Running a retreat in India with the family in tow!
The Goa retreat may have brought with it some challenges, but it was an amazing retreat nonetheless and I know that I am not the only Goan adventurer who is feeling a pang for the nourishing energy of Satsanga Retreat Centre and the warmth of Goa.
One of the Yoga Sutras talks about the obstacles that one may experience on the spiritual path, and while these may include such inflictions as disease and laziness, we were all tested in our own way with obstacles on the path to India and the potential spiritual growth that lay ahead.
Sri Swami Satchidananda writes “…Yoga practice is like an obstacle race; many obstructions are purposely put in the way for us to pass through. They are there to make us understand and express our capacitates. We all have that strength, but we don’t seem to know it. We seem to need to be challenged and tested in order to understand our own capacities. In fact, this is natural law. If a river just flows easily, the water in the river does no express its power. But once you put an obstacle to the flow by constructing a dam, then you can see its strength in the form of tremendous electrical power”.
It seemed that many of us needed to demonstrate our strength to overcome the obstacles placed in our path! For example, there were a number of us challenged in the preparations for the retreat as the Indian authorities, in their infinite wisdom, have made it increasingly difficult for Channel Island residents to obtain a tourist visa. No longer can we obtain a simple and cheaper online e-visa, instead we have to apply by post, at increased cost and hassle.
I admit that I found the whole visa thing an incredibly stressful experience, mainly because I had to complete the process four times, for each family member, and had to pay for it four times too, £140 each! This, may I add, after trying to obtain an e-visa (because I didn’t at that point know that we could no longer obtain e-visas, the system only changed in the spring) and losing £80 on that pointless application.
Then there were the flights, as Jet Airways with whom we originally booked our outbound flights went bankrupt. I was keen to take night flights, thinking that this may minimise the challenge of travelling with young children, so this did limit the options available to us. Furthermore, as Dabolim airport in Goa is a military airport, international flights are only able to arrive during the night, so this adds another consideration.
Then, about two weeks before we were due to travel, Air India cancelled our flight out of Goa and onto Mumbai for our connecting flight home. By then I’d learned little of the lesson, that one clearly has to go with the flow, and try not to get stressed about things that are completely beyond our control. For us it just meant a night in Mumbai, and in many respects (and as it turned out), this was a positive and welcomed experience.
So all of this before we’d even left Guernsey! Still, it was all character building and there were definitely a few of us learning the lessons before we’d even got going. It’s like one of my friend’s, Alice, said, “don’t fight India, or India will fight you back”. So true!
The four of us, me, E and the two children, left Guernsey on time and arrived into Gatwick in time, from there a train ride to Victoria and a bus ride up to Paddington by where we had arranged a day-use hotel from which to base ourselves ahead of our flight that evening. We thought we were terribly well organised, getting a hotel here, not only because we had to meet someone to take possession of a large pink suitcase containing taps, which we were taking with us to our friend Emma in Goa (don’t ask, long story that always makes me chuckle!), but also because it was close to the Heathrow Express.
Taps in our possession and the children starting to tire at the end of the day (having fitted in a walk to the Princess Diana Memorial playground in Hyde Park for the children to play), we made our way towards the Heathrow Express platform at Paddington Station, Ewan having already bought the tickets earlier in the day (super organised see), only to find that all Heathrow Express trains had been cancelled. Arghh! So it was to follow, an expensive taxi ride for us instead. I should have known then that this was setting the scene for the journey ahead, but nonetheless it was clearly a process that we had to go through, for whatever reason, character building I suppose.
Heathrow was manic. I had forgotten how manic it can get. You need more than three hours these days to get through the whole check-in, security, obtaining-water for the flight etc. process, especially with children in tow. We thought we had ample time, I’d even checked out where we might find the children’s play area, but due to the chaos of Air India check-in, we ended up running past the children’s play area, because by then our gate was closing. As is always the case though, there was plenty of time once we had boarded the plane to sit around and wait, wishing that we had not rushed so much to get to the flight in the first place! Another lesson learned!
