All These Places

I love music.  It is the soundtrack to the most important events in my life.  There are certain songs that wrap up moments in time so that I can unwrap that moment simply by pressing play.  My time in Costa Rica was no exception.  And so here is my playlist.  This will hopefully be mildly entertaining even if you weren’t there with me.

1.Big Jet Plane—Angus and Julia Stone

This has quickly become my new 2^nd favorite band (the band holding this title may change weekly but never displaces my most favorite band The National).  ‘Big Jet Plane’ was played during the first student solo class and then it just kept popping up on the yoga deck.  We had an awesome sound system that blasted music onto the deck and into the jungle and this song probably came on about once a day.  When I boarded the ‘big jet plane’ taking me back to the states, I closed my eyes, listened to this song and could almost feel the warmth of the Costa Rican air staying with me.

2.  Slow and Steady – Of Monsters and Men

So this was my 2^nd favorite band until the previous band came along.  I woke up a few mornings in Costa Rica with this song playing in my head.  I would sing it to myself while getting dressed and then I would walk up to watch the sunrise, plug my ipod into my ears, play this song, write in my journal and just feel like life couldn’t possibly get much better than that present moment.  Plus, it’s an awesome song to yoga to.

3.  We are Never Ever Getting Back Together – Taylor Swift

So sue me.  I love this song.  I started singing it one morning before 7am practice and before you could say ‘Jake Gyllenhal’ I was playing it to a roomfull of half-asleep yogis who all started singing with me.  And then it became a favorite for the Gaia House Girls’ Underwear Dance Party (don’t ask…when you live with four other girls and suffer through cold showers, sometimes you need a dance party to warm up.)  So of course, we had it playing in the class that we taught as a group.

4.  Hallejuah — the Justin Timberlake version

I wandered into the main house on the last night at Anamaya to find four of my friends lying on the floor, legs up against the tall stools at the kitchen counter.  I joined them in this state of repose at the one empty stool.  By request, this song was piped over the speakers and we listened in silence.  We watched the geckos that ran around on the ceiling.  There was a butterfly that kept landing just out of reach of this one gecko and they continued this constant game of chase…almost caught..fly away…land again to begin the game anew.  It was this amazing thing to observe and it would never have been seen if we hadn’t taken the time to just recline on the floor and look up in silence.

5.  Paradise—Coldplay

I wasn’t crazy about this song before my trip to Costa Rica and then things changed.  Because we were in paradise after all….and when this song came on I just felt the need to pinch myself and grin like an idiot.

6.  Starships—Nikki Minaj

My fabulous friend Lissa is returning to Florida to teach yoga to children and so for her solo class, she asked us all to pretend that we were 5-8 years old.  Easy breezy.  She taught a deliciously fun class in which we did yoga poses but were fooled into thinking we were birds.  We grew our wings, broke out of our shells and looked out of our nest for the very first time.  To test our wings, we flapped around the yoga deck to this song.  Being able to dance in a yoga class makes me happy like a 5-year-old.

7.  Gangham Style

I never promised that these songs had to be profound.  But this one is good for dancing.

8.  Big Red Machine—Justin Vernon and Aaron Dressner

This was the opening song for my first ever solo class.  It was such an amazing feeling to be in front of a roomful of friends, guiding them through opening meditations.  I have begun a new movie of my life…that of a yoga instructor…and therefore, this song is in the opening credits.

9.  Omaha — the Counting Crows

The downside about meeting cool people at yoga school who are from all over the place is that they are….well, all over the place and therefore difficult to visit.  This song is for my new friend Chelsea, from Wyoming, because we plan to meet ‘somewhere in the middle of America.’

10.  Diamonds in the Sun—Girish

This song has two lines as lyrics.  The first line is a Sanskrit mantra that goes “Lokah samastah sukhino bvhantu.”  The translation is ‘may all beings be happy and free’ and it’s the first mantra that we learned as a group together.  It was played for us once before in practice and then it came over the speakers during our final savasana as a group.  It was an incredibly emotional moment as we prepared ourselves to say goodbye to an incredible place, amazing people and life-changing month.  The second lyric line is “We shine like diamonds in the sun, every one of us.”  And so we do….

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My time in Costa Rica was an immersion.  That’s technically the term used to describe a yoga teacher training that takes place over the course of a month.  But it makes sense.  I was completely immersed in yoga, in self-study, in new friendships, and in a jungle paradise for 28 days.  I was so completely immersed that it felt like I had been there forever and not at all at the same time.

                Thursday was our last day of class.  Our instructor Jackie led us in a final practice filled with fun poses and no alignment points (she was teaching to a room full of yoga instructors after all—we could align ourselves dangit).  Together we sang along to the music occasionally and delighted in the new strength and flexibility of our bodies.  At the end of practice, we were asked to hold one arm up to the sky and one arm out beside us. 

                The hand that reached to the sky grabbed for our power, harnessing it and pulling it in.  The hand out to the side sent that love out to those in the world around us.  We held our arms out in this position for a number of minutes.  My shoulders began to burn.  “You’ve been through tougher things than this,” Jackie said.  “So keep your arms up.  Don’t give up on yourself.”  After all, what happens on the mat is often a reflection of what is happening for the person.  Tears began streaming down my face.

                At breakfast, my tears continued.  I started getting scared about going home, about losing all this strength I had just acquired.  I expressed these feelings to a friend.  “You didn’t put your arms down once during that exercise did you?” she asked me.  I shook my head no, laughed and then started to feel better. 

                After our final exam, we met back on the deck for 108 sun salutations.  For those not fluent in yoga speak, it’s basically 108 push-ups, 108 toe touches and then some.  They were divided into four rounds—one dedicated to ourselves, one to our family and friends, one for Mother Earth and the final one as a thanks to the divine and the confidence that the universe will keep taking care of us.  Fun tunes blasted over the speakers and we sang to a rainy day over the jungle.  Then, we meditated for an hour and eight minutes. 

And with that—classes taught, exams passed, suns saluted and minds calmed—we were declared yoga instructors.

The next morning, on our final day, Mother Nature must have felt the love from our sun salutations because she blessed us with a perfect beach day despite a forecast to the contrary.  We strolled down the hill to a small town where we now felt like locals.  We bought final gifts, lazed on the beach for hours and then a few of us indulged in a final mocha chiller.  Side note: take a group of people and deprive them of alcohol, unhealthy food and unlimited coffee for a month and this thing called a mocha chiller turns into something to be spoken of with complete awe and reverie.

After dinner that night, we were entertained by a fire dancer and the woman who taught us aerial silks before the dance music got going on the yoga deck.  Later, as people drifted off to their separate ways and to bed, a few of us noticed that the stars were brilliant.  We sat on the edge of the deck, saying little and listening to soft music.

I had been letting the sunrise wake me up while in Costa Rica but on Saturday, my final morning, I wasn’t willing to wait.  I set my alarm and walked up from my cabin in the dark and set out my mat.  This morning I would greet the sun—and she was surely showing off.  I’d be there in mid-pose and just gasp in amazement at the beauty, all the while wondering how I could leave this place.  Slowly, others started to wake and join me and we moved together, smiling as we caught each other’s eyes.

The goodbyes were rough, as goodbyes tend to be.  28 days prior, we were complete strangers.  And then, in those four weeks, we became immersed in each other’s lives.  Secrets were told, lives were shared, laughter was echoed, and fears were admitted.  We watched each other change.  We watched each other become teachers.  And day in and day out, we just kept coming back together.  And then, just like that, we had to part.

Ten of us drove to the local airport where we boarded a plane just big enough for us and our luggage.  The runway ran about the length of a football field before literally ending in the ocean.  We squealed at takeoff and delighted the pilots by singing our newly learned Sanskrit mantras. And then, even the ten of us had to disperse, little by little, until finally I was boarding a plane alone—the way I had arrived a month prior.  So I became the strange lady who cries on the airplane at takeoff.

But much like I know that my goodbye to some of my new friends is really just a ‘see you later’, I also know that the end of my time at Anamaya is really just a beginning.

Namaste y’all.  And to my yogi tribe—Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.

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I have a friend in Colorado who scolds herself by saying “Silly Emily.”  Her name is Emily by the way.  She says it in a laughing manner so that instead of beating herself up, she can just laugh at the fact that she has done something against her better judgment.  Or she’ll say it when she knows that she has neglected to do something that would make her feel happier.

                I packed my running shoes and sports bra for my month long trip to Costa Rica.  I lugged them over a thousand miles and since I arrived, they have been sitting at the bottom of my little clothes cubby in my cabina.  Because I didn’t feel like running my first week here; and then it was just kind of fun to not wear shoes at all.  I thought that the copious amount of yoga I was doing would compensate for the lack of miles under my feet; I thought I would somehow be OK not being a runner for a month.

                Silly Ashley.

                Our instructor promised that we would all get to our breaking point at some point during this journey of ours.  It was too much to be in this yoga bubble all of the time.  We would be mentally tested by not only studying for mid-terms, but also by (and perhaps even more by) studying ourselves.  And then we moved into the physically exhausting portion of our training—as we all started to practice teach, our days consisted of taking 5-6 yoga classes a day.  On Friday night, I broke.

                My body was exhausted and I started to take residence in my own head a little too much.  I left the group of people hanging out in the main house at about 8:30 pm and went to bed.  For the first time since I arrived, I started to feel truly homesick.  I took comfort in the fact that everything would be better in the morning, with a fresh sunrise to wake me up.  And then it was a headache that woke me up at 4 a.m.  I rolled around in bed for a while and then had a little cry while talking to one of my roommates.  It helped to get the words and the tears out as she reassured me that my feelings were most likely pretty normal amongst our group.  Everyone is entitled to a bad day—even in paradise.

                That morning, I kept my headphones in my ears for most of the morning, losing myself in music and trying to coax myself back to normal, trying to snap out of it.  It was working and by lunch, I was pretty much back to a good spot.  And then it hit me — I needed to go running.  I laughed at myself for not figuring it out sooner.  We had the following day off so I started to plan my run and I delighted in the simply the plans themselves.

                And when Sunday morning rolled around, I unpacked the socks and shoes that had been stored in a grocery bag for three weeks.  My mind eased in to the return of the old habits—lacing up the shoes and putting my Ipod on my arm.  I told my roommate to alert authorities if I wasn’t back in time for breakfast (always delicious here at yoga school on the days off) and I told her which road I planned on taking. 

                Those first steps felt like coming home.  The muscles started working and I picked up my pace, dodging the mud puddles that had been created by the previous day’s rainstorms.  If I haven’t mentioned it yet, we are residing on the side of a mountain—-so my run up the road had a punishing incline.  As my lungs started heaving, I switched to the yoga breath that I have been practicing these past few weeks.

                At a ‘T’ in the road, I hung a right onto a road that was more rolling.  There was a farm to the right and I gave the cows an “Hola” as I cruised past.  I sang along to the music that pumped into one ear.  I left the earbud out of the other ear so that the music could be accompanied by the sound of birds erupting all around me from the jungle.

                And then about halfway through my run, I had one of those moments where I had to pinch myself.  I was in a foreign country, running on a dirt road, surrounded by postcard-worthy beauty.  There was not another soul to be seen.  The moment was mine.  I would be returning to yoga school where delicious coffee and new friends awaited me.  The 24-hour headache slowly started to melt away and my mood immediately improved.  And all it took was a little run.  Silly Ashley indeed.

                And then I got a $30 mani/pedi on the yoga deck before spending the day laying on the beach and shopping for jewelry.  OK, now I’m good; can I stay here forever?

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I taught my first yoga class today.  And I didn’t puke.  We’re easing into it here at yoga school and starting off with a group class.  My roommates and I were responsible for coming up with an hour and twenty minutes worth of yoga poses.  We also had to have a theme.  Pretty quickly we decided that we wanted to have a fun class.  These days we are doing 6-8 hours of yoga a day and our group had a challenging sequence planned.  Therefore, in an effort to get our classmates to not hate us, we chose a theme of ‘playing on the mat’. 

We introduced the class by reading “All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”  During a challenging flow portion of the sequence we tricked the class into doing the Hokey Pokey.  And then, we led the cool down with a trip to the zoo (we saw cobras and camels and frogs, oh my!).

For those of you not too familiar with yoga, a class is ended in savasana, a pose of deep relaxation.  One can choose to do some inspirational readings to the students during this time.  And my group mates decided that they wanted me to write a poem for our class. 

At first I said no.  Then I said yes BUT I wasn’t going to be the one to read it.  And then I said I would read it BUT I wouldn’t say that I was the one who wrote it.  But I’ve been working on my throat chakra lately so I relented.

A few classmates requested a copy of the poem…so I give it to you here…

Run and run

When you were young

Through the wet grass at high speed

Mud squishing between your toes

Laughter ringing in your throat

You didn’t question things so much then did you?

The fireflies in the mason jar could easily light up your world

What’s so different now?

Run and run

These days of yours

Are nothing to be afraid of

There are still rainstorms in which you can dance

And stars that beg to be stared upon

Small wonders that beckon your laughter

Run and run

When you were young

You knew the secrets of the world

The answers were found in cartwheels and playing games of tag

Out of breath, you reached for life and found it every time

And it’s still there with a mason jar waiting for you to catch it

Go on now….

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So there are quite a few yoga poses.  And here at yoga school, I am slowly learning the alignment points of each, the anatomically correct terminology for the muscles being stretched, and the assists that I can provide my students in each pose.  There are gentle poses in yoga—mountain pose looks like “just standing there” to your average non-yogi and there’s a pose called Corpse Pose in which you just lay there.  On tough days, it’s my most favorite pose.

                There are poses in which you are a warrior…or a dancer…or, god forbid, a pigeon.  There are poses that challenge your quads, engage your core or require you to be all bendy in your shoulders.  Some require balance, some require strength and all of them require that you keep breathing.  When you start doing yoga, there are some poses which quickly become your favorite and others that you tend to dread when they are called out in a sequence.

                And then there’s a final category of poses that just look super cool.  These are the arm balances and inversions.  They are the poses that you watch other people do in your intermediate level class and wonder if you’ll ever have the yoga coolness capacity to perform them.   And then the first time you do them—-well, it’s just a feeling of awesomeness.

                I had been attempting Side Crow for a while.  Instructors walked me through it during a couple different classes.  Basically, it’s a pose in which one balances the entire weight of their body on their two bent arms.  Then, if you are super duper cool, you shoot your legs out to the side.  In all attempts I would either do a crash landing, or worse, never achieve takeoff.

                During our first day off here at yoga school, a group of us went to the beach.   Being the dorks that we are, we used our day off to do yoga on the beach.  “Side crow is easy, really,” said one of my classmates.  “You just do this.”  And with that she just flipped herself in the air.  I watched, I put myself into position and then tried to hoist my sunscreen-oiled legs onto equally slippery arms.  No luck—I ended up sprawled in the sand.

                A few days later, we were assigned to our teaching groups.  Our first attempt at being a yoga instructor would be with three other people, each of us teaching a twenty minute section.  While one person taught, two people would walk around giving assists and one person would demonstrate the poses at the front of the class.  My group began discussing our theme and which poses we wanted to hit.  We decided that the pose we would work up to in the sequence would be…drumroll please…side crow.  And with the order we determined, I would be the one doing the demonstration.

                So now I had a deadline.  I had to get my side crow in the next week and a half.  So I practiced during my free time.  And my yoga muscles are getting stronger —so I had that going for me.    But I still just couldn’t figure out quite how to lift my body in the air.  All of the sudden, I would feel like I weighed about 500 pounds and my arms were made of toothpicks. 

                And then, one day, I placed my hands on the floor and planted them strongly.  I bent my arms and felt the power in them.  I turned my bent knees to the side and slid one elbow just below my hip and the other one just above my knee.  And then I leaned forward, trusting my strength, trusting the earth beneath me.  And it happened.  My legs just floated up into the air.  And then, a few attempts later, I shot them out to the sky.  And that feeling of getting a new pose in yoga—-well, it’s a pretty cool feeling.

                I’ve always loved yoga for the fact that it mirrors life in a million little ways.  And perhaps these tricky poses, these challenging poses are the most perfect example.  Because you could hang out forever in the poses that make you feel safe and secure and be alright as long as you kept breathing.  But sometimes you have to test your strength to find out if it really exists.  And it might take some faceplants before you get to a place of complete balance.  But it’s all worth it—the frustrations and the failures—to get to that place where you can truly fly.

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I asked my instructor the other day if it was possible to fail the meditation portion of yoga teacher training.  She laughed.  I wasn’t kidding.

                Every day at approximately 3:30, we sit as a group on the yoga deck, close our eyes and go to our happy place.  We started at 20 minutes and are gradually working our way up.  And me…I’m struggling.  See, I’ve always been quite the daydreamer.  And I’ve been known to be quite energetic.  And my mind likes to juggle a million things at once.  It’s why I’m such a good waitress.  So there I am, on the deck, sitting cross legged and breathing deeply and my mind just spins and spins.  And then I fidget.  And then I start thinking about what we’re going to have for snack time (we have snack time at yoga school…its awesome).  And then I look at the clock.  And then I run screaming into the pool.  Actually, this last one has not happened yet.  But wait.

                The good news is that I now have something that I can blame completely for this inability of mine.  I’m a Vata.  You’re a whatta?, you ask.  We’ve just started studying the Ayurveda here at yoga school.  And again, cliff notes; but basically it’s a form of medicine that treats individuals based on body types and behaviors rather than treating symptoms.  So we’re reading Perfect Health by Deepak Chopra and there’s this quiz you can take to determine your category (called a dosha—another word not recognized by my spell check).  It’s kind of like one of those quizzes you take in Cosmo magazine to find out if you’re a Savvy Saver or Sassy Spender or something ridiculous along those lines.

                So I’m reading the Vata questions and looking over my shoulder to make sure that someone isn’t playing a trick on me because this quiz…well, it’s like they were in my head.  Your mind is very active, sometimes restless, but also imaginative.  Uh, check.  You don’t tolerate cold weather as well as most people.  Must be why I always enjoyed après skiing more than actual skiing.  Your moods change easily and you’re somewhat emotional by nature.  Guilty as charged.

