Well, I've just returned from four nights and five days at the most amazing place on earth, Sivananda yoga retreat on Paradise Island, Bahamas. With everything that has been going on lately trying to prepare both mentally and logistically for my service, it was EXACTLY What I needed. The funny thing is I didn't even know it was what I needed, and I can't really explain how I ended up there. Somehow there was someone guiding me in the decision to go escape to this magical place tucked away in a little slice of heaven.
I arrived on Saturday morning after waking up at 4am for my flight, yuck! I was tired, groggy, disoriented, and still holding on to all the worry, fear, tension, excitement, uncertainty, and whatever else the last couple weeks have brought on. After a somewhat stressful cab ride I found myself on a small boat crossing over the harbor from Nassau to Paradise Island. My first thoughts were a bit apprehensive as I saw a dead rat and (which I later dreamed my dead dog Shauncey ate and then threw up....I know I am odd, and I still haven't deciphered the significance of that dream!) dead fish floating around the bay, and attempted to take in the size of the many cruise boats and the monstrosity that is the Atlantis Resort.
Negative energy in tow, I made my way on shore, and stepped into a place that was to change my life forever. The second that I stepped on the Ashram grounds I could feel the positive and spiritual energy of the place and right away began to let go of all of the bad emotions I was holding onto. Before I left, my mind and my soul were so clogged and cluttered with a fury of emotions and questions, I couldn't even think straight! There was no line between my heart and my mind, and the force and momentum of my life was pushing forward full speed, but I was not behind the wheel. I was like a puppet, someone would pull a string, and I would react, but my heart and my spirit were not involved. Well, I have opened up people! The channels between my mind and my heart and the channels between my heart and God are flowing freely, and my spirit feels at peace.
Like I said before, I don't know what brought me to this ashram or how I ended up there, but everything about it leads me to believe it was meant to be. I am not a very religious person as of late, and I definitely didn’t know any ancient Sanskrit mantras or prayers before visiting the ashram. I had never even heard the word Satsang before. I can't see the light or the aura radiating from a person, or maybe I just never tried. I take yoga classes at the New York Sports Club, and before this trip I thought silent meditation was what I experienced laying in final relaxation for about two minutes after one of these classes. I didn't know what Karma yoga, pranayama, asana, chakra, or sutra meant. Compared to most of the people there, I was clueless! Once I realized that this didn't matter, the spiritual journey began. It went a little something like this.....
Everyday there is a schedule of events about the going ons of the ashram posted at reception. The day begins with the wake up bell at 5:30am, and mandatory morning Satsang starting at 6am. If the weather is nice everyone walks along the beach in the darkness of the pre-sunrise morning, and finds a place to sit in a circle and begin Satsang. My first morning experiencing this bell was quite a shock, the last time I was up at 5:30 am I was coming home from a bar! Not quite sure what was going on the first morning, I somehow incorporated that bell into my dreams and continued on in the deepest slumber I had experienced in months. Again, the powerful effects of the ashram taking its course.
The next morning however, I jumped up right with the bell and went down to the beach. I can't express how glad I am that I did! Although, I must say it was quite eerie and strange watching a group of people walking along the beach in total silence in the dark of night. I fell back behind everyone else just trying to take it all in, which turned out in my favor when all of a sudden the leader of the group stopped dead in his tracks, and turned around and walked through the crowd straight towards me. I was now the first in line to watch and follow him while he scaled a wall (silent all along), and walked along a broken down cliff jutting over the ocean waves. In the ever growing light of twilight I could read signs saying "danger" and "warning". This guy is crazy I thought, but all I could do was fall in line and follow. Finally he came to a circular concrete platform at the end of the cliffs with a 360 degree view of the ocean. The sunrise quickly approaching to the East, everyone lay out their mats and settled in cross legged for 30 minutes of silent meditation. Having not yet mastered the intricacies of quieting the mind and slipping to a state of consciousness somewhere above the present moment, I use this time to relax, let go, clear the head and start to heal. To the sound of om we all opened our eyes to the morning sun peeking out of the horizon, and begin chanting joyful prayers and mantras which seemed to pull the sun up out of the darkness and cover us all in light. What a wonderful way to start off the day!
