Tag: Shugendo guide

Connections with Nature Pt 2

April 10, 2021 / John D. / 4 Comments

This is a continuation of the interview with Alena Yushu Eckelmann. (For Part One click here.)

4) What does a typical spiritual tour consist of? Where could readers find out more, such as the price of tours and the type of accommodation, etc?

There is no typical spiritual tour. All pilgrimages and retreats are tailor-made and specific to the person or group of people I am guiding. There are common elements though such as mindful walking in nature, water and fire purification, prayers and chanting, meditation, a focus on the five elements and the stimulation of the five senses.

There should to be a strong interest in Japanese spirituality and Shugendo and the willingness to engage in practices and to follow instructions as a prerequisite. As I am working with my teachers and their temples, a relationship based on trust and mutual agreements must be honored at all times. I am planning, coordinating and guiding each tour and hence the number of tours depends on my, and my teachers’ capacity.

Depending on the number of days, the number of people, the accommodations and the content, the price varies. I work with the local communities and temples on Koyasan, Yoshinoyama and Kumano and use accommodations there. It can be Shukubo, guesthouses, minshuku or ryokan. The aim is to provide healthy meal options with ingredients ideally locally sourced, such as Shojin Ryori, Medicinal Cooking, vegetarian cooking, hand-made soba, or similar.

By working with other locals, many of those have become my friends over the years, I try to contribute to the revitalization of the Japanese countryside and to foster a sustainable way of engagement between locals and visitors. My ideal is that guests do not just pass through but stay longer and engage more.

5) You also offer forest bathing. Many have heard about this but they not fully understand it. So how would you explain it? What is involved in the forest bathing you offer.

“Forest bathing” wants to bring us out of the head and into the body. Our senses are the interface between the outside world and our inside world. They let us experience our surroundings and connect with what is around us. We take them for granted but don’t really take advantage of this great gift anymore. When do we really see, hear, smell, taste and feel things around us, much less nature where we spend so little time these days. Many of us live in their heads and through their mobile devices. We think about the world rather than actually sense it with our body. The world is outside there, separate from us, rather than us being a part of this “inter-connected web of beings”.

Japan is the birthplace of Shinrin-yoku, which translates as “forest bathing”. It stands for a full immersion in a forest or in another natural environment and engagement of all senses, fully dressed of course and ideally in-person. Imagine that you bath in the atmosphere of the forest like you would bath in sunlight. You soak it all up with your senses and let the sounds, sights, scents, tastes, colors and textures of the forest do its beneficial work to your nervous system.

To be able to do that you need switch off your smartphone or better don’t bring it at all, then to slow down or even stand still, and become silent and observant of your surroundings as well as your feelings. This is something that we are not accustomed to doing in nowadays fast-paced, overstimulating, noisy and virtual lifestyles.

Smell the faint sent of the shrubs, trees and flowers next to the trail.

Listen to the murmur of the little stream that runs through the forest.

Feel the touch of a breeze of wind gently blowing through the valley on your skin.

See the shades of green around you and the different shapes of trees and leaves.

What are you noticing?

Can you imagine sitting for 15 minutes under a tree doing nothing but focusing with all your senses on your surroundings. What are you noticing? Can you imagine to connect with a more-than-human being in the forest and have a conversation? What are you noticing?

The phrase “Forest Bathing” was coined in the 1980s in Japan. Its underlying idea is that spending time in nature benefits our health and wellbeing. Over the next 20 years the Japanese researched and scientifically tested this concept. Later the phrase was changed from Shinrin-yoku to Shinrin Therapy, which is now a recognized health management system in Japan.

The Forest Therapy Society of Japan describes Forest Therapy as “a research-based healing practice through immersion in forests with the aim of promoting mental and physical health and improving disease prevention while at the same time being able to enjoy and appreciate the forest”.

When Shinrin Therapy hit foreign shores (North America, Europe, Australia, amongst others) over the last 10 years more elements were incorporated and new methods and concepts were created that reflect the history of the land and its native people.

The Japanese way of Forest Therapy and the Western way differ a bit. While the former is more a structured guide-lead walk with elements of nature education, the latter is an invitational and participant-centered self-exploration with elements of council, or sharing circles. I have trained and I am licensed in both ways: first with the Forest Therapy Society of Japan and then with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT) based in the US.

Forest therapy includes mindful relaxation

6) Finally a general question about the spiritual mix of Shinto, Buddhism and Shugendo. Do each offer something different, or can they simply not be separated in your opinion?

