Art from a nomad heart - the blog of my beautiful wife, plus her instagram

Art from a nomad heart - the blog of my beautiful wife

http://jojosamuelson.blogspot.com/

Here is her instagram

https://www.instagram.com/cosmonative_art/

Gurus

When i was 17 i started to read to change my life by changing my thinking. Mainly i read books about psychology, philosophy, religion and occultism. Anything that was “outside” of the norm was of great interest to me, actually it still is. Then i came across a few books by a man called Osho, AKA Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. They were really amazing and i felt like many of the things he was writing about i had been thinking about. As i started to read more and more books from him and writings about him i felt that this guy has a lot of wisdom. And he was also very controversial which for me is a great sign. If this unbalanced, unnatural, unhealthy and disfunctional society is rejecting a person, usually it means that this person has a lot to offer. Years later i went to a few Osho communities and started to practice some of the Osho meditations. Most of these practises have some benefits. Over the following years i met more Osho followers, some of them really beautiful and some less so. There were a few not very pleasant experiences as well. 

Another benefit i got from the Osho movement is my name that i got in 2009 from a teacher called Ma Ananda Sarita. Then i changed my passport too so now it is the label other call me by until maybe one day i get a calling to change it again. Personally i am not attached to any labels so i´m not bothered if people can´t say the one i have, often people call me "Nara". Native Americal Indians changed their name several times in their lives, whenever a new phase of life started. Modern people are very attached to the labels that they get from their parents. Up to the label on a gravestone that says: “here lies so-and-so”. One psychotherapist/shaman/healer called Alejandro Jodorowsky created a system called “psychomagic” and said sometimes it helps to get rid of old karma when you change your name. From personal experience i can say it worked well for me.

Another thought about gurus and people following someone else they think is more enlightened than them. Terence McKenna, the author and a great psychonaut of the 60:s, said that once he asked the spirit of magic mushroom about this topic. According to him, the mushroom spirit said the very idea of following another human is ridiculous, that all human beings are like grains of sand on a beach. So the idea of a guru is like saying that we follow another grain of sand who can liberate us. When i heard that, for me it makes perfect sense. Guru worship is very common in India and also seems to be a growing phenomenon in the western countries. All the religions are also more or less like that. Instead of finding the divine in the nature or within oneself, people look for external rules and other grains of sand to tell them what to do. It's like throwing the responsibility of my life to someone else's shoulders. For me Shamanic practises with entheogens are beautiful, who else could be a better guide for us than the spirits of the plants who have been around for millions of years more than humanity? :)

Biodanza, the dance of life

As a part of my healing journey, at one point i participated in several biodanza workshops and classes. Biodanza is a kind of therapy and also a dance style. It was created and developed by a psychotherapist and anthropologist from Chile called Rolando Toro. He was working with people who had learning difficulties who could not communicate with others, then he discovered that when he was playing certain kinds of music they start to move and connect with others through dancing. From then on he started to refine and develop biodanza and discovered that it also helps ordinary people to get more connected with themselves and others. It seems disconnection from ourselves, from others and from the nature that surrounds us is the main illness of the modern humanity.

Anyway i tried biodanza for the first time in a community called Osho Leela in UK in 2006 or so. It was a really beautiful and touching experience. When i grew up at my home we were not very emotionally expressive and we rarely hugged or touched. In biodanza hugging and gentle physical contact is a big part of the healing. So for the first time people were hugging and touching me i started to cry, to let out all my rarely expressed emotions. From that moment on for the next 3 years i started to go to more classes and more workshops. In 2008 i went with a few friends to a biodanza congress in Italy where we were around 1500 people in total. It was great! Rolando Toro himself was there so i have met the man. He died on February 16:th 2010. For many years i have not gone to biodanza classes but if the opportunity presents itself i will go again :) 

 http://www.biodanza.org/en/

Detoxing, health, Raw food

Ever since i was a child i never wanted to eat any animals but my parents said humans need to eat meat to live. So reluctantly i did and suffered many health problems as a consequence. As a teenager i was overweight: 120 kilos, and suffered from allergies, depression, panic attacks, cloudy mind and many other diseases i was not even aware of until one day years later i was back in balance and healthy.  At age 17 i was reading a book about India and that millions of people there are vegetarian. So i stopped eating meat right in that momeht. Over the next years i started to become aware of why i was eating, often it was for emotional reasons. People often ask me how quickly i lost the weight and i always say i don´t know as that was never my focus. My interest was to feel better. For some years i was following a vegan diet. Then around 10 years ago i was in Indonesia and just felt one day i will eat some steamed fish. At the time i felt my body felt better with fish, maybe because i was missing vitamin B12 as i recently found out that my blood is missing this nutrient again. 

