Day 76: It's All Prakriti, Baby
TW: SA
Yesterday, I landed back in Bali after a whirlwind few months that felt like a lifetime.
2025 hasn’t exactly been gentle for me. From recovering from technology addiction, to being bitten by a dog, surviving a sexual assault, and losing a big chunk of money after a retreat venue was a disaster - it's been a series of gut punches. This week I had to delay paying my social media manager, and when I apologized, she said something that really stuck:
“Alex, I feel so bad that all these bad things happen to you. I hope something good happens to you soon.”
And I laughed and replied, “Don’t worry - something good already did happen! I asked one of my friends on a date, and he said yes. He’s really special.”
Still, if I’m being honest with myself - as a yoga teacher walking this spiritual path - something good happening shouldn’t be the metric. Because all of it, good and bad, joy and pain, is still… Prakriti.
It’s all the material world.
The Instagram addiction, the retreat refund nightmare, the dog bite, the love story, the assault, the financial fear - it’s all part of the constantly shifting dance of Prakriti.
This week while on the yoga retreat in India, I read a line from Meds from the Mat to my students that landed with us all:
“We look out into the material world and identify ourselves with it. Identified with a material world beyond our control, we are consumed with fear… Our true nature is not material but spiritual, and we suffer from mistaken identity.”