For those of you who have been asking for the latest pics, we have finally got round to uploading a couple. As the connection is heartbreakingly slow today, there’s only three. Sadly none to show just how close we are to some of Indonesia’s best water for free-dive training.
Bali’s first purpose built yoga and free-diving space is close to popping…
Weather has picked up very nicely the last few days. The peak of Agung has been clear, the sun shining and the water warm and clear. The last few days have seen some very pleasant free-diving. All hail the return of sunny days…
Onsite, things here have been plodding on, as fast as they ever do in Amed, Bali.
These will probably be the last pics before the place is all shiny, bright and ready to be filled with stuff…
This space will be used for free-diving theory, yoga and meditation practice and then for hanging out later on…
This will be the funkiest little free-diving gear storage space anywhere… 
At the moment, we have the ugliest front in Bali. But in one month (or ten) this ugly place will be the first purpose built free-diving/yoga space in Bali…watch this space.
The last few weeks we have been turning away all new students for both Yoga and Free-diving. While we are sorry to disappoint, we are very happy to be completely absorbed in the reconstruction and decoration of our new training space in the village of Jemaluk, on the Amed coast, Bali. We are right on the beach at Jemaluk wall, probably one of the best places for free-dive training in all Bali.
So far the project has coincided with some very rough weather on Bali, with storms ripping up trees and knocking down mountain-sides. This has affected electricity and telephone/net cover, meaning that some calls have not being getting through. It also means the free-diving conditions have been pretty bad.
We hope that we will be back up and running in the next month, in Bali’s first purpose built free-diving, yoga, meditation and cafe space. 😉
Until then here’s some pics for those who have been making curious noises.
So far we’ve ripped the guts out of the dank and dingy kitchen,
knocked down walls…
And put up bamboo.
Right now it’s a dusty mess.
But in a few weeks it’s going to be great. Watch this space…
Free-diving and Yoga as existential tools for living in anxious times.We live in uncertain times. Our predictions cannot keep up with our pretensions. The world around us shrinks as our need to consume grows ever more insatiable.
We carry phones that are more intelligent and sophisticated than we will ever need to be, but use them mostly to keep up with the growing demands of social networks.
We can see into the furthest reaches of space and deep into the smallest particles of matter, but we find it very difficult to look into ourselves.
Human living has become incredibly sophisticated as our tools for living have become ever more intelligent. If intelligence is a measure of how skilfully one can manipulate and interpret information it can be said that our tools have become intelligent than us.
Intelligence can apportion values but does not comprehend ultimate value, a computer cannot give the meaning of a beautiful symphony nor the moral tragedy of a war-orphaned child. A sense of beauty and meaning cannot come from technology, it comes only from the wisdom of the human heart.
In this time of economic crashes and natural and man-made calamities we will never find meaning or happiness from our rapidly mutating technologies. We must find it in the same place as we have always found it, inside ourselves. Not in egocentric wallowing, but deep inside ourselves where we are all the same human, regardless of culture, class or colour.
We must find our freedom inside the mind and body and to do this we need to know the mind and body. The mind and body are not fixed entities, they are in constant flux. The human being is an infinitely complex interplay of physical, energetic and mental phenomena.
Our problems arise when the interplay becomes stagnant or rigid, resulting in physical and mental sickness and emotional unhappiness. When our body is clogged with toxins and our thoughts become rigid and inflexible, the body loses health. Life loses spontaneity, becoming suffocating. When that happens even a brand new I phone won’t help.
In this age of uncertainty, on so many levels the key to surviving on this Blue planet is fluid living. We must look to the water and learn from it.
With yoga we can bring fluidity to the physical body, with free-diving, pranayama and meditation we can look inside, developing fluidity on the mental and energetic levels. On a social level as our world changes in ways we can barely believe we must flow with the changes and develop new answers, without clinging to the comfort of our habitual reactions.
(DISCLAIMER; Obviously if I said that Yoga and free-diving were the answer to all the ills of the world, I would have to be taking the piss. But the qualities that Yoga and free-diving cultivate when practised with the right mindset are ones that are very useful as we hurtle deeper into the twenty first century.)
If it’s not inside you you’ll never find it outside.
Come to Amed in Bali and learn yoga and free-diving. They are life enriching activites and very useful tools for coping with the impending apocalypse ;).
Yesterday when we went down to free-dive we saw that the beautiful bay had been invaded by the Plastic plague. To escape the disgusting sight of thousand and thousands of plastic bags we went to the outside line where there is more water movement. Even there was the odd bag floating past.
Every three or four weeks the mess comes around again, and every three or four weeks we sigh and dive in another place. Anyone who spends time in the water, knows the saddening truth that our oceans are starting to fill up with plastic and the increasing damage to marine life seems inevitable. Mother Nature looks to be in trouble everywhere.
Context is everything and if we look at the night sky we can see we live on a small planet in in an infinite space. In the context of the universe our woes are insignificant. We may screw things up for ourselves but Mother Nature will always continue creating.
In the context of Humankind’s all encompassing need to consume, banning plastic bags in Bali is also insignificant. But if Bali is to continue using plastic as it does now in ten years the island of the Gods will drown in a sea of plastic, in the context of Bali that would be an environmental, moral and economic tragedy.
There is a face-book page started today on ‘Earth day’ to collect pictures showing the beauty that is Bali and the ugliness that is the plastic plague. If enough people post pics and comments, the maybe we can link up people who would like to see Bali plastic free, which is surely anyone who lives here or has ever visited.
please share this page and post pics.
Who knows, maybe common sense will prevail.