Honduras – Departing from a Journey in the Depths

My Honduran parents – La Doctora and Mahchi

On my last night in Honduras, I gathered with renowned artist Guillermo Mahchi, TV host and dentist “la Doctora” Ivonne, and the yoga students I trained to become instructors – Chris, Jenny, and Hadith – at the yoga center they had recently built. After nearly two years in Honduras, I was standing in something that I had never thought was possible: a yoga studio in San Pedro Sula that was dedicated to yoga and only yoga.

The surprise was mainly due to the reaction of the people of El Progreso, the neighboring town, to my yogic practices. Untrue to its name, El Progreso is far from progressive, and more than a few Progreseños looked upon me as a godless, diabolical sun worshipper. Others viewed me as a strange hippie with Prince Aladdin pants who carried around an overused blue yoga mat much the way Linus from Peanuts did with his blanket. There were others who were made certain of my insanity the day I stuffed a rubber tube up my nose and pulled it out of my mouth on live television to demonstrate a yogic cleansing technique. That said, I did have my fair share of fans. Among them were the people who dubbed me as Michael Gaga in response to my sporadic television performances (i.e. the time I jumped out of a Christmas present and sang and danced to Poker Face with two Dutch women on Teleprogreso).

Spreading Christmas cheer on Teleprogreso

But standing outside of the yoga center (WeYoga), observing the occasional flash of heat lightning that would brighten the night sky, my Honduran tale somehow felt resolved. OYE, the non-government organization I was working at, was no longer in the financial crisis it had been when I arrived, which meant I had achieved a major professional goal. One of the most impressive leaders at OYE, a young woman named Fabiola, who I referred to as “The Machine” for her work ethic and ability to get things done, cried when I left and told me that she had learned a great deal from me. That was a big accomplishment, since I had been convinced that the mission-focused Fabi, who stomps around El Progreso to what I imagine to be the Darth Vader theme, had a heart of steel.

Fabi “The Machine” – all business, all the time (pictured on the bottom right)

And then there was this yoga center that sprouted into being. Even though I had no responsibility in creating it (minus the handful of flowers I planted and the windows I so diligently Windexed), I trained the people who did.

I had arrived to Honduras with the intention of positively impacting my community, as many a well-meaning foreigner does in a new setting. Along the way, I met so many people who went out of their way to make me feel at home in a country that wasn’t mine but sort of started to feel like it was after two years. Fortunately, on my last night, some of the most special of those people had decided to get together to offer me my bittersweet despedida.

The downside, of course, was that it might have been the last time I’d ever be with all of those people again.

It was nearing 9pm and we were all exhausted and hungry from a busy week. Hadith had just finished teaching the class, and the last of the students had trickled out from the studio.

“I’m starving…let’s go eat!” Mahchi declared. He stared at us through large glasses that made him look like the wise turtle on the Tootsie Roll Pop commercial. “It’s my treat!”

Mahchi (right) with friend from Roatan, Marion Seaman (left)

His treat? I wondered. Mahchi was usually willing to host people in his five star house, which is home to an enormous Mark Rothko, a Tamara de Lempicka that ended up in a rinky-dink art store in El Progreso after it had probably been stolen from an old Jewish lady’s attic on the Upper West Side, a signed copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Buddhas of various shapes, sizes, and nationalities. But treating a table of people to dinner wasn’t something I had ever seen the wealthy artist do.

“What’s the occasion, Mahchi?” I asked with a grin.

“I have coupons,” Mahchi stated proudly. “But we only have three choices…Burger King…KFC…and Pizza Hut. Your pick, Mikito.”

I lowered my head and sighed. It was a fitting end after two years of living in a town where Popeyes was considered gourmet and “nutritious” meant putting chunks of avocado on top of the blobs of butter and refried beans spread over flour tortillas.

Fortunately for me, Pizza Hut was the only place on the northern side of Honduras that served a decent salad bar. As a vegetarian, there wasn’t any other choice. Mahchi’s coupons were calling.

The making of baleadas in El Progreso – staple of Honduran cuisine

While sitting at the restaurant’s wooden table in my cushiony red chair, I couldn’t help but look at each one of my friends think about how my Honduran experience was truly approaching its end. In front of me I saw Chris Padilla – a forty-year-old woman whose heart will be forever twenty-five and whose compassion for the human spirit is boundless. Chris has the seductive stare of an intent mistress, her eyes causing most men and many a lesbian woman to swoon. I recalled the first time I looked into them back on the first day of Chris, Jenny, and Hadith’s yoga training.

“I want your body!” Chris had told me while sitting in the cross-legged position on her yoga mat. “Except with boobs!”

Chris, who shares my birthday, is a bona fide Scorpio. She was by far the most flirtatious person I had ever come across in Honduras. She would tell me things like, “You are so beautiful,” and “I like when you wear that shirt,” and “Can you please have my babies…really?” The comments adequately stroked the ego that I was supposed to be actively suppressing through yoga, but they also created an automatic sense of comfort. What I saw in Chris, and what I suppose she saw in me, was the beauty of the human spirit – something that you can’t help but sense when you are in the presence of someone like her.

To Chris’s right sat Jenny, who is not your typical yoga personality. Think of the strictest teacher you ever had plus the most intense boss in the world. Mash the two together, combine them with the fire-breathing Maleficent dragon, multiply it by seventy trillion, and you have Jenny.

The yoga girls – Chris, Hadith, and Jenny

Jenny is a teacher with years of experience in the non-profit world, and she knows how to abide by the rules. In a country where corruption is rife, even at the level of non-profit organizations, Jenny always made conscious efforts to be a model of leadership and morality. Whenever her old supervisor would ask her to do perform tasks that she deemed ethically questionable, she would demand that he make the request to her in writing. She was also quick to call out people for lack of judgment and abuse of power. The attitude wasn’t one that pleased her incompetent supervisor, and it was in all likelihood the chief reason why he decided not to renew her contract at the end of her term.

