the hydranchula goes to ireland: cliffs of moher

the hyranchula goes to ireland is a series of posts i'm writing during my j term study abroad in dublin, ireland. these posts will look a little different because they will have proper capitalization and pictures because professors like proper capitalization and pictures. please follow me on instagram to see what i'm drinking and eating up to every day.

read the rest of the story here.

I’ve never been an extremely religious person. My parents didn’t raise me with any strong affiliation to any certain god or organization. When I was a kid, I wanted to be Jewish because I thought the idea of Immaculate Conception was nonsense. I toyed with the idea of being a Buddhist, because I liked pushing the buttons of adults I knew. I would spend hours on the Internet Googling different religions, taking pieces of each one and applying it to my own belief system. Growing up in West Michigan made me weary of religion; I felt a lot of judgment from classmates and teachers when the conversation of religion came up. I didn’t really know what to believe, so I claimed to be a half Jew, quarter Buddhist, quarter everything else that made any type of sense in my life at the time.

When I started practicing yoga two years ago, I wasn't religious at all. I did it for the exercise. I was going to Catholic mass a few times a month with my then-boyfriend and his family, but I found myself having huge inner conflicts when reciting prayers and singing the songs. I wasn't interested in having any spiritual presence in my life.

Despite my hesitations with yoga, a spiritual sense snuck its way into my practice somehow. I was afraid to meditate because, to a degree, it made me feel a little like I joined cult. The oms, and the chanting were fine behind closed doors, but every time I talked to someone about my practice, I was insecure that my practice would change their perception of me. The more time I spent with myself in meditation, the stronger I felt a spiritual presence in my life. It wasn't really a sense of God or any specific religious leader or icon, but I felt something more. I felt that there was something more to me and my life than just me. 

When I first decided to visit Ireland, I knew I had to see the Cliffs of Moher. They looked so beautiful and eery, and I had to go. I had to go to see it myself and post cool pictures on Instagram. So when Alex and I decided to cancel our trip to Scotland due to inconvenient flight times, we added the cliffs to our itinerary.

The Cliffs of Moher is a really difficult place to explain or describe. It’s not one of those places that make me say, “Oh, the pictures don’t do it justice,” or “You just had to be there.” Because the pictures do, do it justice. It looks just like the pictures. It’s kind of like the Grand Canyon in that way.

But it was something about the wind and the spray of the waves that brought me to a spiritual place; the same type of place I find myself in after an hour of a real sweaty hot yoga flow. A place completely at peace, that left me feeling so safe and secure in my life and very much full of love and happiness.

We walked up and down a very muddy footpath like little lambs for an hour and a half, taking pictures of everything, feeling like we never wanted to leave. We dodged other tourists, with their selfie sticks and screaming children. We even peeked over one of the cliffs for a little bit, crawling on our hands and knees until we reached the edge and laid down on our bellies, looking down at the water hundreds of feet below.

Even after an hour and a half, we wanted more of Moher. We had to pull ourselves away from the edge to run about a mile back to the bus. We spent the rest of the tour looking back at the pictures we took earlier, thinking about the next time we would make it back to the Cliffs of Moher.