May 2019: On Retreats

In September 2019, I am teaming with Sue Crow to run a retreat, offering Assisted Self-practice, workshops, pranayama and meditation in a beautiful setting in Argyll. This has prompted me to consider the idea of retreats: why do we need them and what do we seek in them.

A few years ago, I wrote a short article for New Escapologist magazine. In ‘Retreat Yo’self!’ — a play of words on the Parks and Recreation Treat Yo’self episode — I wrote about the experience of spending my first two weeks in Yoga Plus, Crete. If you know me, you’ll know that I have since returned to Crete every year and I am also a regular attendee at Kia’s Spanish mountains retreat. What I get from these concentrated periods is intense wellbeing, time to nurture what feels important to me.

This is not quite like a holiday. In a paraphrase of my Cretan spiritual home, it is a holiday Plus. I get all the benefits I do from going away, sleeping more, eating better and not rushing, seeing culture and being in nature. But holidays are sometimes a ‘get your hair down moment’ and I have in the past indulged too much: walked too much, eaten too much, drunk too much. In a retreat, I find there is more balance because there is a focus. I get time to reassess what is important, what changes I need to make, what I need more or less of. Since 2015, I can trace most of my major decision-making to a time in a retreat. The seeds to become a yoga teacher, to make changes to my diet and to the way I engage with people came from these times.

To retreat is to return to the source of your being and to listen to the sound it makes. Given our Western lifestyle of busy schedules, noise, social media, consumption and, quite frankly, rather a lot of dirt, time to stop, listen, and notice is more needed than ever. Give it to yourself, you will not regret it.

Laura x
https://www.lauragonzalez.co.uk/yoga/

What I have been reading
I know there is a lot of resistance to retreats in the yoga practitioner community. I hear: Am I good enough? Will I be bored? What will the other people be like? Is this a cult? Will this be too much hard work?

Of course, retreats are not for everyone, nothing is, but there are some serious myths around retreats that need to be debunked and Natalie, Ashtanga Yoga Girl, does this very well.

What I have been watching
I love the Purple Valley Youtube Channel. The videos are recorded with the teachers who are on retreat and they tend to be outside, with the beautiful sounds of the Goan landscape. They have amazing Ashtanga Yoga teachers, many of whom I have mentioned in my newsletters like John Scott, Tim Feldmann, Laruga Glaser, David Robson, and Joey Miles. I so dream of going there! My current favourite is this short video of Joey Miles sharing his Top #10 Ashtanga Yoga Tips:

1. Create the right ambiance/attitude
2. Listen to your breathing
3. Movement and breath
4. The posture is the foundation
5. Stabilizing action
6. Clarification of the 6 directions
7. Pay attention to the feeling in the hands, feet, face
8. Practice at the same time and spot
9. It’s okay if you don’t understand everything
10. Do savasana for a long time

When we do pratyahara, our aim is to take a break from being led by our senses. We become neutral observers of what is going on. We consciously exercise awareness, which brings us to the present moment. It is not a going away from the world, it is a non-reaction to the stimulus received. We exercise this very clearly in Savasana.

My philosophy teacher, James Boag, speaks of pratyahara through the Gita, verse 2.58, which he translates as ‘When we are able to draw in the senses from objects like a tortoise draws in all its limbs, then we are established in wisdom.’ This is such a beautiful image! In the story of the Tortoise and the Hare, the hare is the reactive mind, a prisoner of its condition. The hare does not win the race. The tortoise is steady in breath, movement and awareness, doing what it needs to do skilfully at every moment, not rushing.

I invite you to practice pratyahara, not by sitting in a quiet dark space, but by observing your patterns and habitual thinking. Just observing them steadily, without judgement, not even a little bit. This way, eventually, you will be able to turn your mind wherever you want and become skilful and steady like the tortoise.