The story. Part 3.
Meeting with Leela. Remembering myself.
“
I didn’t know still what I came here to do but I was eager to find out. I knew how I don’t want and what I don’t want but I knew what I would like to do – and I was trying many different self knowledge instruments to understand how to fulfil my potential. And then after many interesting, but not very helpful attempts,
Leela came into my life…
Leela came into my life…
I first learned about Leela about six years ago.
I saw a post on Instagram from a girl I was following. She was sharing her experience of a unique game played on a large floor board, led by a remarkably powerful master. I got interested and felt a strong inner resonance—it seemed like I absolutely had to try it.
I saw a post on Instagram from a girl I was following. She was sharing her experience of a unique game played on a large floor board, led by a remarkably powerful master. I got interested and felt a strong inner resonance—it seemed like I absolutely had to try it.
I remember visiting the profile of this master. He was guiding Leela in different corners of the world – sometimes in Russia, sometimes in India, sometimes in Bali. At that time I was already living in Portugal and couldn’t make such trips. Initially because of the intense tourist season as my work in surf camps consumed all my time and energy. Later because I was waiting for my residency documents, which further limited my mobility. Traveling across the world just for a game seemed unnecessary. Surprisingly, I didn’t even Google what Leela was, nor did I follow the master’s profile. For some reason I had a deep inner knowing: if this was truly meant for me, the game would find me, and the opportunity to play would come at the right moment. Looking back now I realize that six years ago I didn’t yet have the depth of awareness and trust in the universe that I have today. But I guess it was a small glimpse of intuitive understanding – that everything comes in its own time.
After that the game disappeared from my radar. Years passed and I never heard about Leela again – until 2022. Everything changed a couple of months before my first game. During a conversation a friend of mine, who had recently moved to Portugal, mentioned that she had played Leela in Moscow with a facilitator – one of the students of the very same master I had discovered years ago. She described the game as deep and transformative, sharing how much it had given her and how profoundly she enjoyed it. From her words I learned that Leela wasn’t led only by that one master but by other facilitators as well. And then, unexpectedly, she said something that struck a chord within me:
After that the game disappeared from my radar. Years passed and I never heard about Leela again – until 2022. Everything changed a couple of months before my first game. During a conversation a friend of mine, who had recently moved to Portugal, mentioned that she had played Leela in Moscow with a facilitator – one of the students of the very same master I had discovered years ago. She described the game as deep and transformative, sharing how much it had given her and how profoundly she enjoyed it. From her words I learned that Leela wasn’t led only by that one master but by other facilitators as well. And then, unexpectedly, she said something that struck a chord within me:
“
"You could learn this game as well. I see you as a facilitator."
Her words took me by surprise. At that moment I hadn’t even played the game myself and the idea of becoming a facilitator had never crossed my mind. Moreover I didn’t even know it was something one could learn. But as it turned out, her words were prophetic.
Her words took me by surprise. At that moment I hadn’t even played the game myself and the idea of becoming a facilitator had never crossed my mind. Moreover I didn’t even know it was something one could learn. But as it turned out, her words were prophetic.
By the summer of 2022 I found myself in a state of complete emotional exhaustion and deadlock, as I mentioned earlier. It felt like I had lost all stability and hope – not only because of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, which showed no signs of ending, but also due to my own internal crisis. Despite all my efforts over the past two years, I couldn’t find a way out of this state. I had tried different practices, exercises, and theories, searching for answers, testing new ideas – but nothing brought me the results I was so desperately striving for. At that point I knew the general direction I needed to move in, but I had no clarity on how to actually get there. I had no idea what exactly I needed to do.
In the meantime I continued doing what I knew best – working online plus organising surf camps and retreats. In July 2022 I was organising a women’s retreat for a friend of mine, a master of feminine practices. Among the participants was one woman who sparked a deep inner resonance in me, an unexplainable connection. On the last day of the retreat I was driving the participants back to Lisbon, to the airport. During the ride I had a conversation with that very woman, and suddenly, I discovered that in addition to her work with body practices, she also facilitates Leela. Moreover she is a student of the very same master I wanted to play with six years ago!
