single one of my chakras is blocked and imbalanced and broken. Perhaps it might be worth taking this seriously and exploring this weird science if it could help me? Swami Nanda explains how we can diagnose which of our chakras need healing and how we can clean and balance them with white light, certain crystals and meditation, but how a blocked chakra needs ‘self-expression and chakra dancing’ to release that blocked energy and allow it to once again flow through our bodies. A feeling of utter dread washes over me as I hazard a guess at what’s coming next. Chakra dance was no doubt going to be a frantic posturing to some kind of absurd music.

  ‘Through our dancing, our freed energy will be seen by us through our third eye or what is called our Ajna as colours. This is where the old adage “showing your true colours” originates.’

  When the music starts, it sounds like a jungle drumbeat.

  Everyone stands and begins to shake themselves and move their bodies in what looks to me like a tribal frenzy. I feel terribly self-conscious because I’m not a particularly good dancer.

  I prefer to sit still and listen to classical music rather than prance about to it.

  Thinking back, the only dancing I’ve done in a long time was a slow sway with Jon at the end of a romantic evening in a restaurant where there’d been a live band. But soon, being the only one in the room not moving about to the banging beat feels even more awkward.

  ‘Let us focus our minds on seeing an aura of colour through our own vibrations.’

  I soon realise that no one is watching me because they all have their eyes closed.

  So I start to shuffle my feet and sway my arms as the music becomes faster.

  Keeping up with the beat becomes difficult. I stamp my feet and jump up and down.

  My breathing gets faster until, thankfully, the music changes its beat to a sound more like a middle-eastern snake dance. Now I’m moving my body in undulating waves and I imagine I look a bit like Kate Bush performing a wilder version of her 1980s hit Wuthering Heights. After a few minutes, the music changes again and now it’s fast and furious.

  I’m panting and perspiring through the exertion but I’m really getting into it and actually starting to enjoy myself. This is great exercise. Imagine the calories I’m burning … and it’s fun!

  To be honest, this is the most fun I’ve had in ages.

  Then it all slows down once again and I’m reaching out my arms and swaying my body to the ethereal sound of flutes and harps and a slow, rhythmic drum. I’m twirling, whirling in circles, and with my eyes tightly closed I feel like I’m being lifted into a vortex of dancing bands of swirling colours. I’m suddenly feeling light-headed and quite emotional.

  In my imagination I’m being wrapped up in spinning ribbons of emerald green.

  I can only describe what I see through my mind’s eye as something like an aurora borealis.

  The music is vibrating with a humming hypnotic trance-style beat.

  I’m pressing my palms together as if I’m praying and my body is swaying like a serpent.

  The vibrant spinning bands of green appear to be flowing all around me. They are washing over me like a great tidal wave and, in the middle of this verdant kaleidoscope, I can see Jon and he’s holding out his arms to me. I twirl and spin straight into his open arms and then we are spinning and twirling together in the dance of swirling greens. Are we amongst the Northern Lights? Are we bathing in the neon-green waters of the Ganges? Are we being brought together between life and death by Mother India?

  Is this what moksha actually feels like?

  When the music stops, I drop straight down onto the floor like a collapsed ragdoll.

  I’m totally exhausted. I don’t know why but I’m also sobbing my heart out. Tears are streaming down my face. What on earth has just happened to me? I’m in a state of utter shock.

  And I realise this is the first time I’ve properly cried since Jon’s death.

  When I look around, I see it’s not only me who is traumatised and upset.

  Several others have collapsed onto the floor and are wailing and weeping too.

  Swami Nanda rushes around trying to console us and offer us water to drink.

  She explains how feeling incredibly emotional after performing a chakra dance is very common and entirely natural and that, contrary to how we might feel right now, this intense outpouring of emotions means that the dancing has helped us successfully connect with our chakra and see the true colours of our injured soul.

  ‘Please don’t feel upset or embarrassed. Embrace these powerful emotions!’

  We close off the session in savasana – otherwise known as corpse pose which simply allows you to lie on the floor wrapped in a soft blanket in a meditative or calming state.

  Then, one by one, each of us in turn are invited to go and sit and speak with Swami Nanda.

  She sits in her private corner of the shala, surrounded by lit candles and burning essential oils, and when it’s my turn, I shuffle over to her while still a sniffling, weeping, emotional wreck. I know my eyes are puffy and bloodshot, brimming with tears.

  It’s
as if now that I’ve started to cry I might never stop.

