Yel Kaye – Travel Blog, Writing and Photography

I’m in Guatemala City right now, waiting to pick my brother up at the airport. He should arrive in about an hour.

I certainly had an unusual week in San Pedro. Unusual in that I didn’t do as the drunken backpacking Romans do, and instead decided to have a healthy week. I felt emotionally drained… and I’ve had a bad flu twice in the last two months. It was time to be healthy.

Well, on the surface there’s not a whole lot to do in San Pedro than eat and abuse substances. So I spent a whole lot of time reading (read four novels in seven days) and sleeping. But even though that sort of laziness is great, even a sloth like me needs to find something else to do.

So one day while wandering through town I walked down a quiet path and knocked on the door of the San Pedro Holistic Center.

Let it be known: I’m not a very new-agey, holistic sort of person. Sure, I’ve been trying to get into yoga recently because it’s a easily accessible way to exercise while traveling. But the truth is, I don’t particularly love it and I’d much rather go for a good old fashioned run with my IPOD blaring.

I’m skeptical, too. While in San Marcos a couple months ago, I found myself giggling at some of the signs refering to “healing,” “auras” and whatnot.

But I knew that you can’t really knock something until you learn more about it. And besides, the last little while I have felt like I need more “meaning” … whatever that means.

The San Pedro Holistic Center is new (a few months, I believe) and is owned by the same couple from the Flower House in San Marcos. When I went knocking on their door, the man welcomed me in, and spent a lot of time explaining in-depth the various services and courses they offer. I elected to take a meditation class with him, and something called a “cranal sacral” massage with his girlfriend.

I’ve been interested in meditation for awhile, mostly as a way to calm my overactive mind. Seriously – it’s always a whirring, and it gets me into trouble sometimes. But I find it incredibly difficult (maybe because what I’ve learned has come almost entirely from Youtube videos.)

In my two private lessons, I learned something called “active meditation.” It involves focusing on a series of 60 points throughout the body, “sensing” each one. I find it works incredibly well, and leaves me feeling both calm and alert.

I spent a lot of the lessons just chatting, and I believe I learned a lot. He said that it is good to engage in activities that take us outside our personalities: dance, meditation, and so forth. Our personalities (self-image) are our “ego,” he said, and by trying to move beyond that superficial level we get to our “essence” or who we really are.

Maybe not the language I would use, but I understand it, and it’s an idea that I am going to try to incorporate into my life.

For the cranal sacral massage, I didn’t really know what to expect. It actually combined Reiki, a very soft surface massage and a lot of talking about quite personal things. In many ways, it felt a lot like a therapy session more than a massage.

As for the actual massage aspect, while it was going on I mostly though “arrrrrrg… press harder!” I thought it was sort of silly.

Afterwards, though, I felt amazing. The tension in my shoulders was gone. I felt vulnerable, but not in a bad way.

In any case, I decided to spend my alloted “fun” money on this, and not drinking. The couple and their family were warm and kind, and I felt very touched from knowing them.