As an elementary school teacher, Jenny worked to develop impressionable young Hondurans into individuals with a sense of morals and responsibility. One of those students happened to be a child with a bladder problem. The child’s father had approached Jenny, warning her that his son tended to go to the bathroom at least three to four times per hour. He had asked Jenny to look out for his son and to try to help him if she could find a way.

Jenny found a way, and it was refusing to let the child leave more than once per hour to go to the bathroom. She held firm to the rule, even as the child’s eyes would shift to the clock and he would squirm about in his seat. Once, Jenny caught the boy swigging a bottle of water. Jenny snapped at the child, commanding him not to drink in gulps but in sips.

“El agua se toma en sorbos,” she said. “¡No de sola una vez!”

Lo and behold, with time the child’s need to go to the bathroom lessened. Through structure, discipline, and – most likely – untold amounts of fear, the boy learned to control his constant need to urinate. It was a valuable life skill that he might have never learned had it not been for Jenny.

Beach yoga with Chris, Jenny, and Hadith in Omoa

And then there was Hadith. The daughter of a Gnostic priest, Hadith is an eclectic, quirky, and insanely talented television show host who was studying full time while teaching yoga on the side. Hadith, whose light brown hair falls to her tailbone, stares at you with the wide-open eyes of a curious five-year-old. She, like many a Honduran from my or older generations, grew up under constant threat of the Chancla – a flip-flop a Latina mother throws at extremely high velocity to discipline her children. But Hadith’s puppy-like eyes protected her from many a chancla toss, causing her mother to think twice about throwing even when Hadith had been asking too many questions or started prying into things that weren’t hers.

Hadith’s childlike sincerity never abandoned her. When it came to providing constructive criticism to the other yoga students during group reviews, she wasn’t bashful about setting their performances straight with utmost honesty.

“I think you forgot to tell us about the precautions for that position,” she’d say.

Or…

“Something is telling me that that’s not how you’re supposed to transition between moves at all.”

Or…

“You seem like you’re in a bad mood today. I’m just not getting the same happy vibes you usually give out.”

Hadith teaching Chris and Jenny during a yoga micro-lesson

Hadith’s candor during the constructive critiques of the yoga training inspired Chris and Jenny to be just as sincere whenever evaluating Hadith’s lessons. Nothing seemed to please Chris more than the day Hadith forgot to mention the precautions for a posture that wasn’t meant to be practiced by someone with heart problems or high blood pressure. Chris then went on to forget the precautions herself, after which Hadith clutched at her heart, rolled her eyes, and keeled over, pretending to have died of a heart attack.

These were things that simply didn’t happen during training at the ashram in India…

At the restaurant, la Doctora Ivonne laughed out loud to my left in response to something Mahchi said. It was an unrestrained, jubilant chortle that would easily score a 15 out of 10 on a laugh-o-meter if tested. Always dressed to the nines, Ivonne was wearing a sundress with yellow straps and flowers of every color. The outfit matched her perfectly, since Ivonne is sunlight personified. Every moment spent with Ivonne leaves you feeling like humanity’s existence is worthwhile because someone like her was born from it. In many ways, her spirit seems too pure and too wise for this world. Like Remedios the Beauty from One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ivonne might take off one day unexpectedly, ascending into the sky and leaving us all behind in a patch of bright light to wonder how we could have ever come across someone so beautiful.

La Doctora Ivonne, my Honduran mom

That’s not to say that Ivonne hasn’t ever treaded in the shadows. In yoga, Ivonne’s favorite pose is Ugrasana, also known as the furious pose, for a reason. The posture involves spreading one’s legs to the sides in a sort of split and then lowering the crown of the head to the floor with the hands on the feet. She performs the posture so well that Chris, Jenny, Hadith, and I renamed it Ivonasana.

Ivonne’s fury is most easily provoked by liars. Take, for instance, the time a government official had sent a political activist to Ivonne’s office to get dentures. The official had asked Ivonne if she could give the activist a deal. She agreed, discounting the procedure by fifty percent. When the activist arrived, Ivonne told him about the reduced price. He agreed to pay the following week after Ivonne had set the dentures in his mouth. When the procedure came…and went…the activist promised to make the payment to Ivonne at the required follow-up procedure.

But as fate would have it, the activist never showed up for said procedure.

It wasn’t until years later (a few months ago, to be exact), that Ivonne saw the activist at a social gathering of Honduran political families. Ivonne, wearing a metallic red dress and matching lipstick, approached the activist with a light step and a smile on her face.

“I haven’t seen you in a long time, Mr. Maldonado,” Ivonne told the activist.

Mr. Maldonado’s face came alive with light. It was only natural, for he was in the presence of la Doctora.

“La Doctora! How lovely it is to…”

It took less than a second for Ivonne to thrust her fingers into the man’s mouth and snap the dentures free from his face.

“You give me those teeth!” Ivonne yelled. She opened up her bright red purse and tossed the slimy dentures inside. “These are still mine, after all!”

Mr. Maldonado fell to his knees and babbled between his flappy lips, for he wasn’t used to forming words without the aid of his stolen teeth.

“May everyone here know what you did,” la Doctora Ivonne said. “You’ll get your teeth back when you pay for them!”

Within minutes the money was in Ivonne’s purse, above the stain left by Mr. Maldonado’s rancid and crusty teeth.

Guillermo Mahchi loved to tell the tale Ivonne’s dentures story. If there was anyone in the world who was a bigger fan of Ivonne than me, it was him. Mahchi and Ivonne are both divorced, and together they became my adopted Honduran parents. While their separate married lives may not have ended happily ever after, their pretend marriage was absolutely joyful. Mahchi, Ivonne, and I would often paint together as a family – mostly nude women in the style of Picasso. We’d share meals and go to Mahchi’s botanical gardens. Mahchi even created a special garden just for Ivonne – a serene area next to the river canyon that is decorated with nothing but white flowers.

