Ditching the Holidays ...a Mother Escapes to Yoga Retreat to Look for Inner Peace, Her Inner Thighs, Her Old Self, and Mt. T? by Laurie Gough
Laurie Gough and Mr. T., very sweaty
_ This story originally appeared in The National Post
I’ve never been to a spa before, have never paid to be pampered. My type of traveling has mainly been of the backpack-hitchhike-hostel-throw-a-sleeping-bag-in-a-field variety, and the only ‘pampering’ I’ve been aware of recently are from those aptly-named diapers which I deal with on a regular basis since I’ve become a mother. My son is almost three, so the diapers are ready to be ditched. And ditching is what I’ve decided to do this Christmas: ditch the family, the Muzak malls, the plastic backscratcher gifts I get every year, the turkey, and the five pounds I gain from sneaking into the freezer to eat chocolate peanut butter balls. Ditch, ditch, ditch.
It’s not as if I’m Scrooge and I go around vandalizing people’s inflatable Santas in their yards. I don’t hate the holidays. I just like the idea of escaping to a yoga retreat better. Since my husband takes off for two canoe trips a year, I feel it’s my turn for a vacation. I’ve never been away from my son for more than a day, and the idea of taking off for an entire five days to an R&R retreat at Massachusetts’s Kripalu Yoga Centre sounds positively sinful, self-serving, and EXACTLY WHAT I NEED!
I’ve never been to a spa before, have never paid to be pampered. My type of traveling has mainly been of the backpack-hitchhike-hostel-throw-a-sleeping-bag-in-a-field variety, and the only ‘pampering’ I’ve been aware of recently are from those aptly-named diapers which I deal with on a regular basis since I’ve become a mother. My son is almost three, so the diapers are ready to be ditched. And ditching is what I’ve decided to do this Christmas: ditch the family, the Muzak malls, the plastic backscratcher gifts I get every year, the turkey, and the five pounds I gain from sneaking into the freezer to eat chocolate peanut butter balls. Ditch, ditch, ditch.
It’s not as if I’m Scrooge and I go around vandalizing people’s inflatable Santas in their yards. I don’t hate the holidays. I just like the idea of escaping to a yoga retreat better. Since my husband takes off for two canoe trips a year, I feel it’s my turn for a vacation. I’ve never been away from my son for more than a day, and the idea of taking off for an entire five days to an R&R retreat at Massachusetts’s Kripalu Yoga Centre sounds positively sinful, self-serving, and EXACTLY WHAT I NEED!
Day 1
After driving from Guelph through six hours of snow I enter the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts and make a note to move here one day. The colonial towns along winding oak-lined roads make me think I’m in a Norman Rockwell painting. Then I actually see a sign for the Norman Rockwell Museum. Soon I spot Kripalu high on a hill looking from the outside much like the Jesuit seminary it was years ago. I’ve had friends who’ve trained here to be yoga teachers or massage therapists, or who’ve worked here in exchange for room, board and yoga classes, but that was when it was run as an ashram with a guru. Now, Kripalu is guru-free, non-denominational, and attracts mainly women who come for a huge variety of programs, or like me, for an R&R retreat. Inside, a friendly young Kripalu volunteer shows me a bulletin board explaining all the R&R things to do this week: hike, do yoga, attend workshops on yoga, fitness and weight loss, dance, do yoga, cross-country ski, do yoga. As I walk down the long somewhat austere brick hallways towards my room, I realize this isn’t the spa atmosphere I’d imagined, but that’s okay. In fact, anything is okay if it means I won’t be woken up in the night by a two-year old. I pass several yoga studios, high-ceilinged rooms with wooden floors and lots of sunlight streaming in. I can already see myself in five days: a yogi who eschews chocolate and sips wheat grass juice, slightly taller, and able to contort her newly toned and centered body into postures named after flexible animals. At the evening’s orientation, a woman in her forties with a body like Kirsten Dunst asks us to write down one goal for our retreat. She gives examples: relaxation, stress management, weight loss, yoga practice, eat better. I think of the reasons I’m here and how many of these would do, as would “start writing my novel,” “catch up on sleep,” or “find my pre-motherhood, lively self.” I gaze up at the woman and notice her bones like balsawood airplanes, her six-pack abs, and find myself writing down my goal: “Look like this woman by the end of the week.” Next, in the same room, there’s a workshop called Soundplay where participants