                The whole idea behind Ayurveda is to stick to a diet that complements your dosha to achieve optimal health.  After further reading, I got some good news (dairy, pasta and spicy foods are healthy for me!) and some not so good news (red meat and brussel sprouts are not).  P.S.  If you think I’m being facetious about the brussel sprouts, you’ve never had them cooked the way I cook them.  But I digress.  Damn Vata mind of mine.  But Ayurveda also extends to the type of yoga one should be practicing in order to balance their tendencies.  Ever heard of Yin yoga?  It means you hold your poses for a real long time to release connective tissue.  Basically it’s meditation for the entire body. 
                Yesterday was our Vata balancing day and I giggled uncomfortably as our instructor said that she’d be leading us through a Yin yoga class that would require staying still in our own minds.  I think she looked directly at me as she said it might be tough for some of us.   But I had this awesome day leading up to Yin hour.  I swam and read by the pool during breakfast break and got a facial at lunch break.  I swear if all school was like this then I would be the smartest person…ever.  But again, I digress.

                So we’re in pigeon pose, which, for the non-yogis is a pose in which one leg is bent in front of you and the other leg is straight out behind you and you’re laying on the floor trying to breath like a normal person.  It’s an intense stretch for your hips and glutes and we were going to get all yin and hold the pose for five minutes.  I started out breathing deeply and trying to let my thoughts go, imagining my mind as a Teflon surface that nothing could stick to, as suggested by the instructor.  There were so many thoughts that I didn’t even know where to start.  And then I had an idea.  Sometimes, people will use mantras in yoga to settle the mind.  These can be traditional Sanskrit mantras or it could just be an English phrase of your choosing that makes you feel balanced.

                It was then that I had an idea.  I’d been getting angry at myself for my inability to meditate.  But since reading about the doshas and discovering that I was a Vata, I accepted that perhaps there would always only be so much stillness that my mind could tolerate.  That doesn’t mean that I can’t work on the calming aspect of things a bit….but while I do, a little gentleness is needed.  So I began to say these words in my head—“Forgive this crazy mind of yours.  She’s capable of beautiful things.” 

                I took this mantra again into meditation.   And I didn’t levitate or see visions or even really get my mind to go blank at all.  But it was easier.  And just when I was almost to the point of opening my eyes and sneaking a glance at the clock, there was a sound of something running across the roof of the yoga deck.  We all opened our eyes as a little monkey then jumped into a tree right in front of us and looked at us in wonderment.  Meditation was broken with squeals of disbelief that something could be so flippin’ cute.  The monkey ran across the roof again and to a stand of trees on the opposite side of the deck, where he joined about half a dozen other monkeys.  We watched as they put on a show, swinging and jumping from branch to branch.

                “Look what you guys manifested,” said our teacher.  And perhaps we did.  Maybe there were others on that deck forgiving themselves for not being perfect.   And the monkeys were not only a reward, but a reminder that we shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously. 

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I did the required reading for the throat chakra and felt a sense of relief.  I totally got this chakra, I thought to myself.  The book made it sound like it was all about speaking your mind, not telling lies, finding your voice, etc.  That’s cool, I thought, I got that under control.

                Before class that morning, a fellow yogini and I were discussing the novelty of being back in school after so long and we were laughing about how we were reverting back to our childhood ways of being good students, for fear of getting called out more than anything else.

                “I’m such a pleaser,” she said.

                “Me too!” I said.

                So then yoga practice began and our instructor starts talking about how the throat chakra really deals with the will….how it’s the path between the heart and the mind.  Basically, if you’re a pleaser, living life according to what others may think; then you’re lying to yourself…so you’re really just lying.

                And guess what?  If your throat chakra is blocked, you manifest this in your physical body with a sore neck and upper back and ear problems.  Flashback to many doctors appointments for ear issues and good money spent on massage therapists.  Well, crap.  I gotta work on this chakra too, I thought.

                So there’s that.  But what I really want to talk about is our field trip because being back in school also means that you get to go on field trips.  And that day, we would be practicing karma yoga.  Basically, it means that you give if you have it to give.  It’s the yoga of action, of selfless giving.  So for us, it meant we were going to do a beach clean-up. 

                But here’s the catch.  One of the yogic exercises that goes along with the throat chakra is to hold silence.  That means no communication with others, verbally or otherwise.  So before we left, we ate breakfast in silence, coffee slurping and forks scraping against plates.  We then boarded a old school bus to take us down to the beach, the wheezing and grinding of brakes the only sound accompanying our ride.  We were given black bags for trash and green for recycling and set loose upon a stretch of coastal paradise.

