So yay, I’m back, and I also think I’m ready to be back. Projects to finish, others to continue, and hopefully good things soon to start. But before the shine of Greece starts to dull in my memory, I thought I’d share a few verbal snapshots of bullet points I journaled on the ferry ride from the islands (the Cyclades) back to the Hellenic mainland.
* Seriously, don’t flush the toilet paper. It took me several days before that sunk in. Everywhere on the islands are signs about not putting paper in the toilets. I took that in the sense one sees here in the U.S. about not flushing things like paper towels or diapers or other clog-inducing materials. But after a while I was chatting with some friends about it, and it became clear that no, you shouldn’t even be flushing the toilet paper; that you put in the trash. The old pipes just aren’t built for it, apparently. Oh, and in more primitive places, the public bathrooms you find will probably contain what I call “squatty-toilets” – holes in the floor with two little platform thingies to put your feet on while you do your business. So, you know, just be prepared!
* “Turn right at the church” – or any directional heading that’s indexed to a church – is not helpful in Greece. I don’t think I remember the numbers exactly right, but it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that on Amorgos, for instance, they have a population on the order of 3,000 and over 600 churches. Also, concerning churches, watch yourself. I love to check out old churches for the architecture, the art, the sense of peace they contain. But one of our companions was hit on by a priest inside one of them. Can’t lower your guard around those fellows in the robes anywhere, it seems.
* The towns of Fira and Oia, on the island of Santorini, look as though they are built into the side of a cliff. But Santorini is actually part of what remains of an old vocano that exploded, and the towns lie within the inside of the caldera.
* The natural light and the colors. It’s cliché to say that words can’t do it justice, but it’s true, and that won’t stop me from trying anyway. The water is like the purest, clearest kind of sapphire blue. In the early morning sunlight, it sparkles as though it’s covered in diamonds. But when the sunlight is muted, it looks like a slate-grey, and when a boat’s propellers churn it up, it turns turquoise. The islands respond to the sunlight beautifully, too. Sometimes they stand out almost bright white; when the light is more indirect, they look more peachish or pinkish, and again, against the background of the water, the effect is transportive. Sometimes the water looked covered by low-lying fog, so that the islands and boats out there looked for all the world as though they are floating in mid-air. It is entirely possible to have a fantastic time holed up somewhere with a drink and a view to the ocean, and simply watch the way the view changes as the sunlight moves. Oh, and for sure the most awesome sunset I’ve ever seen was on Santorini. We were having dinner at Bernie and Elizabeth’s place, and I walked outside at one point, and when I Iooked up, I was positively fucking stopped dead in my tracks. The entire sky – and we were on the east side of the island – looked like it was on fire, it was so full of reds, oranges, yellows and pinks. As the sun continued to set, the colors shifted to pinks, blues and purples. And that’s to say nothing of how the colors were picked up in the water, and on the islands around. I can understand why, as I heard it, people on the west side of the island all gather just to watch the sunset, and applaud. I think those colors are the same that woke me up the first morning on Santorini, when the light coming into the window was all pink and red. And now I have a new appreciation for Homer’s expression “rosy-fingered dawn.”
* On the islands, although the tap water is eminently drinkable, it tastes salty.
* Every building looks to have solar water heaters.
* Santorini: the land of weensey roads, gigantic tour buses and small cars. I don’t know how many times I sucked in my breath involuntarily, as though doing so would make us narrower.
* Combination stop/yield signs. Never saw those before.
* Even straight-up stop signs seem to function as suggestions, and everyday road rules look to be optional. In my imaginary world, we visitors were rented bumper-cars rather than regular cars, especially since it’s not as though a person can get much speed up due to the windiness of the roads, or the good chances of getting caught behind a slow-moving ATV or moped.
* Interesting lack of road names and street signs on the islands. Generally, figuring out how to get from point A to point B means “travel in the direction of the mountain” or “follow the pointers to Pyrgos”.
* If you like orange juice, make sure to order it freshly squeezed. Otherwise, it’s like water with an orange waved over top of it.
