'Encounters of the Third Kind'. ‘Breathwork Luke’.
Presenting the self-entitled "Breathwork Luke", a breathwork and life coach, and the next enigmatic character on my list of close encounters of the third kind, with the wild and wonderful and outright fascinating.
He is a tall-built specimen, towering above us, with an aura resembling that of a friendly werewolf. His shaggy mullet frames a friendly, bearded visage, and he dons an open waistcoat on his tremendously hairy chest. He is, as could be expected, barefoot, and his forehead sports a splat of red pigment, just above a pair of bushy eyebrows. Originally from Coventry in the UK, he has rocked up in Pokhara after nine years of traveling through Australia, and recently, Goa.
We bump into him at our hostel, whilst feasting on a hearty breakfast of curry, curd and fresh Puri. Luke doesn't join in. “I"m on a fruit fast”, he explains.
"So, what does the red paint on your face signify?", I interrogate him, quite impressed by his style.
"This symbolizes my first eye" he replies gently.
"Ahem. And that is?"
His expression takes on the sincerity of a messenger revealing a secret to all mankind. “It’s a gland, here in my forehead, shaped like a pinecone. Our two physical eyes, they lie to us, (he states this as if it is common knowledge) they only see the Maya, the illusionary world, but our first eye enables us to see reality as it truly is”.
I nod, conjuring all my energy, aligning all my chakras, to keep a straight face. He continues.
“But the thing is, our first eye is closed, it is blinded by the world we inhabit. By things like fluoride in the water, and the Vatican”.
“The Vatican?”
“Yes”, he explains gravely, “they close everyone’s first eye because they want to keep people under their control, they don’t want us to see the truth. The way to open your first eye, your first chakra, is through meditation and breathwork”.
He delivers this with such heartfelt sincerity that it’s hard not to warm up to him, despite his interesting, to stay diplomatic, ideas. Luke proceeds to invite us to one of his sessions, to which we vaguely reply we might dip into.
A day passes, and the next evening we are surprised, and truth be told quite thrilled, to find ‘Breathwork Luke’, our new favourite guru to make impressions of, sitting at the same restaurant terrace as us, on Pokhara’s waterfront. He is sitting watching something on a laptop, yes, as in, a conventional machine connected to the World Wide Web, and eating falafel and pancakes. I am a little taken aback, disappointed even, to see him using technology, and consuming ‘normal’, solid food. I think I was expecting his pores to just absorb Universe juice by osmosis or something. Anyway, he comes over to see us, and after sharing a few words, crouches by our table and takes on the same serious tone of voice as the previous morning.
“I don’t want to spread fear, but just wondering girls, where will you be this Autumn, say October or November?”
We reply, expecting to be invited to an exclusive enlightenment event or something.
He goes on. “Just to let you know, I’ll be battening down the hatches in Goa. Make sure you and your families are safe. Some big shit is going to go down at that time”.
“Hmm, what kind of big shit?”
“Geopolitical, economic. Crypto and everything, something on the world scale”.
I think back quickly to the year of pandemics and wars and price crashes the world has recently enjoyed.
“But doesn’t big shit go on all the time? I mean, what makes you so sure that this will be different?”
His voice fills with genuine concern, and again I find myself avoiding Leah’s gaze in case we both burst out laughing. “Time periods come in cycles, it’s linked to astrology and stuff like that, and we are entering the seventh cycle, which means something big is coming, we are due a major event. So, just, letting you know, so you can be careful, look after yourselves girls” he adds on a lighter note. We chat a little more. A bit dazed, we thank him for his apocalyptic advice, and dig into yet another feast of Thali and hot rum punch. We unfortunately don’t run into Breathwork Luke again.
Holy cow, there is definitely something in the water here…surely it’s not just fluoride..
Below: Hanuman, Luke's fashion inspiration, and a cute little statue.
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