DIY Retreat

This weekend my dear pal E Mickey G (Erin) came up from Washington D.C. to join me on a bit of a Do-It-Yourself retreat. The impetus was a workshop hosted by my favorite Yoga instructor ever. His name is Dalien and I found him and the ashram down the street from my parents’ house while we were going through the last month of my Dad’s dying process.. (Daniel, his class and the Ashram were a Godsend)

For the past dozen years since graduating college, Erin and I have shared each other’s journey in pursuit of balance, love, meaning, joy. Erin has a high-power, high-stress job as a D.C. public official and was looking to this weekend as a way to get back to basics and connect to herself. I don’t have a stressful job per se (it’s challenging but I wouldn’t say stressful). Still, I’ve had a hell of a year and am working through the disorienting process that is grief. A retreat sounded like a good idea to both of us.

Rufus drove up to Monroe with us on Saturday morning. While we were down the street at the Ananda Ashram doing downward facing dog, he was back chillin’ at my Mom’s house with his bestie, our family Black lab, Duffy. Tangent: My Mom’s house looks amazing. She has done a lot of work on it since this summer. New hardwood floors, new rugs, new furniture, new paint. It exudes new energy, new life, new coziness. It was a danky, foggy weekend and we were tempted to just bundle up there in some blankets with the dogs and watch movies all weekend.

But fortunately, we mustered the motivation to head down the street 500 feet and dive in to the retreat mix. Dalien was as enthusiastic and entertaining as ever. Erin immediately became “Erin Brokovitch” … many of the other folks in the class also got funny nicknames. The format was talk therapy, Yoga, then music therapy. The topics ran the gamut. The most awesome part was connecting with others and understanding that, in one way or another, we are all going through the same or similar stuff.

It takes a lot to put yourself out there … look someone in the eye … talk about emotions and blocked chakras and dumping (yes – the colon, digestive system, and crapping was a key topic).  Sound weird? Yeah, it was weird in an awesome way.

I had an epiphany or two … thinking about vampires … people in our lives who take take take and don’t give back … how you have to create boundaries and or cut them out. And romantic relationships … how tough they are … how you can’t hurry intimacy or force someone to be open … at its core, it’s got to be about communication and honesty and respectfulness if it’s going to be healthy and lasting.

After the late afternoon meditative exercises, Erin and I took it off the ranch and got mani/pedis and then went out for dinner at  a local restaurant. We had a little bit of guilt about bailing on the evening activities (which included a Kirtan and Shamanic programming, swords, blindfolds … all kinds of crazy shit).  It was our weekend together, though, and we used the time to reconnect with eachother and go our own way. Which meant drinking wine, having a fattening yet delicious piece of peanut butter pie for dessert, watching a cheesy romantic comedy and going to bed at 10:30.

We rejoined the tribe this morning for some Yoga, inevitably catching some heat for our absence last night. Dalien made constant jokes …”reach out like you reached for the Merlot last night.” Funny. We talked about Crystal  bowl therapy, speculating about how impactful sound treatment may become to the future of medicine.  I was amazed by the power the sound had over my body … it literally felt like a fish hook was dropping down and pulling out some dark, empty innards from my gut. Once it was out I felt better.

The whole thing felt connected to the amazing surge of energy I’ve been feeling lately … ever since the “life after” arrived.  So much has happened. So much has changed yet here I am. Still. Hanging in, working on myself, my life, my relationships, my body. That is cause for celebration methinks. And so it goes …