I went for an ayurvedic massage today: my body was fully felt from head to toe as one, and fully opened from outside to inside.
It was then clear that my body and my soul were distintive parts, and slowly, slowly with the pressure and intensity of touch, I gave my body completely away.
I mean, was it me giving my body away, or was it the body itself that left me, unpossessed and free, without senses or will?

Two women, one in each side, roughly massaging me, turning me from one side to the other, dedicating their full energy to my body, who felt complete and gained a different awareness, forgetting its usual sense of structure- left or right, top and bottom- and becoming as confused about its direction as clear about its dimension.

I did not know anymore if I was lying on my back or on my tummy, where my knees where in relation to my shoulders, what it hurt, or it felt good.
All the usual logic of understanding, sensing and perceiving my body was lost and transformed into a big pleasant unity- a body.

Through the full concentration on that body, my mind was brought into it, focused and entirely embodied, and the result was a paradoxical liberation of this same mind.
To bring the mind into the body, and keep it there, in the moment of the body, interlocked, is to liberate all thought and evasion, developing mind's potential, using it for the evolution of body consciouness, that is ultimately your self awareness.

In the beginning of the massage, I still felt some pain on my joints caused mainly by the hard wood bed I lied in. Lots of immages floated in my mind: the sea and the cows, the flowers in the murals, the yellow light and the black crows, the fishing nets and the wood boats, the sounds and colours of beautiful Kerala ("gods own country", like they say)...

But as soon as those immages were gone out of my mind, it was just me left there, totally taken. And then my India was an outside Idea, and all the travelling a fable, a myth, or projection, a personal experience non the less.

And in that moment, India became a different place.
It became only the place I was in. It was then and there. And my body was totally present in it. I felt then and finally that I arrived.

To understand one's culture is to understand one's touch.