Tag Archives: san luis potosi

If You Don’t Like What You’re Seeing… Turn Off the TV and Go Outside!

“The greatest suffering can be overcome through the simplest of actions…” -Me 

In the past couple of weeks I have cried more and slept less for the longest stretch of time I can remember.

And whenever I would have a moment’s rest from the onslaught of pain, I would wonder… “How can I stay here? I don’t want to go back down. I need to stay above water!”

My sister brilliantly reminded me that I could listen to Thich Nhat Hanh on YouTube or podcasts whenever I wanted.

My own mind was struggling with creating and maintaining a positive thought stream, and I found it almost impossible to stay in the present moment.

So I turned to Thich Nhat Hanh to fill my head with the good stuff. 😉

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It took a couple of days of listening to him, but finally, one of my bigger questions was answered and I had a tool I could use to make changes in the recesses of my consciousness.

Thay said, “If you are listening to a CD and you don’t like the music that is playing, why keep listening to it? Just change the CD.”

Simple, yet brilliant.

“If your thoughts are causing you to suffer, why continue to listen to them? You can make a change, right now. You can choose to stop your suffering, right now.

There are seeds in your unconscious. Seeds of love, of anger, of joy, of hate. If you water the seeds of hate, anger or despair, they will take root and grow strong. You need to sing them a lullaby, and put them to sleep. You need to water the seeds of joy, of hope, of love, and they will grow strong in your mind.”

So thank you for being part of my practice of watering the seeds of gratitude and love in my consciousness. I am going to share with you everything I have been grateful for and appreciated over the last couple of weeks here in Mexico.

This is my lullaby, sending the seeds of despair and fear to sleep. 🙂

The first thing that I think of when I feel this swell of appreciation in my heart are the people I have met in the past few weeks:

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Julian, Ceci and Julian Jr. hosted me twice and became my home away from home. They helped me more than I can say and continue to check on me and support me.
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Gaby took me in and helped me in every way she could until the last minute when I walked out her door.
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Pancho took me on a ride in San Luis Potosi with his cycling group and spent a long time going over maps for my route with me
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Erick picked me up outside of Queretaro so I didn’t have to ride through the city and also spent a lot of map time with me, suggesting routes
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Marcego (on the right) welcomed me to his city, his capoeira group and his home and gave me much needed pep talks about my trip
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I’m thankful for all of the beautiful Mexican women I’ve met, especially Monyca and Aurora who let me fall apart on them and gave me love
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Adriana and Nao Veio took me in at the last minute here in Mexico City and are so beautiful and kind, sharing their home and capoeira with me

And there’s more and more…

I’m thankful for the sunsets here…

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I’m thankful for the beautiful city of Queretaro…

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I’m thankful for cute dogs… 😀

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I’m thankful for the beautiful art of basketry…

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I’m thankful for the mandolin and the ability to play music and heal…

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I’m thankful for my noble steed, my amazing bicycle who carries all of my stuff and goes with me everywhere…

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I’m thankful for capoeira, my saving grace, and Professor Marcego for saying, “If I check on you in a couple of months and I see that you’ve quit and gone back to the U.S., than you’re not my friend anymore.” 😀

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I’m thankful for delicious Mexican food…

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I’m thankful for walking meditation…

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I’m thankful for handstands…

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I’m thankful for finding random, inspiring quotes on the walls of a restaurant:

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“Never ever give up on hope. Never doubt, never tire and ever become discouraged. Be not afraid.”

I’m thankful for Mexico City for welcoming me into it’s awe inspiring massiveness…

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I’m thankful that Addison Rice, the love of my life is coming to see me here in Mexico City in just three days…12246865_932069153513073_4459700671473640900_n

And I am thankful to you, dear friend, for reading this whole post and giving me the gift of your attention today. 🙂

Love,

-Jahnavi

Cycling from San Luis Potosi to Queretaro

Hey guys, I’m sorry I didn’t get this up sooner, but here’s a fun little video of my ride from SLP to Queretaro:

I am currently still in Queretaro, training with Capoeira Longe Do Mar and waiting for Addison to get to Mexico City where I will be with him for almost a week.