It turned out that she was staying in Portugal for another month and was planning to host several games. At that moment my sense of despair and confusion had reached its peak. I felt a powerful inner impulse – I had to play this game, and I had to do it with her. She was a student of the very master I had once wanted to play with and I was certain she could pass his depth and wisdom. Without hesitation I immediately said I wanted to participate. When I found out the price it seemed quite high, but fortunately, I could afford it. And deep inside I knew – if this is the price, then it must be worth it. I had no idea what awaited me, but I could feel the immense value behind this experience.
In the meantime I continued doing what I knew best – working online plus organising surf camps and retreats. In July 2022 I was organising a women’s retreat for a friend of mine, a master of feminine practices. Among the participants was one woman who sparked a deep inner resonance in me, an unexplainable connection. On the last day of the retreat I was driving the participants back to Lisbon, to the airport. During the ride I had a conversation with that very woman, and suddenly, I discovered that in addition to her work with body practices, she also facilitates Leela. Moreover she is a student of the very same master I wanted to play with six years ago!
It turned out that she was staying in Portugal for another month and was planning to host several games. At that moment my sense of despair and confusion had reached its peak. I felt a powerful inner impulse – I had to play this game, and I had to do it with her. She was a student of the very master I had once wanted to play with and I was certain she could pass his depth and wisdom. Without hesitation I immediately said I wanted to participate. When I found out the price it seemed quite high, but fortunately, I could afford it. And deep inside I knew – if this is the price, then it must be worth it. I had no idea what awaited me, but I could feel the immense value behind this experience.
This game marked the beginning of an entirely new chapter in my life. On August 5, 2022 I played my first game of Leela and from that moment on my life was divided into before and after. Before Leela and after Leela. That day five of us – completely different people, strangers to one another – gathered in an apartment in Cascais to play. To play a game that mirrors life itself. I had no idea what awaited me or how long it would last. But I knew – this was exactly what I needed. It felt as though I had already tried everything. Everything except this game.
To enter Leela, you must roll a six on the dice after formulating your question. If you don’t roll a six, you have to reframe the question, shift your approach, and try again. It took me four hours to roll that six. Four long hours.
But as it turned out this was already part of the game. Leela wasn’t just asking me to state a question – it was guiding me toward the right question. I knew the theme of my game from the very beginning. I knew what I wanted to understand. But the game seemed to be testing me, pushing me to refine my question into a form that could truly reveal the answer. I tried dozens of variations, asking about different areas of my life – just in case I was looking in the wrong place. But no matter how many times I rephrased it, I kept returning to the same core question I had come with.
This process of formulating the question was transformative itself. While searching for the right formulation, I had already begun receiving answers. The biggest challenge in this new phase of life after the pandemic (as I thought) was finding the new form in which I could share what I had to offer. The old ways I was used to no longer felt possible or interesting. It was as if I had outgrown them – they no longer resonated with me. I needed to find a new form, but before I could do that, I first had to accept the fact that I have something valuable to share. Those four hours of struggling to enter the game became a turning point. They led me to a profound realization: the problem wasn’t in finding the right form – it was in my inability to accept my own strength, my own worth.
I remembered that meditation in April 2020 when the answer came to me: "Share."
Back then, I immediately rejected it. My mind was flooded with doubts: "Who needs this? Who am I to share anything? I don’t want to teach people how to live. I don’t want to tell anyone what to do. Who am I to speak, to guide, to offer anything at all?"
These doubts became my inner barrier, the wall that kept me from stepping into my own power.
And now, two years later, I was still facing the same wall. The process of formulating my question in the game became a mirror of my internal conflict. It forced me to realize: I couldn’t move forward until I accepted that I do have something to share. That there is real value within me. That I possess a unique strength – one that I could offer to the world. When I finally found the right question—“How can I accept my own power?” – I rolled the dice. And it landed on a six.
To enter Leela, you must roll a six on the dice after formulating your question. If you don’t roll a six, you have to reframe the question, shift your approach, and try again. It took me four hours to roll that six. Four long hours.
But as it turned out this was already part of the game. Leela wasn’t just asking me to state a question – it was guiding me toward the right question. I knew the theme of my game from the very beginning. I knew what I wanted to understand. But the game seemed to be testing me, pushing me to refine my question into a form that could truly reveal the answer. I tried dozens of variations, asking about different areas of my life – just in case I was looking in the wrong place. But no matter how many times I rephrased it, I kept returning to the same core question I had come with.