use their voices to sing, chant and tone. I love singing but usually only do it alone, ever since Grade 4 when the choir teacher took me and another boy out of class and told us to just mouth the words at performance time. We begin by warming up our bodies and voices, then separate out into the room, and with eyes closed, sing on our own, not songs, but tones. Gradually, still toning, we crawl towards the woman in the room’s centre as if she’s some eternal Earth mother welcoming us home. As the notes are unleashed from our voices we miraculously begin to harmonize until our song takes flight into a single ethereal living thing. It’s beautiful and even I don’t sound off-key. Take that, Miss Vermette! Day 2 I’m woken at 6 am when I hear two women chatting in the hall on their way to the day’s first yoga class. Are they crazy? This is a retreat! I roll over in bliss, knowing I’m allowed to go back to sleep. I’m here to get away from the 6am wake-up call, although I admit that yoga at this hour sounds more pleasant than playing Lego bleary-eyed while picking Cheerios off the floor. Two hours later I head down to breakfast where I load my tray with organic quinoa and millet cereal with soy organic yogurt, raw coconut, raisins, and sunflower seeds—no salt or maple syrup—and linden flower tea. Since I’ve already missed the early morning activities of hiking the surrounding trails and another yoga class, I go outside into a sparkling blue New England morning and walk to the nearby lake. Back inside, I discover a café, new for Kripalu, which serves coffee—organic fair trade—and even (yes!) healthy American junk food, like organic peanut butter cups. I don’t buy anything but it’s nice to know these vices are here for emergencies. At my first yoga class a woman shows us how to engage our “core” in our postures, but I’m more interested in how she keeps using the word “effort” as a verb. “You shouldn’t have to effort too much to do this. See how I’m not efforting?” It’s just a matter of time before this aberration will “impact” us in Canada too. You heard it here first. After a lunch of kale, fried tofu, cabbage salad with walnuts, dried cranberries, and freshly milled flax seeds, I attend a Conscious Eating workshop where we learn how to be present and mindful with each bite. I see the wisdom of this but also see how sometimes it’s better not to be so present, like while eating kale. Day Three I discover the DansKinetics class where fifteen of us dance for a blissful hour around a spacious room to songs that deliver me straight back to my 23-year-old self when I used to dance for hours into the night with my university friends. It’s as if they’ve found my old box of tapes and are playing my forgotten favorites: Juluka, UB40, U2. I jump and swirl around the room with the others, overjoyed that all these years later something deeply buried in me has reawakened. Day 4 Waking up with shin splints I can barely make it down to a breakfast of steel cut oats and juicy oranges. I attend a fascinating workshop on body image and another on energy and chakras. Despite the shin splints, I go to another dance class and find a lot more people today. Mr. T is joining us, as in “A Team” Mr. T who is filming a reality show where he’s a motivational guru. In this episode, Mr. T learns to relieve stress through yoga and dance so he can teach car salesmen in Queens how to relax. When he walks into Kripalu it’s clear he hasn’t changed since the 80s—he still has the mohawk and a giant personality that takes over the room. When we’re all dancing together—Mr. T in fantastic shape and working up a sweat in his track suit —the energy in the room builds to an ecstatic high as the dreadlocked drummers in the corner beat our way through African and Sufi dancing. After an hour of cardio glee, we slow down to stretch, Mr. T grimacing for the camera: “I pity the fool who does yoga all day!” We dance some more for the pure joy of it, because Mr. T is so much fun, and because dancing frees the spirit in this hectic world. I’m feeling like my old self again, especially when Mr. T checks out my bum. Not really, but he is friendly. Late that evening in the dining hall I meet six Tibetan monks looking for Earl Gray—not herbal—tea. I find them the Earl Gray, and we giggle together. Day 5 I jump out of bed at 6 am for yoga. Sadly, I have to leave today after one last workshop, this one on Ayurveda, and a dance class. I’m astounded at how much I’ve learned this week, finding something profoundly valuable in every session. More importantly, I’ve discovered the old me has been here all along. I just needed a break to figure that out. For information on programs, rates, or to request a catalogue, see kripalu.org |