                My roommate motioned to me silently about working together as a team and we set out with one black bag and one green bag and began to pick our way back into the forested area of the beach where the tides had pushed bits of Styrofoam, plastic bottles and random shoes.  We collected silently and I noticed that a man stood across the street, holding a machete and watching us with curiosity.

                After a few minutes, he wandered over, machete in hand.  We nodded our heads hello and he grabbed a coconut from the ground.  “Coco?” he asked us and then followed the question with rapid Spanish.  I broke the silence with a good ol’ “No habla Espanol” and he set to hacking open the coconut.  When he had opened it and carved a small hole in the top, he passed it to us and motioned for us to drink.   We passed it back and forth, the water refreshing and occasionally dripping down the front of our chins.  He kept speaking in words that we didn’t understand and when we finished drinking, he took the coconut back, hacked it in half and gave us each a piece.

                “Victor,” he said, pointing to himself.

                “Muchos gracias Victor,” we said, after introducing ourselves.  He gave us a wave and walked away and we continued to silently pick up trash.   The irony does not escape me—a beautiful human exchange made in mostly silence, and without a shared language.

As the day progressed, we began to gradually use our words, using them as necessities for communicating important beach clean-up things (including ‘ew gross, look at this’ of course).  We amassed bags and bags that day, making more beautiful the beach that brought us so much beauty.  We did it because we had it to give.

When we returned to Anamaya, we were rewarded with passionfruit cinnamon smoothies and a delicious lunch of durado, mashed plantain and a carrot salad.  The clouds of the morning broke away and we spent our lunch break by the pool, laughing uncontrollably at times.  And they say karma’s a bitch but I guess if you treat her nice and put in your time dealing with your throat chakra and picking up trash, she will reward you with coconuts and beautiful moments.

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I don’t want to alarm y’all but we’re kinda chanting in Sanskrit and invoking the elements here at yoga camp.

Being that we’re yogis and all, we’re learning all about the chakra system this week here at teacher training (the ‘ch’ pronounced like chocolate and not shiraz…can you tell what I’m missing here in my month of clean living?).  I’ll try to break it down real quick here.  The chakra system consists of seven little spinning balls of energy that run up and down the middle of your body.  Each chakra controls not only different things happening in your subtle body (meaning your emotion, repressed guilt, love, ego, and all that other juicy stuff) but it is believed that when you’re chakras are blocked, it can manifest in issues with your not-so-subtle physical body (i.e. you might have digestive issues when you’re having issues with your ego/self-esteem chakra).   So that’s the chakra cliff notes for you.  Clear as mud?

So anyhow, our ‘week’ of training started on Friday and throughout our day of yoga practice and anatomy lessons, we also talked about the first chakra—the Earth or ‘root’ chakra.  This chakra deals with feelings of belonging, of being in a tribe, in a family.  It’s the feeling of the right to be here on this Earth and partaking in all of its glory.  Quite literally, this chakra grounds you and provides strength for all the other chakras above it.  If you are blocked in this chakra, it can result in feeling insecure, fearful and anxious.  So in an attempt to clear our chakras, we practiced grounding poses in our morning yoga session, feeling strong in our roots and ending with a powerful meditation.

And I’m not going to get into what this intense work on the root chakra brought up for me or for anyone else in my class but I will say that it was a heavy day.  We sat in a circle on the yoga deck that night after dinner and spent two hours opening space for each other, talking about our root chakras.  That night there was an earthquake that shook the grounds of Anamaya yoga resort.  Strange coincidence indeed.

The following day, we talked about the Water Chakra.  This little dude is a spinning wheel of energy that sits right where our reproductive organs are and rules all things emotional and sexual.  It is also through this chakra that we find the energy to create, so if this chakra is blocked and our emotions are repressed, we have a hard time creating.  Makes sense right?  In practice that meant that we spent the day doing lots of hip openers.  We did this exercise in which we started lying on our backs, feet touching and knees apart in a diamond.  We were instructed to pull our legs together, but in a manner so slow that it should take 3-5 minutes to get to the top.  My legs were shaking uncontrollably. The women in the class who were mothers said that the exact same thing happens after giving birth.  And in a way, we were……expelling emotions that needed to be released.

A few of us expressed that we felt nauseous after the morning session, blaming rare Costa Rican food poisoning.  Nope, said our instructor, it’s normal to feel nauseous when clearing this chakra.   So then, while we were eating, a few humpback whales started putting on a show for us in the water right in front of the infinity pool.  Water chakras and whales…crazy, eh?  (In somewhat unrelated news, I am surrounded by Canadians and want to start saying ‘eh’).