* But on the up side: Greek yogurt + honey = YUMM! Also, I had anticipated I’d tire quickly of a diet dominated by lamb and feta cheese, but that turned out to be not an issue at all. Did I ever eat good out there, and especially on the islands! Lots of fantastically-prepared fresh fish. Awesome non-Greek salads (although of course Greek salad is quite good, too). Suvlaki. Seriously, I woke up one morning with my head on my arm, after about 10 days out, and my skin smelled faintly of oregano; that was pretty cool!
* The staff on the islands, particularly on Amorgos and Santorini, seriously rocked. It took no time to relax there in their good hands, and start to feel something like a local, rather than an outsider. They just made life so easy! Decide you want to stay at a hotel for an extra day, without prior arrangement? No problem. Decide to cut your visit a day short? No problem. For Bernie and Elizabeth, who rented an apartment not close to us, they were afforded free rides to and from where the rest of us were staying by the people who ran the property they stayed at. Happiest of all was that, after several days on Santorini, all of us were vocalizing how much we wished we could stay another few weeks. One of our crew, whose work enables him to work from wherever he’s got an internet connection, started looking around for the possibility of renting an apartment for a month there. And by word of mouth and a couple carefully-placed questions, he wound up with a furnished apartment there along the beachfront in Kamari for a month, for something like 230 euros! How terrific is that?
* On the practical side, if you’d like to do an impromptu trip like ours, some pointers. A taxi ride in Athens at night costs 50 euros extra, so plan accordingly. The high tourist season hits later in June/July/August, when it’s also quite a bit warmer – and it was warm already when we were there (although the water was a little chilly). So I think it would probably be more pleasant in late May, and also makes it easier to make less-well-planned-out travel decisions when the locale is not packed with visitors. And when it’s not packed, that makes it easy to do something like show up on an island without lodging decisions being made because at the dock there are plenty of people there waiting who run facilities and can hook you up straight away. And on the islands, the good things of life – the wine, the food, places to see, places to chill – are very, very affordable.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
"Return of the King": why it doesn't suck
All rightie, the other evening there was an eminently enjoyable conversation about the LOTR movies containing focused "Return of the King"-bashing. I quietly puzzled to myself, and maybe a little out loud, about why when I get to the third part of that trilogy, I am not similarly so repelled I have to hit the "stop" 'button and go do something else.
I speculated that it's because I'm probably watching it as I'm winding up a marathon run of the whole series and by that point, I'm so sucked in that the excruciating badness floats right past me.
Alternatively, or maybe additionally, I never started into the whole textbook lore of Middle Earth until long after the movies came out, incongruous as that might sound (I imagine I would seem rather a stereotypical LOTR geek from way back when - I mean, I seem to >myself< that I would be, but it just didn't happen that way somehow.). And even then, I might have gone my whole life without reading the books except for I started doing faire and learned quickly that I'd catch a lot more references and jokes if I had bookish knowledge, so off I went to read them up. Anyway, this all goes to the point that I don't approach the movies, even now after having read the books several times, holding the books as a kind of standard.
And finally, I at least like to think I'm coming, in my appreciation of film as an art form, to keep my evaluation of film separate from that of books upon which films are based, so that (I aspire) I can enjoy the film as a thing on its own terms, even (or in spite of) where the film diverges from a book that I like very much.
Okay, all those caveats aside, to return to "Return of the King." This exercise started as the creation of a list of my favorite bad parts, and I took to starting this film first, so that I wouldn't be lulled into a sense of complacency by the first two in the trilogy. And I've got little in the way of expectations because I haven't read the books in a rather long time now.
First note of surprise: Soon after starting, I had to start a second list = things I really >like< about "Return of the King." I just can't help it, dammit, but there is to my mind some pretty awesome shit in this film and I think that might help me be a little more forgiving about places where the dialogue or action or storyline gets vapid. And I'll start with those good things.
1. Gollum. Andy Serkis friggin' rocks it.
2. Shelob. I'm not even arachnophobic, but yeggghhh!
3. Merry isn't stupid enough to mistake Eowyn for a small man. Applause for that small bit of storyline change.
4. Mind-blowing "big-atures"
5. Trebuchets
6. David Wenham as Faramir. Putting aside how he was directed to channel the character or whatever, that man's a cool drink of water. Yowsa.
