Swapathgami – making your own paths of learning and living

Since October I am based in northern India in Udaipur staying for 2 months at Shikshantar – a community of co-learners and co-creators of alternative ways to living a healthy sustainable life. People in the Shikshantar community are also called swapathgamis, people who are exploring pathways outside of institutionalised structures. As swapathgamis they walked out from unhealthy and isolating life styles, ‘trusting their own creative intelligence over the prescribed lives of the ready-made world.’ - More about that here in on one of their published issues.

Shikshantar was found 12 years ago coming from a place of deep concern for what is happening in the world and fundamental critique to existing institutions and systems and their capacity to solve the complex problems the world is facing. Shikshantar’s approaches to learning and simply living have been strongly influenced by the way local villagers live around Udaipur. Its prime motivation was to create a space where alternative or more appropriately healthier ways of living could be explored both theoretically but also hands-on doing and living it every day. Since then Shikshantar – through providing a safe, trusting and creative space to everyone – has inspired locals and passing guests from all over the world to create the same in people’s homes and personal lives, as one of the founder put it the other day "to see your own house as a live space of activism, your own activism to creating a difference in the world."

Since my arrival here I met interesting people, initiatives and gained a lot of insights into different forms of alternative education, healthy local nutrition and growing your own food e.g. through urban community gardens or by creating your own green roof top and more than anything else how to live a life that hardly produces any waste, best known as zero waste management.


Zero Waste Management and living a healthy life

I am thrilled – in the month that I am living on my own in Udaipur I don’t think I even filled half a bag with non-degradable garbage. 80% of what I am throwing out is compost which I dispose on a big compost pile just outside the house. Even though the extensive packaging of products and food in my home country increasingly annoyed me, I don’t think I have ever quite had the full experience of doing without. Here I buy my vegetables and fruits almost daily fresh from little movable stalls or sellers on the ground, which are all nearby. In fact one can find a veggie or fruit seller almost at every corner, we have one that is ringing a bell and announcing his arrival when he passes our house. This makes it quite easy for me to always eat freshly and local products thus maintaining a super healthy vegan diet while avoiding plastic or other packaging. I usually carry 1 or 2 bags with me to be ready to buy food along the way. One simple thing that impressed me at the very beginning was seeing people here have their self-made little sized cotton bags for loose fruits and veggies. How simple is that? – I have never even thought about making little cotton bags for myself, it hardly takes time to create these and saves the hassle of having to pack your apples or other small items into more useless plastic.

(A bit of a side note here, the other day I listened to an alternative radio programme promoting a newly released film – a documentary called "Addicted to plastic". The film which is based on wide scientific research talks about the effects of plastic on the human body. One thing that stuck with me then is that average life span of a plastic bag, meaning the time its actually been is use, is in average no more than 10 mins.)

The milk – though I am currently experimenting how I am doing without - I can get from a milk store down the street which sells fresh milk out of big metal barrels. I can bring my own small pot with a lid or kettle in the morning without having to use any of their packaging (liquids are also sold in plastic bags) to carry it home. At another local food store I can get local grains, rice and pulses which they sell per kg from huge bags and again are unpackaged, one only has to remember to take along enough small bags from home. All of the above and Shikshantar’s inspiration to change who you are by changing what you eat, by also offering daily delicious healthy and mostly vegan lunches, which include local grains, zero oil preparation and seasonal veggies and fruits left me with a great experience of being able to eat well – taking good care of my health, while reducing massive amounts of waste. Who would have thought living biologically and environmentally sustainable could be that easy?

The initial reaction to all of that might be that this is India, where things are of course very different, but my experience has been such an eye-opener that I started believing that minimizing my consumption cycle is possible in any country – it all started within my own mind of what I think I need in which way and being clear what I want to break out from. This I think is the hardest obstacle to take in the end, overcoming your habits which you have had for so many years and became a second skin you got comfortable with.