Mahchi, who proudly labels himself as “Divorced” on Facebook, had over fifteen years to recover from his marriage’s collapse. Ivonne, on the other hand, was only recently divorced, and her husband’s betrayal had devastated her. I never knew how devastating that was until the day Ivonne broke down in tears in the middle of a one-on-one yoga class. She opened up about the divorce and how hard it had been on her. The tears were only temporary, and I helped Ivonne carry on with her practice that day and in the days that followed. Week after week, I noticed that Ivonne was becoming stronger. Before long she started calling me her angel, telling me that I had shown up in El Progreso at just the right time in her life. Without yoga, she said, she simply didn’t know how she would have been able to find the peace of mind necessary to make it through it all.

Occasionally, Mahchi would join us for yoga class. He would usually interrupt it by saying things like, “Oh, look at la Doctora doing those splits!” or “She knows how to keep her man excited with all that karma sutra!” The man Mahchi was referring to was Ivonne’s new love interest. Of course, it didn’t take long for someone else to try to sweep la Doctora off her feet.

Mahchi never made it through a full yoga class of mine, but when he would perform his postures, he would do so as though he was experiencing the highest form of pleasure. He would moan and groan and moan some more, unbothered by the fact that he was practically orgasming in the presence of others. Inevitably, he would get up to smoke a cigarette, after which Ivonne and the other students would burst out laughing.

When Ivonne started dating her new man – who turned out to be Honduras’s most famous writer and poet – she sought me out and made me promise not to tell Mahchi. She was worried that he would criticize her for dating someone who had a history of womanizing. I maintained the secret of Ivonne’s love affair as the writer tried to win her over, repairing the roof of Ivonne’s home, writing her well-crafted love letters, counseling her children with life advice, and traveling with her to Tela beach. At the same time, she was careful not to get too close, since she sensed the sixty-year-old writer was looking for a caretaker. After having been through one divorce and having raised three children, Ivonne wasn’t so excited about slipping back into the role of domestic goddess. It was clear that she would be keeping the situation on her terms, just as she had done with the activist and his dentures.

Back at Pizza Hut, I noticed that Mahchi was also eating from the salad bar. Mahchi had tried to become a vegetarian a few times since I had entered his life, a commitment that he would inevitably break with a meal of meat. Each time he would fall back into his omnivorous ways, he would fail to acknowledge the fact that he had ever attempted becoming vegetarian in the first place. The next time he would try, it would be as though it were the first. But I didn’t mind the cyclical nature of Mahchi’s attempts. Any meal spent with him was entertaining, and we ended most of them with spiritual I Ching readings that would predict our futures. All good futures were reflected upon with awe and satisfaction. All bad futures were immediately dismissed as flukes.

Yoga on Copan Ruins

Mahchi had taken me under his wing early on in Honduras, as he had a special fondness for the foreigners who came to work for OYE. The adventures of Mikito and Mahchi were many, with the first being the wedding we crashed in Copan Ruins. Mahchi, who believes deeply in the power of karma, had no qualms about barging in on a wedding that he hadn’t been invited to. As it turned out, neither did I. Little did we know that the invisible karmic forces had begun to flow, and not in our favor.

Halfway on the ride from El Progreso to Copan, Mahchi’s rickety pick-up, which he had somehow been fueling with water, broke down. We waited for two hours, conversing as an orange sun set against the tropical landscape. Eventually his mechanics arrived in an equally rickety truck and we picked up from where we had left off on the way to Copan. Then an ominous thunderstorm set in as we wound through the narrow mountain passes, surrounded by immense, cliff-side drops that were hidden in the pitch to our left and right. To make matters worse, the truck’s windshield wipers were no longer working, which meant that we couldn’t see a thing. To help the driver, one of the mechanics hung out of the window, manually forcing the wiper to clear the windshield with his hand. But the attempts were futile, as the rain was too powerful. Meanwhile, Mahchi moaned in the back, huffing and panting as a corpulent lady in pearls might on a sinking cruise ship. He kept telling me not to worry – that we weren’t going to die and that everything would be okay. I needed little convincing, as the near death situation had caused me to doze off – my body’s typical response to stress. Fortunately, we ended up making it to the wedding alive and in time for a massive buffet of Honduran dishes. By that point, everyone else was drunk, the bride’s once white dress had gone brown with mud, and the dance floor had turned into a grimy mosh pit due to the rain. But everyone was dancing as though none of that mattered, the bride included. It was a night to be remembered.

The rain affects so much in Honduras, and my last night was no exception. Once we had left Pizza Hut, I was shocked to see that the mall’s parking lot was flooded with several inches of water. The rain was cascading from the sky, and the city roads were completely flooded. Returning home before the conditions worsened any more was a matter of urgency, and I knew Ivonne and Mahchi had a long way to go to get back to El Progreso.

Mahchi didn’t seem to want to say goodbye in the parking lot – as if doing so would only confirm the fact that our adventures had truly reached their end, in this lifetime at least. Or perhaps by not saying goodbye he hoped that we’d carry on from where we left off sooner than either of us would have ever imagined, albeit in some other geographical setting.

Ivonne, on the other hand, couldn’t help but give me a big hug. She looked at me the way my biological mother did the day we parted ways on my first day at college.

“I’m really going to miss you, Michael.”

The words absolutely crushed me. When I saw Ivonne get in the car and drive away with Mahchi, I felt as though I had been cast into the frigid extremes of the northern hemisphere during the season of permanent night.

The darkness and the constant splashing of the rain masked my tears as Chris and Jenny drove me to their home through the flooded streets of San Pedro Sula. After so many years of living in and moving from different places, I had thought it would have been so much easier to part ways with my friends. If anything, it only felt harder.

The roads of San Pedro Sula had turned into rivers. I had never seen anything like it before. The water was rushing so fast on some of the main roads that I wondered if our car would be able to force its way safely through.

At one bridge, which was a shortcut to Chris and Jenny’s apartment, I was certain that safety was no guarantee. The bridge went over the Rio de Piedras, or the River of Rocks, which received its name from the number of sharp and jagged rocks that formed the typically dried out riverbed. Yet now the bridge was suddenly overcome with rushing rapids that were descending from the hills.

