We Are The Thorsons: The past few days

Friday
We drove up to Hawi to learn about Qigong meditation. This was way different than most forms of meditation that I'm used to. You channel your inner chi and also universal chi's and focus your energy just below the belly button. At the end of the meditation we did this Tibetan prayer chant which consisted of saying the same verse over and over 108 times. We also learned about muscle testing with respect to determining if something was healthy to ingest or not. If you hold something that is good for you to ingest, you will lean forward. If something is bad for you to ingest, you will lean back away from the substance. At the end of this class we walked a meditation labyrinth, and I'm pretty sure our our instructor said it was the 'shart' labyrinth but I'm pretty sure I must have heard her wrong as I'm not finding it on google. I don't have any pictures from this class but will post some eventually when I get some for my classmates.

After Hawi, we drove to the Mani Lani and had class with an exercise physiologist, Jay Williams, who is well known - she writes for the Huffington Post and the Dr. Oz show. She had a gorgeous home in a private gated community on the ocean/golf course.

This was our 'classroom' and Jay's house!

After meeting with Jay, we had a little time to burn so we went to the beach for a couple hours before meeting up with Danny Akaka, a traditional Hawaiian healer for Talk Story. Talk Story is a Hawaiian tradition were elders in the community talk about there history as a way of passing it down to the younger generations. He talked about how his parents would collect plant leaves to make a bad-tasting syrup to heal sickness and how he would have to take a tablespoon of this syrup at sunrise and sunset for 5 days. He talked about how Hawaiian's treat nature - when collecting leaves for this syrup, they would ask permission before taking the leaves and they would have to ask permission twice, once for the right side of the plant (the male side) and once for the left side of the plant (the female side). Once the syrup was made, they would return to leaves to the earth and never just through them in the garbage. During our conversation with Danny, we were right on the ocean and the humpback whales were so active! Ahh, whale watching will never get old :)

This whale sat and splashed with its tail for 2-3 minutes straight. It was awesome!

L to R: Kathleen, Nick, Anna (Danny's wife), Sean, Danny Akaka, Wade, me, Kelsey {I know I look like I hate the sun here but I was really sunburned and trying to cover up - lol}

On the steps of the green cottage where we had talk story.

Saturday
We hiked down and back up Waipi'o Valley. Oh...my...gosh...that was an intense hike. It was a mile hike at a 45 degree grade. Man I can feel it in my legs today. I'll let the pictures of Waipi'o Valley speak for themselves.

The view from above - it was a long hike down!

Still hiking to get there. This is when we made it to flat ground. I didn't take any of the hill, although I wish I would have.

Gorgeous black sand beach!

There were huge waves at this beach.

Didn't go swimming here - I would have gotten destroyed from these waves.

We hiked down this big hill and this picture only shows half of it.

Wild horses which weren't really that wild as they would walk up to people's car windows, etc.

Hi'ilawe Falls in Waipio Valley

The hike back up was NOT fun, but we all survived. After eating some lunch we headed to check out some waterfalls.

Sorry, you'll still have to turn your head. The picture is rotated the right way when I put it in here but it doesn't show up correctly. Oh well - This is Akaka Falls.