The relevance to ‘minimize my consumption cycle’ has been one of the greatest insights since my arrival here. With that I am referring to start living more connected to the land again, if possible most preferably grow my own vegetables, collect my compost and make my own soil, buying locally grown products, etc. Like this complex and large cycles of dietary needs, can be massively simplified. The other simplification of my every day consumption cycle and a massive contribution to zero waste management is to consider which things do I really need and which ones could I make on my own? In the time that I stayed here and with various passing visitors and smaller demonstrations I was fortunate to see Aloe Vera masks and soaps being hand made, bags being sown from recycled clothes or other various utensils and jewellery was made from usually as garbage considered items, such as old magazines, coconut shells, plastic, and so on.

All of this really triggered my imagination and creativity, generating various ideas how I could simplify my life back at home to bring more of that energy and approaches to zero waste management back into my house and local communities. While bursting with that strong drive to bring these newly gained habits back to my everyday life in London, I frequently had flashbacks remembering how my grandparents in Hungary and Poland still live the life that to some extend I am trying to return to. My family in Hungary has almost all their dishes and pottery being hand made by my grandma, the curtains and other textiles in the house being sown and the food that is prepared for lunch or dinner is coming straight from the garden (earlier blogentry fromHungary on that). I also remember my mother telling me stories of her upbringing in a small village in the mountains in Poland where life was pretty much what we would call self-sufficient, sustainable or organic, just this was normal way of living without any particular labelling yet. When travelling through Romania and Bulgaria in August, I realised in probably many more Eastern European countries lif for the majority of the populations is exactly still that. The very unfortunate side of things is that most people there are all very eager to modernize their lives by adapting to our processed, disconnected and wasteful living standards in the name of progress.

There is a really great short documentary on the story of stuff (20 min long) - I totally recommend seeing it!

Becoming Shapeless - Bodywork in California

End of August I arrived in Petaluma, the North Bay Area of California and one hour north of San Francisco. I took a break from travelling for a month and was very lucky to find a nice quiet place outside the city. I visited two seminars at the Strozzi Institute on Embodied Learning and Leadership and for the first time also started taking Aikido classes.

While my trip before then has been much around reconnecting to my past and roots, visiting family and friends and about being in Nature, my stay in California was very much about exploring the being in the presence - mainly about paying attention to the body, on bodily conditioned patterns we develop over time, practices and movements. Spending the last weeks in Petaluma and the Strozzi ranch has been quite an impacting and uplifting experience, as it has helped me to integrate different embodied energies and enhance body-mind integration. At one point in the middle of the seminar I remember waking up the next day and having the sensation of feeling ‘shapeless’. As it was mentioned to us the next day “some might feel shapeless as they are moving away from one shape – their conditioned patterns to a new shape”.

My trip to Petaluma was totally unplanned, my plan was to go from Istanbul straight to India and from there spend the last months in Brazil. End of July I felt a strong pull to get in touch with the Strozzi Institute and explore the possibilities, the conversations went that well that I spontaneously booked a flight and changed plans to visit India in October. It seemed to be exactly what I needed to bring my previous experiences and reflections nicely together.

I find it rather difficult to articulate all of that in an easy comprehensible way, given that most of what I am talking about was a “felt experience in the body” in the realm of body and emotional intelligence as opposed to insights and understanding in the realm of mind intelligence. The work of the last couple of weeks has also showed me how much I still use to live in my head and how difficult it is to let go of my ‘mind habits’ even after all the somatic experiences and practices of the last year that helped me so much already in becoming more body aware and intuitive, I still feel the distance and continuous path to full integration.

King without a crown - celebrating a great summer!

Matisyahu - King Without A Crown from Isabelle Krimniotis on Vimeo.

San Francisco

Aikido Magic at the Strozzi Dojo

For the month, that I am staying in Petaluma, CA, I am going to Aikido classes 3 times a week and absolutely love it. Last week after class, I wrote down the following ...

I experienced Aikido today like music making, as vibrant, flowing, dynamic and magic.
I had this experience of forgetting about my body and just connecting my centre and energy to somebody elses centre and energy....exploring this with curiousity, like tuning an instrument to find the right tone, I tuned in to another persons vibration to find the right tone, to create movement. Not my arms or legs were making the moves and leading the person to the ground but my energy coming from the centre which hit the right tone and found alignment in and with someone else. When this tone was hit and alignment found, it was easy to move the other to the ground without hardly moving your arms or using any strenghts, just coming naturally from your centre of gravitas, your hara or source.

