From My Inner Library
Reflections and excerpts from a lived yogic and human path
Back, But Not Really Home
Returning from India and learning how to live between worlds
(Excerpt from the book manuscript: Spiritual Frogs I Have Kissed)
Dear reader,
There are moments in life when the body has already returned, but the soul hasn’t yet caught up.
I found this passage recently while revisiting old notebooks and book drafts — words written after returning from India, when the longing was still humming in every cell and the West felt strangely unreal.
This was one of those threshold moments:
between worlds,
between loves,
between identities.
What you are about to read is an excerpt from that time on how to live after a life-changing experience.
Spiritual Frogs I Have Kissed – Rick
Returning from India – Marin, Fall of 2009
Back in Marin.
Gayatri found herself back in California. Rick was in Burma by now, soon on his way to Australia. Still, he was very present in her thoughts and body. It was as if they were still connected — closer than ever — even though worlds apart.
India seemed like a hum that continued to make her soul vibrate. Everything still seemed magical. Everything was magical: the apartment of her good friend Thomas, who had welcomed her to stay for a few nights while he stayed at his partner’s place; the always somewhat cold and empty-feeling streets of San Francisco; the SE training she participated in that weekend upon her return.
In a way, she loved being back in America — here and yet also so far — still untouched by the daily concerns of a troubled mind that kept looking for its place in the world without ever really finding one. India, and everything it stood for, still lived in her and radiated into every moment she experienced, even while she went about the familiar routines of life in the West — while actually being far, far away, in a place that felt more like home than any home she could ever find.
Gayatri woke up that morning in a comfortable bed, soft and squishy, to the hectic sounds of high heels meeting hurriedly on hard pavement and a light that was cold and grey, battling to break through the ever-present clouds and mist hanging over the bay of San Francisco. For a moment, she didn’t quite accept the reality of where she was.
She missed Rick.
Lying there in Thomas’s guest room, she drifted inward. She closed her eyes again and, from the sacred chamber of the brain where all impressions and feelings she had ever collected were stored, she nursed her longing to be back where she had been just a few days ago — knowing all along she couldn’t stay there forever.
Her awareness slipped from the present moment into memory.
In her mind, she felt the hard mattress and the rough blanket over a thin sheet that barely separated her from countless seekers before her — all searching for a bit of comfort in a world where most of the population slept on the ground, separated only by a thin bamboo mat from the earth people would spit on during the day.
She heard her favorite bird singing its high-pitched song, making her believe she was in a jungle rather than in a small town close to the holy Shiva mountain. She felt her eyes blinking against the warm golden light of the sun, foreboding another incredibly hot day — sweat running down her spine beneath her long salwar kameez, dust collecting in her sandals, and a chorus of honking sounds threatening her eardrums to burst.
In India, she would be getting up now.
She would wash her face and teeth, put on her black yoga trousers and a Western-style long-sleeved T-shirt, pick up her purple yoga mat, throw her shawl over her shoulders, and slip into her sandals. She would walk up onto the roof of her little guesthouse and roll out her mat.
She would sit at the folded end of it, cross her legs into a half-lotus pose, wrap her shawl closer around her body, rest her hands on her lap, and close her eyes.
Before diving into a concentration that carried her to a place where only silence existed — accompanied by the distant hum of Om — she would listen to the mixed soundscape that always told her, unmistakably:
I am in India.
I am in the place of my longing.
It was a place where everything could happen — from encountering goddesses with red tongues and white skulls, to meeting the knights of your medieval dreams and having your heart shattered into a thousand pieces. A place that promised riches beyond any worldly conception and threatened a poverty so stark it made you believe in hell.
She heard the baritone voice of an Indian swami reciting morning prayers through a microphone, in a language she understood without knowing a single word of it, blended with the harsh staccato of a nearby neighbor scolding her husband, child, dog — who knows? The metallic clatter of pots being rearranged, children’s voices in the distance, the honk of an early-morning rickshaw meeting another early-morning rickshaw — and threading through all of it, the song of the exotic bird one never sees, only hears.
The smell of sweet chai — made of ninety percent sugar, five percent milk, four percent black tea, and only a few lost cardamom buds and black pepper seeds — made her mouth water. Her mind jumped ahead to breakfast in a small rectangular room that resembled more a dollhouse with four tables, a few chairs, and some guru pictures than an ashram canteen.
Her stomach churned at the thought of the sweet yet fiery sambar, flavoring otherwise rather stale but fluffy idlis, served on a metal tray with two fresh chilies on the side — as if the sambar alone wouldn’t already burn holes into your intestines.
Returning Home but Feeling Changed
Back in San Francisco,
Gayatri got out of bed, unrolled her purple yoga mat, and sat — as she used to on the roof of her guesthouse in India — at the folded end of it. She crossed her legs into a half-lotus pose, wrapped a blanket closer around her body, rested her hands on her lap, and closed her eyes.
