Author: Kaisa Kapanen

Happiness

Are we failing or are we growing

Posted on by Kaisa Kapanen

I must admit, during the past months I have felt like I have been failing instead of growing. Like I have given up on all that is important, everything I strived so hard for, everything I worked so hard for during the last four years only to return to the same spot where I left years ago.

Except it’s not the same, not even close, but it was not the future I imagined myself having either. At least not the future I imagined when at the end of 2013 I quit my job after 1.5 years of retraining and coaching, and sat in a plane with a one-way ticket to the Philippines. --> Read more

Life

Space for love

Posted on by Kaisa Kapanen

My body now carries two souls, yours and mine.
My body now carries two hearts, yours right below mine.
Just get here, little one, and I will show you the earth.
I will show you the earth and you will teach me of heaven.

I have been steering into my fear for some time already. I feel my heart wants something, although my mind is terrified. If I feel there is a path for me, I don’t hesitate to follow it, although my mind may hesitate and protest. But my heart knows, and I trust it. I also trust that the fear I feel in these moments will eventually subside. --> Read more

Healing, Life

In the absence of fear

Posted on by Kaisa Kapanen

Freedom has always been one of the main motivators and values in my life. The definition of freedom tends to change, but my desire to be free seems to be written into my DNA, encrypted into my bones and imprinted into my soul.

Lately another meaning for freedom has emerged. I have been musing over the fact that my island escapades of three years were all about the ultimate freedom, until freedom turned into isolation, and space turned into a desert. It got me thinking – what is freedom really, if it’s not sitting on a sandbar watching the sunset with your beloved, and calling it just another Monday night. --> Read more

Happiness, Healing

The secret of seeking

Posted on by Kaisa Kapanen

For most of my twenties and thirties (although I still have some of my thirties left) I have been a seeker. Always seeking something or someone, seeking my purpose, seeking my passion, questioning everything but never truly finding what I thought I was after.

There were times when I was seeking slow, and there were times I felt pressure and panic, because there was such a conflict within me and a deep desire to do something else. Those years I longed to find out what there was to be known, I longed to be somewhere else, be someone else, but I didn’t know what, where, who or how. So I kept running and seeking. I found bits and pieces of peace, some in yoga, some in meditation and some in life coaching. I sought answers and truths in spiritual books and in personal development courses, and although I felt I was making progress, the journey I was on came without an end in sight. --> Read more

Happiness, Life

Let’s talk about freedom

Posted on by Kaisa Kapanen

Something quite unthinkable has happened to me. I have returned to Europe, I have returned to a corporate job, and I am feeling incredibly happy about it!

People often ask me why I would want to give up my freedom and return to work. Why would I give up my life on a tropical island, far away, and return to Europe where it rains a lot and where the temperature hardly ever reaches high enough to wear loose dresses and flipflops. Why would I not want to continue waking up next to the ocean every day, but instead opt for spending my mornings in commuter trains to an office, similar office I so desperately wanted to leave four years ago? --> Read more

Life

Not confused, just awaiting

Posted on by Kaisa Kapanen

It seems to be confusing to people when you don’t fit into a ready-made-box. I have noticed how my very existence at the moment makes most people around me confused.

Yesterday I was walking with a few friends in the parks of Amsterdam, and while testing the local neighborhood Kombucha, I was rambling on about my current life situation. It went something like this:

No, I don’t have an apartment yet, because I don’t have a job yet. No, I don’t know what will happen to my love-life because we seem to have very different ideas about what we want to do next. No, I don’t have a career plan. No, I don’t know how things will unfold from here. No, I don’t want to go back to the island-life, because I have a distinct feeling I’m too tired for that shit. --> Read more

Life

The things we leave behind

Posted on by Kaisa Kapanen

When you lead an unorthodox, rootless and global life, things are often changing quite fundamentally. Today I’m looking to the ocean from my familiar garden chair and drinking my morning coffee from my cheerfully pink mug. Yet in a few days I won’t be here anymore. One adventure, one period of my life is ending, and it’s hard for me to process it.

Not because I am sad about leaving, but because the change is so big I simply cannot understand it yet. How one day I am in my tropical ocean front existence, and the next I roam the streets of northern Europe. I cannot feel sad about leaving, simply because I don’t understand the grandness of it all. --> Read more

Healing

I am my own guru

Posted on by Kaisa Kapanen

During the past years I have been asking for some practical spiritual guidance. Actually I was hoping this would come in the form of a person, someone who would be ahead of me in their spiritual journey, someone who could guide me and help me.

I thought once the student is ready, the teacher shall appear, right? And in my infinite wisdom I decided that I was ready. Now come on with the teacher, show up already! But as usual, Universe had other plans. Universe heard me, but delivered me the answer in its own way. --> Read more

Healing, Life

The silent whisper of intuition

Posted on by Kaisa Kapanen

The voice of the intuition is silent but it goes forth with the strength of the ocean. It is liquid, almost unnoticeable, soft and flexible, until it takes you over and washes you on the shores of your dreams. Sometimes you think you can ignore it, you think you can be above it. Steer better, know better. But no matter how stubborn you are, it will never leave you. Luckily, because we so desperately need it.

Intuition and its neutral voice

Recently my NLP teacher told me about different minds that we all have. We all have a positive mind, negative mind, and a neutral mind. We are all slightly tilted towards one of these, or more accurately towards either a positive or negative mind. --> Read more

Healing, Yoga

How sensitive souls can benefit from Yin Yoga

Posted on by Kaisa Kapanen

If you are anything like me (INFJ, HSP) you know how it feels when your nervous system is hyped up and over-stimulated. This can happen after a long day, or even after some intensive hours of stimulation, at which point I can usually kiss my concentration goodbye. I get short tempered, my body is tense and my mind feels frazzled and restless. Although I know I need to calm myself down in order to become myself again (or to do anything productive), once in motion, it’s hard to stop these wheels from spinning. --> Read more