Detoxing and raw food were a big part of my life probably around 2007 after spending some years travelling in India. Back then i was suffering from parasites in my intestines. I tried Ayurvedic and Chinese medicines to get rid of them. At one point i was so desperate i took some allopathic poison known as antibiotics. Nothing worked of course. Then i remembered reading a book called "grape cure", a diet of only grapes for 2 weeks. So i tried and for the first time in many years my stomach felt normal. Then i started to read more about detoxing and the benefits of a raw food diet. For a while i tried it and really loved raw food. I still do and if i had the opportunity i would be quite happy to follow it. As i said because i used to be overweight and eat for emotional reasons i know very well how connected with emotions eating is. But i also know that we really are what we eat and that diet has much more impact on us than most people would think. It has been found that the stomach has as many nerve cells as the brain so we actually have another brain in our gut. If more people would be aware of that they would be more conscious of what they are putting in the body :) 

Nonviolent communication (NVC) - Suomessa Rakentava Vuorovaikutus

Several years ago i came across a book called: "Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life" from a man called Marshall B.Rosenberg and i found it very interesting. Several years before that i had already heard about NVC but i didn´t learn much about it at the time. After reading Rosenberg's book i wanted to learn more so i got "nonviolent communication training course", an audio tutorial to get deeper into the history, technique and the application of NVC in our daily lives.  NVC is an amazing tool for observing our thinking patterns and the way we communicate with ourselves and others. Along with Vipassana meditation, NVC is a technique that every human would benefit from learning. If all people on the planet would practice these two amazing transformative techniques, the world would be a better place. Here are some links about NVC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication

http://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/index.htm

https://www.cnvc.org/

Related topic to NVC is about education. Marshall Rosenberg talks a lot about how people have been educated by our social, political and economical systems to think in a way that is causing violence on our planet. He makes a lot of sense. Most people think that education means school. To a degree yes but also the way that most schools function in our society is just to turn human beings into non-thinking machine slaves. In school people are meant to learn to work for extrinsic rewards (grades in school, salary at work) without regards to whether it is beneficial or not. Also people are meant to learn obedience to authority (a system who can either punish or reward according to how people are labelled: good or bad)

Before i went to school i already knew how to read and do basic maths so i was sitting there bored. Then we were supposed to study all kinds of nonsense as for example history that is very one sided story, told only from one point of view having little to do with reality. Over the years i spent in conventional school, i was very motivated to learn what interested me but not willing to become a mindless slave. So eventually i left at the age 18. If i had had a chance to go to a Steiner school, i could have stayed for longer. On the other hand, i don´t know much about Steiner education, perhaps at some point i would have run into same difficulties with this system as well? My last name is Freeman and that really states my personality: free of external control and free to be myself.

Real education comes from life. And i have been blessed to meet many amazing teachers. Some of them non-human like the spirits of entheogenic plants.

There is an author that i like very much who talks a lot about education. His name is Alfie Kohn and i recommend reading his books or articles. Also i have seen a few talks on video and they are really good.

http://www.alfiekohn.org/

Suomessa NVC kulkee myös nimellä Rakentava Vuorovaikutus ja tässä on lisää tietoa siitä https://savannaconnexions.fi/

Yoga and Vipassana meditation

In 2003 i was in India looking to learn yoga and meditation. Then i went to a community called Auroville http://www.auroville.org/ where i saw a poster about a Thai massage workshop that included free yoga and meditation class. So i participated in the course which was wonderful. And the teacher Itzhak is a great yoga and meditation teacher too. The massage training was also amazing. After those 11 days Itzhak suggested that i go to a silent 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat. So i went to Dharamsala in the north of India to stay 3 weeks in a yoga ashram and then after that went to my first Vipassana retreat. The retreats are run by an organization who just want to help people be happy by learning to purify their minds. It is not part of any religion, you will learn a technique that will help you to discover why you make yourself and other around you miserable. Vipassana helped me to change my life and i would not be who i am without it. I highly recommend everyone to go on a retreat at least once! For more information have a look at:
http://www.dhamma.org/en-US/index

Back to yoga. After those 3 weeks in the ashram in Dharamsala i mainly practiced by myself. Sometimes i went to lessons but not very often. For many years i i haven't had a regular practise. In 2013 i went with my wife Joanna to India to stay for one month in a yoga ashram, we did one month yoga teacher training course that was nice. Maybe one day i will have some use of the certificate i got there :)

Thai massage training

My first Thai massage workshop was in India in 2003 with a man from Israel called Itzhak Helman. He is an amazing teacher with whom i also learned yoga and Vipassana meditation. Over the years i did 6 workshops with him. His website is: http://thai-yoga-massage.org/

Itzhak told me about an amazing teacher in Thailand called Pichest Boonthumme who is a recognized master of Thai massage. He is also a Shaman who knows where you have blocks in your body and he communicates with the spirits. I only spent 6 weeks with him but one day i would like to go back to learn more. He is a really great healer and a rare master unlike anyone else i have met. Here is a website you can find more information about him, i think it is one of his students who maintains it:
http://www.pichestthaimassage.com/index.php

Also in Thailand i was learning for a few weeks with a blind massage therapist called Mr Nat. He is a very nice man who uses hard pressure and has a very good tactile sense of the people. Of course being blind his sense of touch is more accurate and he likes to hug people. I´m happy i had a chance to meet this happy soul.

In 2010 i did a "Thai massage therapy with energy lines" workshop with an Italian man called Laurino in Greece. Both Itzhak and Laurino are members of "the sunshine network" which is an international association of Thai Massage teachers and practitioners. 

In 2014 i did a workshop called "OsteoThai for the breathing process" in Greece with a teacher from France called David Lutt. OsteoThai is a combination of Thai massage and Osteopathy and it´s good. In the future i wish to do more OsteoThai training. Here is a website of OsteoThai: http://lulyani.com/en/

Here are my certificates: