How Yoga Changed My Life In 30 Days
I didn’t go to India with the intention of finding myself. But the self snuck up on me anyway
Instagram is well known for promoting unhealthy body image expectations.
When I click the explore tab, my personalised algorithm throws up a cacophony of beautifully muscular men in designer gear, hanging around grimy-but-cool gratified urban settings, and toned and tanned women usually wearing as little as the community standards policy will allow them to.
It knows me.
Or at least it knows — despite my best interests — what my eye unwittingly lingers upon, even though I know these images don’t portray reality and I don’t like to consume this kind of material on a daily basis. I’ve tried tricking the algorithm out of this pattern but it’s a stubborn little devil.
If you search #Yoga the unreal expectations meter runs off the scale. Glistening oiled bodies, contorted to near-impossible positions, yet smiling with a peaceful inner serenity, clad in skin-tight lycra sportswear, with pristine hair and makeup and not a sweat patch in sight.
So when I arrived for a one month stay at a yoga retreat in Goa, India, fresh off of a one-way flight from London Heathrow and with very little experience, to say I felt like a fish out of water is somewhat of an understatement. My gills had positively dried out.
Other than being shown up for the inflexible, skinny, easily agitated human being that I was, I had no idea what to expect.
Empty your cup
I had entered into the world of yoga around a year prior at a wonderful studio in my home town. But if you factor in all the lessons I had dodged and a complete lack of motivation and space to practice at home, this probably only totaled at around twenty-five hours of practice.
I had been recommended the retreat in Goa by my instructor back home. I knew I wanted to leave the UK and avoid returning if I could. I wanted to travel indefinitely until I found a location or a job or a relationship that inspired me to put down roots.
I had no real plan of where I would go or what I would do; nothing was set in stone. I took the word of my former teacher and ran with it. I transferred a bunch of money to a bank account in India and hoped for the best.
And honestly, if you would have asked me then to script a dream scenario to kick-start my world tour it wouldn’t have lived up to what I experienced in Goa.
As soon as I arrived my worries were put to rest. They told me in no uncertain terms to forget the yoga I had seen on Insta and YouTube. To quote the words of the resident guru Gyan Mitra Saraswati, “Whatever is in your cup, empty it. Here we will be filling it with something completely different and new.”
He wasn’t lying.
Igniting the flame of Yoga
It wasn’t the physical practice that kindled my interest in yoga. I already had one eye on Buddhist philosophy and I had many unanswered questions. The nature of reality, the emergence of consciousness, the mastery of mind and senses — these were all topics that caused me endless intrigue and kept me up at night. I had reached a barrier that western scientific understanding couldn’t carry me past and was increasingly turning to other schools of thought for answers; Buddhism, Hinduism, Yogic philosophy.
These kinds of questions were not going to be answered by booty-burn yoga workout videos on the internet. I knew I had to go deeper. It was when I read the Upanishads, a collection of ancient Indian teachings, that I came to realise that people in that part of the world had been delving into these topics for millennia, and often reaching conclusions far more advanced and satisfying to my mind than modern science and philosophy.
So there I was, cup emptied, ready for one month of mind and body bending teachings deep in the sweltering Goan jungle.
The schedule was demanding and fully packed. Wake up at 5:30 am ready for an hour of group mediation at 6. Four hours of philosophy, an hour of Karma Yoga (selfless service — usually consisting of sweeping and cleaning around the retreat in the midday Indian sun) and an anatomy lesson, all sandwiched between two ninety-minute sessions of Asana lessons at either end of the day (the physical practice that most people know yoga as).
After dinner during the week, we would chant Sanskrit mantras for an hour and a half. On Saturdays and Sundays, we would practice Havan, an ancient Indian fire ceremony, where we would perform the ritual of chanting a specific mantra 108 times whilst offering an unwanted part of ourselves to be eviscerated in the flames.
It was challenging, easily the toughest four weeks of my life. Every single one of the seven people who were there with me on the course had an emotional breakdown at some point during our time there. Our bodies and minds and spirits were pushed to the limit, sometimes over the limit.
