What Happens When You Go on a Yoga Retreat? (Part 1)

Just about two months ago, I slipped out between blizzards to board a plane headed south for my first ever yoga retreat.

Last year’s teacher training changed me in a blunt-force, initially destructive sort of way. This retreat stripped away the armor and chipped at the ice in a much more subtle, peaceful fashion, yet it also somehow reached the bones and soul.

Every retreat is different. My experience is far from universal. But I’ll share 10 things that happened, and might happen to you. Here’s the first.

1. You forgive yourself, and you are forgiven. After an exhausting and emotional visit to a nearby city just before the retreat, I drove up to the island in time for the initial evening gathering on the first day, then settled in and set my alarm for the sunrise yoga class the next morning.

When I woke up, light was streaming in through the plantation shutters on the windows of my beautiful turreted room and glowing in a thin rectangular outline around the door leading to my balcony. I had missed class entirely. The alarm I’d set was a weekday alarm, and it was Saturday. I’d lost track of the days on vacation already.

After the initial self-berating, I stepped outside onto the balcony and sank into the rocking chair. The scene was movie-perfect: singing birds, big lazy moss trees, clear sunshine over a bit of lingering fog, a warm breeze. Had my alarm awakened me as planned and allowed me to get to class, I would have missed this tiny stretch of quiet morning perfection.

Naturally, as I walked over to the dining room afterward for breakfast, I ran into the retreat leader. The porch peace evaporated, replaced by shame, and before I knew it, I was stumbling through an apology for missing class and rambling about the iPhone alarm function. She smiled and reminded me that every activity was optional. “Your body knew what it needed,” she assured me. “That’s what you needed this morning.”

I’d love to say that I immediately latched onto that message and carried it throughout the retreat, but it’s not one that sinks in easily. I was handed a chance for reinforcement the next day, when I actually did arrive on time for the morning class and then realized I’d probably have a headache by the end if I didn’t get some coffee first.

I sprinted outside into the dark and headed to the lobby outside the dining room, worried that I would be late returning to class and/or that caffeine was anti-yogic and cause for judgment. But there, once again, was the retreat leader… who was also getting coffee, and who casually mentioned she’d be a few minutes late starting class. Instant permission and forgiveness granted again, this time unspoken and realized on my own.