Following the heart.
Linn's story of change.
I know Linn Lehmann since 2013 from the yoga teacher training. I have witnessed her transformation in terms of strength, courage and determination from back then up to now. I have been watching her path into absolutely unchartered waters. Linn is a very conscious woman and practically an expert in making change. I talked with her about what inner and outer changes she has experienced and which ones she wants to bring out into the world.
Linn, I know you from Cologne. Currently we are separated by over 12,000 kilometers and six hours of time difference. You live in Bali. What happened?
Linn laughs.
What happened? That is a good question. I came here in January initially to stay only two months. I got to know Indonesia, especially Bali and Lombok and felt so good here in this special -also energetically special- place. So I decided to extend my stay for another month. Well then I got stuck here for COVID 19. Let’s say voluntarily stuck. And now I don’t want to leave anymore.
So I had to deal with all the fears that arose, that came towards me from my family and friends and the tourists who got scared by the pandemic. I didn’t want to be crazed by the others but wanted to listen to myself. And staying here was the best decision of my life. (Linn is grinning audibly.) I spent a Lock Down here with a lot of time for meditation and nature. That felt really good.
There is a previous story about the times before you arrived to Indonesia – the beginning of your big trip…
Yes!
Pretty much two years ago, in 2018, I bought a van, built the interior and went traveling with it in Europe. That was an important decision. I had noticed that I didn’t feel well anymore in Cologne: I have had enough of living in a city. I was not happy anymore with my job and everything that it brought. I realized how energy-draining life felt. I didn’t have enough time for my friends, my family and my hobbies. And then I followed my heart. I quit my job and travelled through France, Spain, Portugal and Italy with my van. Here and there I worked as a yoga teacher or as a climbing instructor to earn some money along the way.
If I remember it right, your announcement back then was not: ”I will be off for a while.”, but “I will be off then!” So you left it open when and if you would come back at all.
Exactly. It was clear from the start that this would stay unclear (laughing). I didn’t want to take a break from everything, just to come back and keep living the same life. I was very sure about that. I wanted to find a place, a profession, something that I’d live up to, that would make me happy and where I would want to stay.
I couldn’t picture myself living the life I lived in Germany anymore. I knew, I wanted to create something, but didn’t know neither what nor how. On my first longer stop in Portugal I was woofing on a permaculture based farm. That was the missing piece for me. Then it “clicked”: I wanted to find a location somewhere in the world, where I would do permaculture, where I would offer my yoga classes, where my guests could climb, surf, hike and above all: Experience the magic of nature.
What you are describing sounds like fulfilling a life’s dream. This is a huge change, a big venture. Many people struggle with only small changes. What would you say was necessary for you in order to take this decision of transformation and implement it? What is necessary to make that step despite the unknown that change is always accompanied by?
These decisions were possible only when I was completely connected with myself and did not listen to the outside- to what is expected, to what society taught me. I tuned into myself over and over again and asked myself: “What do I need? And what do I want for myself?” I think I have such a basic sense of trust that everything will turn out good. That I will attract the things that I wish for. I think that helps me to not be too attached to the things that are in my life or to those I think I would own. But to say instead: “okay, I will let this go now. I have no idea what comes next, something new is going to come and that’s good.”
You say that you tune into yourself. How do you do this?
Doing this I feel my heart very intensely and I operate from my heart. That is a comforting and vast feeling in my heart space. And I get there through regular meditation. By now I practiced this so much that I feel this in my everyday life without having to go into meditation for this. It turned into an inner attitude I don’t have to focus on anymore. It became second nature to me without the need to “do” it.
So meditation, stillness, retreat from the outer world helps you to create the change?
Exactly. Through this I learned to tune into myself and to ask myself “What do I need?”. Because often you are in this mode that you don’t feel well, you don’t want it the way it is, but you don’t know what you want either. And then to find out what is good for oneself, what you wish for yourself – that is what happens in this meditative state.
You mentioned this already concerning the topic of Bali and Corona and here again you emphasize that it is important to lock away opinions and wishes of others, education and precepts in order to take decisions for oneself. How do you approach worries, fears or blockages that appear from the outside?