She started to repeat the mantra Om — in the same way she did in India, or anywhere in the world for that matter — and eventually dipped into a void that seemed one-pointed yet all-encompassing, peaceful beyond peace, silence filled with an understanding no human language could ever break down into words. In that space, she lost all sense of time and place, not caring whether she was in India, San Francisco, London, or Vienna.
When her left hip and right knee started to burn like a wash cloth on fire, and she couldn’t bear the battle between pain and bliss any longer, she slowly opened her eyes, taking in the beige carpet, the corner of her half-closed suitcase, and the brown duvet cover hanging down from the edge of Thomas’s bed.
Slowly stretching her aching limbs and opening her chest and shoulders, Gayatri knew she was back.
She was back — and there was nothing she could do about it.
She would get up, prepare her oatmeal, make herself a cup of Celestial Seasonings Sweet Chai, and enjoy a warm shower. She would step out onto a fluffy, soft carpet, dry herself with a real towel — not the never-quite-dry turquoise travel towel from India — and look into a mirror with a real frame.
And she would remind herself:
It isn’t that bad.
You can do this.
Finding home within yourself.
Reading this now, years later, I recognize something I couldn’t yet name back then.
This wasn’t just homesickness for a place or a person.
It was the ache of having touched something essential — silence, devotion, belonging — and then being asked to live without it on the surface, while carrying it inside.
India had become an inner landscape.
Rick, too, had become something internal — a catalyst rather than a destination.
What stayed with me was not the romance, not even the places, but the realization that once the soul has tasted depth, there is no going back to superficial living. I can return to comfortable beds, real towels, and framed mirrors — but I cannot un-know what silence has shown me.
And perhaps this is one of life’s quiet initiations:
learning how to live between worlds without losing either.
How to Integrate Yoga and Real life
From my many trips to India, I have learned how to live life after deep spiritual experiences and how to integrate yoga and real life — which isn’t always easy, but in my view, it is the most important part.
It is important to take time out for special retreats or journeys — to step away from daily life and dive deeply into yoga, meditation, or other spiritual and health practices. These spaces can be profoundly nourishing and transformative. But the real question is: how do we continue once we return? How do we live what we touched when everyday life begins again?
Yoga means union. To live yoga in your daily life — and not only while being on special trips or retreats — is the real goal. It is then that you receive the deepest benefits of yoga: when the teachings, practices, and spiritual principles become your inner guiding light, rather than remaining external practices that only support the body and mind.
This is also what I support students and clients with: integrating spiritual practices and experiences into everyday life. So that sadhana — spiritual practice — does not remain an occasional tool used only when we are already burned out, but becomes a gentle, preventative, and daily way of reconnecting with silence, truth, and your own inner center.
From that inner center, you can draw strength, focus, and recalibration — not only during joyful times, but also during challenging ones. It is from there that we learn to act from our own inner wisdom and lived truth, rather than following recommendations from the outside that may sound right, but do not necessarily fit you or your life in this moment.
Yoga can do much more than keep us healthy. It can guide us home — to a deeper sense of peace and belonging — back to our true nature beyond name and form.
If you feel called to explore how yoga, Ayurveda, and spiritual practice can be integrated into your own everyday life, you can learn more about my 1:1 work and programs here: my 1:1 work and programs
Three Reflections to Take Into Your Own Life
If this story resonates with you, you might want to pause for a moment and reflect on these questions — not as ideas, but as something to feel into honestly:
- Have you ever experienced a place, a relationship, or a time in your life that changed you — and that you couldn’t fully go back to?
How does that experience still shape the way you see yourself and the world today? - Where in your current life do you feel a quiet longing or sense of “in-between”?
What are you holding inside that doesn’t always have a place in your everyday routines? - Are there small, simple rituals in your day — movement, silence, prayer, writing, walking — that help you stay connected to what matters most to you?
If not, what might be one gentle practice you could return to, even for a few minutes a day?
Sometimes the work is not about returning to where we once felt most alive.
It is about learning how to live from that place — right where we are.
With love and presence,
Verena Gayatri Primus
Ayurveda–Yoga Coach and Teacher
You’ll find all the details of my 1:1 Coaching Path here:
→ Personalized 1:1 Ayurveda–Yoga Coaching
About the Author
Verena Gayatri Primus is an Ayurvedic specialist, yoga teacher, writer, and mentor with over three decades of lived experience on the yogic and human path. A former professional dancer, she has spent many years studying and practicing yoga, Ayurveda, and meditation, including time in ashrams and extended journeys through India.
Through her work, Verena supports people in cultivating physical health, mental clarity, emotional maturity, and spiritual depth — not as an escape from life, but as a way to live it more fully. From My Inner Library is a space where she shares lived reflections, stories, and teachings shaped by practice, love, loss, and renewal.
You can explore more writings, reflections, and resources at
www.verenaprimus.com