Shugendo is typically described as the “way of training and testing to receive special powers”. This is typically done in the mountains and forests of Japan and over time certain places have become the training grounds of Shugenja, the followers of Shugendo. The founder of Shugendo is said to be En-no-gyoja who lived in the 7^th century. Gyoja means a person who is doing gyo, or ascetic activities in the mountains and forests. He is known to have been an herbalist and to have achieved super-natural powers through his training. He must have been in close communion with the spirits of the land and with the invisible realms of the kami-sama, the Japanese deities of Old Shinto.

He lived at a time when Buddhism had just arrived in Japan. The imported deities and believes merged with the local deities and believes and created a syncretism referred to as Shinbutsu Shugo. I think of it as two sides of the same coin. Each side is different but they cannot be separated. Academics called this merger Honji Suijaku (original ground and manifested traces) whereby Indian and Buddhist deities (Honji) appear in Japan as local kami (Suijaku), a theory that was accepted until the Meiji Restauration when Buddhism and Shintoism was forcefully split.

I believe that this syncretism is still the under-current of Japanese spirituality now and it is the base of Shugendo, which developed over centuries, merging both strands of Shintoism and Buddhism, as well as other influences such as folk beliefs and Taoism, into a spiritual mix with its own practices and rituals, and with its own identity as a self-conscious spiritual tradition.

Pilgrim’s hat and staff for walking the Kumano Kodo

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To read some published articles about Alena, please click here for a piece in Japan Tour, or for Kansai Scene here, or for Buddhist Door here.

Connections with Nature Pt 1

April 8, 2021 / John D. / 4 Comments

Alena Yushu Eckelmann – ‘Kii Monogatari‘

1) You are a guide in Wakayama Prefecture which contains the UNESCO World Heritage trails of Kumano Kodo. How long have you been there, and how did it come about?

I came to Japan in 2005 and joined the Executive Training Program (ETP) Japan in Tokyo. All was set for a corporate career and life in Japan’s capital. I had lived in London for 9 years before and worked as a research manager at a company near Oxford Street, so coming to Tokyo was a new challenge and a step up. Deep down, however, I craved for nature and living in the countryside. I grew up in a small village and spent a lot of time outside in the woods and fields during my childhood.

While living in Tokyo, I visited Kumano several times and walked the Kumano Kodo trails. I fell in love with the area and wanted to live there. This is also when I came across Shugendo, a spiritual tradition of mountain asceticism. I started training with a teacher who came to Tokyo once a month. At some point I just wished I could live near his temple and commit to serious training.

Quitting Tokyo is not easy but then came March 11 2011 with the Triple Disaster (Earthquake, Tsunami, Nuclear Meltdown) in Tohoku. This gave me an ‘excuse’ to leave the metropolis and move to a remote region, basically going from one extreme to another. My Japanese partner and I just packed up and on July 1 2011 we drove down with no place to live and no work lined up.

In 2013 I had a chance to participate in the first Interpreter-Guide Training of Wakayama Prefecture and became a licensed guide for the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trails and for Koyasan, the Shingon Buddhist monastery in the north of the peninsula. In 2020 I also passed the Koyasan guide license examination at Kongobuji, the head temple of all Shingon Buddhist temples.

Having these licenses opened doors for work in an area where there is little employment, however, I did the training also for myself to learn more about the pilgrimage traditions on the Kii Peninsula, and about Saint Kobo Daishi and Shingon Buddhism, both of which I had a strong interest in by then. I started guiding “regular” tours and took foreigners around Koyasan and around Kumano and walked the pilgrimage trails with them as part of hiking tours.

This is how I became a guide. I worked full-time as a tour guide for a tour operator from 2013 to 2018, which often took me to other parts of Japan and away from Kumano again. I decided then to go freelance and take the next step: to set up on my own. This became the Kii Monogatari – the story of the Kii Peninsula and my story living here. I cannot separate one from the other. As such, the Kii Monogatari is not a “product” like a tour but it is an evolving journey in which I am as much a traveler as are people who visit here. This year will be my 10^th anniversary on this beautiful peninsula to which I am totally committed now.

Alena leading a pilgrimage of foreign visitors

2) How did your life before coming to Kumano inform your current activities?

There is no short answer to this question. My interest in nature and spirituality come from my upbringing in a small village in East Germany. My family is Protestant Christian. We were practicing Christians in a socialist state before The Wall came down in autumn 1989. After this life-changing event it took me some time to deal with something that resembled a “culture shock” and my next mission was to learn English, get a degree and climb the career ladder. During these years I focused on study and work. I had discovered the esoteric section in the bookstores and eagerly read one book after another.