I’m still figuring out my next move after this, but I’ll keep you posted (no pun intended)!

When failure is a temptation… but not an option!

Sometimes, when you have writer’s block, the best solution is just to set out to ride your bicycle 250 km across a desert landscape through towns where no-one speaks English.

Works every time.

I haven’t felt like writing much these past two weeks, but day 2 on the road, and inspiration has kicked in!

For the past couple of weeks I have been struggling with ups and downs, sadness, depression, what-have-you.

Most days, at some point, I would decide I couldn’t do it anymore. ‘I can’t do it,’ I’d tell myself, ‘I’m not riding my bicycle to Brazil. And now I have to go back to Austin and face all of the people who have been rooting me on.’

I failed… this is what failure feels like, I would think to myself. I thought I could be like those cool, brave, girls in the travel blogs, or the ones who wrote books and had movies made about them.

But maybe all I want to do is plant a garden and bounce a baby on my knee… and do capoeira everyday… and ride my bicycle. Maybe I don’t have to be special or brave or amazing. Maybe it’s okay to just be ordinary.

Honestly, it was kind of cool to experience what if would feel like to give up on a dream I’ve had for so long.

It’s crazy… it felt like… like suddenly I had no idea who I was anymore, and there was just all of this open space.

But then I would remember that I can’t actually go back to Austin.

Addison is having a blast with me gone, going to bed early, waking up early, skyrocketing his career, working out to his heart’s content, having lots of ‘bro time’ with affluent-entrepreneur-copy-writer-types.

He’s rearranged our entire apartment, and his creativity has exploded within.

“The apartment feels too small for both of us now,” he told me.

Even if Addison had welcomed me home, I knew I couldn’t give it up. I want to so often, but I just can’t.

I have to try a little longer, I would tell myself. Just ride to the next town. If it’s awful, you don’t have to do it anymore. But maybe you’ll have a breakthrough.

I hadn’t actually traveled by bicycle in two weeks by this point, because of getting the ride back to Saltillo and then taking a bus to San Luis.

I suspected part of my hesitation was simply the lack of momentum, and my fear of cycling alone in Mexico.

I’ve been staying in San Luis Potosi with Gaby and co., and then I traveled to Chical. I got back to San Luis last weekend.

As I made plans to cycle to Queretaro, Gaby begged me to just take a bus or get a ride.

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Pancho, Gaby and me

“It’s so dangerous!” she would wail, her mascara heavy lashes fluttering in consternation. “It’s a big highway, so many… how you say… semi-trucks!”

But Pancho, a cyclist who took me on a day ride with his group in San Luis Potosi, said, “Hey, do what you have to do. It’s not a bad road, just a lot of traffic. It’s okay. Anything could happen to you anywhere. And you need to ride your bicycle, so do it.”

It’s about 250 km from San Luis to Queretaro, so I knew I needed three days at least.

I mapped out my route, making sure I would end up in some kind of town each night that would hopefully have a hotel, or a church, or a ‘bombero’ (fire-station).

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The night before I was planning to leave, Alejandra and her son Daniel came over, and Alejandra asked me:

“Did you look at the weather for tomorrow?”

It had been sunny and between 60-70 degrees everyday I’d been in San Luis, so no, I had not thought to.

When I admitted this, she said, “Well, it’s supposed to be very cold and raining for the next two days.. and maybe even snow!”

I quickly looked at the weather app on my phone and discovered she was correct.

What?? I thought. I’m already having trouble motivating myself, why this?

Gaby smiled happily. “It’s okay, you stay here, we go to the movies… you can live here if you want!”

Alejandra and I made plans for the next day, but it was hard for me to hide my disappointment.

It’s not that I wouldn’t love to spend more time with Gaby and Alejandra, but I was stuck and I needed to unstick myself, and the way I could see how to do that was to ride my bicycle to Queretaro.

Well the next morning when I opened my sleepy eyes, I saw immediately that the sky was a little cloudy, but the sun was peeking through. And when I stepped outside, although the temperature had indeed dropped, it was as dry as a desert ought to be.

