FINDING REFUGE TO IMPROVE YOUR MIND-BODY CONNECTION

Rick Hansen in Buddha's Brain: p 98
Find Refuge in whatever is a sanctuary and refueling station for you. Potential refuges include people, activities, places, intangible things like reason, a sense of your innermost feeling or truth.
I have always felt the comfort of a refuge, which in the past many years has been traveling to see friends and of course participate in some humanitarian medical activities.
When I suggest to my friends, shall we meet in Easter Island? the response is almost universal, Easter Island is too far!
Then I thought to myself, my monthly visits to the Indian Reservations attract very little interest from Americans but it attracts a lot of attention from foreigners. While none of my American friends have visited me in my Reservation Sojourns, I have had visitors come from 
Karigasniemi, Lapland, Finland
Cologne, Germany
Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Honolulu, Hawaii
Toyama, Japan
Paris, France
Kingston, Jamaica
KL, Malaysia

Obviously travel is an idea for some, a relaxation for others, a refuge for some other. 
Since I am the traveler, I have always made special efforts to go and see my friends, whether they live in Buenos Aires or Buffalo.
Recently, some newly made Danish friends invited to Aarhus and I told them, it is a dangerous thing to say to me, because I would come.

I have always enjoyed meeting friends in third countries, which is neither mine or theirs
or even smaller cities, such as San Antonio in Texas
If you have a friend who also finds refuge in Travel, it is truly fantastic to run into them in various places across the globe.
My good friend JH from Bogor and I have met each other in 
Phnom Penh
KL
Singapore
Bangkok
Bali
Paris
Amsterdam
Brussels

I have had japanese visitors meet me in New York, Miami, Puerto Ordaz, Cochin, Yangon, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile. Vietnamese visitors had come to KL, as well as a visitor from Teheran.

For two years from 2008 to 2010, the regular refuge visit was to KL, in 2005 it was Japan, around this time, Myanmar was also a refuge.
And of course, if you are tired of visiting London, you are tired of life, as Samuel Johnson brilliantly said, centuries ago.
The sensation is very different from traveling with someone, discovering new places together. Refuge strengthens your mind, and the pleasure of meeting a good friend relaxes your system.
Lately, my refuges seem to follow a pattern
Miami, which is home
La Habana, which is another home

KL , Bogor, Phnom Penh

and Mexico!

Eating well has always been a fringe benefit of these travels.

and Jiddu Krishnamurti would say:

Awareness of outward things If you are aware of outward things—the curve of a road, the shape of a tree, the colour of another’s dress, the outline of the mountains against a blue sky, the delicacy of a flower, the pain on the face of a passerby, the ignorance, the envy, the jealousy of others, the beauty of the earth—then, seeing all these outward things without condemnation, without choice, you can ride on the tide of inner awareness. Then you will become aware of your own reactions, of your own pettiness, of your own jealousies. From the outward awareness, you come to the inward; but if you are not aware of the outer, you cannot possibly come to the inner…When there is inward awareness of every activity of your mind and your body; when you are aware of your thoughts, of your feelings, both secret and open, conscious and unconscious, then out of this awareness there comes a clarity that is not induced, not put together by the mind. - Krishnamurti, The Collected Works vol XV p 243