To cope with the moves, I had to almost forget my limbs and focus on my centre and energy flow and welcome the other, connecting to the other persons energy flow (ki). Let the body move as it wanted to move. An amazing experience of intuition and Ki.

There was a lot of magic in my Aikido class, I learned a lot today taking on moves that looked so damn hard. Its amazing how all these experienced teachers and blackbelt practitioners were taking care of me, with much patience letting me experience the moves and also allowing me to try these on them, with the right amount of exploration and guidance, always reminding me to recenter as the core strenghts and reconnect to the flow of the other, feeling into his body, his spine, almost anatomically moving down within the "opponents" body. The more welcoming, accepting, relaxed and connected I was with the other, the more powerful the moves and the falls. The one falling then experienced me as gentle and almost warm towards them, holding in a way but also very powerful in executing the moves.


Aikido is the "Way of Peace," or "Way of Unifying Life Energy" a martial art aimed at harmonizing the body and spirit with the natural forces of the universe. (The Secrets of Aikido, John Stevens). Ai means "to come together, to blend, to join, to harmonize" and ki, which has different meanings but in this context means "spirit" or "disposition".

Aiki as the universal principle that brings all together, reflects the grand design of the cosmos, the union of body mind and spirit and to live together in harmony in a state of mutual accord.
Morihei Ueshiba - the founder of Aikido had a vision of aiki that corresponds closely to to the notions of integritas (wholeness) and consonantia (harmony) in Western Philosophy. Integration between - between body and spirit, self and other, humankind and nature, truth and beauty - is a condition that all people should strive for, and integrity is a moral state as well: those who are whole can act in the best and fairest manner.

Reading this lines again - I feel like Aikido is the context for my stay in California and beyond, as everything that I experience, I find in Aikido and everything that I learn and notice in Aikido, I see show up in life. There is invaluable learning in the moves and the relationship with one another that I experienced in the dojo, that I am looking to integrate into my everyday life. Looking forward to contiuinng the practice in London.

Budapest to Istanbul

This entry is mostly flips - short videos with impressions from my trip - hope you can see it all alright.

Back in Budapest
Early August I arrived back in Budapest, travelling by train from Munich overnight in a wonderfully comfy sleeping wagon which I had all to myself. There were enough empty wagons, so the ladies from my cabin decided to take another one for themselves. That was probably the best travel comfort I ever had while travelling low budget and eco friendly.

Truong and Bettina - arrived shortly after from Berlin and as we made it back into town from the airport we went straight into birthday celebrations and a Hungarian warm welcome with Palinka. The day finished as it started with even more Palinka. (Sorry no subtitles yet on the flip below)

Palinka from mokoflip on Vimeo.

Romania - Transylvania
Few days later we sat in an overnight train to Bresov, Transylvania, where the hiking and journey to Istanbul began. Being in the South Carpathian mountains and forest - the largest mountain range in Europe with up to 2,500 m (8,202 ft) - has been one of the best experience of my trip so far. At some point Truong and Bettina moved on to the Danube Delta at the Black Sea and I continued another week on my own, enjoying the hike up and down the mountains through endless wild forests which still have bears and wolfes. I must have walked between 8 - 12 miles a day in average. I think I have never done that much walking in a week time and for me who has been more or less glued to a bike most of my life, this was quite an experience. I enjoyed the path more than reaching a particular destination, taking my own pace, sometime superslow and steep, sometimes running downhill or discovering interesting things along the way. Leaving Romania left me incredibly grounded and content.



Some impressions on the flip...

Tree hug from mokoflip on Vimeo.

Bridge over waterfall from mokoflip on Vimeo.

Dance in the woods from mokoflip on Vimeo.

Bulgaria - Transit
From Bucharest to Istanbul I took a train which took 20 hours in total, leaving noon on Friday and arriving 8 am the other day. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Bulgaria we had a little stop over. Some fellow travellers from Slovakia and great musicians with bikes gave an uplifting performance and helped change the mood immediately. All the people left the train curiously to see them. We all loved it and the music magically helped the people to open up and connect more easily.

Waiting for the train in Bulgaria from mokoflip on Vimeo.

