Home means many things to me. As far as I can remember, I have felt like the world was my home. I speak several languages and feel comfortable in many cultures, with varied people. Perhaps it is no coincidence that my name is Parvati, daughter of the earth. I feel very connected to this planet in a cellular, soulful and spiritual way.
I am not much of a homebody, in that I have traveled a lot and lived out of a backpack for much of my adult life. But I could say that one way I find home is in my body, my body being a temporary place of inhabitation while I am in this world. I feel that this body is part of it all, connected to everything. It is made of the very stuff that makes up all matter. So for me, literally, my home is the world.
We have all heard the saying, “home is where the heart is”. Home is where we feel belonging. Where we feel accepted, whole, understood, received, grounded and alive. While I had friends over at my home recently, I was arrested by a momentary “a-ha!” when everything felt absolutely perfect. I felt completely supported, loved and accepted as though everything was in its perfect place. I felt profoundly at home.
Our birthplace may be home, where we have memories from our childhood, where our foundations were built. Montreal is my birthplace and is definitely my hometown. When I travel there with those that know me now, not then, I am told that I express a freedom and expansion in Montreal that is evident. My body language changes. I feel more relaxed. There is something in the air, in the light on the streets and buildings, in people’s attitudes, in the way we interact that just says, “home” to me – deeply.
I feel similar feelings about speaking French. It is, I say, the language of my heart and home has a lot to do with the heart. When I get tired, I have been known to just start speaking French, without even noticing I am doing so. People have also noticed how my personality changes when I speak French. I feel like an inner part of me comes alive. English for me is a more cerebral language, more practical and touching a place of worldliness. French reaches in to touch my emotions and reveals another inner world with greater ease.
We may find home in the familiar. We may find home in our sense of place and accomplishments that we achieve at work. We may find home in family, landscape, territories and feelings of patriotism. These may add a sense of purpose, belonging and meaning to our life.
However much I find home in something physical, there is something deeper that brings a true feeling of home to me. I touch the feeling of home and find meaning in my life through my meditation practice and my creative work. In those, I rest in a timeless home not bound by borders or bodies. There I am.
Parvati Devi is the editor-in-chief of Parvati Magazine. In addition to being an internationally acclaimed Canadian singer, songwriter, producer and performer, she is a yoga teacher and holistic educator, having studied yoga and meditation since 1987, and developed her own yoga teaching style called YEM™: Yoga as Energy Medicine. Her current shows, “YIN: Yoga in the Nightclub” and “Natamba”, bring forward a conscious energy into the pop mainstream.