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 Aleksandra Kowalska 2025

Back home for almost a month now. The mattress swallows me. The water runs hot. My tea is strong, and no alarm at 4.45 a.m. to tell me it’s time to sit, and face myself. Everything is soft, easy, clean.

And yet, something aches. Not in the body — it’s rested now, strong — but somewhere deeper. Rishikesh lingers, like a bruise under the surface. Or a dream I’m not quite waking up from.

The ashram was never about comfort. It stripped us down. Not cruelly — but completely. No coffee. No noise. No escape. The food was simple, the days long, and the silence louder than I thought possible. There were mirrors, yes — but not the kind you check your hair in. These ones stared back. 

Everyone was forced to confront the projections they cast onto others. In the close quarters of the ashram, irritations flare within— someone talks too much, someone is too confident, too silent, too needy. But over time, it becomes clear: these aren’t really judgments of others, but reflections of the self. The ashram doesn’t just expose the body — it exposes the buried, uncomfortable truths we carry. Our need to be seen, our fear of not being enough, our quiet anger. The faces around us became mirrors, and what’s reflected back wasn't always kind. And yet, in that rawness, there’s a strange kind of freedom. The beginning of something honest: self-awareness.

We arrived complete strangers. Stiff bodies, guarded eyes, everyone trying to hold it together in stretchy pants and quiet ambition. But the ashram doesn’t let you perform for long. Not when your hips are screaming in an impossible pose. Not when your fellow teacher sobs during breathwork and you’re the only one awake to hear it. Not when someone shares their hardship over rice and dal, and you realize there’s no polite distance left between you anymore.

We broke — slowly, beautifully. Laughed in the cracks. Passed notes like it was a dirty secret. Held space for each other in the mess.

We chanted verses none of us understood, but our voices grew stronger anyway. We learned the anatomy of the spine, and then felt our own fall apart. We sat in stillness, not because it was peaceful, but because running wasn’t an option anymore.

And somewhere in the midst of it — in the sweat, the silence, the shared fatigue — something softened. The ego. The resistance. The part that always needs to know what's next. I don't think we found everlasting serenity, but something more real, maybe braver: honesty.

Now I’m back, in a world where things are smooth and fast and filtered. And I keep wondering: Was that real? That place? Where pain wasn’t hidden, where presence felt like love, even without words? Where nothing was easy, and everything mattered?