The bridge was impossible to cross, or ford, as the case was. But in the middle of it, a car was dangling over the edge. One side of it was being pummeled by the rapids, while the other was angled towards an angry, uncontrolled abyss of water.

A large crowd had formed on the bank of the river. No one dared to near the water, which was certain to wash away anyone who dared to step foot into it. Chris, Jenny, and I got out of the car to join. At that point the rain had stopped, but the flooding river was still raging.

I watched as a man’s silhouette escaped from the side of the angled car, with one foot balanced on the bridge and the other on the vehicle. My eyes widened and my breathing stopped as the car slipped and fell, the man lost his grip, and his body became one with the River of Rocks. People screamed and cried. Chris, Jenny, and I stood in stunned silence, for we were absolutely certain that what we had just witnessed was a human’s death.

The car fled down the river and lodged itself between trees and rocks. I looked into its windows to see if there was anyone inside. It looked empty. Rumors from among the crowd were that children were trapped inside. Policemen arrived on the scene, but no amount of training could have prepared them to ford the untamed river. In the absence of any type of equipment that could help rescue anyone trapped inside of the car, the only option was to wait until the flooding calmed over the course of several hours. The following day, the River of Rocks would be dry once again, but the amount of time the people in the car had, if there were any people left, seemed increasingly uncertain.

According to the newspaper the following day, three men had been in the car. One was found alive but comatose. The other two were dead, with one having washed up in a distant town.

The life of the dead makes up the memories of the living

The storm was an eerie coda to my time in Honduras – a cryptic, morbid event that left me wondering how fleeting our moments and memories were in the grand scheme of our mortality. Impermanence has been etched into us from the very beginning, but to observe the demonstration of that impermanence was something that I hadn’t been prepared for at all. Just as I hadn’t been prepared for the possibility of never seeing my loved ones again by virtue of physical separation.

The joy. The sorrow. The hunger. The pain. It can all disappear so quickly, even before it has fully manifested. The floods left me wondering what I could have done to alter that disappearance – what choice I could have made but failed to do that might have helped things turn out differently.

The floods carried away a great deal. Not just lives and memories, but the sense of constancy I had in a world that seemed so stable. The world had never explicitly presented itself that way to me, but somewhere along the way I had convinced myself that it had. Nature had been the one to persuade me that I had been absolutely wrong.

Supposedly, Christopher Columbus had been quoted as having said, “Gracias a Dios que hemos salido de esas Honduras” (Thank God we have come out of those depths) after his exploration of Honduras’s northeast coast. While my journey in the depths of Honduras had filled me with a great deal, it had also come with sacrifice. Two years of youthful life. Time that could have been spent with family or friends at home or in the other parts of the world where I had lived previously. The potential for a long-term relationship. The opportunity to work in a profession that could pay me a great deal more than anything I could have found in the Honduran social sector.

But I wouldn’t take the opportunity back for anything. Anything that the Honduran depths might have taken is infinitely outweighed by the knowledge I have acquired, the natural beauty I observed, and the people whose influence has impacted me in a way that is so far from fleeting.

Having made it through the experience has left me in a state mixed with relief and gratitude. Similar to Columbus, I can’t help but feel comforted by the fact that I survived it. Likewise, I can’t help but wonder what remains of the journey and under what circumstances its purpose will come into clarity as the future manifests into present.

Princess of Light

Botanical Gardens

Shortly after my return from India, I received what was quite possibly the longest Facebook wall post ever from friend and fellow yoga teacher, Tatiana Bueno.

“Hello Michael. How nice it is to have you back in Honduras and what beautiful photos from your sublime experience in the ashram in India. I wasn’t able to go this time, but the lovely people at the ashram wrote to me and told me that they would be waiting for me next year. My duty as a mother, which comes before all else, kept me from going. I hope to share in much of what you learned on this Road of Knowledge, and that we may use it to awaken ourselves even more! Experiences that we will share together on the Road await us in the future, and I won’t get upset with myself for not having been able to travel this time. Each experience that we have connects us all – the warriors of light – who travel constantly in search of truth while elevating the consciousness of the world. We will continue to manifest LIGHT. Remember that you are LIGHT, and only as LIGHT can we bring heaven to earth, guided always by the knowledge of the heart. I bless you and thank you for your wisdom, light, and teachings.”

Tatiana sent the message in response to the photo albums I had posted after my month and a half long adventure in India. We were supposed to have traveled there together to take an advanced yoga course, but the sickness of Tatiana’s four-year-old daughter had made that impossible. Instead, Tatiana wanted to know when we could meet to catch up and so I could share some of the things I had learned.

I’ve known Tatiana for well over a year, and I can safely say that she is one of the freest of spirits I have ever come across in life. Take the time, for instance, when I accompanied Tatiana to El Progreso’s botanical gardens. I had seen the occasional butterfly or two in the gardens before and assumed that they were infrequent visitors. However, when I went with Tatiana, the garden suddenly came alive with the fluttering of butterflies of every color combination imaginable to the human eye. Metallic blue with white spots…tiger-striped patterns of orange, black, and white…or tree-colored with spots shaped like angry owl eyes. The charming creatures that floated around us like blossoms in the wind appeared as though they had escaped from the pages of a fairy tale. One even landed on Tatiana’s shoulder. It relaxed its wings slightly as Tatiana turned her head and acknowledged it with a gentle nod.

There was also the time Tatiana and I were treated to lunch at our mutual friend Mahchi’s house. We were sitting at a table outside when a curious, aqua-colored bird with peacock-like ocelli at the tips of its extended tail feathers perched onto the chair next to Tatiana. Shortly after landing, the blue-crowned motmot tilted its head and chirped.

“It’s because I have a special connection with all animals,” Tatiana told us in a voice that seemed to melt into the heated air.

The motmot chirped again, as if to affirm the truth of Tatiana’s words.

“Oh don’t talk bullshit, Tatiana,” the abrasive Mahchi said. “No one can talk to birds!”

“Of course we can,” Tatiana said with a coy grin. She turned to acknowledge the motmot. “Isn’t that right, my little bird friend?”

The motmot chirped once again and tilted its head to the other side.

“You are a being of light,” Tatiana told the bird. “And you make the world even more beautiful by virtue of your god-inspired grace.”

The bird chirped three more times and jumped on the table in Tatiana’s direction. Tatiana extended her hand and the bird hopped even closer towards her fingertips.

I don’t recall exactly when my jaw dropped, but I started drooling on myself as I observed the bizarre yet undeniable connection between homo sapien and ave.

“This is insane!” Mahchi yelled. His voice was uncontrolled and it startled the motmot, which fluttered away out of instinct.

“Mahchi!” I said. “How could you do that?”

“Don’t worry, Michael,” Tatiana said. She lowered her head slightly and stared at me with crystal-colored eyes that draw people in with vacuum-like force. “All of our auras are connected, transcending time, transcending distance.”

Honduran Moth (Polilla)

Transcending time is something that seems to come naturally to Tatiana. Tatiana is in her late forties but looks like she’s at least fifteen years younger. That makes her living proof for many an aspiring yogi/soccer mom that yoga truly is a fountain of youth. Hailing from Colombia, one of those South American countries that spit out Miss Universe winners and runner-ups on a near annual basis, Tatiana is beautiful, tall, and constantly radiating in the aura of her own bliss. Even after giving birth to four children, with one of those births having taken place just four years ago, Tatiana’s slim and conditioned body shows absolutely no signs of having experienced any form of childbirth.

When it comes to her yoga practice, Tatiana’s gifts are self-evident. Her spine is as supple as a cobra’s. Her balance is as steady as a tree’s. And she can perform splits, forward bends, and inverted postures with ease.

Beyond her physical qualities, Tatiana possesses the unique ability to talk to anyone about anything at any given time. When initiating a conversation with her, one must be prepared to be in it for at least an hour and a half, regardless of the time of day. It’s normally best to be seated and comfortable before bringing up something Tatiana is excited about – which is almost everything. At the same time, you don’t want to be too comfortable, especially if Tatiana is talking to you during the wee hours of the morning, as you might fall asleep in the middle of her lecture. Going unconscious won’t stop her, as Tatiana only considers that to be an alternate plane of existence. Accordingly, Tatiana will continue talking until you wake up.

One day, Tatiana and I met up in San Pedro Sula, where she took me to a seminar on Arhatic yoga taught by an instructor who had come all the way from Nicaragua. I went armed with a notepad and pen, ready to take notes on a style of yoga I had never heard of until that day.

We started off with a few stretches and then sat down at the white conference tables for the instructor’s PowerPoint presentation. One slide led to another until an image of pink, white, and yellow flowers appeared on the screen that reminded me of Easter. After a few seconds, Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World” started playing in the background. The PowerPoint slides slid to reveal sing-along lyrics.

I sighed. I couldn’t help but recall the day my kindergarten teacher forced my nose-picking classmates and me to listen to “Heal the World” back in 1990. Even then I thought it was as bit much. Fast forward to 2012 and the song was just plain ridiculous. (No offense, Michael Jackson…may your soul rest in peace on an alternate conscious plane.)

I was too embarrassed for myself and everyone else in the room to actually look around for someone to sympathize with. So I lowered my head, closed my eyes, and silently sang the chorus to “Judas” in my mind until “Heal the World” went away.

When the song ended, we proceeded to take part in a meditation called “Twin Hearts.” The meditation is a recording by a Filipino monk who has managed to trick a significant percentage of the meditating population into thinking that he is a divine spirit. To perform his meditation, you have to sit in a chair and extend your hands. After closing your eyes, you have to pretend that golden beams of light are blasting from your hands onto a mini-sized earth. Said beams of light are supposed to “heal the world” (damn you Michael Jackson…but bless your soul all the same) until all of the world’s problems are fixed. While doing this, the Filipino man speaks with a Yoda-like accent, saying funny things like, “Make all of the happiness come alive,” and “Let the entire earth be blessed with loving kindness.”

I nearly fell over and died when I heard the Filipino man tell me to “bless the world with loving sweetness.” I started to wonder what the room’s reaction to Twin Hearts would be if they opened their eyes at the end of it to find that one of their peers had gone and noosed himself from the ceiling fan. I bit my lower lip and maintained my composure. Just like life, the meditation came and went.

Following the meditation, the Nicaraguan instructor took the opportunity to elaborate on the style of Arhatic yoga. He mentioned that Arhatic yoga was “so interesting,” “amazing,” and “life changing in so many ways.” To top those insightful comments off, he concluded that those in attendance “should really find the time to study Arhatic yoga more in depth.”

I searched the room for rolled eyes or wrinkled expressions. Instead, the sparkly-eyed audience applauded the instructor, who I was certain had done absolutely nothing for us whatsoever except waste our time. The others smiled and clapped with glee, like kindergartners at the end of a clown’s birthday party performance.

After the applause, the woman running the event informed all in attendance that we had to pay $10 for the workshop.

What workshop? I wondered. Alas, no one seemed to have read my mind.

My stomach growled, not from the intensity of our Arhatic yoga session but from not having eaten anything that day. I stood up as soon as the class was over and headed to the refreshments table in the back. Small Honduran finger foods like sliced baleadas and nachos were being offered. I decided that if I was going to get my money’s worth, I might as well make a meal out of the tortillas and beans.

I only made it to the drinks when I bumped into Tatiana. She asked me what I thought about the workshop.

“It was very…interesting,” I said.

“Next month they are having a shaman come to teach us about crystals,” Tatiana said. “You should really take the course on crystals. You would love it and you would learn so much.”

A middle-aged woman who looked like she was searching for nourishment stopped to ask Tatiana and me about our yoga experience. It soon became evident that she wanted to learn about how yoga could spice up her love life.