Then, yesterday, we talked about the Fire Chakra.  Now, THIS, is my chakra.  It’s all about self-esteem and tapping into your own personal sense of power.  In releasing this chakra, you’re getting out of your own damn way to make things happen.  It’s about figuring out who you are so that you can do your goodness for the world around you.  In practice, we did exercises where we reached our arms out and then pulled them in with a strong yell, over and over.  The monkeys in the tree started howling, acknowledging us, encouraging us.

Last night, we had a fire ceremony.  We took two pieces of paper with us to the ceremony.  One had a list of things we wished to let go of.  As we chanted a mantra to Ganesh, the clearer of obstacles, we took turn being smudged with sage before we stepped to the fire and burned all those things that no longer serve us.  There was dancing, there were drums, there were makeshift instruments using wooden yoga blocks and forks.  I won’t even go into what was on that sheet of paper.  It’s gone..it’s ash…those things have been given to the rainforest and removed from me.  So there.

Our second sheet of paper held a list of things we wished to bring in to our lives.  We changed our mantra chanting to invoke Lakshmi, the goddess of spiritual and material prosperity.  More dancing, more drums…and smiles upon our faces.  Into my being I brought confidence, self-love and a fire that would radiate all the way up to my face for the world to see….and a few more things.  But again, that’s between me and the fire and the monkeys that kept on howling.

Today we focus on the heart chakra, and the corresponding element is air.  Don’t be surprised if I report back with strange incidences of flying.  Until then….Namaste.

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I picture you rolling your eyes when I tell you that yoga camp is no easy feat.  Sure, I don’t wear shoes around here.  And yes, I get every meal cooked for me.  And OK, I’ll admit, the postcard-worthy views make it pretty easy to tolerate the screaming muscles around my ribcage.  Apparently those are my wrapping muscles (“Are those the muscles you need to beatbox?”asked the jokester in the group the first time we heard the term).

                We had our first day off on Thursday.  The night before, we were released early from class time so right after dinner we let loose by having a giant dance party on the yoga deck deejayed by yours truly of course.  There’s a stripper pole on the yoga deck and a hula hoop and we laughed hysterically at each other’s antics.  Being that we’ve all committed to a month without alcohol, the dancing was still pretty uninhibited.  After dancing, we jumped into the infinity pool and had noodle races and did cannonballs. 

                On our day off, we took the 15 minute walk straight downhill into the town of Montezuma.  We hit the beach, walking down the coast and making a stop at the mouth of the river, where a cold freshwater pool sat waiting to refresh our hot feet.  The river spilled from the top of the jungle and we hiked up rocks and let the rush of waterfalls pound on our tired muscles.  We then continued on to the surfing beach where we could swim and jump around in the waves.  After we were sufficiently waterlogged and sunburned, we went back into town where we satisfied our cravings for French fries, gelato and fizzy drinks.  I am still committed to no alcohol or red meat for the month, despite how much I would love a beer and cheeseburger on my day off.

                So there’s that—the times where laughter rings from my throat and I can’t wipe a silly smile off my face every time I look out over the ocean.

                But this whole self-exploration stuff ain’t exactly a walk in the park either.  The training that I am undergoing to become a teacher covers not only the anatomy of various poses.  You see, the physical practice (called the asanas) is only one small part of yoga.  There’s also breathing…and meditating…and coming to terms with your chakras (huh?); because to be a good teacher of yoga—one who can help others—one must first turn that energy towards oneself.  And I’m cool with that.  Because I didn’t come to Costa Rica just to be a beach bum for a month and get a rock hard yoga body (though these reasons were on the top ten), I also came to Costa Rica to step back into my own body.  I came here to clear my chakras; which before I knew this term basically means that I wanted to figure my shit out.

                I had my first reiki session the other day.  It’s basically bodywork done to clear the chakras so that energy can flow freely through the body.  Without telling y’all about all my stuff, I will say that it took the rest of the day and well into the next before I felt normal again.  Things are moving around for sure.  And we’ve graduated up to meditating for half an hour at a time.  When you sit alone with yourself for that long, revelations are bound to happen. 

                Its scary work and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t desire for issues to arise in me so that I can deal with them and move forward in my life in the most positive way possible.  But it’s beautiful work too when done in this environment.  I’m surrounded by 26 other souls who are also figuring their shit out (i.e. clearing their chakras) and right now, we’re speaking the same language, drinking the same Kool Aid, and being vulnerable with each other.   

I’m glad I still have three weeks left….it could definitely take that long to continue figuring things out….and to perfect my cannonball into the infinity pool.

