There is a bird here
that sounds like a coyote
from a great distance.

You know what it feels like to be here? It’s a combination of band camp, working on the cruise ship, high school, and Banff. All of which I came to really dig after I’d been able to streamline my little rituals e.g. how much time it takes to go pick up my water bottle/coffee cup/Thermos from my tent/room/locker, what parts of the buffet/cafeteria I like and what the politics are in terms of lines and groups and queues &c., where the Kool Kids hang out.  My dad calls this process “peeing in the corners”; it is a mandatory McInnis travelling survival mechanism.  It feels like the cruise ship because of the Babel of tongues with Spanish predominant although there are several delegates from Germany and a couple from Japan and of course us Nucksters although Nico and Chloe speak Spanish so really I’m the only one who gapes like a flounder when asked “Como estas?” ["Muy bien", as it happens]

It only took me
one day to feel like this is
home. A new record!

So, everybody out in the blogosphere and back at home’ll want to know different things about this experience. Please feel free to skip ahead to your best self-description or combination of self-descriptions. I know you, my dear readers, are busy busy people with rich, full lives and may not wish to plow through a description of what flora grows in my “front yard” or what sequencing was given to prepare for Urdhva Dhanurasana dropbacks or how the tattvas have been explained to us.

IF YOU ARE A…

1. Gardener, nature maniac, inveterate scenery conoisseur: It is the end of the dry season here and so the countryside does

From my door

have a dessicated and hazy quality. The resort where we are overlooks a valley and over the course of the day once the dew dries the days’ activities drum up some serious dust and haze, encouraged by the windy heat that rises as the afternoon proceeds. One of the biggest questions I got before I left was, “what is a tentalow?”. A tentalow is a tent. Except more fancier, with a carpetted floor and a proper bed, and electricity for reading lamps and similar. The best part of the tentalow, if I can pick just one best thing, is in the late morning when I can open up my blowy cream-coloured drapes and let the wind flow in, and feel like I’m in a George Michael video from the early 90s. I bring my dwelling up in the Nature portion since as you can imagine Nature is a pretty big part of living in a tent, and the little tent-city all around is basically spattered and integrated with gardens, planned and accidental. There are rows of aloe, making the planned garden look like an old toothbrush. The first night I was here something [???] was up in the coconut palms sawing away…staff? fruit bat? it’s unclear. The flowers are stunning and ubiquitous. I can’t imagine the lushness of the rainy season, since pretty much every bloom you would pay CDN$7 at Capers for here is here in every pathway and every flagstone.

2. Asana athlete: The practice here is KILLER. I have not felt like such a slouch for many years. I mean, these are some serious students with such devotion and IMPRESSIVE practices; I spend most of the time with my fingers in my mouth, going “duuuuuurp”. Well, that’s not true. How does my first unassisted dropback sound? Booyah. But, seriously, folks: I feel like we’ve really only scratched the surface here in terms of what John has intended for us. The first day was pretty mellow, just checking stuff out, and while nothing has really been gimmicky like “whoa check out this sequence can you STAND THE AWESOME!??!?!?!?”, lots of long holds [e.g. today we must have done Vira 1 like 27 times], strong therapy [I hope my students reading this are taking their thighs back. The beatings will continue until morale improves], deep meditations, nice steady pranayams, and luscious philosophy…

3. Yoga philosophy junkie: Pratyabhijna Hrdayam! FOR ONE WHOLE WEEK! And I’m so glad because when I got here I was feeling really shaky, very “less than”, and to rediscover the tattvas and these very seminal topics was just the sort of spiritual smack upside the head that I needed. I mean, this was the stuff that helped me make the transition to this practice and this philosophy, so what better time to revisit it than a time of doubt? To be so much in nature viz. sleeping in a tent helps with all of this work, balancing the elements and so on, and John has been strongly teaching to the doshas so far this week which is always a good exploration and process of bringing mindful balance. I was feeling tridoshic except in the bad way: deranged and unsettled from being on airplanes for about 1,000,000 years, slow and miserable and fat and unconfident [see airplanes, above], and pretty much furious with the intense beauty and confidence of the practitioners all around me: how dare they be so awesome when I am so tired and pale and sluggish? RAWR. I am now put to rights thanks to John’s ministrations, lots of good jungly rest serenaded by crickets and woken by birdsong, and a reminder of the malas: how imbalance in our tendencies creates separation, an inability to see our connection to others and to our best selves.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Self, all of this Great Goodness and Inherent Wisdom and Intrinsic Love sounds like wicked good fun, but how in the world can that ever be true? Have you been to Main and Hastings lately? I told you yoga was for chumps”, then the Pratyabhijna Hrdayam is for you.

Yoga is always
much easier than we make
it out to appear.

A good teacher will
remind you of the ease, and
not impose struggle.

2 Comments »

March 17th, 2009 Costa Rica Haikus, Vol. II - Viva Main Vein | Heavy Metta Says:

[...] Costa Rica Haikus, Vol. II – Viva Main Vein | Heavy Metta [...]

March 20th, 2009 Heather W Says:

I love you Sjanie! Thanks for posting and keeping us up to date. Can’t wait to see you again.

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