How to Uncover your True Self with Travel

In my recent trip to Italy, I discovered something major about myself. Let me explain how travel can help you uncover your true self with each trip you make.

If you missed?this story , I wrote about a?small coastal town in the Campania region ?of Italy. Although the town has a wide stretch of sandy beach and is a typical Italian summer destination, something was missing for me to totally love it. You can read that story?here .

Timelines of how I uncovered my True Self with Travel

Let me explain to you the process of how I discovered my true self with travel, including the timelines.

My first ever trip to Italy was in late summer 2018. I mainly wanted to attend a healing group workshop in Tuscany. I wrote about my Osho Miasto trips and the healing work in many blog posts. You can do a simple search on the?main blog page ?to find them.

I’ll be sharing more about the inner child therapy work that I did in Tuscany in my?upcoming ebook . So be sure to?sign up for updates .

As you probably know, Tuscany is in mainland Italy. The region is known for its cypress trees and red meat dishes. Basically Tuscany is an inland region and although some parts of it are beachside, I didn’t get to visit those areas.

The meditation center where I went for the deep energy healing work is located in a remote forest. The nearest Tuscan town to that center is Siena. But the center is in a truly remote and isolated area.

I have to add that I made two trips to Tuscany as part of visiting the meditation center. And in both trips, I would spend a few days before and after the group therapy work to prepare and integrate. I’m so grateful that I did the work this way because it was really intense. In fact, the inner child work that I did in my second Tuscany trip was so intense that it took me three years to process and integrate.

While this blog post isn’t about my healing journey, I thought it would be good to share some insights into this this healing modality – energy healing work.

In the year 2019, before heading back to Tuscany for inner child and teenage years de-conditioning (two very powerful group therapies), I visited Sicily. I spent ten days exploring Syracuse and the towns in that part of Sicily. And that’s when I discovered my love for coastal Italian towns.

Fast forward to this year (I didn’t travel to Italy when the pandemic started) and after two trips to coastal towns, I uncovered another major aspect of my personality: My love for coastal towns.

You can read more about?Alassio ?in Liguria and my?latest trip ?to Southern Italy?here ?and?here .

Although?Alassio ?was the perfect beach getaway destination, the people aren’t as open or friendly as in Southern Italy.

What I really loved about?Alassio ?was that it was off-the-beaten path and most tourists don’t know about it. The small coastal town is the perfect beach lover’s haven. You have expansive stretches of sandy beach, private beach clubs dotted along the shore, a quaint shopping street with incredible food and drink options. Alassio truly was perfect to me in every sense. Except that the people were mostly closed. Although I went out to a certain bar on most nights, I didn’t have a conversation with anyone. And I only realized this when I went to Campania and a cab driver who drove me from Sorrento to Santa Maria di Castellabate told me this: “They are cold.” I was sharing with him my love for Alassio and he replied that the people in the north are cold. And I agree.

So now that I uncovered that being somewhere off-the-beaten path and coastal isn’t enough for me to want to go back, there was another piece of the puzzle waiting to be revealed in?Santa Maria di Castellabate .

Big Revelations with Each Italian Trip!

Just when I thought that I uncovered every aspect of my true self, something major was uncovered to me in the last town that I visited in Campania.

Although Santa Maria di Castellabate was the perfect summer destination. There was a small street with tiny, average eateries and cafes (not to the same level of Alassio at all).

What was hugely missing in that town was the nightlife! I’m not saying that I wanted to go out dancing each night but apart from a few bars in the town’s historical center, there was really nowhere special to go for aperitif. After ten days there, I was starting to get bored.

I blame it on not doing enough research before booking the hotel in 2019. Yes, I booked that hotel stay in 2019 and I couldn’t go until this past summer. I had already paid for the entire stay and so I had to go.

Luckily, I met a group of people a the hotel and I spent half of my stay hanging out with the group.

I thought of exploring the next village but it wasn’t easy. I even tried to walk there. Anyway, without getting into details I learned a big lesson in Santa Maria di Castellabate.

My true self wasn’t only about being a beach bum and alternating between swimming and walking along the shore. My soul craved some kind of modern-day nightlife! And that was non-existent in Santa Maria. It was a family-oriented town.

I also could tell that most people who lived there were very traditional and all about starting a family. It felt misaligned.

And in that total misalignment, I uncovered another aspect of my true, authentic self.

I believe that I had to experience this misalignment in order to discover who I truly am.

I wanted to share this story to help you see how transformative and powerful travel is. Hopefully I can inspire you to start planning your next trip and getting closer to who you are in the process of researching the destination and exploring it.

Do you feel like your recent trips helped you uncover your true self? If so, which ones and how? Let me know in the comments!

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Love,

Leela