First thing in the morning, a part of my daily practice, weather permitting, is to walk the short distance from my home down to the cliffs by the ocean. I have a special place where I like to stand and watch the ocean, and now days I also do a bit of Qi gong and stretching.  I have visited this spot while it was still dark and watched night turn into day.  Many times I have rolled out of bed and raced down to catch the sun raising over the horizon.  Lately I have been allowing myself to wake naturally and then head down immediately upon getting out of bed.  Occasionally I have gone down at the end of the day to watch the moon rise.  Any time of day I go down there, it is magical.

I call it kissing the sea as the area that I call my special spot, is on a bit of an outcropping where there are waves crashing on either side of me.  Sometimes the waves coming in are large enough to splash up near me, though I have learned to keep a safe distance from the edge.  Often I can feel the salt spray of the ocean in the air.  I can taste the salt on my lips.  I can feel the crashing of the waves against the cliffs and embrace the power of the ocean.

It is during these times down by the ocean that I feel the happiest.  I refer to it as my “connecting with my inner mermaid time.”  There is something about the ocean that I fell in love with the first time I saw it.  Born and raised in the Rocky Mountains, the ocean holds a magic for me that seeps deep into my soul.

Sometimes during the winter I see the whales along this coast.  It has been documented and warms my heart that these are the same whales that visit Alaska in the summer.   They come here to have their babies then return to the abundant waters of Southeast Alaska to feed and grow their little ones!!  Not long ago I spotted a mother and her baby about 300 feet out from the shoreline.  What a precious gift to be that close!  The connections between Alaska and Hawaii are rich and are not limited to people.

During the early stages of my wellness adventure, I used to sit down at Pohoiki Bay watching the surfers and the tour boats coming back from their trips down to see where the lava poured into the ocean.  I had a series of three surgeries within the first four months of living here and was unable to get into the ocean.  But I could sit by it, for long stretches, and let it heal me.  I have several favorite places around the area where I can hang my hammock and literally hang out for hours. 

It has long been a place of meditation and contemplation of life.  I am pretty sure some of my best solutions have come to me on the trade winds blowing across the ocean.   My healing place, my happy place, kissing the sea.