In another world, I was a warrior.
Maybe it was another life. Many months ago, I left Thailand behind. I left with bruises, for sure, though disproportionately less than I should have considering the beatings I had been taking. I credit much of this to the healing properties of yoga, Reiki, thai massage, and what the Thai call pran.
I left on this journey around the world to finish something I started a long time ago. To change the direction my life was headed; to bring new things into my life. That’s exactly what I have done.
Meeting Simon was really just the next step, I suppose.
Zsofi and I were both excited to get to Thailand. I was much more interested in Muay Thai training, and she was more into cooking, yoga, kiteboarding, and all the other fantastic things that are right at your fingertips on Phuket.
Part of my training was early morning yoga with Simon the Yogi. It’s hard to just jump up and run off to being beaten on all day without a little warm up and stretching first. I watched trained fighters make this mistake and pay for it with their bodies. Only part of the yoga was physical, though. Simon spoke to us through the whole hour, waking up our minds and getting us ready for a day full of possibilities.
“This is not an ashram or a temple: life here is different. With the sounds and clatter of battle around you, you cannot fool yourself. You are not a monk. You are a warrior.”
Also, he often sounded like a complete madman.
Simon didn’t just do yoga, he taught weapons classes; stick fighting, krabi krabong, and knife offense and defense. When he spoke about using weapons it was again with mysticism.
“You are performing sorcery. You are causing solid objects to move around your body in geometric patterns.”
Given all the exposure I had to Simon’s particular brand of acceptable lunacy, I had a great deal of time to chat with him about energy, pran, ki, chi, chakras; the intangibles.
One afternoon, somewhere between the spirit house and the giant golden Buddha, over the sounds of battle, Simon told me he did Reiki attunement, and I was immediately onboard.
Sundays are the only day of rest at Tiger. Hence on Sundays, when Simon wasn’t off in the jungle somewhere, he would sometimes initiate the curious into the world of Reiki.
I was concerned that it wouldn’t ‘work’ for me. Somehow, after traveling halfway around the world, running with the bulls, working with the IDF, riding camels through the Sahara, making friends in every corner of the globe, I still believed that there was something uniquely and fundamentally ‘wrong’ with me; that I couldn’t do it.
Simon tapped into this and in his own way, tailored everything he said towards it.
“Inadequacy is an illusion,” he would say to me. “You can do all of this. Effortlessly.”
Effortlessly. He kept saying that word all day, it just kept coming up; through the smoke, over lunch, through meditation and Reiki sessions.
Years later, I have been given more Reiki attunements. I have experienced numerous healing modalities, and even endeavored to make some of them my own. If you are interested in learning more about Reiki or Yoga, just google your area. Enlightened people are everywhere. It may change your life in some small way. For me, I can say it has given me a number of tools for making my life easier, though perhaps not quite “effortless” as was promised. I still hear his words sometimes, echoing in my memory. And so I offer them to you, dear reader.
“Protect me. Evolve me to the highest good. and all else too.”