7. Denathor's cracking up. I know it can come across as a little over-the-top, but I look at it thusly: the character losing his mind is effectively the frigging king, situated in a such a way as to enable his looniness, not contain it. Why shouldn't such a fellow be over the top? I'm happy to be taken there and I enjoy the theatrics, and it makes it all the more satisfying when Gandalf clubs him with his staff later.
8. Although there isn't as much singing as is in the books - and that's a good thing! - there >is< singing (and this positive evaluation holds for the entire series). Not so much that it even remotely threatens to turn the movies into a musical. But on one hand I like the hint of the idea that singing was something >done< in the course of everyday life, and not just something listened to. On another hand, sort of film-ically speaking, I like the approach of having music embedded in in the performance, and not only in a disembodied soundtrack playing over top of the movie.
9. The message of how love and friendship can enable a person to find the courage to stand up in the face of danger is rather moving, and here of course the film is consistent with the books.
10. Eowyn's kicking serious ass in the Minis Tirith battle scene.
11. Gandalf's talk with Pippin about death is also touching, to me.
12. That the dotty-sounding woman (in the book) in the House of Healing was left out. Honestly, JRR, you test a girl's patience sometimes.
13. The "mouth" of Sauron.
14. The reluctance and struggle Aragorn-in-the-film went through before he was ready to take up being king. I somehow always felt it a bit off-putting in the books how Aragorn was always running around from book 1 going "I am Aragorn son of whoever, heir to the throne of Gondor" or whatever. I like how the movie portrayed the character with more humility.
15. Although at about point #13 I was distracted by the arrival of beer and banjo, if memory serves correctly the film departed from the book in how Gollum met his demise at the end. I'm too lazy to go dig out my book and check, but I >think< in the book Gollum slipped during his celebratory dance after getting the ring and fell, whereas in the film Gollum fell following a struggle with Frodo for the ring. I think I have some vague memory of reading the book and thinking "that's it? after all the scheming and planning and struggling, he slips and falls: the end?" - like JRR just kinda gave up. If this is all on-base, then I think the film's working of Gollum's fall is more believable. And if memory serves me wrongly, then just forget point #15!
Now, all these points I like being made, I'll turn to the parts that make me scratch my head:
1. Arwyn's turning mortal. Sorry, it's just not explained very well in the storyline of the film. It seems to be all tied up with her staying there in Middle Earth, but why should that be? Obviously other elves stayed - her dad, the elves who worked to remake the sword - were they all facing a death sentence? Or is mortality something one can simply choose, sort of like Tabitha wrinkling her nose and then: ta dah!? And if that's the case, then why can't a person simply choose back the other way later? But no, then it seems tied up with the growth of evilness in Mordor - as Sauron's power grows, Arwyn's hold on life lessens. Well, which one is it?
Note: I >know< there's an explanation in the literature, but that's not my point. I think: would it have changed any of the dramatic tension to not have Arwyn having to choose between love+mortality versus staying with her own people+immortality? And good god, what is it - recalling my thoughts about a genre of country songs that pair the pursuit of love with imminent death - that choosing the course of love commits a person to pursuing a course towards death, too? Is this some kind of weird guy thing? Honestly! In short, to my mind the tension could have been maintained just fine by leaving the whole mortality issue for Arwyn out.
Okay, I'll leave that alone now.
2. The beacons between Gondor and Rohan. Maybe the movie-makers simply had so much cool footage of mountain tops it was a shame not to use it, so they plugged most of it in here. But I can't get out of my head that Gandalf told Pippin it was a 3-day ride between the two realms, where that interspace was apparently massively populated by stratospherically-high mountains. Every time I watch that music-swelling beacon-lighting bit, I can't help but think it seems that the two realms must be on opposite sides of the globe.
3. Where did the people of Minis Tirith get all the flowers to toss at the men riding off to battle? It doesn't look exactly spring-ish, and Minis Tirith looks to be entirely composed of stone without a hint of green.
4. That Frodo seems, apropos of nothing, to be able to speak elvish (when he hold up the light of Elendil (?) to scare off Shelob). Without that bit of information given to me in the books, I'd think in terms of the movie alone that Frodo had gone aphasic.
5. Denathor's managing to run all aflame for so long before falling to his death.
6. That while Eowyn looks to be an eminently kick-ass-can-do woman, at apparently a single glance abandons her crush on Aragorn and falls for Faramir. I think they left that bit out of the theatrical version, and that's a good thing.
I speculated that it's because I'm probably watching it as I'm winding up a marathon run of the whole series and by that point, I'm so sucked in that the excruciating badness floats right past me.
Alternatively, or maybe additionally, I never started into the whole textbook lore of Middle Earth until long after the movies came out, incongruous as that might sound (I imagine I would seem rather a stereotypical LOTR geek from way back when - I mean, I seem to >myself< that I would be, but it just didn't happen that way somehow.). And even then, I might have gone my whole life without reading the books except for I started doing faire and learned quickly that I'd catch a lot more references and jokes if I had bookish knowledge, so off I went to read them up. Anyway, this all goes to the point that I don't approach the movies, even now after having read the books several times, holding the books as a kind of standard.
And finally, I at least like to think I'm coming, in my appreciation of film as an art form, to keep my evaluation of film separate from that of books upon which films are based, so that (I aspire) I can enjoy the film as a thing on its own terms, even (or in spite of) where the film diverges from a book that I like very much.
Okay, all those caveats aside, to return to "Return of the King." This exercise started as the creation of a list of my favorite bad parts, and I took to starting this film first, so that I wouldn't be lulled into a sense of complacency by the first two in the trilogy. And I've got little in the way of expectations because I haven't read the books in a rather long time now.
First note of surprise: Soon after starting, I had to start a second list = things I really >like< about "Return of the King." I just can't help it, dammit, but there is to my mind some pretty awesome shit in this film and I think that might help me be a little more forgiving about places where the dialogue or action or storyline gets vapid. And I'll start with those good things.
1. Gollum. Andy Serkis friggin' rocks it.
2. Shelob. I'm not even arachnophobic, but yeggghhh!
3. Merry isn't stupid enough to mistake Eowyn for a small man. Applause for that small bit of storyline change.
4. Mind-blowing "big-atures"
5. Trebuchets
6. David Wenham as Faramir. Putting aside how he was directed to channel the character or whatever, that man's a cool drink of water. Yowsa.
7. Denathor's cracking up. I know it can come across as a little over-the-top, but I look at it thusly: the character losing his mind is effectively the frigging king, situated in a such a way as to enable his looniness, not contain it. Why shouldn't such a fellow be over the top? I'm happy to be taken there and I enjoy the theatrics, and it makes it all the more satisfying when Gandalf clubs him with his staff later.
8. Although there isn't as much singing as is in the books - and that's a good thing! - there >is< singing (and this positive evaluation holds for the entire series). Not so much that it even remotely threatens to turn the movies into a musical. But on one hand I like the hint of the idea that singing was something >done< in the course of everyday life, and not just something listened to. On another hand, sort of film-ically speaking, I like the approach of having music embedded in in the performance, and not only in a disembodied soundtrack playing over top of the movie.
9. The message of how love and friendship can enable a person to find the courage to stand up in the face of danger is rather moving, and here of course the film is consistent with the books.
10. Eowyn's kicking serious ass in the Minis Tirith battle scene.
11. Gandalf's talk with Pippin about death is also touching, to me.
12. That the dotty-sounding woman (in the book) in the House of Healing was left out. Honestly, JRR, you test a girl's patience sometimes.
13. The "mouth" of Sauron.
14. The reluctance and struggle Aragorn-in-the-film went through before he was ready to take up being king. I somehow always felt it a bit off-putting in the books how Aragorn was always running around from book 1 going "I am Aragorn son of whoever, heir to the throne of Gondor" or whatever. I like how the movie portrayed the character with more humility.
15. Although at about point #13 I was distracted by the arrival of beer and banjo, if memory serves correctly the film departed from the book in how Gollum met his demise at the end. I'm too lazy to go dig out my book and check, but I >think< in the book Gollum slipped during his celebratory dance after getting the ring and fell, whereas in the film Gollum fell following a struggle with Frodo for the ring. I think I have some vague memory of reading the book and thinking "that's it? after all the scheming and planning and struggling, he slips and falls: the end?" - like JRR just kinda gave up. If this is all on-base, then I think the film's working of Gollum's fall is more believable. And if memory serves me wrongly, then just forget point #15!
Now, all these points I like being made, I'll turn to the parts that make me scratch my head:
1. Arwyn's turning mortal. Sorry, it's just not explained very well in the storyline of the film. It seems to be all tied up with her staying there in Middle Earth, but why should that be? Obviously other elves stayed - her dad, the elves who worked to remake the sword - were they all facing a death sentence? Or is mortality something one can simply choose, sort of like Tabitha wrinkling her nose and then: ta dah!? And if that's the case, then why can't a person simply choose back the other way later? But no, then it seems tied up with the growth of evilness in Mordor - as Sauron's power grows, Arwyn's hold on life lessens. Well, which one is it?
Note: I >know< there's an explanation in the literature, but that's not my point. I think: would it have changed any of the dramatic tension to not have Arwyn having to choose between love+mortality versus staying with her own people+immortality? And good god, what is it - recalling my thoughts about a genre of country songs that pair the pursuit of love with imminent death - that choosing the course of love commits a person to pursuing a course towards death, too? Is this some kind of weird guy thing? Honestly! In short, to my mind the tension could have been maintained just fine by leaving the whole mortality issue for Arwyn out.
Okay, I'll leave that alone now.
2. The beacons between Gondor and Rohan. Maybe the movie-makers simply had so much cool footage of mountain tops it was a shame not to use it, so they plugged most of it in here. But I can't get out of my head that Gandalf told Pippin it was a 3-day ride between the two realms, where that interspace was apparently massively populated by stratospherically-high mountains. Every time I watch that music-swelling beacon-lighting bit, I can't help but think it seems that the two realms must be on opposite sides of the globe.
3. Where did the people of Minis Tirith get all the flowers to toss at the men riding off to battle? It doesn't look exactly spring-ish, and Minis Tirith looks to be entirely composed of stone without a hint of green.
4. That Frodo seems, apropos of nothing, to be able to speak elvish (when he hold up the light of Elendil (?) to scare off Shelob). Without that bit of information given to me in the books, I'd think in terms of the movie alone that Frodo had gone aphasic.
5. Denathor's managing to run all aflame for so long before falling to his death.
6. That while Eowyn looks to be an eminently kick-ass-can-do woman, at apparently a single glance abandons her crush on Aragorn and falls for Faramir. I think they left that bit out of the theatrical version, and that's a good thing.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
What's it like to go on a yoga retreat? Recollections from last weekend.
I suppose at the outset that the kind of experience one gets at a yoga retreat has a lot to do with the sort of retreat it is. That is to say, I imagine that the vibe at Land of Medicine Buddha in Soquel is different than the vibe at Wanderlust out at Lake Tahoe. The former was a small group for a yoga and meditation weekend at a Tibetan Buddhist center; the latter looks like it is a large scale-yoga-cum-burning man-cum-live music fest. I hope it turns out that I can attend both, but at bottom I'd just point out that there are yoga retreats, and there are yoga retreats, and I don't pretend that any observations I have from last weekend hold across the board.
In the time leading up to going to Soquel, I wasn't sure what to expect, never having gone to such an event before. I think I'm far enough along in practice to feel like I'm good for more after an hour or hour and a half class, but in signing up for a whole weekend, was I facing going at it for something like 6 hours straight? I was excited to go, but I can't deny I was a little bit apprehensive about it, too!
That being said, the first thing I have to comment on is to applaud Julianne's teaching style. She's just friggin' amazing. She's a very gentle teacher, but don't let that gentleness fool you. It might not seem that she's encouraging you to push much, and for the whole weekend there wasn't any moment that I was sweating bullets or aggressively challenging my "edge," and there weren't any 6-hour sessions. But I knew on Monday morning when I woke up that I'd have to bail on my regular Monday evening class because it felt like every muscle in my body was wrung out.
So if there weren't any 6-hour sessions, then how did it go? The pace was pretty mellow, and part of what added to that mellowness was Julianne's insistence that all of the program was optional: that we should listen to our bodies and our minds and be present for what we were ready to do, and take time off when that was right, too. So, for instance, although there was by all accounts a fantastic little music event Saturday evening under the stars in the meadow, my body was definitely telling me to sleep, so off to bed I went at 7:30 and I slept for nearly 11 hours straight, not even noticing when the 2 girls I was sharing a room with returned during the night. How awesome is that?
Another thing that I think was spectacular was the pacing and organization. On organization, for instance, the last afternoon's yoga session was spent doing partner work. Not PARTNER-partner, but work with a partner to help get into a stretch better than one can on one's own. I think, theoretically speaking, it would have been conceivable to do partner work the first evening there. But doing it last instead, after we had all had a weekend to get to know each other and feel more comfortable around each other contributed to making the whole environment more friendly and relaxing, and that made it possible to get more of a benefit from that sort of practice. As another for instance, one of the things I was really looking forward to doing was yoga outdoors. And, again theoretically, it's conceivable that we could have all schlepped out to the meadow Friday afternoon for a go at it. But we had a Friday evening yoga session first, then another one on Saturday morning before going out to the meadow Saturday afternoon, and I think that was a really good thing. It gave us a chance to get the psychological muck of our workaday lives out and start embracing the calm of the surrounding environment. Gave us a couple sessions of revisiting the motions in the controlled environment of the Pine Room's studio. That was all key to practicing outdoors, because I sure learned that all the pretty pictures aside, doing yoga outside is more challenging than it looks. We were in a grassy meadow, but the ground was still uneven and it took extra focus to do even fairly uncomplicated things. So if we had gone outdoors straight out, I don't think I'd have gotten as much benefit from it.
The pacing was also fantastic. Sure, over the course of the weekend we did a fair bit of yoga, but it was broken up into sessions in the mornings, afternoons and evenings and interspersed with different sorts of quiet or meditative time. Maybe it would be a sitting meditation in the Pine Room. Or maybe it would be a silent walking meditation out in the woods. Or a moment of lying down under the trees and just taking in all the surrounding beauty. I have read that traditionally speaking, the yoga that we all associate with in what one does when one goes to class is actually intended as a technique for preparing the body for meditation. But we don't often meditate in class, or if we do, it's not for very long. Here I got to experience, for the first time really, just how profoundly present one can feel in taking a meditation after yoga - of really and truly feeling the past and future fall away and being settled and content here and now. That was crazy awesome.
And speaking of the present beauty, there was certainly the beauty of being out in the redwoods. But being at the Center there was incredibly amazing. There was no cell phone reception there. No phones in the rooms. No TVs. No computers. No traffic. Outside the studio, on the site, everyone - the Buddhist monks and nuns, the other visitors or employees - were soft-spoken and friendly. In the evenings, you could hear chanting emanating from the temple. You could hear the birds sing. I swear you could hear the dust fall. Sometimes you'd hear chimes ringing out there, somewhere. It was so calm and peaceful there.
And friendly and supportive. The food that was served was just the bomb; I swear I ate three servings at every meal. Even the bread! (I'm not a big bread eater, generally speaking.) The staff were all so kind. In the cafeteria area you could get tea or coffee or water or fruit any time you wanted, and it wasn't uncommon to fall into conversation with someone else there, and have little get-togethers on the couches. I really liked, too, how there was a designated "quiet" table - it has a sign on it that said it was a space for people who didn't want to talk and for others to respect their desire for silence.
Actually, I >really< dug that because there was at least one time for certain I considered sitting there, not because I didn't dig anyone's company, as though that were an undesirable thing. It was more like I felt a lot of processing going on - not like I was consciously focussing on it, but I could kind of feel it ka-chunking along in the background and I just sorta wanted to be quiet and be present to that happening without getting distracted.
BUT everyone was so friendly and nice, and I really enjoyed talking with them! Here I'll speak particularly about the group I did the retreat with. It was really a terrific bunch of people. As I heard one person put it, there weren't any yoga-snobs there. Everybody was warm and welcoming and supportive and accepting, and that made the space we created all the more one where you could just >be<, without excuses, or explanations, or worries. There was such great power in that!
One of the more fabulous experiences of that was Saturday evening when Julianne was teaching us a technique for getting into the "wheel" pose - a backbend, on other words. Remember doing them when you were like 8 years old? Tried one lately?