The flight from Heathrow to Delhi went without drama, but then we were delayed in Delhi for a good few hours, to the extent that we missed our connecting flight from Mumbai to Goa, so had to sit around Mumbai airport for a good few hours too; always a joy with children! The luggage went missing for a time too upon arrival into Mumbai. I couldn’t help thinking how typical it was, that our bags should go missing when we were in possession of the taps, which Emma was desperate to have so that she could finally get running water in her new kitchen.
This was most definitely a lesson in non-attachment, and I concluded that the only thing I was slightly sad about losing was my Tibetan singing bowl and my Yoga file, plus the crystals that I had brought with me as gifts for the retreat attendees. The rest of the stuff was just stuff that could be replaced, we’d managed to travel light with only 36 kilos between us all, which was much less than the 100 kilos we had available to us, and I wasn’t attached to it. “So what?”, I finally thought.
As I reached this conclusion, by then at some early hour in the morning at Mumbai airport, me chasing our giggling boys around the arrivals hall (much to the delight of the elderly Indian ladies sitting and watching us), Ewan confirmed that our bags had been located, we just needed to wait for them to be delivered. More entertaining of children under the bemused and amused eyes of the Indian women who were desperate to get a hold of Eben and give him a squeeze.
This we encountered frequently, lovely Indian ladies of all ages, desperate to pick up Eben and have their photo taken with him, and with Elijah too if he’s indulge their requests, which he did eventually, disinterested as he was to all the attention. The main comment was about the length of the boys’ hair and how they look more like girls. “Yes, we know”, we were frequently saying, “but it’s less unusual back at home where we live”, although when I think about it, we don’t know many boys with long hair here either!
Finally, we arrived into Goa during the middle of the night/early morning, as we had been keen to avoid, and I did wonder at the ludicrous nature of our route to Goa all in the quest to avoid this exact outcome. We arrived into rain too, heavy rain, most unusual, the monsoon was meant to have finished.
The next day, it was still raining. Heavy rain. Not that this stopped us from having fun. It was wonderful to see our friends, Emma and Olaf, the owners of the retreat centre, and their beautiful boys Lomax (5) and Leo (2), plus all the beautiful staff who work at the centre and live in the local village. Our boys were grateful to have playmates and books and toys on hand, and there followed much playing and swinging from the indoor swing and interaction with the resident animals.
This was yet another challenge for us, when it came to the children at least, because Eben (who had turned 3 the day before we travelled) loves dogs but has no awareness of the fact that some dogs are kinder and more child-friendly than others. By the end of the trip he finally recognised this, but initially he was trying to hug and kiss all three of the dogs and one of them, Simba, was not so sure about this, and I’m not sure Shanti was that taken either! Prana, the friendliest sandy coloured dog, became the firm favourite and Eben was frequently found trying to pick him up or lie on him, or generally bother him.
Seeing Goa through a child’s eyes was interesting, especially from the animal side of things. There was the novelty of the frogs and the lizards in our room, and then seeing cows in the roads, and the packs of dogs who frequented some of the beaches. Our first afternoon on the beach at Vagator, for example, during a brief break in the rain, a couple of dogs followed us to our spot in the shade, and were hanging around on account of the fact that the children were eating biscuits. Eben was desperate to interact with the dogs, but these are stray dogs, and it was certainly a challenge trying to educate him that these dogs are not like the dogs on the beaches at home who have owners and who are often on leads.
Those first few days, the rain continued to fall relentlessly from the grey-laden sky and soon the winds whipped up – there was a cyclone sitting offshore that wasn’t moving, just our luck! If ever there was the lesson in letting go of attachment to outcome and going with the flow then this was it. I have been working with both this year, as part of boundary work (the theme of the year it seems, not only for me but for others too as it is in the “field’) and letting go of the need to control outcomes, be that taking responsibility for other people’s experience or trying to force things to happen. If there’s one thing I absolutely cannot control, however, it is the weather!
I’ll admit that this awareness didn’t stop me fretting! The thought of 19 lovely students travelling all the way to Goa and being met with relentless rain was not ideal. There followed a sleepless night the evening before the retreat began, as I listened to the relentless rain falling heavily, knowing that some of the ladies were arriving during this time, and some with wonderful open-top bathrooms – no need for a shower with that rain, they just needed to stand in their bathrooms with the heaven’s pouring down upon them!
Fortunately, by the Saturday morning and the arrival of the last remaining guests, the rain had eased and while the forecast had suggested rain all week, we were happy to go with our taxi driver’s prediction that the cyclone was moving away and sunnier weather was ahead. He was right! By the time the retreat began later that afternoon, the sun had reappeared and life looked decidedly brighter.
As for the retreat itself; if there is one thing I love more than anything else (bar the family and writing) is teaching yoga, and especially teaching yoga in the Shiva Shala at Satsanga, which for many years was a dream. I felt enormous gratitude to the students who had travelled so far to help to make this dream a reality, and I had to catch myself at times, because as a teacher who teaches most of these students regularly at home, it was a blessing to have the time and the space within which to help them explore and deepen their practice and for me to share what I have learned with them in more ways than I can at home.
This was my third trip to Satsanga and it was as beautiful as ever. It’s difficult to explain the attention to detail and the nurturing energy until you have experienced it for yourself, from the friendly smiles, to the flowers that were carefully and lovingly placed around the centre, to the men who cleared leaves from the pool, swept the paths, and made sure we felt safe with 24-hour security watch, to the women who cleaned, cooked and washed for us. Nothing was too much trouble, and no one ever imposed on your space.
The food was a definite highlight and I am grateful to the local women who lovingly prepared this for us – no one was sick and all dietary requirements were catered for, including one of the ladies who had a severe nut allergy and various other dietary restrictions. For her, it was a real treat, because the majority of the dishes she was able to eat, and for once she didn’t feel as if she needed to be treated differently.
The centre is strictly vegetarian although the majority of the dishes were vegan to allow for the various dietary requirements. This was the most amazingly tasty and nourishing home-cooked vegan food I have ever had the fortune to taste, and I am missing it very much now I am back home. It was served buffet-style so that you could help yourself and help myself I did!
Breakfast composed of a variety of cut tropical fruits, plus soaked chia seeds and a quinoa-puff cereal. There was also a choice of breads, porridge and another warm option, maybe a local savoury dish or pancakes, it always smelled yummy but I never managed more than just the fruit.
We were often away from the centre for lunch, heading straight to the beach after breakfast, to get the children off-site and give the guests some quiet space, but also because we rather enjoyed travelling up north and exploring the beaches, playing in the sea and drinking chai!
I am assured that lunch was yummy, and certainly if it was anything like the evening meals then this is true. There was always so much choice and so many different flavours, and a real range of vegetables too. There was a mix of rice, noodles, chapatti and dosa. It makes me miss it, just writing about it, and I’m not usually a foodie!
As for the yoga, this took place twice daily (apart from Wednesday when we took a break in the afternoon) in the stunning wooden-floored Shiva Shala, so called because it features an amazing bronze statue of Nataraja (the dancing Shiva) so that you cannot help but welcome Shiva into your life come what may – he being the destroyer of the trinity, including Brahma, the creator, and Vishnu, the preserver.
We embraced mouna in the morning, and therefore arrived to class in silence, able to enjoy the morning sounds of the birds and insect life outside! Here we practiced some breathing exercises together before sitting in silence, building up a minute a day so that by the end of the retreat we were sitting for 11 minutes in silent meditation. This may not sound very much for seasoned meditation practitioners, but was a real achievement for those who had not sat for any length of time previously.
The rest of the morning class was active in nature, and everyone rose to the challenge. Not once was there any moaning about the heat, or about the fans being on too much or not enough, these practitioners just got on with it! it was a delight for me to have a whole cupboard of props available to use during the classes (mine are sadly all packed away in storage awaiting the moment I finally have my own yoga space!) so that we were supported where needed and were able to explore our practice.
It was also a joy to have wall space available to us too. Much of my training was undertaken using walls and it really does add another dimension to practice and testing limitations (often of the mind, more than the body!). The walls helped many of the students to access inversions and backbends in a way that they might not have been able to otherwise. Furthermore, we were able to consider alignment principles, and experience postures in a different way – even on our yoga mats we get stuck in ruts and in habits so it is good to challenge these and maybe shift our perspective on life generally.
The afternoon class was softer in nature and we often chanted together, learning the Om asatoma mantra (sometimes known as the peace mantra), but also singing devotional mantra and exploring ‘Om” as well as chanting the Bija mantra regularly. There was gentle movement, some yoni yoga (embraced by our male participant too), restorative yoga and daily yoga nidra too.
I invited Chiara one evening, an Italian singer of the Dhrupad tradition, who sang to us on the last retreat; she is fab! Dhrupad is a form of music to bring the mind to a peaceful and meditative state. It is an ancient science of sound and music that aims to develop human consciousness and its corresponding nervous system. An original form of Indian classical music, it has retained its pure form to date – it’s ancient, beautiful and powerful and I was certainly moved by the experience and felt a moment of heart opening and momentary expansion.
I also arranged a singing workshop another evening with a lady called Natalie, also a Reiki Master, who has lived in Goa for many years and uses the voice for healing. I was joined by 9 other lovely ladies and together we found our voices and managed to create a beautiful sound together. I was proud of us for embracing the fear and joining together and supporting my efforts in arranging this.
On our penultimate night I arranged a sound bath, which was unfortunately not as enjoyable as I had hoped. Simply because by then we had created a rather special group energy and it was a lesson for me in bringing someone else in to manage this, who was not part of the group energy. This meant that her resonance did not resonate with us as a group per se, and therefore it was not as restful an experience, or indeed as much of an expanded experience as I and others on the retreat know that sound baths can be (we’ve been spoilt in Guernsey!). We live and learn!
But really, this didn’t matter. The fact the group energy was so strong and had taken on so much of its own energy was testament to the positive attitude of all the students and their willingness and openness to embrace each other and all these new experiences. For me it was a joy to witness friendships formed, and everyone getting on with it, with non of the drama that can sometimes accompany these retreats, with different personalities and needs.
It was also a joy to see so many embracing what they could of Goa in their down time. While we as a family may have limited our excursions to exploring the beaches, with only a short trip to the weekly famed Anjuna market, others ventured further afield. There were visits to temples and to the Spice Farm, to Mapsa, the main centre of the area, to local eateries and villages, and even a sunset-viewing drink from one of the beach bars.
There was also a lot of lying around and chatting beside the pool, and of course swimming - Elijah finally learned to swim properly on this trip! I took great delight in swimming in the evenings once the children had gone to bed, and I was joined by a few other ladies on a couple of the nights. On the last retreat we had managed a full moon swim, but this retreat coincided with the new moon, so there were star-swims instead!
The retreat was, without doubt, an unforgettable experience, that allowed all of us to get away from it all and dive deeply into our yoga and spiritual practice. You can’t help but be spiritually nourished and expanded, practicing in that beautiful Shiva Shala with all the energy of years of yoga practice and meditation that has taken place in that space under the watchful eye of Shiva. There is also no doubt that staying at Satsanga leaves you feeling nourished and nurtured and with a renewed sense of wellbeing that continued after the retreat finished.
Not to say that India wasn’t still challenging us as she does. We left the retreat centre at 7pm the same day that the retreat finished, for our 11.35pm flight up to Mumbai. To say we were tired might be an understatement, given that I had taught about 22 hours of yoga, and Ewan had looked after the children during this time, all the while tested by our 3-year old testing boundaries. Twice he managed to run away from Ewan and turned up in the Yoga Shala while I was teaching! Nothing like teaching tree pose with a small child in arms!!
So we could have done without the delay to our flight that meant sitting around the airport with the children until well after midnight. The highlight was the fact we attracted a number of Indian children who were keen to play games with the boys, their ability to speak English was just amazing and here they were some of them only 6 years old.
By the time we made it to our hotel in Mumbai it was 3.35am. Not quite what you have in mind when you have finished a retreat, and needless to say body clocks being body clocks we were all up by 7am! Still the hotel was a treat, and we are grateful to our travel agent, Lisa, for having taken pity on us with all the flight changes we had encountered which meant we needed to stay a night in Mumbai; and we were treated to pure luxury and we relished every moment of it!
We enjoyed our limited time in the city too, taking a tuk tuk (at Elijah’s request) to see some of the boats and the beaches, passing shanty towns and the luxury buildings that lies side-by-side. Our tuk tuk driver, appreciating we had limited time, stopped enroute at a building crowded by Indian tourists. We had no idea what it was but took an obligatory photo anyhow, thinking maybe it was a famous temple, but when I later googled it, I discovered it was the home of a famous Bollywood actor! This is certainly a city that deserves more time and more exploring.
We chanced upon a café near to our hotel that served the most wonderful India chai. This felt like a gift from India before the long journey back home. The caffeine was also much needed, because after only 3.5 hours sleep post-retreat, we had to keep going until our 10pm flight that evening. We had learnt by then the need to get to the airport really early, and this certainly made the whole experience less stressful – I even managed a final Thali.
The flights home were uneventful fortunately. Admittedly it would have been a joy to take a direct flight back to the UK, rather than a short hop to Dubai and a wait there, before the longer leg, at 1.30am back to the UK. The boys slept on the short hop and then in pushchairs throughout Dubai, but Ewan and I had to keep going. I think we managed 3 hours of broken sleep on that journey.
I admit that while we are experts in sleep deprivation having had two boys who still, 6 years on, don’t sleep through the night without waking us at least once, the 6.5 hours of broken sleep split over two nights, following the end of an intensive week-long retreat, was a whole other level of sleep deprivation, that I don’t want to experience again if I can avoid it! We are only now beginning, slowly, slowly, to feel more human, especially now the children have stopped waking at 5am!
Sleep deprivation aside, it was a wonderful retreat and I miss Satsanga and our friends dearly. India was as wonderful as ever, and the challenges perhaps necessary for us to learn the lessons she was trying to teach us. Namely, go with the flow, non-attachment to outcome and running retreats in India with the family in tow is a sure sign of madness!!
In all seriousness, though, I did question whether this was some form of self-harm that I had set-up for myself – teaching a retreat in India with two small children on site and enduring all that travel. It’s something I am still pondering, because these patterns do have a way of playing out in our lives, even though we may try and convince ourselves that it is character building and all in the quest for love and light.
Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed all of it, and would love to teach at Satsanga again, but all the challenges did get my attention! Perhaps I was also, on some level, testing out the superwoman role. This is being tested for many of us women at the moment – do we want to be superwomen? No, I can honestly say I don’t. It’s an old paradigm, that we women need to move on from now.
How? I don’t know. But in our quest to ‘rise, sister, rise’ I do feel that we’ve got ourselves trapped even more into the ‘being of all things’ with this pressure we’ve put on ourselves to run a household and run a business, like it’s a badge of honour now, the latter, rather than the former. I don’t get off on the ‘running the business’ thing anyway, because what is that all about anyway, who cares?! Just do what you love and love what you do.
Which is my problem. Because I do what I love and love what I do, and somehow that takes me on crazy adventures to India! Thank you Shiva for calling me back, and thank you to our most beautiful friends Emma and Olaf for making it as easy as possible when we were there. Thank you also, to you most wonderful yoga students who joined me, I really miss you all and look forward to seeing you at class soon!
*Many more photos can be found on the Beinspired Facebook pages.