This is all takes before two hour yoga asana (or pose) classes on the platform overlooking the beach. This is my favorite part of day and we exercises breathing, asana, and relaxation exercises to open the mind, the heart, and the body. We begin the class with a series of sun salutations, again facing the sun and feeling like we are pulling it closer and closer to us in our praise, telling it to come and bless us with its warm rays. All of this and it's finally time for breakfast! Food on the ashram might possibly be enough of a reason to stay there for the rest of my life. Everything is vegetarian, but the most delicious food I have ever tasted. Maybe it’s because I have already been up for 5 hours and am starving! I never knew I could enjoy a simple salad so much at 10:00 in the morning! Every morning and night I would make my plate and take it down to the picnic tables overlooking the ocean. There everyone sits and eats and strikes up conversations with your neighbor, maybe someone you know well, maybe someone you've just met. In this way, it is never too difficult to make friends at the ashram if you have a smile on your face and an open ear. It’s in this way that I began to gather stories of people’s lives and roles at the ashram. I even met another rpcv, the ashram gardener Nancy. She was so excited for me and flooded me with wealth of knowledge from her PC service in Niger and later Guinea. For me her words were like gold, and I clung to each and every one of them. After all, it’s not often that I get the opportunity to speak first hand with someone who has gone through what I am going through and can relate. It's been a long time since I took an hour to sit and linger over my meal, talking to others and really enjoying the food.
Since I am a "guest" of the ashram, I have the afternoon free to do as I please until the next asana class at 4pm. Everyday there is a workshop scheduled covering various topics of yogic principals starting around noon and lasting a couple hours. Deciding to make the most of this experience, I attended every one of them. I learned some fascinating things about the use of yoga in chiropractic medicine and physical therapy, the practice of meditation, and Ayurvedic diet and medicine as a holistic approach to wellness. What a good student I was! This only left me with a couple hours to spend on the beach, or sitting in a hammock writing my aspiration statement for my Peace Corps service. Then two more hours of asana classes, another fantastic meal, and a quick shower would bring me up to evening Satsang.
You would be surprised how different this is from morning Satsang, even though the prayers are exactly the same. Everyone gets dressed up and makes their way to temple. We begin with silent meditation again, and then start the singing the Mantras out of the prayer book. This is great for me because I can actually follow along and they also give you a small explanation of what each Mantra means. Our singing is accompanied by instruments and as we start to pick up speed and tempo people start to join in with tambourines, drums, and shakers. The prayer ends and every night there is a different guest speaker. The whole event is about two hours long. I was lucky enough to be there one night when the Swami of the paradise island ashram, Swami Swaroopananda, hosted a question and answer session. At first I was a little intimidated by him when I would see him around the ashram, but once I heard him speak, he was actually quite funny! It was so easy to relate to him, and he had a gift to speak directly to the heart of a question, and directly to the people that I have never seen before. We pondered topics such as Karma, reincarnation, and being the so called “children of the light”. I felt so privileged and inspired to be a part of such important topics of conversation.
After evening Satsang, most people would head straight back to their tents/huts and hit the sack. At this point it’s 10pm and that 5:30 bell comes pretty quickly! As usual, I don’t do things like most people. Another part of my absolute belief that I was meant to be at this exact place at this exact time, is the fact that I was blessed with two of the most amazing women ever as roommates during my stay. We would sit up and talk and laugh and have a wonderful time sharing our stories and beliefs and personalities with each other. Perhaps this is why I only made it up for morning Satsang once (oopsy) but it was worth every moment. As much as everything else I experienced, these woman were a part of my spiritual growth and taught me so much. One night we were having so much fun and were so rowdy that we started getting knocks on the door from our neighbors asking us to keep it down. Some even joined in and afterwards said it had been months since they had experienced that deep kind of belly laugh. I was lucky enough to get it every night! Well, now that you get the picture of what daily life at the ashram was like, I’ll try to express what I learned from it.
My last night at the ashram I took an amazing asana class with a lovely lady who’s name I have no idea how to spell but it sounded like Ishuwary. She works in the wellness center, and is trained and certified in Ayervedic practices (she is the one who led the workshop I attended). I mentioned earlier in this entry that I can’t see the aura or light radiating from people, or never even thought to try. Well, slowly but surely I came to understand what this meant, and I began to discover the light within myself. At first it came to me in meditation or relaxation in the form of energy. I could feel my own energy pulsing through my fingers where they touched each other. Then one night I was laying in savasana next to my roommate Katrina and I’m not even sure that we physically touched our bodies, but her energy literally jumped off of her body and shocked me as I felt a jolt of energy rushing through my body. In these ways I was shown how this energy absolutely exists, and I began to feel it if not yet see it. Well, after my final evening class with this amazingly comforting and just truly glowing woman, I began to see this force so clearly; I wondered how I didn’t see it all along. I could see it radiating off of her, and in turn could feel it in myself. In fact, I can’t tell you how many people have told me how healthy I look, or that I am glowing since my time spent on the ashram. And it’s true. I can literally feel a force field of strength and energy and radiance and peace surrounding me. Let me tell you, New York City is doing it’s best to break this down, and although I am sure it will fade, I now know that it always has, and always will exist somewhere inside of me. Even when I forget it’s there!
My thanks to this wonderful woman I am calling Ishuwary. Because of her amazing energy and power, I was finally able to pull myself up into the headstand position! Sivananda yogi’s call this position “The King of the asanas”. This is not for nothing as it is a very hard pose to get the hang of. I struggled with it for three and a half days teetering closer and closer on the edge of getting it. Somehow in this class I went up into headstand like I had been doing it my whole life, and from then on have no trouble hanging out standing on my head! Quite the accomplishment! Anyway, at the end of class after our final prayers, she said something and created a vision that I think I will keep with me forever. Our eyes had been closed for sometime now and our class had come to an end. She said, let your eyes sink back deep into your head and then prepare to open your eyes. But this time, when you open your eyes, take with you everything that you just experienced in the last two hours, and let it change the way you see the world. I opened my eyes, looked out over the bay, felt the breeze on my face and knew exactly what she was talking about.
This is in a nut shell what this experience has done for me. I have opened my eyes and now look out on the world with a different gaze. I now know that I am ready to allow this gaze to incorporate everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen as a result of my Peace Corps service. It is time to let go of the worry, fear, regret, and guilt. I have myself, and I have God and I must love both of these in order for this mission to succeed. It is time to stop beating myself up over setting people up, and then letting them down. There is nothing I can change, the decision has been made, and as I said in my email to friends and family, I must believe that this is a job I was born to do. I am finally ready.
I arrived on Saturday morning after waking up at 4am for my flight, yuck! I was tired, groggy, disoriented, and still holding on to all the worry, fear, tension, excitement, uncertainty, and whatever else the last couple weeks have brought on. After a somewhat stressful cab ride I found myself on a small boat crossing over the harbor from Nassau to Paradise Island. My first thoughts were a bit apprehensive as I saw a dead rat and (which I later dreamed my dead dog Shauncey ate and then threw up....I know I am odd, and I still haven't deciphered the significance of that dream!) dead fish floating around the bay, and attempted to take in the size of the many cruise boats and the monstrosity that is the Atlantis Resort.
Negative energy in tow, I made my way on shore, and stepped into a place that was to change my life forever. The second that I stepped on the Ashram grounds I could feel the positive and spiritual energy of the place and right away began to let go of all of the bad emotions I was holding onto. Before I left, my mind and my soul were so clogged and cluttered with a fury of emotions and questions, I couldn't even think straight! There was no line between my heart and my mind, and the force and momentum of my life was pushing forward full speed, but I was not behind the wheel. I was like a puppet, someone would pull a string, and I would react, but my heart and my spirit were not involved. Well, I have opened up people! The channels between my mind and my heart and the channels between my heart and God are flowing freely, and my spirit feels at peace.
Like I said before, I don't know what brought me to this ashram or how I ended up there, but everything about it leads me to believe it was meant to be. I am not a very religious person as of late, and I definitely didn’t know any ancient Sanskrit mantras or prayers before visiting the ashram. I had never even heard the word Satsang before. I can't see the light or the aura radiating from a person, or maybe I just never tried. I take yoga classes at the New York Sports Club, and before this trip I thought silent meditation was what I experienced laying in final relaxation for about two minutes after one of these classes. I didn't know what Karma yoga, pranayama, asana, chakra, or sutra meant. Compared to most of the people there, I was clueless! Once I realized that this didn't matter, the spiritual journey began. It went a little something like this.....