There were some folks who had trouble with it and maybe some who thought they just couldn't do it at all. And in teaching a variation on the pose, I suspect that the original intent was to have just a few people try it out, to sort of demo the technique. I was one of the first 2 or 3 who tried it, and I'll probably going to sound all "woo-woo" (as Julianne would put it) to describe how it felt, but I'll go there anyway.
Mind, now, in the process of doing warm-ups for my martial arts class we always take a couple of wheels (if one can), so I'm not a stranger to going up on my hands and feet. But when I went into wheel there, in that place, in the space of a fraction of a second it felt like I had firecrackers going off all along my spine and then felt something like a crazy burst of energy busting out of my chest up to the sky. To make what might sound corny, cornier still, if I had to visualize the feeling, I think of "the weapon" kicking in at the end of the movie "The Fifth Element." So call me what you will, there's no denying it was one of the most powerful or profound sensations of energy I've ever felt, so there you have it.
After I was done, I turned to the friend who had come to the retreat with me and said "you have GOT to try this!" and where before, she told me later, she had been all "uh-uh, no way, not happening for me," she braved up and decided to give it a try, and successfully did a wheel, too. And by this point, if what had been intended was to do a few demos, it morphed into EVERYONE taking a turn while everyone else applauded and cheered and it was just a really beautiful thing, and that couldn't have happened without everyone in the group being as kind and supportive as they were.
So that's a few snippets of what it's like to go on a yoga retreat. If you like the practice, and have the time and curiosity, I definitely recommend taking the opportunity if it comes your way!
In the time leading up to going to Soquel, I wasn't sure what to expect, never having gone to such an event before. I think I'm far enough along in practice to feel like I'm good for more after an hour or hour and a half class, but in signing up for a whole weekend, was I facing going at it for something like 6 hours straight? I was excited to go, but I can't deny I was a little bit apprehensive about it, too!
That being said, the first thing I have to comment on is to applaud Julianne's teaching style. She's just friggin' amazing. She's a very gentle teacher, but don't let that gentleness fool you. It might not seem that she's encouraging you to push much, and for the whole weekend there wasn't any moment that I was sweating bullets or aggressively challenging my "edge," and there weren't any 6-hour sessions. But I knew on Monday morning when I woke up that I'd have to bail on my regular Monday evening class because it felt like every muscle in my body was wrung out.
So if there weren't any 6-hour sessions, then how did it go? The pace was pretty mellow, and part of what added to that mellowness was Julianne's insistence that all of the program was optional: that we should listen to our bodies and our minds and be present for what we were ready to do, and take time off when that was right, too. So, for instance, although there was by all accounts a fantastic little music event Saturday evening under the stars in the meadow, my body was definitely telling me to sleep, so off to bed I went at 7:30 and I slept for nearly 11 hours straight, not even noticing when the 2 girls I was sharing a room with returned during the night. How awesome is that?
Another thing that I think was spectacular was the pacing and organization. On organization, for instance, the last afternoon's yoga session was spent doing partner work. Not PARTNER-partner, but work with a partner to help get into a stretch better than one can on one's own. I think, theoretically speaking, it would have been conceivable to do partner work the first evening there. But doing it last instead, after we had all had a weekend to get to know each other and feel more comfortable around each other contributed to making the whole environment more friendly and relaxing, and that made it possible to get more of a benefit from that sort of practice. As another for instance, one of the things I was really looking forward to doing was yoga outdoors. And, again theoretically, it's conceivable that we could have all schlepped out to the meadow Friday afternoon for a go at it. But we had a Friday evening yoga session first, then another one on Saturday morning before going out to the meadow Saturday afternoon, and I think that was a really good thing. It gave us a chance to get the psychological muck of our workaday lives out and start embracing the calm of the surrounding environment. Gave us a couple sessions of revisiting the motions in the controlled environment of the Pine Room's studio. That was all key to practicing outdoors, because I sure learned that all the pretty pictures aside, doing yoga outside is more challenging than it looks. We were in a grassy meadow, but the ground was still uneven and it took extra focus to do even fairly uncomplicated things. So if we had gone outdoors straight out, I don't think I'd have gotten as much benefit from it.