This went on until I got to Tokyo and went through Japanese language and business training on the ETP program. It was a high-level training aimed at young managers in European businesses dealing with Japanese clients. I felt privileged to be on this program and at the same time I could not shake off the feeling that there was something lacking, something that did not quite fit.

After the end of ETP I took the radical decision to explore the feeling and signed up for intensive aikido training and for taiko drumming, and I started jogging through Tokyo. A whole new world opened up. All three activities were physically strenuous more than spiritual. I wanted to explore where they would take me. First, I committed myself to running the first Tokyo Marathon. I was no runner and had just started jogging but I pushed myself and crossed the finishing line in February 2007. Then I signed up for the Senshusei training in Yoshinkan Aikido, an 11 month aikido boot camp. It took me from scratch to the Black Belt in 2008. In the same year I signed up for the Monkansei training at Oedo Sukeroku Taiko and I trained with a group of people until I left Tokyo.

These activities taught me about “mind over matter”, but also that a healthy body hosts a healthy mind. They taught me about following a traditional “way” as a lifestyle, being patient, diligent and determined, about the importance of the master-deshi relationship and the value of my training group and training partners. There were so many traditional and cultural things that I learned about Japan that the corporate training had not taught me.

These were all experiences that would form the base for my Shugendo training, which started for real after my move to Kumano.

3) You offer spiritual tours, which draw on your own experiences and practice in Shugendo. Could you tell us about your spiritual training?

Soon after moving to Kumano I entered a 21 day training period at Sangakurin, my Kumano teacher’s Shugendo temple. The training was Kaihogyo, an ascetic practice that consists of “circling the mountains”, playing the Hora (conch shell) and prayers at certain places in the mountains. The 10km course was the same every day for 21 days. I memorized the prayers in Japanese during this time, including the Hannya Shingyo (Heart Sutra) and mantras dedicated to En-no-gyoja, the Founder of Shugendo, Fudo Myoo and Zao Gongen, central deities in the Shugendo tradition.

Since then I have walked this Kaihogyo course every year in December for one week. This training is my winter shugyo (ascetic exercise) and it is dedicated to Shakka Nyorai’s Nehan. My summer shugyo is walking the Okugake, the Shugendo training trail that connects Kumano with Mount Yoshino. This is a 7-day walk across a mountain range that consists of countless peaks at an altitude of 1,000 to 2,000 meters. Along the trail are 75 nakibi, places for prayer.

Regular training has been gongyo, a formalized service of veneration and worship that is usually done twice a day. It involved memorizing many more mantras for specific deities but I love chanting and devotional prayer. There are training periods of 3, 5 or 7 days that I commit to danjiki (fasting) and meditation. There are periods of training that involve misogi and takigyo, purification in water or under a waterfall. Difficult training includes 3,000 prostrations to the Buddhas in 3 days and chanting the Lotus Sutra, all 28 chapters.

In May 2016 I received Tokudo at Sakuramotobou Temple on Mount Yoshino. My dharma name is Yushu. Since then I have received transmissions from my teachers in Shugendo rituals. Training is ongoing and transmissions take place when my teachers consider me ready. I try to attend the services at my teachers’ temples whenever possible and there attend gongyo services, monthly goma (fire ceremony) prayers and festivals throughout the year.

In addition to the rituals, there are many more activities that are maybe not spectacular but they are part of training, such as cleaning the temple halls and temple compounds, weeding, wood-cutting, preparing for ceremonies and helping at festivals. Some are seasonal and related to the teachers’ temple activities, such as planting and harvesting rice, or supporting the mountain entry of a group of 30 men by preparing their futons and meals.

In recent years there has been increasing interest in Shugendo, and there have been more and more requests to me to help coordinate and guide pilgrimages, kaihogyo walks or weekend retreats with a Shugendo theme. I understand that this is also part of my training to become a Sendatsu, a guide and leader of pilgrimages.

My teachers have already given me the opportunity to help guide various people, including groups of women, groups of teenagers, media representatives, researchers and foreigners with a strong interest in Shugendo. I have also been asked to plan, coordinate and guide “spiritual tours” for a number of groups from Taiwan, the USA and Australia. This is how Kii Monogatari has gradually emerged over the last few years.

(Part Two of this interview can be read here.)