Istanbul
On the train from Bucharest to Istanbul I met Matz. Matz is also from Germany and it turns out, that he lived in Istanbul for 1.5 years! He even spoke some Turkish, very impressive. We had a nice relaxing day on one of the islands in the Marmara sea.

Why Istanbul? from mokoflip on Vimeo.

Meeting Truong and Bettina back in Istanbul, we had a good last nights dinner before my departure to San Francisco - eating really good fish dürüms in the heart of Istanbul.

Fish Durum from mokoflip on Vimeo.

The first 3 months - Making decisions can sometimes be the hardest…

Suppose you had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about. Suppose your side won, and you had the society you wanted. How would you start living, you personally, in that kind of society, start living that way now! Whatever you would do then, do it now!" (Paul Goodman)

Speaking to people about my trip always triggers all these wonderful associations with taking time off from regular routine at home. People seem to immediately imagine amazing time away, where you are free to do whatever you want to, have responsibilities, lean back, relax and enjoy yourself and all the things you usually don’t have time for, like travelling around the world, meeting friends, reflect on where you are in your life etc…at least definitely I have imagined a lot of that and was part of what made me go.

I had some of my toughest times the last months sometime feeling totally lost in “the everything is possible space”, where I could speak about going to Israel one week and then think of Mozambique the other. Where I could think of having proper beach holidays at some point, but at same time see myself in Dojo for a month, meditating and practicing martial arts, see friends or spend a considerable time by myself in the mountains. It’s great to be on this sort of daydream- excursion when one sits in the bus on the way to work but actually sitting in front of my laptop having to make decisions arranging my route, knowing that I now finally have the time and some financial resource, freedom can be a burden indeed. Questions have been in the back of my mind…What am I REALLY drawn to do and WHY? Out of the huge list of the things I love doing and feel I want to follow, where do I want to put my focus? How do I invest my little money wisely?


Laying the path as I walk – enjoying the Learning Journey

As the sabbatical proceeded, I learned to slow down and be increasingly present to my intentions even in smaller every day activities. I learned a great deal about what my real purpose of the trip is and how I am crafting this learning journey as I am taking one step after the other.

“Paying attention to what we are doing provides a spaciousness that allows
self-inquiry to take place.” (Richard Strozzi-Heckler)

I had to smile when I recently read the line above in a book, the first 2 months of my trip, every morning and evening I captured in much detail the activities and intentions of the day and reflections on those at the end of the day. This has helped a lot to shift my attention and awareness to be more sensitive to what enjoy in the moment. It's not a very forward looking energy, rather a very grounded in-the-moment-quality, most of the times pretty unconscious. I guess you know that feeling of when you least think about it you seem to have the best results or right decisions?. In retrospective it usually makes sense, I then ocassionally get some post-realisations like a “oh that’s why!” or “Yeah, all seemed to perfectly fit after all!”

Slowing down takes soo much time– after the first 3 months, basically 1st third of my trip, I can slowly feel at ease with the a more in-the-moment-focused attention and experience of living.


My legs are tingling to run but my sight is blurred – finding courage

The difficult part came when I needed to align or consolidate this approach to the actual material and commercial world of great deals or when getting involved with other people’s decision making processes that affected mine! How far ahead can I really plan while still make grounded decisions on future travel arrangements or any future plans?

It was a little disturbing to have wasted some money on good-deal-pre-booked train tickets within expensive Europe when then at that time my entire body really asked for something else than going French-Breton dancing in Moulins-sur-Allier (and I honestly was looking forward to go for months).

The urge or necessity to plan ahead in the world we live in, in the last couple of weeks increasingly turned out to be an incredibly uncomfortable place to be in especially after having experienced how much richer and aligned my life has become when not jumping ahead of myself too much. There were a couple of days when I was glued to the computer, researching flights and felt incredibly pressured to make decisions. I was still waiting to hear back from my contacts in India (a learning village I was going to visit) and in California (a ranch and great institute for Body work). I was very, very excited and felt quite special about visiting both places and from both I was still awaiting the final green light and ok about a last minute swops of dates from my side because “it felt right”.
At the same time a lovely and very patient travel agent, who by then has spent a lot of time checking flights, connections and deals and came down to ensuring me the final offer is an amazing deal which indeed it was. Travelling to all the remaining countries I wanted to go to (India, Brazil and to California) for only about 1000 bucks was hardly worth arguing about. Of course as life has it – it only lasted till end of day which was then about 4 hours remaining before the close of offices on a Friday afternoon and still had no reply from either India or California. Incredibly hectic! This whole felt marathon of arrangements, search for options and communication etc made me be stuck and numb for days – holding breath all this time and losing any capacity to make any grounded decision even though I so wanted to complete this, likethe last run of finalising a proposal or thesis. By Tuesday I finally had enough from sitting at my desk, I gave up went into the garden and started seeing the sky and breathing again. There was nothing I could nor even wanted to do anymore. I didn’t hear back from both places until coincidently both came back to me almost the same time, the Friday after only. By then of course the deal was gone but it didn’t bother me anymore. I felt absolutely content with the decision made to go for the swop of order, both confirmed they were fine with that too. Once all the clarity was in place, booking the remaining flights was really peanuts and probably done in less than 30 min.

I was really getting the complexity of not just aligning yourself but aligning yourself with your environment. More than anything else, I felt it is a lot about having the courage to go with something I was sensing is right to me but haven’t yet entirely comprehended or come to peace with in my mind to feel confident enough to run with it. Having the courage to change plans, go against my and other perceived rights and wrongs, my judgements, go with something that might be seen less popular, say no to friends, or to invest quite a lot of money into something which wasn’t part of the story or visible at the horizon in the first place but somehow quietly called me has been invaluable to me still feeling like I am on course, more strongly so than ever before.

Returning to the starting place – getting ready for the next 3 months

Being back in Budapest the place where my journey started 3 months ago, turns out to be a good move. Remembering how different my time and exploration has been then but also tapping back into the serene, nurturing and lively place that Budapest always is to me. I feel I have found a lot of treasures, a bit like puzzle pieces. The difficult part is not to isolate them and clearly define each piece but to put them together to a fitting, elegantly balancing colourful image, which makes up the life I want to live. It makes me think I shouldn’t zoom in too much to identify the details with much precision but keep maintaining a peripheral view as long as possible before working on the details – like an artist working on a picture over a period of time.

The treasures of my first three months in a nutshell

• Honour and maintain building relationships with important people in your life. It’s been invaluable to spend time with family and stay in touch with friends. Reconnecting and deepening the relationship– meaning actually getting to know them with fresh eyes and a new perspective.

• Staying in touch with home and everyday life to some extent to not run risk to disconnect too much from the normal world but rather strive for an embodied new experience and routine of living which I can easily bring back and integrate into my everyday life in London.

• Keep telling your story as it is unfolding to be present to it and to keep it alive for yourself and others, but also to see how it is developing, like a song and a melody that is written and maturing overtime.

• Tune in and keep being true to present moment energy. Am I really doing what I ought to be doing now? Just because I felt right about it yesterday or two hours ago doesn't mean it’s still right for me now. It is also important to keep paying attention to finding a balance between trusting and following your intuition while still knowing when to keep commitments, being grounded and down to earth when taking decisions.

• Find balance between spending time on your own and time with others.

• Turning criticism, fear and doubt – most of my own – into learning, a gate to overcome and grow. My shadows keep coming back and pulling me regardless where I go. It’s a bit like fighting the demons at a gate in a computer game where you gain extra powers once you manage to beat them and get to the next adventure. ]

• Be protective about daily balance between routine, practises and fun times. Time to lean back to relax and enjoy my trip as if there was no tomorrow – Checking-in regularly with myself e.g. through centring and other practices to increase body awareness have helped me a lot to also get a better sense of my present mood and emotions.

• Trust yourself like no other – following your intuitive pace and flow. Criticism and doubt from others can hurt. It can be spot on but also can be totally off the shore. Staying with my intent and energy, my pace and inner sense even , when I trust my friends and respect their judgement and plausible views about where I am at, - has helped me to stay in a grounded place, feeling right and content about the steps I am taking. Silence and paying close attention to how I feel about something is my secret union with my most trusted advisor.