Everyday there is a schedule of events about the going ons of the ashram posted at reception. The day begins with the wake up bell at 5:30am, and mandatory morning Satsang starting at 6am. If the weather is nice everyone walks along the beach in the darkness of the pre-sunrise morning, and finds a place to sit in a circle and begin Satsang. My first morning experiencing this bell was quite a shock, the last time I was up at 5:30 am I was coming home from a bar! Not quite sure what was going on the first morning, I somehow incorporated that bell into my dreams and continued on in the deepest slumber I had experienced in months. Again, the powerful effects of the ashram taking its course.
The next morning however, I jumped up right with the bell and went down to the beach. I can't express how glad I am that I did! Although, I must say it was quite eerie and strange watching a group of people walking along the beach in total silence in the dark of night. I fell back behind everyone else just trying to take it all in, which turned out in my favor when all of a sudden the leader of the group stopped dead in his tracks, and turned around and walked through the crowd straight towards me. I was now the first in line to watch and follow him while he scaled a wall (silent all along), and walked along a broken down cliff jutting over the ocean waves. In the ever growing light of twilight I could read signs saying "danger" and "warning". This guy is crazy I thought, but all I could do was fall in line and follow. Finally he came to a circular concrete platform at the end of the cliffs with a 360 degree view of the ocean. The sunrise quickly approaching to the East, everyone lay out their mats and settled in cross legged for 30 minutes of silent meditation. Having not yet mastered the intricacies of quieting the mind and slipping to a state of consciousness somewhere above the present moment, I use this time to relax, let go, clear the head and start to heal. To the sound of om we all opened our eyes to the morning sun peeking out of the horizon, and begin chanting joyful prayers and mantras which seemed to pull the sun up out of the darkness and cover us all in light. What a wonderful way to start off the day!
This is all takes before two hour yoga asana (or pose) classes on the platform overlooking the beach. This is my favorite part of day and we exercises breathing, asana, and relaxation exercises to open the mind, the heart, and the body. We begin the class with a series of sun salutations, again facing the sun and feeling like we are pulling it closer and closer to us in our praise, telling it to come and bless us with its warm rays. All of this and it's finally time for breakfast! Food on the ashram might possibly be enough of a reason to stay there for the rest of my life. Everything is vegetarian, but the most delicious food I have ever tasted. Maybe it’s because I have already been up for 5 hours and am starving! I never knew I could enjoy a simple salad so much at 10:00 in the morning! Every morning and night I would make my plate and take it down to the picnic tables overlooking the ocean. There everyone sits and eats and strikes up conversations with your neighbor, maybe someone you know well, maybe someone you've just met. In this way, it is never too difficult to make friends at the ashram if you have a smile on your face and an open ear. It’s in this way that I began to gather stories of people’s lives and roles at the ashram. I even met another rpcv, the ashram gardener Nancy. She was so excited for me and flooded me with wealth of knowledge from her PC service in Niger and later Guinea. For me her words were like gold, and I clung to each and every one of them. After all, it’s not often that I get the opportunity to speak first hand with someone who has gone through what I am going through and can relate. It's been a long time since I took an hour to sit and linger over my meal, talking to others and really enjoying the food.
Since I am a "guest" of the ashram, I have the afternoon free to do as I please until the next asana class at 4pm. Everyday there is a workshop scheduled covering various topics of yogic principals starting around noon and lasting a couple hours. Deciding to make the most of this experience, I attended every one of them. I learned some fascinating things about the use of yoga in chiropractic medicine and physical therapy, the practice of meditation, and Ayurvedic diet and medicine as a holistic approach to wellness. What a good student I was! This only left me with a couple hours to spend on the beach, or sitting in a hammock writing my aspiration statement for my Peace Corps service. Then two more hours of asana classes, another fantastic meal, and a quick shower would bring me up to evening Satsang.
