Allow Play

On the Portugal retreat, we woke up to horses neighing (or one allergic horse coughing) and the breeze whispering the pines. We got coffee or tea and wandered up to the studio for breath practice and meditation sits. Returning to the common area, we found breakfast displays full of home made seed breads, fresh juices and smoothies, more coffee and teas, herbal infused waters, fruits, local European cheeses, and protein and fiber rich bowls like the one below.

Our retreat site was a 45 minute hike, or shorter run, down to Praia Amado and Praia da Bodera. These are two of the best surf beaches in Europe. They're also on something like a Portuguese Appalachian trail, a beautiful coastal hike through Portugal's south.

If you didn't want to hike, the drive took about 10 minutes.

Surf schools had lessons on the sand. Rented campers parked in the lots while road trippers read novels in the open backs. Snack stands sold cappuccinos in addition to beer.

The cliffs created coves of natural shade. Additionally, one of our retreat participants had been gifted an umbrella. Portugal's west coast hit a COLD current of Atlantic. The little river tributary provided a warmer swim and shallow waters for kids.

After mornings spent in practice we spent afternoons hiking, swimming, sunning, watching.

From our retreat vantage in the hills, the beaches looked inches away. From our height we could watch the sun drop into the water each night. The ocean stayed with us.

As we hiked near, all the hills and valleys clarified perspective. Praia Amado and Praia da Bodeira, so near as the crow flies, were not so near!

Long hikes called for cold beers. And taxis back so we could make it to the retreat in time for evening Yin and meditation practice!

Our group was pretty adventurous, so we had a few days of piling into cars together and trekking to major points throughout the Algarve. South of our home in Carrapateira, we visited the famous beaches of Lagos. Praia Dona Ana is the stuff of post cards.

Little beach side restaurants sold grilled sardines and Portuguese baguettes in the shade.

Some of the beautiful women of our retreat.

Among many many topless women. Some of us joined them. 

Still in Lagos, the Benagil caves are accessible by boat or swimming from some beaches. We decided to get on a little boat tour to visit some of the beautiful grottoes.

We had SUPER fun captains who did wheelies in the water and took us to private coves to swim.

The hidden treasures of the Algarve, the southwestern-most cape of Sao Vicente, the grottoes and smiles...

Lauren was the CAPTAIN'S FAVORITE! This chick knows how to play along and have fun!

My favorite part of a yoga retreat is remembering that yoga is not so serious. Meditation and practice don't have to be austere. Let your well-being swell with joy.

Allow Yourself: Longing Retreat to Portugal

I have a database of thousands of retreat centers all over the world. I consult it when a client asks me to scout a retreat for them. I filter through their perimeters to find an ideal fit.

I also have a short list of my own ideal fits.

Monte Velho Retreat on the Western Algarve, Portugal was a short list. People always want to go to to Europe. I'm down but people often don't want to pay European prices. Portugal and Greece are currently two of the most affordable destinations (for unfortunate reasons to do with the Euro and economic destabilization).

Portugal is safe and an easy connect for US travelers.

It was also the last retreat I have planned for myself for the foreseeable future.

When Yogawood transitioned ownership this past year there was a lot of work to do. I usually plan retreats well over a year out to secure best dates, negotiate rates, budget tuitions, and set a marketing strategy. I couldn't do it all. There was enough change in the air so I decided to let it happen. Let this be my last retreat for the foreseeable future and see where there was flow, movement, and growth.

I don't ever feel like you should do something because you do it.

Do it because it's aligned. Do it because it serves. Do it because it works.

When I do plan a retreat I look at what I know of that particular place or what that place tells of itself. Costa Rica has an environmental tourism campaign around reanimating the world-- reminding visitors that the land needs to rest, that animals need a break from human interference. Cuba tells the story of the joy of rebellion. Alaska reminds humans that we are small in the perspective of nature's grandeur.

Places have an identity.

I look at the place and where it might illuminate a facet of yoga. We practice yoga all over the world. What is the intersection of place and practice? What do we learn? How does yoga help us land where we are? How does yoga help us see a place as it is and not be blinded by our own expectations? How does yoga help us see ourselves and not be blinded by our own delusions?

As I started learning about this windswept coast of Portugal I read about the cliffs sailors saw before they sailed away and the songs of lament and longing both they and their loved ones sang. I listened to Fado, birthed in fishing villages and working class neighborhoods of Lisbon, and sung in very ritualized ways to lean into our own longing.

Saudade. Longing. Yoga works with longing. Bhaktis use yearning to reach for God, worshipping God, singing to God. The stories of Radha and Krishna in Vrindavan are filled with reaching.

After having such a wonderful time working with Colleen Seng for the Belize retreat, I worked with her again to develop material for this retreat. We filled it with poems from Leonard Cohen, Sanskrit yogic chants, traditional Portuguese Fado lyrics, meditations from Tara Brach and Thich Nhat Hanh, and notes from Rumi, Hafez and more. I created meditations and consciousness practices to use the retreat to work with place, practice, and feeling.

And we went in.

You can plan retreats until you're blue in the face but like any yoga class, it is co-creative. Any retreat worth it's salt will shift to meet the participants where they are.

In yoga we work with our bodies and our thoughts. Longing, bhakti, reminds us to work with the material of our feelings. Follow the feeling. What is the information?

The beautiful experience was a group of people who were willing. Who didn't feel ashamed of taking a break to step into their own experience. They didn't apologize for going on retreat-- instead, they excitedly talked about other ways to build in breaks, experiences, and celebrations. While we tuned in to events at home and with our loved ones, there was equal space to turn in to the breadth of our own experience.

Allowing joy, allowing longing-- where we reach towards integration-- allows ourselves. It means we're not banishing a part of ourselves as unacceptable, thereby giving it the power to control and influence us in unforeseen ways. Allowing our desires, our feelings, the scope of who we are allows us. Allows us to be. To exist.

So we lived. Together. In a very beautiful place.

Allow Joy

Let yourself enjoy it.

Everything.

I lingered over coffee and watched the light. I did nothing with my time. It felt still and luxurious. Some little thought nagged at me-- "I should apologize for this." Or, "I should justify this." "This relaxation will produce some later writing. Or it will prompt an idea. For work."

Because everything is work.

I know people who won't share the joy in their life. If they take a vacation, they keep it quiet to not seem to brag, or to not seem to ignore the problems of the world.

Post-empire Portugal reminded me that it all ends. Enjoy it.

I lingered over coffee in cafes with reminders of Portugal's one time power. I'm not trying to romanticize nor justify that power but it was there. Influence and wealth that seemed permanent. I sat in the ruins of Portuguese power watching my birth place, the United States, dissolve in its own pool of unrestrained grasping. For awhile now I've been reading historians who chart the US rise and fall of power and comparing it to other fallen empires, like that of Rome for example. Many signals point to those of us living in the US living through it's decline. The future will confirm which prophets got it right.

We know that some people survive empire's collapse. Portugal is an example of that. What is life like after empire?

Detroit.

There is so much I love about Portugal. One big piece: enjoy it.

It's a very European attitude to prioritize one's life potentially more than one's work. The United States tends to produce the opposite affect: work justifies your life.

Again and again, we learned Portuguese history of slave trade, navel power, colonization, conquest, without apology. The monks who sought to atone, the Templar Knights who avenged the church, the white knuckled explorers sailing uncharted seas. Their descendents pour coffee and live in the ruins. They live in life's inevitable cycle. And they do not apologize for their joy.

I often wonder about that-- why do we have to hide our joy? Does our joy exacerbate another's suffering? Is my suffering soothed by other's shared suffering? Isn't the cycle about the whole of it? Do we get to have capacity to allow ourselves it all?

Not all of us gets to travel. I readily acknowledge the realities of privilege and access.

We all get range. Within our experiences, there is a range of feeling and experience.

I want to live it all. I'm not going to apologize for it.

I wish you all the experiences. I wish you thrills, sunsets, late nights with friends. I wish you the big mile stone moments and the small gentle ones. And I don't need your apologies. Your existence entitles you to it all.