A yoga retreat on Bribie Island Friday, February 12 to 14

It’s Valentine’s Day weekend (and Chinese New Year coincidentally) and Tanya is officially done her practicum in Adelaide and is flying out to Brisbane to meet Dane on Saturday. What a perfect time for me to jet off and let them spend a weekend together. A company based in Brisbane was offering a weekend yoga retreat on Bribie Island (just north of the city) and I thought it would be a perfect mini-holiday where I just might learn something new.
I really had no idea what style of yoga it was but soon found out after a delicious vegetarian Friday night dinner and our first yoga session. Anthony, the instructor, learned tantric yoga from a master in India and spent several years there with his partner, the lovely Nina. I’d always thought tantric was hippy mumbo-jumbo and involved having sex for hours on end. While tantric sex is one facet of the school, the yoga aspect focuses more on the spiritual practise of yoga and seeks to connect the body through asanas (yoga postures) and the mind. Anthony combined physically challenging yoga sessions, where poses are held up to seven minutes (a lot different from the fast forms I’m used to back home) with meditations, lectures, group activities and videos. It turned out to be an incredibly enlightening and empowering weekend, and I also had a ton of fun with all the great people at the retreat.
Friday night was the first foray for many of us into meditation. I’d done a bit of it in China four years previous on a study-abroad program, but was definitely out of practise with the art of thinking about nothing. It’s surprisingly difficult. And Friday, February 12 was a very auspicious night for meditating, according to Anthony, because the astrological calendar only aligned in such a way once a year. Apparently the universe is much more receptive and accessible all night. It would be a 50 minute meditation and I was a bit scared I wouldn’t be able to sit cross-legged for that long. It’s important to keep your spine straight during meditation so the energy flows correctly. Anthony told us to concentrate on the chakra (energy source) above our heads and let the music move through us. I’m not sure how long I had been sitting there but I felt myself falling into a trance. I could feel energy pulsing above my head and eventually at the sides. It then moved in waves through the middle of my head and down my chest. The feeling is indescribable. I then began to see flashes of white light but it was incredibly hard to stay focused and the sensation didn’t last long. Combined with my sore butt, I tried to re-focus but it’s definitely a process. The experience was undeniably powerful; something I have never felt.
As we were going through the various teachings of yoga Anthony mentioned many principles taken from Lao-Tzu, the founder of Daoism. This brought me back to the time I had spent in China and what I had learned and seen there from this great, ancient master. China had been a deeply spiritual time for me, the first time in my life I had ever felt truly connected with a higher power. Whether it was a connection with Daoism or Christianity I cannot say and I don’t think it really matters either. What did matter was the effect the teachings had on my internal self. Like so many of us, I struggle to find time to do all of the things I want to do and continuing a spiritual practise is one of those. When I returned home from China, I kept reading and learning but it soon fell by the wayside as school and work took its’ toll. What I heard Anthony saying this weekend brought it all back to me and the importance of spirituality in my life. Combining these spiritual aspects with the magnetic, de-stressing effects of a yoga practise is perfect for me.
Before we all left on Sunday, we had a love meditation which many later affirmed was the highlight of the weekend. We all sat in a circle and took turns in the center. Our goal was to send love to whoever was in the center through our heart chakras. As people rotated into the middle I concentrated all of my energy on my heart and felt it began to get warmer and felt a line of energy leave my body and go to the person in the centre. When it came my turn to receive, I was astonished. My heart began burning and I felt waves of energy pushing me in all directions but I remained steadfastly upright. The emotion of that moment was overwhelming and while talking to others afterwards, learned that many felt like crying joyous tears when they left the circle.
This all may sound like New Age crap and let me assure you, I’ve always been wary of kooky sounding alternative therapies but after what I felt in that meditation circle, I can honestly say there is more to being a human being than purely the physical body. We are surrounded by energy fields and are capable of transmitting them to others and using them within our own bodies for healing purposes. The great yogis can make their bodies levitate (another event I witnessed in China at a Daoist temple on the sacred mountain Hua Shan) and have cured everything from broken bones to cancer. The power of the mind should never be underestimated and can work wonders where modern medicine cannot.
And as for the spiritual side of it all- it’s all very simple really. When we become more focused on seeking internal peace and happiness and less focused on external forces, such as material possessions, then we will find true happiness. Everyone wants to be happy but who is really happy? The man with the big house and fancy car or the man who feels completely fulfilled and is sure of his purpose in life.
Realizing one’s purpose is another key to happiness. We were all sent here for a reason- nothing is an accident and there is a divine purpose for all of us. Whether we reach that purpose or not is up to us. No one wants to realize on his or her deathbed that they’ve wasted their life or have not done the things they wanted to do.
What is really important to people? We watched a video with Dr. Dyer, a famous American psychologist and author, on his findings of the spiritual yoga practice. He interviewed a large group of men and women, before they started the practice and asked them to rank what was most important in their lives. Number one for the men was wealth, followed by respect and accomplishments. After a few months of the spiritual yoga practise, Dr. Dyer interviewed the same men. Number one this time was inner-peace, something never even mentioned the first time around. Other values, such as family and honesty made the list and previous notions of wealth and prosperity were abandoned.
Number one for the women at the beginning of the study was family, unsurprising since women are always taking care of other people and often gain fulfillment through the needs of others. Independence was second, very important for many women. Another high ranking value was physical appearance, also unsurprising since women are so often judged by their appearance. During the second interview, the highest ranking value among the women was self-love. Women so often forget to love themselves in the quest to love and nurture everyone else. Inner peace and self-fulfillment were also there. It’s worth thinking about how much better a mother, wife, daughter, sister and grand-daughter you can become when you love yourself first.