A Bali Recap

Here is my long winded, long overdue, recap of my yoga retreat to Bali.

I decided to go to Bali on a whim. I had never thought of it as a place I wanted to go, honestly I had never really thought about it at all. When my yoga teacher said she was planning a retreat there I instantly made the decision that I was going to attend at retreat. Never mind that I had absolutely no savings or plan of how to come up with the money. Never mind that I had already used up my two weeks of vacation for the year. Never mind I didn't even know where Bali existed on the globe. I made the decision to go and I followed through.

This in itself is a pretty big accomplishment for me. Give up the power of planning a vacation to a relative stranger and pay her a lot of money for it? Not something I would usually do. Some people love using travel agents but part of the fun of traveling for me is scoping out the best hotel locations and flight deals. I went without researching anything except what to pack and how much most things cost, I didn't find out about temples or beaches or any other type of sightseeing attraction. I left everything up to my teacher and trusted her to create a memorable experience for me. Releasing that element of control was a departure from my usual ways and it felt really good. 

In practice though I struggled with leaving the plan up to someone else. I am a planner by nature. I've talked about this before. I need to have an idea of where my time is going even if it's dedicated to a West Wing marathon. In Bali I had no choice but to let my teacher and the resort owner decide what my options were. I was frustrated without a seeing full itinerary upon arrival. As much as I had hoped I would become a go with the flow person the moment I landed in stepped foot on the island, I couldn't force myself to enjoy waking up without an idea of what was happening that day. I thought going in that this trip would teach me to become the manic-pixie-dream-girl I always wished I was. "Of course I'll be able to ignore all the impulses that have led me to my planner state and just relish every moment in this beautiful place." I thought. Boy, was I wrong.

I spent a good portion of the trip frustrated and lost. It's humbling to say because no one wants to return from a two week international vacation and have anything less than wonderful memories but it is true. I took a dance lesson, visited some stellar temples, indulged in massages and saw a really cool stepping performance but most of the time I was not having fun.

Instead I got so much more than a fun time.

The retreat gave me the opportunity to practice really being present. This idea gets thrown around our busy, work oriented culture too often but in this situation there is no better term. I was essentially forced, through the nature of the circumstance, into processing emotions as they came up. Instead of holding grudges toward the people that surrounded me 24/7 or the situation I had little power to change, I focused on feeling that frustration as it came up. Every time I felt myself getting annoyed or upset I would excuse myself, find a comfortable place to sit in my bedroom or near the yoga space and let myself indulge in the upsetness for as long as I needed. Sometimes, to my surprise, this would include allowing myself a good ugly cry. Then usually after about 15 minutes I felt totally relieved of that emotion and I would join back up with the group refreshed.

Processing this emotions immediately is the opposite of how I've done it my entire life. I am a slow feeler. I like to ruminate in my emotions for days or even weeks before I let myself express them. I like to think about my emotions so much that I am able to apply some logical explanation to them as well. I have never been good at living in the moment this way. In Bali that was not an option. I forced myself to get through the emotional messiness with some sympathy, compassion and as little logic as possible. It turned out this made feeling the emotions and also getting over the situation so much faster. Getting over things more quickly is a concept I have been working toward lately and I couldn't have asked for a better location for a crash course in how to do that.

I went in to this retreat with no realistic idea of what to expect and I ended up with so much more than I could have asked for. In the three weeks that have passed since, I've become aware that a break through like this will leave me forever changed but will take consistent work to retain the lesson. I acknowledge how easy it is to process emotions when the only thing I have to focus on is the emotion itself. The realities of life afford little time for this. So I continue the work of of growing into the person I want to be while balancing reality and remembering the significant experiences that have brought me to this point.

Onward!