Hi there! Luciana and James here.
Welcome to our world!
Our Motto
Step out of your comfort zone. Respect all life forms. Eat healthily. Be in touch with nature. Exercise. Keep your friends close. Laugh at yourself. Travel as much as you can. Respect Mother Earth. Connect with the Universe. Enjoy every moment!
ON THIS PAGE
The Dream World Inspiring this Project | About Finding the Bliss | Meet Luciana | Meet James | Our journey
THE DREAM WORLD INSPIRING THIS PROJECT
OUR INSPIRATION
A world with abundance of gratitude and compassion, free of judgement, injustice, or prejudice.
In this world, people work on their personal issues and their relationships.
They take care of themselves and their loved ones and prioritise on their physical and mental health.
Here, nature is a source of wisdom and healing.
In this world, people are conscious consumers concerned with our beautiful Blue Planet.
On a normal day, everyone is healthy and happy.
This is our dream world, the world we want to help build, one day at a time, with passion, love and faith, in whichever direction life takes us.
ABOUT FINDING THE BLISS
In its initial stage, Finding The Bliss was a blog intended to be a source of yogic lifestyle inspiration.
But as soon as we decided to take some time to travel to explore new horizons, Finding the Bliss became a place to share our travel adventures, while we temporarily adopted a nomadic lifestyle.
As we explored new and exciting destinations in Southeast Asia, we became inscreasingly concerned with the environment. After witnessing firsthand the effects of mass tourism, excess plastic waste, bleaching of coral reefs and other environmental issues, we also felt the need to share environmental related content.
In 2018 we returned to Portugal and in the beginning of 2020, settled at the Orange Bloom Homestead & Guesthouse. This new chapter of our lives, added a new scope of Finding the Bliss.
Finding the Bliss is in constant metamorphosis!
We are going with the flow to see where the journey takes us.
Meet Luciana
You probably already met Luciana here. Here’s Jame’s take on her:
“Well, this is easy, she is a fun-loving Brazilian who motivates me and keeps me on my toes! Loves music and dancing, though we don’t find enough time to go dancing as we used to.
She is a great conversationalist who takes a deep interest in getting down to the facts and meaningful talk and gets bored with idle chit-chat. She takes no prisoners when telling the truth, she cannot lie or tolerate injustice.
When it comes to working nothing stands in her way and she will finish when it’s finished even if it takes her into the small hours of the morning, so taking her computer away would be like taking candy away from a kid!!!
All said and done I don’t think I know another person with such strong moral values which is to the benefit of all who come in touch with her. She makes friends easily and keeps them forever so there is no fair weather friendship where she is concerned. You are either a friend or not!
A joy to be around.”
Meet James
MOST COMMON EXPRESSION “Let’s think about it”
James is an Englishman, born in Suffolk, raised between the beautiful English countryside and stunning beach sides of Malaysia.
He lived in London for many years before moving to Portugal. After some years in Belgium, he returned to Portugal.
As a child, he transitioned between boarding school in the UK and Malaysia. Although he was based in Europe most of my adult life, he is still drawn to the mystic east, where he has many roots and memories.
A lover of the ocean and windy shores, James has been living in Portugal, on and off, for over 30 years, the first time in the 80’s to set up a windsurf school.
Although not a regular practitioner, he enjoys yoga, but nowadays, his most intensive excercise is heavy-weight gardening!
For more than 30 years, James owned an interior renovation company, running teams of workers in Portugal, Belgium and UK. Although he had to close his building company in 2008, the passion for building remained and he is now focused on ecological and sustainable building.
One of his dreams is to spend some time in Bali learning about construction with bamboo.
A handy cook who likes dabbling in the kitchen, James has been slowly trying to pass on the kitchen duty to Luciana… (work-in-progress)!
The true MacGiver, he is handy when it comes to designing and building anything and is in his happiest state when doing something constructive.
He enjoys photography and often contributes with his photos and footage to Finding the Bliss.
LUCIANA’S TAKE ON JAMES
“James is a wonderful young and lively soul. He is a creative mind and a dreamer at heart. He is always in a good mood and in full charge.
He has a very special affinity with animals. He loves them and they react to him in a very unique way. James is a nature person, so do not put him in front of a computer for too long!
James gets extremelly restless after a few months without travelling, as he believes the world is too big and life is too short not to be lived to its fullest.
Above all, he is my sunshine, my companion, my friend, the person who encourages me and supports my decisions, who puts up with my full-moon moods, who makes me laugh and doesn’t like to see me cry.”
OUR JOURNEY
2014 – During a very stressful work period, I had a calling to return to yoga practice to retrieve some peace of mind.
2015 – James and I started questioning our lifestyle, motivations and aspirations after his father passed away unexpectedly.
We saw how fragile and unpredictable our lives are. In an attempt to rescue time, we took a trip to Thailand and Bali.
By the end of the year, after a yoga retreat on the Portuguese island of Madeira, we started considering it as our possible new destination.
2016 – In June, we decided to break free from the rat race and reinvent ourselves. After attempting to adjust our company to a less stressful model, we decided to close it and go travelling in search of inspiration for the next chapter of our lives.
2017 – During my self-discovery journey, I rekindled my passion for writing and in February 14th I launched the blog Finding the Bliss.
Soon after, I took my first online blogging course to help me face the internet jungle.
In March we arrived on Madeira Island to start a new life and start building our newly designed dream life. But things didn’t go as expected and in June we were on an aeroplane to Malaysia!
For three and a half months we run a small resort, on Langkawi Island, as volunteers, using the Workaway platform.
During that time, we dug deep into our innermost desires and inspirations, knowing that finding purpose was an essential part of the equation.
While on Langkawi island we understood that part of our next mission would be to promote conscious living and an eco-friendly travel attitude.
During our travels in South East Asia, we witnessed firsthand the terrible consequences of massive tourism, plastic waste and deforestation.
As a result, in addition to our travel stories and lifestyle tips, we decided to use this blog and our YouTube channel as tools to spread awareness about environmental issues.
By the time we left Langkawi Island, in September, we knew we would return soon.
On December 30th,we were back.
The plan: to stay until the end of the year to explore the country and the possibility of moving there.
2018 – Four months on Langkawi Island, one in Malaysian Borneo, two in Bali and a quick two-week stop in the UK made this one of the richest years of my life thus far. (Watch The Trip)
We returned home earlier than planned as our house was sold. In two months we moved to the new house to start, in contrast, a very challenging year.
2019 – While James was busy with the building works of the new house, creating his lifetime masterpiece, I sunk into self-development.
2020 – Blessed by perfect timings, in many ways, the State of Emergency in Portugal due to the Covid-19 pandemic, was implemented a couple of days after we moved to our new dream home, in a small farm, which we named Orange Bloom Homestead & Guesthouse.
2020 opened a new uncertain chapter. It was a time for reflection, work and adjustment. This traumatic year was also an opportunity to put into practice so many teachings about patience, mindfulness, detachment and going with the flow.
2021 – Expectations, hope, adaptations. Our projects progressed slowly, toward our bigger dream. Farm life came with a steep learning curve and stirred me away from the blog and my studies for most of the year.
2022 – The year started with big expectations of bringing the dreams, projects and teachings together.
For Luciana, this was again a year of investment in education and preparation for the next chapter of her life. 2022 marks the lauch of her long dreamed practice as a Holistic Life Coach.
The boom in foreign investment in real estate in Portugal opened up the doors for James to go back to the building industry, this time as Project Manager.
After four years in Portugal, we start to feel the urge to be on the road again.
Let’s see what 2023 brings…
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