I have a month until the con, and doesn't look like I'll be able to reach 52 kg by then. It makes things more complicated, and especially under these circumstances I hate to be the one that has all the responsibility for others... I'll be the designated driver because half of our party doesn't have a license and the other half is unwilling... Luckily they are also the most understanding people on earth - still, leave it up to me to make problems for myself when they don't exist.

Eating is just... a chore. Boring, unpleasant, at times difficult... and yes, sometimes impossible.

To keep up with the routine I build up at the retreat I've set my alarm to ring half an hour earlier and have started a meditation practice. It's not much yet, but quiet me-time without hurry or pressure feels really nice.

Coming back on Sunday was a bit of a culture shock... So many people in the city, and they all look so different. It was weird, I always thought West End was really relaxed and full of nice genuine people... walking down Denman to get lunch on Sunday was unpleasant as the street were full of people in hurry, and everyone looked so, well, artificial. Just proves that it's all relative.

Anyway, the photos of the retreat are all up now, go and check them out if you're interested.

One of the most concrete things I've been trying to keep is the pace. I noticed it the moment I stepped outside, my normal walking pace is much faster than it was back on the mountains. Am I really in so much hurry? I've tried slowing down and I can do it, only it's started raining again which makes it slightly less comfortable. On my first day back at work I had four meetings... four, and I never normally have any. One of them was my yearly review which went extremely well. I don't honestly feel like I'm worth all that praise.

So yeah, I'm definitely experiencing the post-retreat low here. Hopefully it'll just pass in couple of days.

Vancouver is beautiful in its glorious summer heat, it is truly one of the best places in the world. Vancouverites are out in force, rollerskating, biking, hiking, walking running, and jogging all over the place. The city is filled with ice cream, juice, summer berries, pina coladas, bikinis, beaches, tanned people and music.

I should take time off more often.

I love the noble silence we preserve in the mornings. I don't think most people would have anything intelligent to say anyway, and it just cuts off unnecessary chitchat... we make our way to the pavilion, then proceed with the meditation and pranayama, and practice. And even having breakfast in silence is fantastic... most of the stuff that I feel like saying is "wow, you took lot of that bread" or "I'm starving". Idle, eh?

Food is the big topic, no doubt. Even when we're eating, we're just talking about food... the food we're eating, food we've eaten, food we should be eating, food we shouldn't be eating. Starbucks... we talk about Starbucks a lot. There is coffee available, and people take a cup in the morning - but maybe it's one of those familiar and common things that strangers talk can about. We talk surprisingly little about yoga. With my teacher gang yoga is almost all we talk about - maybe here our free time is so consumed by yoga that we don't have the urge to talk about it over dinner too.

Me and couple of other people also took a tour of with the estate manager Ron this afternoon - Ron showed us some of the sustainability part of the retreat center, mainly we had the time to see the energy production that they have going on. They take water from two springs further up on the mountain, and use it to produce pretty much all the energy that they need - and we have all the modern amenities including hot running water and lights, there is a washing machine but no dishwasher (that's one of the ways they can easily conserve power and water by using manpower). It was very interesting, later on in the week Ron promised to show us the recycling and sanitation facilities they have.

It occurs to me that this is the first time in my life I've ever done something like this. I've never been on a holiday on my own, and this might even been the longest time me and Dragon have ever been apart - and it was exactly ten years ago last Saturday that I moved to England to be with him. Yet it doesn't feel strange, maybe that's not a surprise to the dear reader, but I'm surprised at myself.

Yoga is good, although in the lectures there's still very little new to me. I've been to two of Paul's workshops by now, and I've seen short version of Bernie's anatomy/yin and yoga history lectures. But some things are good to go over again and again, and one thing I really appreciate is to see all the teachers and their different bodies. So far the group has been fairly cautions and I don't see quite the same kind of connections forming than in my previous teacher training - but people are nice, and I love the ladies in the back row with deep belly laughs.

Food is good! Three meals a day are provided, and I'm always in the front of the line... food is made by volunteers who live at the center, some short term, some long term. We help out by doing the dishes, we have a rotation where three people at a time do some part of washing and drying and with three meals a day and 15 people it works out having to do some task about every other day. In addition to that I managed to appoint myself as the gong sounder, five minutes before the lectures start I'll strike the gong twice so that people know they should be heading for the pavilion if they haven't already. They wanted someone punctual, and... well, punctually is both one of my bad and good points.

It's interesting, within few minutes of whipping out my laptop two people came and asked if I was on the internet... looks like I'm not the only addict. I looked at my emails - and when I say "looked", I mean I looked at the subjects but didn't read any of them. Doesn't look urgent, and casual things don't interest me right now.

I'm constantly hungry even though I eat a lot more than I normally do.

Today's lectures haven't been anything new - it's anatomy, and I've heard Bernie's lectures before, now he's added a lot of stuff Paul talks about and his workshop is still fresh on my mind too. Repeat doesn't bother me too much, and I'm kind of glad first day is like this because I'm definitely feeling the post-city and stress low setting in. Feeling lethargic, tired and dull... it'll be better in few days.

Maybe it's something I should be trying to give up, at least for this week.

Whether I choose or not, the truth is that our schedule is so full there will be very little time to use for random internet browsing. We start the day at 6 am with some meditation, pranayama and asana practice, then have breakfast at 8 am. We are also going to keep a silence until the end of breakfast, which will be... interesting, I think. Probably weird at first, but I expect it to be calming once I get used to it.

Then we'll do some yin yoga and lectures, have lunch... then we have a "happy hour" where Bernie gives us a "happiness theme" and we have an hour to explore it on our own. Followed by lectures and dinner, followed by "story time" i.e. Bernie telling stories about yoga history and mythology, followed by meditation... Which takes us to 9 pm and I'm pretty sure I'm about ready to turn in by then.

The place we're at is called Sky-to-Sea Retreat Center, and it's situated about 30 km from Whistler, up in the mountains by Daisy Lake. It's a ecological Buddhist retreat center run by volunteers - it's quite new and it has all modern amenities like warm water and electricity, but also has a very close relationship with the nature and tries to recycle and conserve as much as possible. There are bears and cougars in the area, we saw one black bear from the buss window on our way here, and a little snake just now slithering across the path... and there is a bird's nest in the house that I'm sleeping. The nature looks very much like Finland, except the mountains and high altitude changes - very familiar and calming. Felt at home right away.

I'm still feeling a little bit apprehensive, being away from home and all - it's not a normal state for me so it'll take me a little while to adjust. But I think I'm going to love it here.

June is such a fickle month in Vancouver, the summer is starting but it's generally still fairly cool and rainy. I find it amusing that Vancouverites say that summer starts on summer solstice, on 21st, whereas in Finland we call it midsummer. Telling a Finn that summer starts on juhannus would get strange reactions, I'm sure.

I'm at work, watching crows feed their chicks on the roof of the building opposite. They are fluffy and stupid and eternally hungry and selfish.

Last weekend I was lucky enough to get to go to Paul Grilley's workshop again. Last time I saw him was about two and a half years ago and that time he changed my yoga practice completely - soon afterwards I decided to become a yoga teacher. This time was not quite as earth shattering, but it was still very very good - his knowledge on the subject of fascia and the modern meridian theory really is unparalleled in the west. He's holding a ten day anatomy workshop in California next year, and I'm seriously thinking of going there... I can probably dedicate one week a year to my further yoga teacher training - this year I'm going to study with another teacher of mine, Bernie Clarke, at his nine day retreat in Whistler - that's happening in a week's time.

I also bought a new camera today. To replace my old Ixus, I went for Canon SD800 IS, and currently I'm waiting for the battery to charge... pretty new pictures to follow in Flickr soon, I promise.

It's been 103 days of our 365 project, and here is a small collection of photos I've taken. It's kind of taken the daily time I've dedicated to communicating with friends afar, and blogging seems to have taken a back seat. I feel guilty about and try not to... Maybe I should start posting more photos and see if I can write more that way?

I guess it's also time for another weight update... it was 48 kg early this week, so the trend is still up. Seems to be about half a kilo per week which seems healthy enough. I'm still a bit ambivalent about the whole eating thing, but using a bit of willpower and common sense I can get it happening. And that's really all I want to say about at this point...

I found through a concrete experience on Sunday that it's way too low for me to do much strenuous... well, anything. We had Kate's birthday party in Central Park, and it involved being on my feet the whole day. As happens always with events like that I eat very little, but now that I have absolutely no reserves to go back on - it exhausts me completely, and by the end of it I had a big panic attack and fell asleep pretty much as soon as we got home. I slept well over eight hours which is enough for me, but it still took me two days to get back to feeling normal again - the physical strain was pretty severe.

So it's fairly clear to me that I can't do three and a half days of a con in this condition.

If that doesn't motivate me, I don't know what will. So. Target: weigh 52 kg by August, that should give me a little bit of spare to live on for three days. Also need to plan eating at the con much more carefully than I would normally do (normal attitude is "meh, whatever") - maybe have snacks planned out all through the day, and make Chu take care that I actually eat them.

Inspiration through anime cons, whowuddathunkit.

Am I suffering from a bloggers block? Is it that I don't have anything to say?

I don't know. Things are pretty good, I guess. My mom's visit is now couple of weeks behind, she was a great guest and was missed. We spend a lot of time working on cosplay, meeting friends, going to parties. Work is work. I do very little asana. I study Sanskrit and meditation. I teach yoga.

And I am mindful. About what I do, about what I eat. I take breaks to just sit still. I eat - some days enough, some days not. Weight is something like 45-46-46-47 so it's going up... I feel bloated and I feel like I eat like a pig. I question my thought patterns, my sanskars, and I try to use my buddhi, my intellect, to reason that this isn't so, and try not letting my ego get to the driving seat.

And summer is here... in the mornings our apartment becomes an oven and we have to open all the windows just to be able breath. But we are cautious of leaving them open when we leave, we've had some squirrel pups and and visit us recently. We've brought the fan up from storage and it was immediately put to good use... today it's raining again, but it never lasts for long and it's still warm. Everywhere is green and luscious and beautiful.

Yes, I'm still here and in this moment.

It's lovely to have her here... I've missed her, and I've been able to say things I've had on my chest since June last year. And didn't really even know they were bothering me this much until I've suddenly started crying and just letting it all out. Countless number of pots of tea have been consumed and we've talked about philosophy a lot, especially about Patanjali's yoga sutras and how this ancient map of the mind is still as relevant as ever. I'll take her to see Padma tomorrow.

Eating? Well, a little. I weighed myself on Sunday - trying to do this once a week at the same time - and the scale shows 46 kg. I'm not reading too much into that, one way or another, these kind of small fluctuations are perfectly possible. After last week's inspiration from the Buddha I've been mulling it over... there are some really interesting things coming from it. I'm still being very humbled about my support network, surprising how sensitive some people are and how they make things easy for me. For example on Friday I was too lazy to go and have lunch, and Don invited me to share his - so I took a fork and started eating from his plate, and we talked about something else than eating and watched old Amy Grant videos together. And that's really perfect - I've been trying to take the stress out of eating as much as possible, to make all the eating experiences as pleasant as possible.

Still getting little nudges from my friends from different circles. Some are a little bit late, like my friend Laura who hadn't read her email in two weeks - but she called and we had a very interesting talk about things only sixes talk about. And since she's actually probably the friend that I see most regularly in Vancouver, she sees things my friends on the other side of the Atlantic don't, and her eye is keener than most people's... some things she sees are uncomfortable, but a lot of thoughts this issue has brought up to the surface are. I think I need to talk to her more.

You meditate for hours and hours and your thoughts are a confused mess and nothing comes to you. And then suddenly there is that moment of clarity that you have been looking for.

It came to me in meditation last night that what I'm doing is probably a very advanced sort of body control. I've been doing it for years and years in many different ways, adopting healthy eating habits, dropping snacking, sweets, extra fat, as well has fixing posture, building muscle, strength and aerobic fitness. Learning to sit still, breath. It's all a big discipline exercise and this is my victory of mind over body. I shan't deny it, it makes me proud that I'm able to do it.

I was talking about it with Padma last night and we drew parallels to many yogis in India who do very extreme things to their bodies to celebrate their devotion. What I'm doing is not that different from a yogi painting his body blue and raising his hand above his head keeping there for five years in show of his dedication to the cosmic unity. Then Padma talked about Buddha and how he, in search for spiritual enlightenment, starved himself eating only a grain of rice a day until he was nothing but skin and bones (there are some rare and very interesting statues of him in this state in the Far East). But he stopped and came to the conclusion that middle way was the right way, and that starvation and spiritual progress were not compatible. When I asked what was it that Buddha realized when he decided to stop - Padma said something that I think will be the corner stone to my recovery.

"What was it that made him stop? He was probably asking himself what was the purpose of his action and was it achieving what he wanted."

Question, of course, isn't what Buddha realized. He was Siddhārtha Gautama, the man who later reached enlightenment and became the Buddha, something I'm not and I'm not even seeking. His dilemma was his alone, and his reasons applied to him. My question is "What is my purpose with this and is it achieving what I need?". Yes, purpose! What is my purpose here? My lifestyle and eating habits that have brought me to this place I am today because... I want to be healthy and happy?

I think this is going to be very important.

Today eating has been good, but I'm dominated by thoughts about gaining weight. I can't go to the scale at all because I know that if I've gained weight I'll feel bad about it. I talk to people and everyone keeps saying that I've got a really good handle of the problem, I've analyzed it well.

It's true, I know the mechanics intellectually and I can look at my thoughts very rationally. I look at my belly after I've eaten and it looks huge to me, yet I know it's not true. I know I'm at an unhealthy weight but yet I like how I look. I know that when I feel weak and lifeless eating will help, yet I can't bring myself to do it.

Much work ahead.