Another year has been lived

The year 2021 was all about community life, connections with family, friends and love and developing yoga therapy and bio-construction skills.

A year full of connection, community and bioconstruction.

I haven’t shared my story in a while. There has been a lot happening and I just didn’t have the inspiration to write a blog a about it. The past months a lot of my focus has been on the yoga therapy training I’m doing, which is still amazingly awesome. Besides that, life has been busy with more beautiful opportunities, spending time in the Netherlands, my aunt visiting, beautiful bioconstruction workshops and, as cherry on the cake, love.

Living in community is still a great experience.

Since a while we’ve been working towards creating a sociocracy. A system in which decisions are made through consensus. This means that there needs to be a lot of openness and communication. It’s a practice I’m really enjoying. Everyone has a voice and they need to share it. So even when I feel I don’t have an opinion about something, I still need to think about it and form one anyway. It also creates structure. Everyone has a role or job in the community and with sociocracy this is being clarified. To me that has been really helpful, since I couldn’t see my role within the project clearly. The existing agreements with every individual have also been clarified. I had been struggling with the feeling of not doing enough, not putting in enough hours. Finding a balance between work for the community, work for my training, friends and rest. Turns out I’m lacking hours in a day and days in a week 😉

The practice has been on focus and clarity.

What do I need to do, what can I do and what do I really want to do. This is an ongoing exploration. What has become clear is that getting myself organized is key. This has been be quite challenging after having lived a pretty free life for the past 4 years. I’ve rediscovered my agenda and I’m slowly getting the hang of all the planning and knowing how much fits into a day and a week. I’m also starting to feel more comfortable taking the time I need for my yoga therapy work and that it is ok to miss out on some social gatherings in the project. My role has been more clarified as a person who does building projects or helping out with them and as an energetically grounding presence who can also help people out with yoga therapy. The presence part is one that I’m still stepping into, learning to see that as an actual role that is important and brings a lot to the community.

Connecting with people dear to me.

In September and October, I spent 5 weeks in the Netherlands. My parents have their birthday and I got to see and hug my friends again. That was such a lovely experience. After about 3 weeks back, I did notice that I was starting to miss my Spanish family. At the same time that made me realise how rich my life has become. I can genuinely say I feel I have 2 homes.

When I went back to Spain, my aunt came with me. It was such a joy to show her my Spanish life. We were staying in a friends’ house, which was great for my aunt, because of privacy and space. I did notice that it was more challenging for me. After a busy time in the Netherlands, I had been looking forward to going back to my van, but I wasn’t in my van. So I was back, but not completely. Being back with my aunt was a very different dynamic, also between us, because she was now visiting me and the community I live in and more dependent on me, which had never been the case before. An interesting experience for me. Noticing my wish to share, to rest, to join the work, sensing a responsibility towards the project, my aunt and myself. But my aunt and me have been through many experiences together, so we connected, we lost it, and we reconnected again. With ourselves, with each other and with the community.

Developing my bioconstruction skills further.

I’ve also reconnected with a sense of passion for bioconstruction. Juancar, one of the guys I worked with on Charlies finca, was giving a workshop on the tadelakt technique in Sevilla. My aunt had told me about that technique of waterproofing limestone plastered walls and I had seen it in Juancar’s house, which made me eager to learn. It was an intense but awesome weekend, where I noticed how much I enjoy working with my hands in this way. A month later there was a woodworking workshop, organised by the same organization with a different teacher. Here we built a roof, using traditional locally used wood connections. I got to use the woodworking tools that used to belong to my dad and had been stored in the attic for all my life and that I had brought with me, when I came back from the Netherlands in March. It was great! More than ever, I’m looking forward to designing and building my own eco house.

The values of community and love.

The finca hunt however, has been paused. Between my training, the work I’m doing and meeting up with friends, I don’t feel enough space and focus to actively look for something. At the same, since I’m really happy at Catalina, I think it makes more sense to focus on my training, growing my business and learning more from community life. The idea of buying something for myself has really shifted into seeing the value of community. And how important it is to do that with the right people. At the same time that idea is also shifting again towards something much smaller. Life keeps changing so let’s see what will make sense.

And the cherry on the cake has been love.

Besides all the love I feel for all the people in my life, a new and beautiful man has entered into it and we’re very much enjoying each other’s company and getting to know one another. Fun fact: he was also born on March 16^th, just like me. I think it’s hereditary, my dad married Els, who was also born on the same day as him :’)