I turned to Tatiana. She batted her crystal eyes the way she always does when she’s intrigued. She lowered her chin to her chest, and a mischievous grin spread across her face.

“Yoga activates all of the energy portals and vortices of the body,” Tatiana said. “Starting with the root chakra…”

Dammit, I thought. I had gotten stuck in another one of Tatiana’s lectures thanks to a woman who was trying to figure out how yoga could resolve her sexual needs. The moment was entirely inopportune, as I was both starving and standing. If that wasn’t bad enough, the snacks I so desperately longed for were within arm’s reach. But a line of the workshop’s attendees had already formed. Their wide eyes and visible skeletal structures suggested ravenousness.

“Your mooladhara chakra is the foundation of your system,” Tatiana continued. “It connects you to the earth as would the roots of a tree, providing you with a feeling of groundedness if it is sufficiently activated. But if you are having trouble with intimacy, then this chakra is blocked, and there are numerous negative consequences if one has a blocked mooladhara chakra….”

The woman stared at Tatiana with swirling eyes, tranced as she was by the chakra talk. Over the course of an hour, I shifted my weight from one leg to another, waiting for Tatiana to finish speaking to the woman about centering one’s vortices and the science of utilizing crystals to heal past wounds.

It wasn’t until all of the finger foods were gone that Tatiana turned to me and let me know that we had to pick up her daughter from school at noon.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

My gaze shifted to the table of empty finger foods. I smiled and nodded lightly.

“Let’s stop by the grocery store first and see what we can get for lunch,” Tatiana said.

Tatiana smiled and continued to talk to me about vortices until we pulled into the parking lot of the supermarket. I looked at the clock. It was 11:45.

“Aren’t we going to be late, Tatiana?” I asked.

“Time?” she asked. “Time is present, past, and future. Time is an amalgamation – a holy triad. It is nothing and it is everything all at once.”

It sounded nice, but I was quite certain that Tatiana’s conception of time wasn’t going to help us get to her daughter’s school by noon.

It didn’t take long to gather the beetroots, grapefruits, and carrots Tatiana needed to make her lunchtime smoothie. Still, by the time we made it to Tatiana’s apartment it was well past noon. Once we had actually finished drinking the smoothies and wrapped up a small discussion about the pros and cons of Bikram yoga, Tatiana decided it was time to get back in the car.

It was one of those rare rainy days in San Pedro Sula. Knowing that we were late, Tatiana drove faster than usual. At one intersection it was clear that she wasn’t paying any attention at all to the road. She pulled forward as a speeding car zoomed towards us.

My life and all of my previous incarnations flashed before my eyes the way they say they do just before death. The seconds grew heavier until time started to trudge. I watch the events unfold before me in slow motion on the conscious plane. The oncoming car swerved to the side. Tatiana’s car hydroplaned and skidded to the left. Rain continued to patter against the blurry windshield.

But the car passed by us without collision. Somehow, we were saved.

“See?” Tatiana asked, smiling and as calm as ever. “I always say that the spirits are watching over me. It’s because warriors of light are connected to the heavens.”

I could barely breathe, let alone vocalize my single thought: If I hear you say light one more time…

But perhaps there was some truth to Tatiana’s words. I knew from a previous conversation that Tatiana had gotten into a serious car accident fifteen years earlier. She had been the only one to survive, even though her neck had twisted at nearly 180 degrees. Her neck broke but she remained alive. Later on the doctors told Tatiana that she would have died had it not been for her flexibility.

It wasn’t long before we arrived to the school of Tatiana’s youngest daughter, Isabella. There were no other cars or parents. When we pulled up to the entrance, I saw a disgruntled looking teacher standing with a small child behind the door.

Tatiana exited the car as Isabella came running towards us. Tatiana embraced her and lifted her up into the air. Isabella dangled in Tatiana’s arms, her expression devoid of anything that might resemble elation.

Once she was buckled in the car, Isabella straightened out the wrinkled fabric of her white dress. She proceeded to glare at Tatiana’s reflection in the rearview mirror with angry beads for eyes.

“Why were you a million minutes late?” Isabella asked.

“Isa, we weren’t a million minutes late,” Tatiana said. “It’s only…”

Tatiana’s eyes shifted to the car’s clock. It read 1:15. Even she couldn’t help but chuckle at how late we were.

“Time is present, past, and future,” Tatiana said. “Time is an amalgamation – a holy triad. It is nothing and it is everything all at once.”

“But I’m hungry!”

“We’re going home to eat now, Isa. Just be patient and we’ll be there soon.”

“But I want to eat something now.”

“I brought you your favorite yogurt,” Tatiana said. She grabbed her hand-made purse and pulled out a small blue yogurt carton and a metal spoon.

Isa accepted the yogurt, but she didn’t seem convinced by the offering.

“But I wanted the red yogurt.”

“Isa,” Tatiana said, the warning in her voice unhidden. “Yesterday you told me the blue yogurt was your favorite.”

“But today it’s red!”

“Isa,” I said, interrupting the small altercation. “I’ve had the blue and red yogurt, and I think they’re both really good. Just give it a try since I want to know what you think of it.”

Isa crossed her arms and huffed, not wanting to listen to my efforts at diplomacy. After a few seconds of hunger pangs, she gave in and opened the yogurt.

Back at the apartment, Tatiana prepared Isa a lunch of pasta and vegetables. While waiting for her food, Isa, who was in much better spirits, decided to show me all of the yoga she had been learning. Downward dog was her favorite posture, but she could also perform a full wheel, touching her feet to her head with ease. With a single posture, the four-year-old managed to inspire nothing but jealousy in the twenty-seven-year-old me.

Tatiana called us over for lunch. She had prepared me a plate as well, since she correctly assumed that our pre-lunch smoothie wasn’t enough to quell my hunger. I told Tatiana how impressed I was by Isa’s yoga skills. Tatiana said that all of the postures seemed to come naturally to Isabella.

