Kauai and the “Third Eye” chakra

by Luca Oliveri and Andrea Marangon

Biophilia in the Kalalau Valley

The oldest Hawaiian island, Kauai, is carved by mountains as ancient as life itself and washed by the roaring waves of the Pacific Ocean.

Among its natural wonders and mystical beauty, everyone can feel a unique and powerful energy – the “Third Eye” – the sixth Earth’s chakra, which connects us, according to mythology, to our Higher Self and innate spiritual wisdom.

This Hawaiian island seems to vibrate at this frequency, inviting visitors to experience it looking beyond the surface of things and deeply connect with their inner selves.

In Sanskrit, this energy center is called “Ajna,” meaning “to perceive.” Just as the Third Eye in humans allows us to see beyond the physical world, Kauai invites us to explore reality through all our senses, fully experiencing and understanding the world around us.

In the island of Kauai the connection with the chakra happens

It’s on the island of Kauai that the connection to the Third Eye happens naturally, because being immersed in its untouched nature makes it easier to access the spiritual realm and look inward, sharing moments with others or with the Earth – “aina” – in Hawaiian which means Mother Earth.

The Kalalau Trail along the Napali Coast

At the island’s northwestern edge, along the Napali Coast, the Kalalau Trail stretches eleven and a half miles and it is the most epic hike on Kauai. This summer, we tackled it for the fourth time.

Along the path to the beach, the picturesque Kalalau Beach, I intensely felt these “connections” that allowed me to rediscover a new version of myself reflected in nature and experience the beauty of the souls of some people we met there, like Natasha and Anastasia, who seemed to have stepped right out of the pages of our novel “Eleven and a Half Miles”.

Birth in the valley

“In the moment when everything stopped, the waiting and worries over, the little girl began her dance into the world, her tiny heart glowing with the stars. I felt it coming, silent, with a flutter of wings, the little archangel of life full of love. I welcomed them and bound them to me indissolubly, the brave creatures who chose my arms as the cradle of their dreams” — Eleven and a Half Miles by Luca Oliveri and Andrea Marangon.

Natasha and Anastasia seem to have stepped out of the pages of “Eleven and a Half Miles”

Natasha had struck us from the beginning. On the afternoon of the second day spent on the beach, she left a delicious papaya next to our tent. Thanking her gave us the chance to talk to her and figure out what about her personality attracted us so much. At the same time, her daughter Anastasia was crawling naked on the sand, exploring leaves, small hermit crabs, and discovering the world with complete freedom.

“Anastasia was born nine months ago, under a starry sky, with the sound of the waves, right here on the beach,” her mother told us.

“Really?” I asked in disbelief as emotion welled up inside me, seeing the similarities between her story and our novel.

We began a long conversation, telling her that she and her daughter seemed like Grace and her mother Giudy from the chapter “October 4, 1975” of our book. We translated those pages into English for her, and she listened attentively and with pleasure. She smiled. Only then she told us that the Kalalau Valley is a special place, a garden filled with every plant a human could imagine, and that she had picked the papaya she gave us about a mile and a half inside the valley.

Anastasia and the armony with Nature

Her daughter was indeed born on the beach, nine months earlier, and she was as surprised as we were by the strange coincidence. After all, in Hawaii, “things” happen, and coincidences are just another expression of what is truly real.

Without electricity, eating on an acacia koa leaf as a plate, and surviving only on plants and fruits they gathered, their existence was a return to a simpler time.

Her daughter was a new life growing in harmony with nature, learning from the start the value of simplicity and human connection.

Anastasia, still happily crawling, came toward us, drawn to the camera we had taken out to capture her beauty and the spontaneity of that moment. She laughed as she got closer. I picked her up to cuddle her and, through that little being, rediscovered the meaning of Kauai’s Third Eye, while everything around grew serene, with the sounds echoing through Kalalau Valley, like the notes of an organ in a church full of worshippers. The sun was almost setting in the west, casting its warm, blood-red light over us. What an emotion!

“There is another way of life…”

Kauai’s Third Eye, on the Kalalau Beach, creates connections and releases the energy of sharing: “Ohana,” I thought, recognizing in our experience the bond formed even with strangers, who suddenly become part of your “family,” the family of those who share something in common.

“There is another way of life, another world is possible” — Eleven and a Half Miles.