  Swami Nanda immediately reaches out to me and puts her arms around me in a comforting hug. ‘Oh, Maya, dear, dear girl. It’s okay. It’s perfectly all right to let it all out!’

  I haven’t been called a girl in a long time. But compared to Swami Nanda, I suppose I am.

  As we sit together in a heavy cloud of patchouli, she gently coaxes me to speak about what I saw while I was dancing and to express to her my emotional experience, and convey what colours had been revealed to me when I danced. I find it difficult to find the coherent words to explain what seems to me to be unexplainable.

  ‘When I was dancing, I saw my fiancé …’ I confess. ‘Only, he d-d-died recently.’

  She takes both my hands in hers and looks into my eyes with warmth and sincerity.

  ‘He appeared to me in swirling shades of green. It was quite b-b-beautiful. He looked so r-r-real and it felt so v-v-very special. I miss him terribly. I w-w-want him b-b-back!’

  And I weep and weep and weep like the whole world has suddenly ended.

  ‘Oh, Maya, sweet Maya. Green is the colour of Anahata or the heart chakra. I feel your heart is broken. But, do not fear, my dear. Because if you allow it then I can help you.’

  I try to smile through my tears to at least acknowledge her kindness.

  ‘With respect to you, Swami Nanda, I fear there is no cure for a broken heart.’

  She smiles and nods, her eyes shining brightly with kindness.

  ‘But I can still help you with your pain,’ she assures me gently. ‘You see, Maya, when the heart chakra is broken it pains us greatly. We feel hurt and resentful and angry and betrayed.’

  She’s right about all of that because my broken heart aches mercilessly.

  I do feel betrayed and the stress is making my chest feel so tight that it hurts to breathe.

  ‘Yes. That’s how I feel. Grief physically hurts.’

  ‘Grief is both a positive and a negative energy. In its negative form, we tell ourselves we deserve to suffer in order to carry our burden of loss and so we constantly sabotage our own efforts to heal and move on. I can help you see the positive side of your grief. This will allow you to tap into your supressed feelings of being grateful for the love you have received and to feel once again the happiness of still being able to feel that love in your heart.’

  She’s right. My head is full of negative thoughts. But how can she rid me of that?

  ‘Dearest Maya, your pain is born of fear. Do tell me, what is it that you fear the most?’

  Sitting in this cosy golden snug, wrapped in Swami Nanda’s love and surrounded by sweet scents and ageless Hindu statues depicting scenes of love and life and death, my fear suddenly feels very close and very clear to me, when up to this moment, it had been buried as deeply and as surely as my lost love.

  ‘My greatest fear … is of never knowing love again or being happy.’

  There. I’d said it, and it was from a place of raw honesty and heartfelt truth.

  It wasn’t just Jon that had been taken away from me … it was my love and my happiness.

  ‘Maya, you have chosen the correct path in coming here for help and guidance, but I fear you got lost along the way. I can show you how to overcome these negative feelings that overwhelm you now, but you must trust me. Do you think you can do that?’

  Everything about Swami Nanda tells me I should trust her with my broken heart.

  She looks like a little Yoda and is a wise and kind old soul.

  I wipe my tears away with the back of my hand. ‘Okay. Yes. I can. Let’s do it.’

  ‘It’s important to remember this next step is all about opening your heart and having faith.’

  My heart is already broken open … but faith? Oh dear, did she rightfully suspect that being faithless was my shortcoming? I would try. I would try my best to have faith.

  ‘Maya, I want you to turn your third eye away from all negative energies. They are and have all week been trying to draw you away from us. You must choose to ignore negative. This is not hard to do because all energy – including all the energy within you – is always equally negative and positive. So you should consciously choose only to see and to acknowledge the good in the world and around you. Choose light over darkness. See beauty rather than ugliness.’

  I nod my agreement. I came here to trust in something and so what do I have to lose?

  ‘Come into the garden with me and together we will work on healing your Anahata.’

  Along the way we walked together slowly down a steep sand covered pathway, Swami Nanda chatting to me constantly and asking me questions. Her voice sounds like a little chirruping bird in the ashram garden. I can see her face flushed with pleasure in her surroundings. ‘Maya, look around you. Tell me what you see.’

  All around were flowering shrubs and the sand pathway was free of weeds and tendrils. The garden here was very different from the one at the front of the ashram where the land had been left to nature. ‘I can see flowers and this garden is well tended. Do you look after it yourself?’

  ‘Yes. It’s my greatest passion. Tell me, Maya, do you have a garden in England?’