You would be surprised how different this is from morning Satsang, even though the prayers are exactly the same. Everyone gets dressed up and makes their way to temple. We begin with silent meditation again, and then start the singing the Mantras out of the prayer book. This is great for me because I can actually follow along and they also give you a small explanation of what each Mantra means. Our singing is accompanied by instruments and as we start to pick up speed and tempo people start to join in with tambourines, drums, and shakers. The prayer ends and every night there is a different guest speaker. The whole event is about two hours long. I was lucky enough to be there one night when the Swami of the paradise island ashram, Swami Swaroopananda, hosted a question and answer session. At first I was a little intimidated by him when I would see him around the ashram, but once I heard him speak, he was actually quite funny! It was so easy to relate to him, and he had a gift to speak directly to the heart of a question, and directly to the people that I have never seen before. We pondered topics such as Karma, reincarnation, and being the so called “children of the light”. I felt so privileged and inspired to be a part of such important topics of conversation.
After evening Satsang, most people would head straight back to their tents/huts and hit the sack. At this point it’s 10pm and that 5:30 bell comes pretty quickly! As usual, I don’t do things like most people. Another part of my absolute belief that I was meant to be at this exact place at this exact time, is the fact that I was blessed with two of the most amazing women ever as roommates during my stay. We would sit up and talk and laugh and have a wonderful time sharing our stories and beliefs and personalities with each other. Perhaps this is why I only made it up for morning Satsang once (oopsy) but it was worth every moment. As much as everything else I experienced, these woman were a part of my spiritual growth and taught me so much. One night we were having so much fun and were so rowdy that we started getting knocks on the door from our neighbors asking us to keep it down. Some even joined in and afterwards said it had been months since they had experienced that deep kind of belly laugh. I was lucky enough to get it every night! Well, now that you get the picture of what daily life at the ashram was like, I’ll try to express what I learned from it.
My last night at the ashram I took an amazing asana class with a lovely lady who’s name I have no idea how to spell but it sounded like Ishuwary. She works in the wellness center, and is trained and certified in Ayervedic practices (she is the one who led the workshop I attended). I mentioned earlier in this entry that I can’t see the aura or light radiating from people, or never even thought to try. Well, slowly but surely I came to understand what this meant, and I began to discover the light within myself. At first it came to me in meditation or relaxation in the form of energy. I could feel my own energy pulsing through my fingers where they touched each other. Then one night I was laying in savasana next to my roommate Katrina and I’m not even sure that we physically touched our bodies, but her energy literally jumped off of her body and shocked me as I felt a jolt of energy rushing through my body. In these ways I was shown how this energy absolutely exists, and I began to feel it if not yet see it. Well, after my final evening class with this amazingly comforting and just truly glowing woman, I began to see this force so clearly; I wondered how I didn’t see it all along. I could see it radiating off of her, and in turn could feel it in myself. In fact, I can’t tell you how many people have told me how healthy I look, or that I am glowing since my time spent on the ashram. And it’s true. I can literally feel a force field of strength and energy and radiance and peace surrounding me. Let me tell you, New York City is doing it’s best to break this down, and although I am sure it will fade, I now know that it always has, and always will exist somewhere inside of me. Even when I forget it’s there!
My thanks to this wonderful woman I am calling Ishuwary. Because of her amazing energy and power, I was finally able to pull myself up into the headstand position! Sivananda yogi’s call this position “The King of the asanas”. This is not for nothing as it is a very hard pose to get the hang of. I struggled with it for three and a half days teetering closer and closer on the edge of getting it. Somehow in this class I went up into headstand like I had been doing it my whole life, and from then on have no trouble hanging out standing on my head! Quite the accomplishment! Anyway, at the end of class after our final prayers, she said something and created a vision that I think I will keep with me forever. Our eyes had been closed for sometime now and our class had come to an end. She said, let your eyes sink back deep into your head and then prepare to open your eyes. But this time, when you open your eyes, take with you everything that you just experienced in the last two hours, and let it change the way you see the world. I opened my eyes, looked out over the bay, felt the breeze on my face and knew exactly what she was talking about.
This is in a nut shell what this experience has done for me. I have opened my eyes and now look out on the world with a different gaze. I now know that I am ready to allow this gaze to incorporate everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen as a result of my Peace Corps service. It is time to let go of the worry, fear, regret, and guilt. I have myself, and I have God and I must love both of these in order for this mission to succeed. It is time to stop beating myself up over setting people up, and then letting them down. There is nothing I can change, the decision has been made, and as I said in my email to friends and family, I must believe that this is a job I was born to do. I am finally ready.
You have the most amazing trips/adventures/life experiences.
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