I Did the One Thing That I Hated the Most and It Changed My Life
It was never going to happen. Not a chance. Oh, I made vague half-promises that maybe I'd make sunrise yoga. Everyone was so nice - and so hopeful, too - asking me every night before bed, with expectant little smiles, "So, yoga tomorrow morning? What do you think?"
"Hmmm...I don't know. We'll see," I'd say. "I'm on deadline for a story and I'll be up late, that's how it is with travel journalists."
It was true, but the fact was dragging myself out of bed before first light to twist my body into uncomfortable shapes wasn't anything that I wanted to do, now or anytime in the future. I'm more the stay-up-late, get-up-late type of woman. My creativity flows best at night. I've been known to snarl, literally snarl, if someone tries to speak to me before I've had coffee.
So here I was, a caffeine-addicted, fake-sugar-and-red-meat-eating, non-meditating, stressed-out mess at a week-long yoga retreat in the Galapagos. I didn't exactly fit in with the rest of the glowy, blissful, and extremely limber group. If everyone hadn't been so kind I would have felt like that weird kid in second grade whose family moved from someplace like Saskatchewan in the middle of the year, the one who wore beige corduroys every day and ate paste. I believe he grew up to be a U.S. Senator, but his elementary school days were a little rocky there for a while.
"If everyone hadn't been so kind I would have felt like that weird kid in second grade whose family moved from someplace like Saskatchewan in the middle of the year."
I guess part of the problem was that before signing up with The Travel Yogi for this trip, I'd never done yoga. Okay...that's being a little over-dramatic. I'd actually done yoga once. For about 10 minutes. It was a few years back, at an eco-resort in Nicaragua. Because I arrived during an almost-hurricane and there literally wasn't anything else to do, I decided to get some private yoga instruction. It was beastly hot and very humid and every position I tried hurt. I believe I fell over on my face at one point while trying to do some sort of bendy thing on my hands and one leg that no one over 12 should ever attempt. Through it all my instructor was so serene I wondered if she were on lithium. I decided I'd rather stab myself in the forehead with a fork than ever try yoga again.
But time tends to blunt the impact of unpleasant memories, doesn't it? And it's started to seem like everyone I know is all about yoga. A good friend of mine is even teaching it professionally now, and she credits it with pretty much changing her entire life for the better, for making her both emotionally and physically healthier. So when I was offered the chance to write about my experience at a yoga retreat in the Galapagos, the fiercely wild Ecuadorian islands populated mostly by sea lions and iguanas, it sounded like a good idea. I mean, I'd be willing to cover a convention of cannibals if it meant a week-long retreat to the Galapagos. Yoga surely had to be better than I remembered it, right?
"I'd be willing to cover a convention of cannibals if it meant a week-long retreat to the Galapagos."
It was. Mostly. I immediately fell in love, or perhaps gratitude is a better word, with our instructor, Kristin. She was not the 20-year-old, uber-fit and ultra-hardcore Scarlett Johansson-type I'd been fearing, but instead was a little older and a lot more patient and reassuring. She still could do ridiculous things with her body - all sorts of handstands and headstands - that left me open-mouthed. But there was a gentleness to her I responded to and respected. She managed to challenge the longtime yogis, the people who knew what downward-facing dog is (bend at the waist, put your hands on the floor and make a big V with your body) and what prana (lifeforce, or energy) means. But there was room for a near-first timer in her class, too.
It took a couple days before I entered the yoga studio, however. On our first full day in the Galapagos our group explored Isla Bartolomé, a trip so amazing and exhausting we had no energy left for a class that evening. We'd traveled two hours by boat and then climbed more than 300 stairs in the unrelenting equatorial sun and nearly 90-degree temperatures to reach the summit of the island. The view had been worth it: endless bottle-blue water and cloudless sky, blending as if by an artist's hand with the muted reds and browns of the volcanic island on which we stood. We snorkeled afterward, spotting Galapagos penguins and blue-footed boobies on our way to the reef where we swam with dozens of species of fish, including a handful of whitetip reef sharks. Most were snoozing on the ocean floor, but I saw a few gliding by me, silent and oddly beautiful.
The next day was less arduous, with a visit to the Charles Darwin Research Station and a Galapagos tortoise preserve; tortoises are considered "vulnerable" by conservationists, though at least on Santa Cruz, where I was staying, those things were everywhere. You could spot them alongside the road, looking distinctly bored by the eager tourists who had pulled their cars over to snap pictures of them: Paris Hilton tortoises. They were even on the grounds of our guest house; I'd catch them sometimes, making their slow, determined, and dignified way to destinations unknown. Thanks to their ubiquitousness and proximity, spending time with Galapagos tortoises was an easier task than swimming with reef sharks. That night we all had energy left for yoga, though as it turns out, we didn't need as much as I would have guessed.
"I didn't know why, but I wanted to get out of that studio. I didn't feel all glowy or blissful. I felt anxious."
Kristin devoted class that evening, the first one I attended, to the grins of all around me, to yin yoga, a slower, more meditative style that applies pressure to the tendons, ligaments and fascia of the body to increase circulation and flexibility. We did things like the "shoelace" pose, which is sort of like sitting cross-legged, but you pull your legs even farther out, one over the other, so your toes are up by your hips. There was the butterfly, too, where you sit on the floor with the bottoms of your feet touching, pulling them as far toward your groin as you can. We ended flat on our backs, in what Kristin called "corpse" pose. As we lay there Kristin murmured to us in that same, soothing, reassuring voice she'd been using all class.
She told us to do things like drop our eyes back in the sockets of skulls and feel the earth rising up under our bodies and "breathe into the back window of your heart." Or something like that. By that point I was restless...vaguely irritated, actually. I didn't know why, I just wanted to get out of that studio. After class ended I fled to my room. I'd enjoyed the stretching much, much more than the first time I tried yoga. But I didn't feel all glowy or blissful. I felt anxious.
The next evening, after a day kayaking and swimming on Tortuga Bay, with marine iguanas, sea turtles and more reef sharks, Kristin focused the class on inversions. I tackled "downward facing dog," and a few variations of the "half-moon" pose, a crazy thing that involved a foot and hand on the ground, a foot and hand in the air. And I wasn't entirely inept, either. A couple women in the class applauded my flexibility and one, a sweet lady who was on the trip with her daughter, even called me a yoga natural. I felt like one; I relished the class, enough so I was really looking forward to the next one. But I wondered, what had been going on the night before?
I asked Kristin about it, confessing that although I'd loved the physical component of yoga I'd felt uncomfortable, strangely so, about something the previous night I couldn't quite name. "Well," she'd answered, "Yin is all about being receptive, accepting, and allowing. We're just looking at things, we're not trying to change anything."
It didn't take me long to get it. My discomfort, even irritation, made a good deal of sense. I spend a lot of time in my head, trying to figure out how to fix things. How to fix my broken heart, or maybe just ensure it never gets broken again. How to fix my parents, their increasing frailty and pain. How even to fix my brother's death, I guess so it just stops hurting so much. I'm not good at accepting or allowing or even slowing down. I think because I'm afraid of what will happen when I do. I typically go a million miles an hour all day, every day. It's the quiet I fear. The stillness. Exactly what yoga, especially what yin yoga, encourages.
"I was uncomfortable with the mental component of yoga precisely because that's where I most needed the help."
"So," Kristin replied, after I'd spilled all this out to her, "maybe that's exactly why you need yoga?"
The rest of the week passed quickly and slowly at the same time, in that way that happens when you pack a lot in during a trip you really love. Time passes slowly because there is so much more to your days than there usually is, but it passes quickly, too, because you want nothing so much as for it to last. I got to hang out with some sea lions, as comical as they were sleek, and see more blue-footed boobies. I never made it in for a sunrise class, though I didn't miss an evening one. I knew Kristin was right: I was uncomfortable with the mental component of yoga precisely because that's where I most needed the help.
I thought a lot that week about how easy-going Kristin and most of the women in our group seemed to be. I remembered what it was like to feel that way - carefree, even joyous - before it all started to go wrong. I was trying to work my way back there, but the fact was that I was still riddled with anxiety. I was still short-tempered. I still felt lost more days than not, and I still cried more often than was maybe healthy.
Before I left the Galapagos I was already looking at yoga classes back home in Pennsylvania - and checking out more Travel Yogi trips. If practicing yoga in the Galapagos could change my perspective, hopefully even my life, what would doing it in Bhutan or Bali do?
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