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                I had thoughts of composing this in the form of an old camp song: Hello mother, hello father, here I am at Anamaya.  But there was too much to say; too many words to force into rhymes.  So what you get here is a post about my first full day ‘yoga camp.’  Because I know you want to know what I’m doing here in the jungle (Yes!  I’m really in the jungle!  There are monkeys that howl throughout the day and bugs the size of medium-sized birds). 

                I took a shuttle to Anamaya, in Montezuma, with thirteen other people.  We acquainted ourselves in the van and then on the ferry across the Gulf of Nicoya.  It was raining on the ferry and we huddled under the overhang on the top deck as loud dance music played from the small concession stand.  We were the second half to arrive.  The other 14 yogis were already sitting around a large dining table when we walked into the main room of the resort.  While our dinner was being prepared, those of us who had just arrived, though weary from a day of travelling, ran out onto the yoga deck.

                “It’s just like the pictures,” someone gasped.  And it was.  The large wooden deck was surrounded by trees, dropped into a jungle filled with flowers and had spans of ocean vistas on all sides.  Dinner was incredible—cauliflower soup for an appetizer, followed by curried squash served with a black quinoa and a fresh salad.  We were led down to our separate cabins after dinner; myself and four other women staying at the cabin at the bottom of the hill—the Gaia cabina.  There are five beds, two outdoor showers that have a view rivaling the yoga deck and no AC.  For a girl who had been living all by her lonesome, in a temperature-controlled environment, I welcomed the challenge.

                I told someone the night before I left that I felt like I was going to rehab and fat camp all at the same time.  As a group, we are committing to spending our entire teacher training—28 days—without the influence of alcohol, drugs or sex.  We use all of those things as crutches, our instructor told us the next day.  The point of the training is to get rid of all barriers, all escapes in order to get to the root of our true being.  More on that stuff later.  The food is incredible here.  But wow–it’s super healthy.  There’s no red meat, lots of vegetables and coffee is only served once a day (let’s take a moment and reflect on this last part and the meaning for me, a girl who drinks coffee all day, every day…I’m now drinking lots of hot tea…it’s almost the same.   But not really).

                Every morning, fruit is served at 6:30 am before our first yoga practice of the day at 7am.  I was worried about getting up so early.  No need.  At 5:30 am, the sun started to come up over the ocean.  I had a panoramic view from my bed.  Our first practice was incredible as we stretched our travel-weary bodies in familiar ways.  Our intention for that practice was to focus on ourselves, on the reasons why we ended up in Costa Rica.

                During our morning ‘class session’ we focused on things such as the daily schedule and other housekeeping items.  We were introduced to the on-sight massage therapist who also offers reiki and cranial sacral treatments.  We were also introduced to the salsa instructor and aerial silks instructor– options for our days off.  Aerial silks?, you’re asking…..don’t worry…hopefully there will be an entire upcoming blog entry to explain.  Then we introduced ourselves to the group.  Who are you?  Where are you from?  Why are you here?  Loaded questions to be sure.  We were all the same though in that we were here, at Anamaya, as a gift to ourselves.  Quite a few of us were givers, and ready to turn that attention inwards.  We were told just that morning that to become teachers, instructors of yoga, we must first learn to take care of ourselves, and only then can we take care of others.

                During our lunch break, I took Anamaya’s private trail down to the Montezuma waterfall with a few others.  After break, we did more yoga and then our first meditation.  Yoga isn’t just about the physical practice (called the asanas) but it’s also about breath work and meditation.  I have trouble sitting still and the meditation aspect is perhaps more daunting than perfecting my headstand.  But my first twenty minute meditation was successful in that it didn’t feel like an hour I guess.

                Meditation was followed by class time and class time was followed by another fabulous sit down dinner.  Dinner was followed by time spent relaxing with my fellow yogis as we drifted into easy conversation and studied our required texts.  Soft salsa music played in the background and the ocean breeze drifted in the open door.  And then it was bedtime so that we could begin again tomorrow.

                And that, my friends, my readers, my loved ones, was my first day at yoga camp.  During meditation yesterday, we worked with our first mantra.  A mantra is a saying that is chanted and yesterday we chanted the Sanskrit words meaning “May All Beings Be Happy and Free.”  We were asked to project that onto ourselves and then to those loved ones that we left back home.  Thinking of all of you, those of you who are so happy for me for taking this journey, I got emotional for what surely won’t be the last time during this journey.  So to you, my friends, my readers, I say thank you.  It is you that got me here and in this journey I hope to gain the faith in myself that you already have in me.  May you all be happy and free.

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