SHE FOUND HERSELF IN HEALING MASSAGE
Monika Karsai now runs a healing massage center
In front of the islands’s oldest temple (Wat Phu Kao Noi)
With Mum in Koh Phangan
“True happiness is if we do what we love and we are with the person we love.”
„I thought mommy was a witch!”
Sometimes we have to wander to the other side of the world to find ourselves. To find what is truly important to us. This is what happened to Monika Karsai, who had to travel to Thailand for this. By the time she returned home, she turned from a person looking for herself into a true healer.
She invites me to her small apartment in Buda. She rolls up the tatami in the living room and as we step on the balcony, the entire city lies beneath. This gives that daily joy, this view, the feeling of freedom. On the wall she shows me the photo with Mommy, her Thai master. The one she thought was a witch at first, with her purple lips and wrinkled face… Fresh vegetables, the ingredients to the Thai dinner color the kitchen, next to them several kitchen tools made of coconut, accessories of another world – objects that mark the journey she had to take in order to arrive back more mature than when she started from.
- I studied fine arts and gastronomical journalism in Rome, I was interested in esotericism, literature, music, always depending on who I was with, what kind of boy I belonged to – she says – these times I always became whoever happened to be by my side, I gave up my personality and started dealing with what he was dealing with. I was hair model. They liked me, saying I can be as diverse as a chameleon. When they put a different wig on me, changed the color of my hair or the style, I became a different person. Then I met someone. An intelligent, kind, well raised by and I knew that I was going to go with him to Thailand. I was preparing to, earlier, but it was always got cancelled. Actually it felt as if I was preparing for this journey all my life.
Sometime in the past I wanted to be a psychologist or a nun, even then my primary motive was to help people. My parents were against the idea. My granny was different, she kept the traditions, took down my fever with compress, made me drink herbal teas when I was ill and put a wooden board on my bed so that my spine will become straight. Though I lived with her for a longer time, I was never able to show my love. I pushed away her hand when she stroked my hair. Then one day I returned home to find out she’s dead, that she no longer exists. This was such a loss that I almost followed her, because I felt that I lost someone important, to whom I’ll never be able to express my love. Then came this boy, we were together for almost a year and he knew that it’s not worth going to Thailand for a few weeks. We bought a semi-annual ticket and decided to stay as long as we enjoy it. I went on the condition that I would be massaged by someone every single day…
KARMIC ENCOUNTER
We arrived to a magical little island, Koh Phangan. For a while it seemed like paradise. On the first morning on the island my boyfriend woke me up saying he found someone who would massage me. It was still very early, I was angry when I saw the old, wrinkled lady with the purple lips. I almost sent her away, saying this witch would not touch me. But by that time they have been bargaining for over an hour and I couldn’t say no. She became Mommy. I felt the love radiating from her; just by the way she touched me. It was a karmic encounter. She lost her son, I lost my granny and we found who we lost in each other. I keep visiting her ever since, because I know that I have to be with her while I can.
But she was not my only master. I somehow got to a convent lead by women and I applied for a ten-day residential Buddhist Vipassana meditation. My boyfriend wasn’t very happy, but I insisted. I paid the deposit and the retreat that changed my life began. We lived in tiny wooden barracks, woke up early in the morning, there were not civilizational tools at all, we only used a spoon, a fork, a knife, a glass and the place selected for us. We were not allowed to talk and to look at each other, or to kill any animal. Not even tropical bugs or mosquitoes that sometimes covered our bodies. In the first two days I felt horrible, I suffered a lot, especially from my own thoughts. Only the deposit kept me from leaving… Then I had a strange outside the body experience and started to pay attention to tiny details. Like the bugs that climbed the tree to die. By the time the ten days passed, only their strange skeleton remained on the tree. At noon, the time of rest I climbed on the top of the hill, to the viewpoint of the monastery, seeing the daily life of the beloved island from above, who goes where, which days there are parties and I often glanced at the spot where Mommy lived too. When the retreat was finally over I could barely speak again. Something was rearranged inside of me. I finally knew what true happiness was. Doing what we like, being with the one we love. I cried a lot, both when I was sad or happy. My boyfriend actually thought I got insane and wanted us to go back home…
“NEVER BEFORE FELT HAPPINESS”
I started massaging after we arrived back home. My boyfriend didn’t want me to massage at the intensive care, to be among dying people because he saw how much energy it took from me. For me it was some kind of a strange mission. Once I was called to a boy who was in a coma with basal skull fracture, lying still, connected to a medical ventilator. I massaged him, but back then I couldn’t explain what was wrong with the boy, or how and what I did, because they only understood Latin and I didn’t speak Latin. But they told me to come again, because the boy awoke from the coma… When he completely recovered I felt such happiness and joy that I never experienced before. Then I was called to see an old lady who had a stroke and just got paralyzed. During the massage I felt how she was draining my energy. I got very tired by the end, but as I was leaving the old lady waved at me with her “paralyzed” hand. From that day on I didn’t go home to see my boyfriend. I stayed at a friend’s place and summarized my life. I evaluated who I was, who I could be, who is with and against me, what I could do in the future. Many people saw me my life as beautiful, rich, with a stable future, the only problem was that I didn’t see myself in it. At home I couldn’t move from all the clothes and shoes and now I knew that these would not make me happy. My dream was a real healing Thai massage center. Where the sick can go and from where everyone leaves with a smile. Going through the possibilities I found the people who could help me in this. Because we are all able to create with our mind and if we even do something for it, then there’s no such thing as impossible. I let go of my past, I took the risk because I believed that one day we’ll have everything back or get what we deserve. And there it was. The Thai massage center. This year it’s turning three years old and they are paying attention to us worldwide. Today my students already started healing too.
I’m very proud that Thai people believe I belonged to them in my previous live. I have students among them as well. And I really got back what belonged to me, even the view, with this feeling of infinite freedom. I was searching until I found this little apartment, where I can see the entire city of Budapest from above again, just like Koh Phangan, that little Thai island back in the days.