This process of formulating the question was transformative itself. While searching for the right formulation, I had already begun receiving answers. The biggest challenge in this new phase of life after the pandemic (as I thought) was finding the new form in which I could share what I had to offer. The old ways I was used to no longer felt possible or interesting. It was as if I had outgrown them – they no longer resonated with me. I needed to find a new form, but before I could do that, I first had to accept the fact that I have something valuable to share. Those four hours of struggling to enter the game became a turning point. They led me to a profound realization: the problem wasn’t in finding the right form – it was in my inability to accept my own strength, my own worth.
I remembered that meditation in April 2020 when the answer came to me: "Share."
Back then, I immediately rejected it. My mind was flooded with doubts: "Who needs this? Who am I to share anything? I don’t want to teach people how to live. I don’t want to tell anyone what to do. Who am I to speak, to guide, to offer anything at all?"
These doubts became my inner barrier, the wall that kept me from stepping into my own power.
And now, two years later, I was still facing the same wall. The process of formulating my question in the game became a mirror of my internal conflict. It forced me to realize: I couldn’t move forward until I accepted that I do have something to share. That there is real value within me. That I possess a unique strength – one that I could offer to the world. When I finally found the right question—“How can I accept my own power?” – I rolled the dice. And it landed on a six.
The game had begun. What followed were endless hours of moving across the game board – ups and downs, moments of progress and setbacks, encounters with other players, astonishing synchronicities, reflections of my own questions in the stories of others and no sleep at all. In total, my game lasted 21 hours – a rare and, as I later learned, an extremely intense case. Typically, group games last between 8 to 12 hours, but not an entire day. Yet, I wasn’t even the last to finish. The final player completed their game exactly 24 hours after we had started.
The game revealed to me the obvious truths I had stubbornly refused to see. It illuminated my blind spots, exposed my weaknesses – the ones I had been avoiding. It showed me things I had already worked on, because by that point, I had been in therapy and on a path of self-development for years. I thought I knew a lot about myself. But knowing your problems is one thing. Truly working through them and changing something – that’s entirely different process.
Deep into the night, at the 18th hour of the game, I was ready to quit. It felt completely absurd – we hadn’t slept in almost 24 hours, sitting in the same room, playing some game. At that moment all I wanted was to walk away. But the drive to see it through, to understand myself, outweighed the exhaustion. I was angry. I cried. I argued – with myself, with the game, with the facilitator. But in the end, I began to surrender to what the game was showing me – because it wasn’t revealing something abstract. It was revealing me. All my patterns, my defence mechanisms, my weaknesses. Everything I had been so determined not to notice.
Step by step the game was leading me to a very simple answer. A few hours before it ended, I finally saw where it was all going. And I refused to believe it. The answer was so simple that it felt absurd: I just needed to love myself. I remember how I laughed at the idea, full of sarcasm: "How can that be the answer? How can that be the key? Love myself? That’s impossible!". I argued with the game: "How am I supposed to love myself here and now, in the middle of a game? I’ve been working on this in therapy for years. I know how hard it is. How can I just love myself when I haven’t done it for 30 years? When no one ever taught me how?". And it was as if the game simply responded: "Alright, then take some more time". So I walked. Again and again, I landed on the same cells, slid down the same snakes, confronted the same lessons. Layer by layer I cleared away the rubble of old beliefs, defence mechanisms, and internal barriers. And only when I finally surrendered to this simple yet profound truth – that the key to my strength, to my acceptance, lay in loving myself – only then did the game come to an end.
I finished the game with one clear answer: to embrace my power means to embrace myself. And to embrace myself means to love myself. My power is me. What I need to share with the world – is myself. This simple yet profound truth became a turning point. It shifted the way I saw myself, my life, and the path ahead. When I finished the game, I didn’t suddenly start loving myself. But I surrendered to the intention. I acknowledged that this was something I struggled with and I accepted the fact that my growth depended on this decision. I realized that I could no longer avoid this topic – I had to dive deeper into it. At that moment, I had no idea what loving myself even meant. I couldn’t imagine what it was supposed to feel like or how it should manifest. And so, for the next two and a half years, I dedicated myself to exploring this question: What does it mean to love yourself? What does it look like? What does it feel like? How can it be cultivated?