That is a very conscious process. As soon as I realise that doubts and fears come up deriving from my socialization and the way I was raised, I become aware of this and recognise: “Ah this is my fear, it is here for that reason. But I don’t need it.” Through telling this to myself consciously and through connecting with my heart energy all my worries vanish. And even further, then the things I need come towards me easily, then I meet the right people, the universe gives you what you are asking for.
What did that new way- your way of living do to you?
Wow! (laughing)
It gave me so much inner strength. Retrospectively I realise how big of a step this was and that I did it by myself, that I made this step from my own power. That is a very special inner strength, from which a general confidence was built. At the beginning when I started my trip I was still very insecure. I didn’t know where I belonged and what I really wanted to do in my life. This time and especially the past half year in Bali gave me a lot of awareness, a lot of power, tranquility and self-confidence. Through all the time I took for myself and the meditation I became more and more aware on many different levels. That was one of the reasons why I went traveling. In my everyday life I didn’t have the capacity to work on my topics. And I wanted to keep growing and I realised that was not possible for me the way things were. I was able to make space for this on my journey.
“Bali instead of Bochum” is the title of a book of the expert of finance Natascha Wegelin, in which she conveys how we can save money to leave the economical world as early as possible or to fulfill our dreams of life. You stepped out of that world and currently you are fulfilling your life’s dream in Lombok close to Bali. Is it necessary to have a lot of money for doing this?
That depends on what you want to do. To travel through Europe I needed some money to buy and build my van. But I had my network in Europe and knew where I could find work. And I knew if I would run out of money I could always go back to Germany and work again. I had my working network there all this time- my safety net. That is a different thing now here in Bali. I can’t go back quickly. I didn’t have a lot of money saved up. That’s why originally I had planned to stay in Bali for only two months. Now I’ve stayed longer and managed to find my way around. I rent out my van in Europe for example, maybe I will sell it soon. Since I want to stay here I changed my plans for my future: I decided to bring to life my heart-project on Bali’s neighboring island Lombok.
What is your heart-project? Tell us!
The underlying idea is creating a space where people can come for one or two weeks or longer and live in a community of permaculture values. You can also call it AgroEcology. So an agricultural design for a garden on a piece of land that equals a natural self-sustaining ecosystem. From this the people can feed themselves without wasting energy. Everything in this system is (re-)usable, recyclable, compostable. This way all the energy is completely used and stays in the cycle. Coming here means you can help out, you can learn how things work. But you can also come, stay and unwind while surfing, doing yoga, meditating or hiking, just by living in this special system and enjoying nature. For me it is about bringing the people back into their connection with nature. This connection showed me how comforting and healing it can be. How much it grounds you. Many people living in cities have a longing for nature and for the unspoiled. I want to make that happen on an active and conscious level. So you can learn how to treat nature and thereby how to treat yourself better. I also want to offer workshops in which you learn how to make your cosmetics, shampoos and creams from natural products without using chemicals. So you can be inspired by this place and get some ideas that you can implement in your life back home.
Regardless of how long someone stays at your place, what will be the change for this person?
My heart’s wish is to inspire people. Just by the way I live there. But changes will also be initiated through yoga and mindfulness practices, through stress-management-tools that are offered in workshops. This life transformation is dear to my heart for every single person, personally as well as globally. I want to encourage people and empower them in listening to themselves, to their most inner truth, to value themselves. These are the initial steps that you need for living a happy and abundant life.
What you are saying reminds me of a verdict of Gandhi: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Many try to change the topics of environment and climate on a big scale through politics and global decisions. If I understand you right, starting out with one person itself seems important to you to bring about the big effects on this planet.
Exactly. For me that makes the most sense. I myself need to be the initiation if I want to make a change in the bigger picture even on a global level. I see it like this: If people come to me, in whatever way I can inspire and affect them, maybe even motivate them to change their mindset. And they, too, inspire other people and pass on this inner attitude and this knowledge so it spreads like wildfires. I love to work on a personal level, to share experiences instead of developing abstract concepts.
Courage and inspiration are surely key pillars for change. What I see over and over again though is that people wish to have a change but dread the step into the unknown. Because you never know how it is going to be, because you don’t know if you will be happy, if you will fail, if this is the right decision. At the very top there is the financial but also the social fear. Do you have any advice for those people who cannot so easily say: “Okay, then I will listen to my heart and know what is right for me and let myself be guided by intuition and my basic sense of confidence.”?
Well, in my case doubts and fears arise, too. It is not about being perfectly courageous. For me it is more than anything else about allowing these emotions. If I feel fear then it is there and it is alright that it’s there. The important thing is not to be taken in and captured by it. So you would think you are the fear. It is simply an emotion, it’s not me. I am not the fear. It will go away at some point.
So here you also have confidence in the change?
Absolutely. This is not a permanent state.
In the beginning it helped me to tell me this exact thing: “This is my fear speaking here, this is not me.” And thereby I was able to distance myself from it time and time again. At the same time feeling the fear but also letting it go through this. For me this is a process of perception. I can be aware of the acceleration of my heartbeat, of my restlessness, that I don’t feel good about it- and at the same time acknowledge and accept that these things are there and that I feel this way.
So it is important to over and over confront oneself with these situations instead of repressing a feeling. Looking at it, feeling into it, accepting and understanding these repetitions as a process of learning?
Yes, exactly. I experienced how the fears got less and less each time and it became easier and easier to look at the situations and to allow the feelings to be there. This way I was able to identify what was going on while it was happening, what was scaring or blocking me. Like this I was able to take action and say: “Good, I will take a step back now and find out what it is.” This helped me to deal with my emotions in a more constructive way.
Do you believe through this approach of letting things be and distancing oneself you find your heart’s wishes, you find that what really motivates us to step into the change? Often you don’t even know what you want.
Definitely. For me it felt like layers and layers of fears and compressed experiences. These are past feelings, experiences and conditionings we put to the side without having worked through them. They are there although you are not consciously aware of them. In such a process they come to the surface piece by piece and you can learn to deal with them. This way I found it easier to take decisions, the smaller decisions in everyday life as well as the bigger ones.
Often it is the fears and the doubts that make change difficult. But often there are also procrastination, laziness and non-discipline. Do you have an idea about that? Or are those just different varieties of fear?
I think, in this case you do not dare to really look at what wants to come to the surface, that wants to be seen. Often it is not very pleasant to look at it. This requires bravery and determination. Also to ask oneself: “Why don’t I feel like doing this? Am I insecure? Don’t I know where to start? Is it too big for me? Or do I make it too big?”
So it is again all about asking questions? About looking at it and questioning it?
Yes. The question Why? Was always the most important one for me. Why is it like that? Why do I feel this way? Why do I always do it this way? And also to question Why do I want it to be this way? Asking Why? is the question that takes me to the root of the topic.
What you describe is a path of self-responsibility without compromises. It is not about making your job, your partner, your parents or the children responsible for a special condition.
With everything that I observe and question I always end up with myself. Even if I would have so many reasons to blame the others, in the end it is about how I deal with the situation and how I communicate. For me communication has always been a big topic. And this topic includes the communication with yourself. You need to be honest with yourself.
Linn, all this sounds wonderful! Can you give future prospects for when people are able to find you at this special place?
At the moment I am planning to have everything up and running in about two years. But I might start early even though not every element of the project is complete yet. I will see throughout the next three months if that is doable. The location is certain, it is Ekas in South-East Lombok. Here you have a nice ocean view, the area is super beautiful, a little village, still very natural and pure.
So how about if someone wants to invest in your project, or wants to help setting it up or just wants to surf, do yoga and retreats, or only wants to get in contact online – is there need?
Oh yes! Any help is very welcome! Currently I am looking for investors for my project “Ekas Green Hideaway”. I am also looking for partners and contributors who are keen to stay on the grounds and help with bringing it to life. I wish for interested people who want to work in the field of AgroEcology and environment, in the field of conscious treatment and co-living with nature and plants. But also yoga teachers and people who are interested and passionate about the project.
Do you have any last words you would like to add…?
I can only say that I’ve embraced change within myself and as it is presented to me. I warmly recommend to each and every reader: Trust yourself, trust the universe, connect to yourself. I am very, very happy where I am right now, because I listened to my heart. This is what I highly recommend to everyone!
For those who are interested in Linn’s project you are welcome to contact her:
ekasgreenhideaway@gmail.com