I don’t know if it was mental fatigue, physical exhaustion, the pressure of trying to absorb all the information, or just good old lack of sleep, but I found myself skipping a couple of sessions in the third week and hiding in my room crying into a pillow.
Shat Karma
Then there was the hidden gem of Shat Karma — Six Actions. A traditional detoxification process described in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, one of the classic foundational texts of Yoga. They truly snuck this one up on us.
It starts off fairly innocuous. Using a specialised Neti pot, you clean out the sinuses by leaning forward and pouring slightly warmed, slightly salted water into one nostril and letting it flow out of the other. Repeat on both sides a few times and you’ll be breathing as you’ve never breathed before.
Then it gets interesting.
You’re given a large cup and told to drink as much of the warmed saltwater as you can (fresh, they don’t make you recycle it from the first round). No pauses, just keep drinking. One cup, two cups, three, four, five…. It takes a fair bit of determination. After one large glass, my body was already telling me to stop. But with encouragement from the teachers and the rest of the group, I pushed through.
One particularly well-built German man made it onto his eighth cup before it produced the desired effect: once your stomach is beyond full, your body’s natural response is to eject the fluid back out the way it came in dramatic and explosive fashion.
For me and others around me, this was a very cathartic experience. For a few months prior I had been suffering from growing anxiety and my relationship with food had been unhealthy for a long while. With the physical act of vomiting not only did the water come up, emotion, trauma, and a heaviness I had been carrying around for some time all left my body in an instant.
More tears, this time tears of joy at the feeling of release. My attitude towards food, my diet, and my weight have all seen a massive improvement since this process.
Picture the scene: a dozen people with tears running down their faces and saliva on their chins, high-fiving and congratulating each other in the middle of a tropical jungle for successfully making themselves vomit. Vaham Dhuati complete.
Had enough? Well tough, it goes on.
After a quick clean-up and a bit of a rest, we move on to Shankhaprakshalana. Here, you continue drinking the (fresh) saltwater solution. This time slower and with a few abdominal yoga postures in between to encourage the water to make its way through your digestive system, rather than just sit in your stomach. Two glasses then asana, two glasses, asana. After a few rounds, you feel the pressure building and will be soon running to the toilet; this dramatic and explosive ejection is best not to be shared with the group.
The idea is to keep repeating the process until you are passing crystal clean water, meaning that the cleansing of your digestive tract is complete. Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m yet to see any of the beautiful and toned social media stars sharing this part of their yogic journey on their Instagram stories. I wish and wait.
Rising from the ashes
The month in a yoga retreat broke me.
But it didn’t leave me broken. Before I left I was rebuilt, and the person that came out was stronger than the person who went in. Physically, for sure. But the part that really counted — for me anyway — was the mental strength it gave me.
My belief in myself had multiplied. My confidence had skyrocketed. Personal insecurities greatly diminished. My capacity to love and trust other humans and the world around me and God and the universe had increased infinitely.
One year later and I still carry the determination to practice all aspects of yoga on and off the mat every day. This kind of commitment seemed impossible to me before this experience.
I truly know that the person who stepped through the gates of the yoga retreat in November 2019 is no more.
I can’t put my finger on what exactly it was that instilled these qualities in me. Maybe it was persevering to sit completely still and silent on a cold floor for one hour during the morning mediation when my body was screaming out in agony. Maybe it was the slow comprehension of philosophical wisdom from an ancient era. Maybe it was trying to bend my body inside out in front of a group of beautiful strangers who have now carved their names into my heart for the rest of my life. Maybe it was surrendering to the power of creation and the creator.
Maybe it was all of this and much, much more, something that I’ll never find the words to describe in a blog post.
One thing I do know for sure though: yoga isn’t defined by a hashtag or by competitive stretching on a mat in a gym; it’s an endless journey of discovery that starts with your first breath and which carries you to the end of this lifetime and beyond.
Lokah Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu
