Biography, story of my life

Hello, my name is Narahari. It is not a name that i got from my parents but from a teacher who lived in India for 26 years. Her name was Ma Ananda Mahasatvaa Sarita. When she gave me a new name then i got rid of all my old names and changed my passport. That all happened 10 years ago. So my official passport name is Narahari Prem Freeman but usually i just tell people my name is Nara. Prem could also be okay, it is Sanskrit and means «love».

I was born 22 of January 1979 in Lahti in Finland.So i´m 42 and it feels good, i like to have gray hairs in my hair and in my beard. My childhood was probably nothing special. My mother was 45 and father 54 when i was born. I also had half brother and sister. Of course they are whole humans but it means we have the same mother but different father. Of my family only my mother and brother are still alive.

When i was 21 years, i moved away from Finland and went to UK to work. I was there on and off for 10 years, during those years i also travelled a lot in India and a few times in Thailand. Then i went to work as a volunteer for an organisation called WWOOF (willing workers on organic farms) in Spain and Portugal. It was in Portugal where i met my wife Joanna over 9 years ago. Joanna is from Mexico but she also has a Swedish citizenship because of her father.

So for around 4 years we lived during summer time in Lofoten in the north of Norway and travelled in the winter. Then almost 3 years ago we lived in Oslo. In January 2019  we moved «permanently» to Helsinki in Finland. Then I went to school for a year to study massage.

I´m very interested about south American Shamanism. Ayahuasca has been incredibly wise, powerful and beautiful teacher for me. She is always guiding me in my life. I have really understood she has always been with me in this life and also other previous lives. Besides Shamanism my interests in this life have been Osho, psychology, yoga, Vipassana meditation, NVC (non violent communation), raw food, tantra, biodanza, traditional Thai massage, Wim Hof Method etc. I´m always searching for new ways to expand awareness, become more healthy and learn to live in harmony with each other and with our mother earth.

 I did not live in Finland for 18 years so when i speak Finnish people say i have a funny accent. Of course i have an accent also when i speak English, or Spanish. But what is an accent anyway? It means that a person does not speak exactly as a person from that country. So it means i am not from any country but from the stars :)

Biografia, elämäni tarina

Hei, nimeni on Narahari. Se ei ole nimi minkä sain vanhemmiltani mutta nimi jonka sain yhdeltä opettajalta joka asui Intiassa 26 vuotta. Hänen nimensä oli Ma Ananda Mahasatvaa Sarita. Ja kun hän antoi minulle uuden nimen niin sitten hakkiuduin eroon kaikista vanhoista nimistäni ja muutin kaikki nimeni passissani. Sitten virallinen nimeni on Narahari Prem Freeman. Mutta yleensä lyhennän sen ja sanon että nimeni on Nara. Voisi myös nimeni olla Prem. Se on Sanskrit-kieltä ja tarkoittaa "rakkaus".

Synnyin Suomessa Lahdessa 22 Tammikuuta 1979. Joten nyt olen 42 vuotias, tuntuu hyvältä olla aikuinen. Tykkään että mulla on jo harmaita karvoja hiuksissani ja parrassani. Lapsuuteni ei ollut varmaankaan niin erikoinen. Äitini oli 45 ja isäni 53 kun synnyin. Oli mulla myös puoli veli ja sisko. Olivathan he tietysti kokonaisia ihmisiä mutta tarkoitan että meillä oli sama äiti mutta heillä oli eri isä. Perheestäni äitini ja veljeni ovat vielä tällä hetkellä elossa.

Kun olin 21 vuotias lähdin pois Suomesta ja muutin töihin Iso Britanniaan. Asuin siellä noin 10 vuotta mutta myös niinä vuosina matkustelin paljon enimmäkseen Intiassa ja pari kertaa Thaimaassa. Siitten menin työhon vapaaehtoisina WWOOF (willing workers on organic farms) organisaation välityksellä Espanjaan ja Portugaliin missä tapasin vaimoni Joannan yli 9 vuotta sittten. Joanna on kotoisin Meksikosta mutta hänellä on myös Ruotsin passi kun isänsä oli Ruotsalainen. Sitten noin 4 vuotta asuimme osan vuotta pohjois Norjassa ja matkustelimme talvella. Viimeisen melkein 3 vuotta olemme asuneet Oslossa.

Tammikuussa 2019 muutimme "pysyvästi" Suomeen. Menin opiskelemaan hierojan ammattia kouluun vuodeksi ja valmistuin Joulukuussa. Olen hyvin paljon kiinnostunut Etelä Amerikan Shamanismista. Ayahuasca on minulle ollut niin mahtavan kaunis, vahva ja viisas opettaja. Hän aina minua elämässäni ohjaa. Olen ymmärtänyt että Ayahuasca on ollut aina minun mukanani tässä elämässä ja myös toisissa elämissä tätä ennen.

Shamanismin lisäksi kiinnostuksiani tässä elämässä ovat olleet Osho, psykologia, jooga, Vipassana meditaatio, NVC (väkivallaton kommunikaatio), raaka ruoka, tantra, biodanza, perinteinen thai-hieronta, Wim Hof -menetelmä jne. Olen aina etsimässä uusia tapoja laajentaa tietoisuutta, tulla terveellisemmäksi ja oppia elämään sopusoinnussa keskenämme ja tämän äiti maan kanssa.

En asunut Suomessa 18 vuoteen, kun puhun Suomea ihmiset sanoo että on minulla hassu aksentti. Tietystikin on minulla myös aksentti kun Eglantia puhun, tai Espanjaa. Mitä tarkoittaa aksentti? Se vain että ihminen ei puhu niinkuin se henkilö joka on siitä maasta kotoisin. Joten en ole kotoisin mistään maasta, olen tullut tähdistä :)

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/