I gathered up my bags and began to do the final stages of packing where I had left off of yesterday.

Gaby came home from her morning spin class and observed that I was leaving after all.

Being the good sport that she is, instead of trying to stop me, she began making phone calls to her friends.

What blows my mind here in Mexico, is that friends seem to be available to eachother at the drop of a hat, anytime, any day.

People would come by to visit Gaby and spend hours at her house, with little more than a half hour of heads up.

Or we would go to a restaurant and slowly, over 4-5 hours, a whole retinue of friends would cycle in and out, sitting at the table together and talking talking talking.

The communality of Mexicans is amazing to me. I would like to see more of this in the States, at my own home and with my friends.

All of that is to say that Juan Ramone appeared at the door with his pick-up truck 15 minutes after Gaby called him.

“Leaving San Luis, 57 (the highway I was planning on taking) is very very dangerous,” Gaby explained. “Juan Ramone is going to drive you just outside of the city. It’s not so good even after this, but it’s better.”

Juan Ramone is in his late 40s and is very deliberate and thoughtful. He can’t speak much english, but I could understood most of what he said because he actually spoke nice and slowly.

We transferred my gear and bicycle into his truck, and then I said good-bye to Gaby. 2016-01-28 14.29.27

Gaby has a busy, full life, and even so she took the time to make sure I was safe and that I had a good route planned out, and made me feel welcome to stay as long as I needed. I appreciate her so much!2016-01-28 14.29.35

I’m looking forward to seeing her in Austin when she visits, or to taking vacations with her in Alejandra to the beaches of Mexico.

Juan Ramone (well, his full name is actually Juan Ramone Grande Primero, he instructed me, when I was adding him to my contacts) drove me 20 km out of San Luis.

Indeed, Gaby’s concerns had been legit.

The highway leaving the city was god awful.

I was so grateful for the ride.

We stopped 30 km away from Santa Maria del Rio (the town I was planning on cycling to first) and I assembled my gear onto my bicycle while the semi-trucks and other traffic screamed past (and while Juan Ramone reminded me repeatedly to not step in the dog shit that was lying just near my front wheel).

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I said good-bye to Juan Ramone and then heaved myself onto my bicycle and wobbled away.

I’m doing this, goddammit, I thought to myself. I’m doing this!

Capoeira in San Luis Potosi

When I left Austin on my bicycle, something I had to leave behind that is near and dear to my heart is my capoeira group, Evolucao. But I promised myself (and Contra Mestre) that I was going to visit lots of capoeira schools along my ride and broaden my experience and understanding of this beautiful art-form.

When I return to Austin and it’s time for me to start teaching classes for Evolucao, I hope to be sharing capoeira from a deeper sense of knowledge and experience.

Brazil is the motherland of capoeira, so ultimately this is really where I need to go to get the submersion I’m looking for.

However, capoeira is a big family that has spread across the world, and so when I saw that there are a couple of groups here in San Luis Potosi, I wasn’t too surprised.

(in fact, I ended up getting a ride to Chical–which you’ll hear about in my next post–from the dad of one the directors of capoeira in Mexico)

I introduced myself to the teacher, Sobra (his Capoeira name means ‘shadow’) through a FB message, so that when I arrived at the class, he would have a little bit of background for this spanish hacking gringa capoeirista.

I was immediately welcomed into the class, and despite the language barrier, we all shared an understanding within capoeira that allowed me to have a great training session and experience some camaraderie with my fellow blue-yellow cord.

It was slightly hilarious to be called up to demonstrate with the teacher however, since I didn’t really understand the verbal explanation of the drill, and had to just gather the information through gestures and imitation.

(part of what I’m experiencing as I learn spanish is how I quickly convince myself I don’t understand what someone is saying to me, due to some kind of stage fright–it’s like a mental barrier that lunges into place when I’m put on the spot… not exactly helpful!)

My friend, Alejandra, came to watch the end of the class and kindly took some video so that I could share a snippet of time with you guys here!