Deep into the night, at the 18th hour of the game, I was ready to quit. It felt completely absurd – we hadn’t slept in almost 24 hours, sitting in the same room, playing some game. At that moment all I wanted was to walk away. But the drive to see it through, to understand myself, outweighed the exhaustion. I was angry. I cried. I argued – with myself, with the game, with the facilitator. But in the end, I began to surrender to what the game was showing me – because it wasn’t revealing something abstract. It was revealing me. All my patterns, my defence mechanisms, my weaknesses. Everything I had been so determined not to notice.
Step by step the game was leading me to a very simple answer. A few hours before it ended, I finally saw where it was all going. And I refused to believe it. The answer was so simple that it felt absurd: I just needed to love myself. I remember how I laughed at the idea, full of sarcasm: "How can that be the answer? How can that be the key? Love myself? That’s impossible!". I argued with the game: "How am I supposed to love myself here and now, in the middle of a game? I’ve been working on this in therapy for years. I know how hard it is. How can I just love myself when I haven’t done it for 30 years? When no one ever taught me how?". And it was as if the game simply responded: "Alright, then take some more time". So I walked. Again and again, I landed on the same cells, slid down the same snakes, confronted the same lessons. Layer by layer I cleared away the rubble of old beliefs, defence mechanisms, and internal barriers. And only when I finally surrendered to this simple yet profound truth – that the key to my strength, to my acceptance, lay in loving myself – only then did the game come to an end.
I finished the game with one clear answer: to embrace my power means to embrace myself. And to embrace myself means to love myself. My power is me. What I need to share with the world – is myself. This simple yet profound truth became a turning point. It shifted the way I saw myself, my life, and the path ahead. When I finished the game, I didn’t suddenly start loving myself. But I surrendered to the intention. I acknowledged that this was something I struggled with and I accepted the fact that my growth depended on this decision. I realized that I could no longer avoid this topic – I had to dive deeper into it. At that moment, I had no idea what loving myself even meant. I couldn’t imagine what it was supposed to feel like or how it should manifest. And so, for the next two and a half years, I dedicated myself to exploring this question: What does it mean to love yourself? What does it look like? What does it feel like? How can it be cultivated?
The second major realization that became clear to me right after finishing the game was just how deeply Leela had impacted and inspired me. This tool felt incredibly familiar, almost instinctive. I had a strong sense that Leela was the missing piece in the puzzle I had been trying to put together for the past two and a half years. It fit perfectly into what I wanted to do for people. Almost instantly I felt the desire to learn this game, to become a facilitator. It was remarkable that just a month earlier, my friend had told me she saw me in this role. At the time it had felt distant and almost unreal. But after playing this game the desire felt completely natural – like something I had been meant to do all along.
I felt like I had finally found the tool through which I could share what I had always wanted to. And not only would this tool help others – it would also help me on my journey toward self-love and embracing my own power. For me, it was essential to learn from a strong and experienced facilitator, someone who deeply understood Leela and its potential. In October 2022 I began my studying with the first level of the School of Leela Facilitators – from that same master I wanted to play the game all along. The learning process itself became an inspiring journey. I was completely fascinated by the world of Leela – studying the board’s cells, their meanings, the principles of the game, and the intricate connections between its elements. It felt like discovering an entirely new universe, filled with endless possibilities for growth and transformation – not only for myself but also for those around me.
I felt like I had finally found the tool through which I could share what I had always wanted to. And not only would this tool help others – it would also help me on my journey toward self-love and embracing my own power. For me, it was essential to learn from a strong and experienced facilitator, someone who deeply understood Leela and its potential. In October 2022 I began my studying with the first level of the School of Leela Facilitators – from that same master I wanted to play the game all along. The learning process itself became an inspiring journey. I was completely fascinated by the world of Leela – studying the board’s cells, their meanings, the principles of the game, and the intricate connections between its elements. It felt like discovering an entirely new universe, filled with endless possibilities for growth and transformation – not only for myself but also for those around me.
Did you like this story?