Yoga Retreat
Ommm…Is Where the Heart Is
The healing powers of yoga-in-the-wild, butterflies, dreams, music, and magic
I attended my daughter’s yoga retreat in the Columbia River Gorge a couple of weeks ago. I was looking forward to the long weekend to refresh and recharge both mentally and physically…and to spending time with Lauren, who’s an amazing teacher and creator of memorable, uplifting experiences. What I didn’t expect is that there would be an undercurrent of grief and tragedy that would deepen my emotional experience.
After dropping my suitcase in the bedroom of a sprawling farmhouse with stunning views of Mt. Adams, I hitched a ride to our main venue and joined my fellow yogis for our first, open-air yoga session. It was early Friday evening. Between the cross-country flight and 2-hour car ride to this secluded mountain meadow, I needed a good, relaxing stretch.
Just as I was setting up my mat I saw a text from my brother in New Jersey. His wife’s sister had collapsed and gone into cardiac arrest, and EMTs were trying to revive her. I didn’t want to interrupt Lauren’s class by answering texts, and there was obviously nothing I could do to help. So I turned off my phone and tried to focus on following Lauren’s prompts, but I was extremely anxious and distracted. By the time the class was over, more than 20 texts had been exchanged between my siblings as the tragedy unfolded in real time. Sadly, my sister-in-law’s sister had died.
I didn’t know her very well, but she was a lovely person. And YOUNG — she had just turned 59. I sat in shock, trying to absorb the sudden tragedy and thinking about my sister-in-law and her family. I told Lauren, and she was extremely saddened. Though she didn’t really know the sister who died, she adores her aunt and was heartbroken for her.
Meanwhile, I became very friendly with one of the women on the retreat, K., a student of Lauren’s whose beloved 17-year-old nephew had died in a kayaking accident just over a month prior. She and her nephew were very close, and she was doing her best to process what had happened. She found comfort in the fact that several times over the weekend a certain type of black-and-yellow butterfly would flutter nearby, and she would feel her nephew’s presence.
Lauren had told me about the tragedy a few weeks before the retreat, and I felt enormous empathy for K. Once I met her and learned more about her nephew and how beloved he was by EVERYONE, my empathy turned to outrage at how she, her family, and his many friends had been robbed blind by fate.
There are so many people over whom, if they were to depart this earth, no one would shed a tear. And here were two immensely kind and loving people who were — and still are — loved deeply by so many, taken tragically and far too young. Why?
I am not a devout believer in any organized religion, however I consider myself to be a spiritual person. You can’t look up at the sky, particularly at night with a billion shimmering stars, and feel like THIS is all there is, that all the life-force energy swirling around this planet begins and ends here. However, when grossly unfair things happen, it’s hard to believe there’s a benevolent higher power overseeing life on earth. But that’s a debate for another time.
Lying on my yoga mat the next morning and gazing at the vast blue sky, I thought, Where did they go? They were JUST HERE. Why did these beloved people die such untimely deaths?
The universe had no answers for me.
Later that day, K. and I did a very steep, difficult hike in the Cascade Mountains called Sleeping Beauty. Channeling our inner Kali, a yoga goddess who embodies fierce feminine energy, we made it to the top…and back down again, which may have been even harder. The feeling of triumph and connection to the earth was invigorating and cathartic.
That night a bunch of us, including Lauren, K., and I, went to the local music hall. There was a zydeco band playing, complete with banjo and washboard. I’m not a fan of the genre, but when one of our group ran up to the stage and started bopping with the exuberant folks on the dance floor, we followed. Before you knew it, we were jumping up and down and dancing ourselves silly like no one was watching. It was a spiritual release...and just a damn good time.
The following afternoon, Lauren had us do what she called a walking meditation. She would ring the chimes; then we were to walk about the property for 20 minutes as though we were in a dream. We could go anywhere, do anything, but we had to remember we were in a dream. If we passed by another person, they were simply a character in our dream. After 20 minutes she would call out to let us know it was time to come back to our mats (the gentle chimes would not carry far enough for us all to hear). Specifically, she would yell out a sharp “Ca-caw!” Her demonstration of this outburst, cupping her hands around her mouth like a jungle bird call, was loud and sudden and made everyone giggle.
