I was in a some state when I emailed the Cambodia based yoga/meditation retreat center The Vagabond Temple. I was down and out in Vietnam, feverish, towards end of my money, nearly maxed out in my credit card, in chronic pain, and locked inside an apartment in Saigon where my couch surfer host seemed to be confused about the difference between hosting and imprisoning a guest.
In the carefree realm of dreams, I had envisioned a much different trip to Asia. I hadn’t planned on chronic and debilitating neck pain to me my travel companions. But there they were, dominating my trip and ruining my life.
So instead of riding elephants and trekking through the jungles I spent most of my scant savings on doctors, chiropractors, masseuses, and healers. Some offered hope, others dire predictions, no one offered a cure. My income came from writing, but using a computer caused unbearable pains to shoot from my neck to my wrist. So I had to cut opportunities I’d spent my whole career landing.
I tried to stay positive, but by the time I reached Vietnam, all I could bring myself to do was spend time in bed asking Googling hypochondriac questions.
With Google as my enabler, I diagnosed my fever as result a general candida infection. On the Internet, all illness leads to candida.
Further more I concluded that the candida was depleting me of potassium and magnesium, which was causing my neck muscles to not rebuild after the strain of running, reading, and writing in a forward neck position. A great theory!. Not at all accurate.
But I thank my lucky spirit guides for this misled train of thought. It led me to email a few detox places in the area including The Vagabond Temple. I saw VT offered the type of detox I hoped could cure me of the candida infection I didn’t actually have.
Broke as a joke, I couldn’t afford to enroll in their program, so I offered an exchange—to write some articles and shoot some videos in exchange for a spot at the center. A few days later Amy, a karma yogi at The Vagabond Temple emailed me back and said they’d be happy to have me. So I broke out if my Vietnamese prison and headed to Cambodia and entered the Vagabond Temple.
My week turned into a month.
“We like you’re energy Luke,” Kobi said, “You’re welcome to stay the duration of the course.”
Owen, an Aussie in the course with described Kobi and Pazit like this, “Their the real deal. They don’t have big egos.They just want to help people from this place of compassion.”
That’s what you find at The Vagabond Temple—a fresh vibe of authenticity delivered from compassionate hearts. It’s a place where everyone is allowed to be the person they are going through whatever it is they’re going through my
The yoga at The VT was a first step in a healing process that would eventually allow me to see my pain as the greatest teacher and gift I’d ever been given. It paved the way not just physical healing, but mental, emotional, and spiritual re-tooling.
It was at the Vagabond Temple where I started to experience the first cracks in the many walls I’d built up through the course of life.
The guidance is offered from a heart-based compassion. Everyone there was there for good reasons and many going through some process. We were all there to work out the kinks in ourself and when it was all over it was hard to believe how we all held ourselves. We emerged steadier. Not wholly healed of all woes—but better off and more confident about confronting them. 
My journey through pain and into self didn’t end there—but I will always hold the Vagabond Temple in a special place in my heart. It was at the VT I was given the tools to begin a journey into my own truth, a place where I began to find balance in the dislodging gusts of life.
Life had taught me to be strong, the Vagabond Temple teaches that there’s strength in looking deeply and honestly at yourself and not hiding from our unkempt corners.
Sri Ramana Maharshi was once questioned if total surrender was possible. “No,” he agreed, “Total surrender is impossible, but partial surrender is, and from partial surrender comes total surrender.”
And thus from the Vagabond Temple my journey on “The Path” began. Of course, it continues today, and will for this lifetime and maybe many more to come.
Here I was emboldened with the knowledge that it’s okay to be a little cracked—that’s how the light gets in folks!
My heart smiles to know I am one of many. What a joy to know that tucked in an unassuming corner of the world is a place where Kobi, Pazit and their cohorts give guidance on this great journey of love called life.