“She must have been a yogi in a past life,” Tatiana said. “Or a princess.”

Tatiana lowered her fork to her plate and stared at her daughter. Isabella was sucking noodles greedily into her mouth, slurping chunky bits of tomato sauce across her cheeks.

“What are you the princess of, my love?” Tatiana asked.

Isabella carried on inhaling another fork-full of noodles, acting as though she hadn’t heard the question.

“Isa,” Tatiana said, her voice a cautionary hum. “Tell Michael what you are the princess of.”

Isa dropped her fork into her bowl, spit out the noodles, and let out a small breath of a sigh.

“Light…” she said, rolling her eyes.

Tatiana lowered her chin to her hands and smiled at Isa like a teenage girl beholding her first love.

“Yes you are,” Tatiana said, her face illuminated with pride.

Tatiana and Isa returned to Colombia shortly after Tatiana found out that her father was in his final stages of a prolonged battle with cancer. I covered some of her yoga classes in San Pedro Sula as she remained by his side. She stayed in Colombia for over a week, surpassing the amount of time that she was permitted to be away from work. I waited for bad news – a phone call or an email that would inform me of her father’s unfortunate passing.

But the news never came. Instead, I saw Tatiana in Facebook photos standing next to an elderly but otherwise alive and healthy-looking man. In the captions she thanked the supreme consciousness for his gift of life.

Before long Tatiana was back in Honduras.

“He is the strongest man I’ve ever met,” Tatiana told me over the phone. “The doctors said that he was on his deathbed. But I performed my pranic healings and mantras on him every night until he got better. Now he’s up and about as though nothing ever happened.”

Because of her absence, Tatiana had lost her old yoga-teaching gig at the gym. It didn’t seem to matter to her, since most of her students were ready and willing to leave the gym where she was teaching to take classes with her privately.

After a few weeks, Tatiana called again to tell me that things had taken another turn for the worse for her father. She wanted to meet up one last time before she departed for Colombia, this time permanently.

When we met, Tatiana and I embraced. My body went warm and tingly upon contact, as it always did in her presence.

“I like your earrings, Tatiana,” I told her. They were dangly and shaped like elephants.

“I wore them because of you,” she said. I had never told Tatiana that elephants were my favorite animals, but I wasn’t surprised.

“I wanted to give you something before I left,” Tatiana said. She opened her car door and reached inside. She stood up with a glowing smile and presented me with a black and white bag with the word “COLOMBIA” stitched in black letters on white.

“Bogota is your next destination,” Tatiana said, her tone serious. “I will see you there, and we will practice yoga together.”

I lowered my head and smiled. Tatiana had been telling me for months that my next destination would be Colombia. Even though my contract in Honduras was approaching its end, I still wondered how I would manage to pull off a switch from Honduras to Colombia. The feat seemed impossible.

“I’d love to go to Colombia, Tatiana,” I said.

“And you will,” she said. “Whatever you visualize will come true. You are a warrior of light, and the universe will conspire in your favor.”

Several weeks passed. I resumed with my semblance of a routine – work, travel, writing, yoga, and spinning with ridiculously good-looking instructors. Then one day I received an email from a friend of a friend who asked me if I would be interested in applying for an opening at his non-governmental organization.

“Where’s it based?” I wrote.

“Bogota,” was his reply.

I applied mostly out of interest in the position, but also to see if Tatiana’s prophecy would in fact come true. Though I had gotten my application in a few days after the deadline, the organization decided to process it anyway. I answered the questions, secured the letters of recommendation, and took part in the interviews. Within days I received word that I had landed the position with Ahmsa in Bogota, Colombia.

I contacted Tatiana right away to let her know that I was coming.

“See?” Tatiana wrote in an email. “I gave you that bag because I knew you would use it and that you would be coming. I look forward to seeing you again in this beautiful land, my country…”

Tatiana told me in that email that her father had been placed on life support. After much deliberation, her family had agreed to pull the plug and let the suffering come to its end. Tatiana had been against the decision, and instead of giving in she continued performing pranic healing sessions day and night. Miraculously, her father survived being taken off life support. On Facebook, he was back on his feet, looking healthy and fresh in a gray suit.

After reading the message, I stared at my Colombia bag – a folded piece of stitched black and white that sat practically shapeless on the ground near my feet. Honduran ground. Ground that I had been so happy to inhabit but felt ready to leave for something new, fresh, and irrefutably foreign. An alluring and sanctified pleasure for the seemingly aimless traveler.

Of course I’d miss all of the memories, but Tatiana would tell me not to be bound by them. They were simply events of the past, no longer to be delivered to me on the present plane. Instead, I would have to open my eyes and enjoy what was before me. A present riddled with excitement and mystery. A future that had become the object of light-filled dreams and clairvoyant visions.

Existence would always be an amalgamation, I decided. A holy triad comprised of nothing and everything all at once.

Bag of Destiny

Teleprogreso: A Yoga Lesson Learned

At Teleprogreso, February 2011

One of my students, Ivonne, is a middle-aged Honduran dentist who has volunteered for ten years at El Progreso’s Casa de la Cultura to promote art and culture in Honduras. After attending my first open-air yoga class, which ended in complete darkness since I hadn’t taken sunset into account, she left with that relaxed, half-high, half post-orgasmic expression that every person should wear después de yoga. She offered to drive me home, and in the car she told me that she wanted to feature me on Teleprogreso, a national/intercontinental television station that streams throughout Latin America.

The teenager inside me nearly screamed (“OMG – I’m gonna be on TV!”), but as a cool, calm, and collected yoga teacher I tried not to let my emotions show. I agreed with Ivonne that the idea sounded great, and she suggested that we film an interview on yoga, an interview with OYE’s youth scholars, and a yoga session live on Friday afternoon. We exchanged numbers so we could be in contact.

The days passed without further word from Ivonne. I’ve only been in Honduras for less than two months, but I am already well versed in the Honduran way of “mañana.”  If something doesn’t get done, it’ll just get done tomorrow. And if doesn’t get done tomorrow, the day after is perfectly fine.