At the sound of the chimes, I started walking through the meadow, trance-like. It felt a little weird at first, but I quickly got into it. I peered closely at every blossom, branch and blade of grass, and soon everything was framed by a hazy, dream-like scrim.
I moved slowly across the carpet of wild flora. I stopped before a flowering shrub and watched bumblebees hopping from one blossom to the next, pollinating. Remember, you’re in a dream. I climbed up a hill of gravel, because it was there, and let the warm stones massage my feet. I stopped and listened to a babbling brook hidden behind an unruly thicket. Remember, you’re in a dream. I spotted a rabbit hole and stared at it for several minutes, waiting for something small and adorable to emerge. When nothing did I simply shrugged and moved on.
Suddenly Lauren’s “Ca-caw!” came piercing through my dream. I started back toward the yoga space, and saw that a single wildflower had been placed on each of our mats. We all assumed Lauren had done it, but she said she hadn’t. Whoever had wanted it to remain a mystery.
Lauren opened up the floor for commentary, and several of us shared our experiences. I noted that I felt much more present in my dream. When I was walking through the meadow, I wasn’t thinking of anything else but what I was looking at in that moment. A daisy, a buttercup, a butterfly, a bumblebee. I was more observant, more focused. And ironically, I felt much more aware than when I was walking through the field in my “awake” state, troubled by my sister-in-law’s loss and distracted by other extraneous thoughts that now seemed so trivial.
That evening, Lauren suggested we all cook together at the main farmhouse and have a campfire afterwards to roast marshmallows. Once we got a crackling fire going and everyone was sitting around it, I asked M., a Berklee College of Music student attending the retreat with his mom, to grab the house guitar so we could all sing.
For a 20ish young man, he was well-versed in 60s and 70s music, and was able to play any song that anyone suggested — the Beatles, the Eagles, Simon and Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, the Violent Femmes; he was a prodigious talent. For about an hour we sang our hearts out, gorged on sticky s’mores, and celebrated the ephemeral family we had become after two-and-a-half transformative days together. It was magical.
The next morning we had one more yoga session. As we settled down for savasana (for the uninitiated, that is the period of rest at the end of class), I took in the puffy white clouds drifting across the azure sky and closed my eyes.
Normally Lauren plays music during class, but this morning we practiced with only the melodic sounds of nature — birds chirping, bees buzzing, and mountain breezes wafting gently through the pines. Then, as we lied with our eyes closed, I started to hear the soft strumming of an acoustic guitar. I couldn’t help it, I peeked…it was M., of course. He started singing Cat Stevens’ If You Wanna Sing Out, Sing Out, an iconic folk song that celebrates individuality and freedom. We had sung it the previous night around the campfire and Lauren had asked him to play it during savasana. Listening to his warm, evocative voice, I thought what a perfect coda this was to a weekend of healing, community, and friendship.
If you wanna sing out, sing out
And if you wanna be free, be free
There’s a million things to be
You know that there are
After a few minutes, Lauren instructed us to come up to a seated position with our eyes closed. Again I peeked, and this time saw that same black-and-yellow butterfly circle around K. and fly off towards the meadow. It didn’t go near anyone else. After the class I told her what I saw, and we both started to cry. Lauren had witnessed it too, this moment of magic, and all three of us wept. K.’s nephew, who fully embodied the spirit of that song in his far-too-short life, was there with her. We were sure of it.
Yoga retreats are wonderful ways to take a break from reality and get your zen on. To really focus on YOU. Though reality found its way into this retreat, it was an invaluable reminder that life is all about joys and sorrows. You have to revel in every joy, and go out and make your own joy if you can. And then mourn the losses when they inevitably come. Because they will.
But know that joy and peace and freedom can always be found— in nature, among friends and loved ones, or within your mind and heart.
Cause there’s a million ways to go
You know that there are