The pacing was also fantastic. Sure, over the course of the weekend we did a fair bit of yoga, but it was broken up into sessions in the mornings, afternoons and evenings and interspersed with different sorts of quiet or meditative time. Maybe it would be a sitting meditation in the Pine Room. Or maybe it would be a silent walking meditation out in the woods. Or a moment of lying down under the trees and just taking in all the surrounding beauty. I have read that traditionally speaking, the yoga that we all associate with in what one does when one goes to class is actually intended as a technique for preparing the body for meditation. But we don't often meditate in class, or if we do, it's not for very long. Here I got to experience, for the first time really, just how profoundly present one can feel in taking a meditation after yoga - of really and truly feeling the past and future fall away and being settled and content here and now. That was crazy awesome.
And speaking of the present beauty, there was certainly the beauty of being out in the redwoods. But being at the Center there was incredibly amazing. There was no cell phone reception there. No phones in the rooms. No TVs. No computers. No traffic. Outside the studio, on the site, everyone - the Buddhist monks and nuns, the other visitors or employees - were soft-spoken and friendly. In the evenings, you could hear chanting emanating from the temple. You could hear the birds sing. I swear you could hear the dust fall. Sometimes you'd hear chimes ringing out there, somewhere. It was so calm and peaceful there.
And friendly and supportive. The food that was served was just the bomb; I swear I ate three servings at every meal. Even the bread! (I'm not a big bread eater, generally speaking.) The staff were all so kind. In the cafeteria area you could get tea or coffee or water or fruit any time you wanted, and it wasn't uncommon to fall into conversation with someone else there, and have little get-togethers on the couches. I really liked, too, how there was a designated "quiet" table - it has a sign on it that said it was a space for people who didn't want to talk and for others to respect their desire for silence.
Actually, I >really< dug that because there was at least one time for certain I considered sitting there, not because I didn't dig anyone's company, as though that were an undesirable thing. It was more like I felt a lot of processing going on - not like I was consciously focussing on it, but I could kind of feel it ka-chunking along in the background and I just sorta wanted to be quiet and be present to that happening without getting distracted.
BUT everyone was so friendly and nice, and I really enjoyed talking with them! Here I'll speak particularly about the group I did the retreat with. It was really a terrific bunch of people. As I heard one person put it, there weren't any yoga-snobs there. Everybody was warm and welcoming and supportive and accepting, and that made the space we created all the more one where you could just >be<, without excuses, or explanations, or worries. There was such great power in that!
One of the more fabulous experiences of that was Saturday evening when Julianne was teaching us a technique for getting into the "wheel" pose - a backbend, on other words. Remember doing them when you were like 8 years old? Tried one lately?
There were some folks who had trouble with it and maybe some who thought they just couldn't do it at all. And in teaching a variation on the pose, I suspect that the original intent was to have just a few people try it out, to sort of demo the technique. I was one of the first 2 or 3 who tried it, and I'll probably going to sound all "woo-woo" (as Julianne would put it) to describe how it felt, but I'll go there anyway.
Mind, now, in the process of doing warm-ups for my martial arts class we always take a couple of wheels (if one can), so I'm not a stranger to going up on my hands and feet. But when I went into wheel there, in that place, in the space of a fraction of a second it felt like I had firecrackers going off all along my spine and then felt something like a crazy burst of energy busting out of my chest up to the sky. To make what might sound corny, cornier still, if I had to visualize the feeling, I think of "the weapon" kicking in at the end of the movie "The Fifth Element." So call me what you will, there's no denying it was one of the most powerful or profound sensations of energy I've ever felt, so there you have it.
After I was done, I turned to the friend who had come to the retreat with me and said "you have GOT to try this!" and where before, she told me later, she had been all "uh-uh, no way, not happening for me," she braved up and decided to give it a try, and successfully did a wheel, too. And by this point, if what had been intended was to do a few demos, it morphed into EVERYONE taking a turn while everyone else applauded and cheered and it was just a really beautiful thing, and that couldn't have happened without everyone in the group being as kind and supportive as they were.
So that's a few snippets of what it's like to go on a yoga retreat. If you like the practice, and have the time and curiosity, I definitely recommend taking the opportunity if it comes your way!
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