I was soon to learn from Ivonne, however, that the rule of tomorrow doesn’t always apply. Sometimes when someone really needs something to be done today, that person will wait until the last minute and then make everyone around them feel badly until said thing gets done.

Such was the case with Ivonne. She called me at 8:30am on Friday to tell me that she would see me at 4pm that day. I told her that 4 would be difficult since I had a meeting at work that might run past 4.

Trigger Ivonne’s Spanish soap opera voice.

“But Michael! You simply can’t do this to me. I cancelled the other person who was supposed to come in at 4…” (blatant lie?) “…and I need you and the OYE scholars to do yoga!”

“But Ivonne, I have to work.”

“But Michael, there is simply no other way. I need you to explain to people that yoga isn’t a religion. You must come!”

“But Ivonne, why didn’t you call to confirm during the week? In the United States people call several days in advance to confirm, and then they call later on to confirm again!”

”But Michael, we agreed in the car. I told you Friday at 4…”

By this point I was yelling, which a yoga teacher should never do to his or her student, even if said student is driving said yoga teacher crazy. But I was so stressed out with a scheduling conflict, a meeting about the Catholic Church and a lawyer with a history of corruption who was trying to con me out of my lempiras, and a few rough nights of sleep due to the constant singers at the Evangelical church across street, among other things.

Back up. Take a deep breath in…and take a deep breath out. Take another deep breath in…and another deep breath out.

Since when did I become Diva Michael? Since when did my television debut to help promote my yoga class and OYE  become too much for me to handle? And why was I prepared to lash out at a kind-hearted, albeit disorganized woman who waited until the last minute while trying to help me and OYE?

I told Ivonne not to worry and that I would work everything out when I arrived at the office. Once there I found two scholars who would come with me to Teleprogreso. I told my boss that our 2pm meeting had to start at 2, not 3 and especially not 4. I called Ivonne and confirmed. Yoga on Teleprogreso was going to happen.

Fast forward past the 2pm meeting getting pushed back to 3 and arriving to Teleprogreso with only a few minutes to go before airing. I sat down on a black leather block that seemed like it was designed to make people uncomfortable. Ivonne sat to my left, and to my right was another heavily made up woman whose wrinkles vanished magically on the television screen, making her look at least ten years younger than she really was. The two asked me to help them come up with the interview questions before we started airing. I only had to prompt them a little bit before they went on a role with questions about my life, why I came to Honduras, my writing, and a summary of the books I have written.

At the end of the interview, Ivonne thanked me for sharing my time and for traveling so far to help improve the health of the people in Honduras.

“Now, do you have a phone number where people can call you to find out more information?” she asked, her expression completely serious.

Ugh…put on the spot on live TV.

What was I supposed to do? Give out my Honduran cell phone number to an audience of what might be millions of viewers? Or do the rational thing and refuse?”

Gulp.

“956735…”

The OYE Staff came by to pick the OYE scholars and me up in a brown pick-up truck. While bouncing around in the truck’s open bed with the warm afternoon wind rushing through my hair, I heard my phone beep in my bag. I thought it might be my friends in San Pedro calling me to find out when I would be coming to the city that night.

But no, it was a text from an unknown number from someone calling to tell me: “Listen. I just saw you on the television and I can’t begin to tell you how delicious you are. I want you to be my private yoga teacher.”

The beeps continued, as did the messages, invitations for new Facebook friends, and phone calls. In fact, they are still continuing to this very moment, with a few aggressive people really hoping that I am going to call or message back.

Take a deep breath in…and a deep breath out…

I can’t get mad at the messages or the people or the people who are sending. I suppose they’ll stop eventually, even the ones who like to wake me up in the middle of the night. Until they do I’ll enjoy them for what they are – opinions from a small, moderately perverted fan base of potential yoga students.

Bringing Yoga to El Progreso

Photo by Michael Franken 9/11/10. Liberty State Park.

If you happen to be in El Progreso, Honduras and are looking for a Yoga class, I will be offering city’s first Yoga classes…ever! I am really looking forward to providing quality and affordable classes to anyone, especially beginners. The first 8-week series runs from February 7 to March 28, 2011. Please read the following ad if you are interested.

Find your perfect balance:

• Study and practice the static and dynamic aspects of asanas
• Improve stretching and overall body conditioning
• Develop lung capacity
• Enhance concentration
• Dissolve stress and sources of bodily tension
• Quiet the mind and improve attitude
• Control levels of stress and anxiety
• Introduce the practice of meditation

Schedule:

Mondays starting on February 7, 2011 until March 28, 2011 (8 weeks)

Morning class: 8:00 – 9:30 AM

Afternoon class: 5:00 – 6:00 PM

It is not mandatory that you attend all of the classes and you can start on whatever Monday you like in the series. However, to enjoy the full benefits of Yoga, we suggest that you take part in all 8 classes.

Costs: Your first class if free! After, each class will cost 100 lempiras. A packet for all 8 classes of the series will cost 600 lempiras.

Location: La Mansión, El Progreso, Yoro

This Yoga class provides a weekly space for the promotion of individual health. Taking into account that we exert much energy, both emotional and physical, throughout the day, this class seeks to revitalize our energy and help to discover new ways to rejevenate our bodies and reduce stress through relaxation.

Many of the problems that begin to affect the quality of life, such as insomnia, obesity, back pain, depression, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease, among others, can be avoided, alleviated, and in some cases cured thanks to the practice of specific asanas, yogic respiration, meditation, and relaxation.

The ideal is not to permit certain behaviors, tension, poor eating habits, and sedentarism to deterioate our health. So…why not try Yoga?

Yoga is an art and a way of life that helps to develop our minds, bodies, and spirits in a harmonious way. Yoga is not a religion; it is a philosophy on life that originated in India thousands of years ago. Through its practice, we seek to restablish peace, health, and happiness in our daily lives.