  I consider the small paved terrace at the back of the house that I’ve just sold. When I first bought the house, I was told that the terrace would be a wonderful place to sit in the summer, but in reality it never got any sunlight in any season and so was a dark, damp space instead. Then I think of all the houseplants I’ve neglected and killed over the years.

  But then I realise I must take my thoughts consciously away from negative and only focus on the positive, as Swami Nanda instructed. So I think fondly of my mother’s garden in Hong Kong and I remember how it felt to breathe in the sweet scent of her beautiful roses.

  ‘When I was a child, my mother used to grow pink damask roses in our garden,’ I say. ‘I remember they were beautiful, and the scent was intoxicating. They’re my favourite flowers.’

  Swami Nanda looks at me with round eyes that crinkle in the corners in absolute delight.

  ‘Maya, did you know that the damask rose is one of the oldest varieties and it is almost exclusively used these days to make rose essential oils? And that the complex perfume of the rose awakens our capacity to deal with emotional wounds? That is the reason rose oil is used to open the heart chakra. I think it’s no coincidence you remember this particular rose today!’

  I didn’t know this and I’m suddenly in awe of the connection between the rose and my heart.

  She explains how many of the plants here were grown for their unique and special properties. She pauses to point out the dark leaves of Peet Bhringraj – a plant that could be ground down to use as a black hair colourant. And Indian Sorrel, which is used in the kitchen to make mango chutney. She goes on to tell me how many of the plants here in the garden provide the ashram with Ayurvedic medicine. All around us there are trees and shrubs and vibrant flowers and wildlife. We stop to observe a bee buzzing on a sunflower. We watch a small purple sunbird with a long beak hovering at a lily trumpet. This part of the garden really is something of a hidden gem. It’s warm and scented and sheltered by the sloping ground between the ashram and the riverbank. We pause to close our eyes and inhale sweet wafts of the breeze while we listen to birdsong.

  It’s a short but steep walk through the garden to the little shala at the end of the path. It looks to me like a little gazebo fashioned from bamboo and palm fronds, but it takes us a really long time to get there. We stroll so slowly, stopping often to look up into the tree canopy and admire the monkeys who are sitting on branches or hanging from vines. Some have tiny cute babies clinging onto them. And, just as we reach the shala, I realise what this slowest of walks is meant to represent. Consciously choose only to see good things. Choose light not darkness. Look for beauty rather than ugliness.

  Inside the shala there is an altar or a mandap decorated with flowers and offerings.

  There is also a statue of a beautiful Hind
u Goddess.

  Swami Nanda lights the candles. ‘This is Parvati. She is the goddess of love, power and renewal. Parvati is the wife of one of the most worshipped of all Hindu Gods, Lord Shiva. We will call upon her today to help us and to guide you in opening up your heart chakra while we meditate together.’

  I watch as she takes a small bowl and carefully pours rose essential oil into it while stirring it with a sprig of hawthorn. It looks like she’s mixing a magic spell and I have no doubt that there are things going on here – in this supernatural setting – that are beyond my understanding.

  She chooses some rocks from an ornate box laid at Parvati’s feet. Rose quartz and green malachite and pink rhodonite. She lays them out on the mandap. Then she turns and gently lays a piece of green silk fabric over my shoulders. She anoints me with the rose oil and then we chant about opening my heart and feeling free and being forgiving of myself and others.

  We practice slow yoga together focussing on Urdhva Mukha Svanasana or Upward Facing Dog and Setu Bandha Sarvangasana or Bridge Pose to open the Anahata heart chakra and to release pain and fear. Swami Nanda continues to chant with great emphasis on the Sanskrit words and I soon join in. The rhythmic sound we make together is exactly like the sound of a beating heart.

  Lam vam ram, lam vam ram, lam vam yam.

  I try hard to imagine my heart opening and divine energy whirling through my chakra.

  I close my eyes and inhale the aroma of the sweet rose essence, focusing on the sound of distant bells ringing out from the many hundreds of ashrams along the river. Then I allow my thoughts to drift back to my mother’s rose garden. I see myself sitting in sunshine on the immaculately clipped lawn and I watch her as she cuts roses for displaying inside the house.

  The air is filled with their perfume. I breathe in and I breathe out again.

  And, although I still feel a great depth of sadness within me, I also feel something else.

  I feel lighter and uplifted somehow. I feel calmer. I feel much less fearful and far less angry.

  But, in all honesty, despite her best efforts, my broken heart is still far from healed.