From a plane, sometimes you can easily determine if what you are looking down upon is a mountain or a hill. You are in a large jet with 150 other people and when you see something that looks like it could invade the sky, it is a mountain. When you are on a small plane with just a prop or two and flying low with 12 other people, sky invaders are much more prevalent. Nosara is a lot like that. Are we low or is that land mass high? It is a place where one can slow down enough to feel perspective, see subtlety.
The Bodhi Tree Lodge we were staying at in Nosara was on a hill. At its apex was the communal areas like the pool, juice bar, restaurant and most of the yoga shalas. On the sides of the hill were the rooms, some shared and some more private. From the lodge’s highest point, you could look to the south and see a large white building on a distant hill or mountain. That would be are next stop, The Blue Spirit lodge of yoga retreat center.
The area surrounding the white building with red ceramic tiles was greener than the other areas that have been taking the full brunt of the drought– the rainy season is still months away in earnest. The greenness is supported by repurposing of grey water and other green techniques. Because of this, four or five groups of howler monkeys have moved surprisingly close to fill their bellies and project their grunts to protect their turf…er…trees.
Out next yogi-atic, event was the opening session of the Kundalini Yoga Retreat and Gong Therapy training. Both of us did the former and Lisa attended the later. The leaders of the sessions were, Mehtab and Guru Karam, husband and wife and founders of Yoga Yoga in Austin, Tx. Yoga pundits (can you have yoga pundits?) have called Kundalini Yoga, “Huff and Puff” yoga due to its use of various breathing exercises like Breath of Fire, alternative nostril breathing, etc. Most of these folks have only attended a handful of classes or none at all. Kundalini Yoga and can be every bit as physically demanding at any other type of yoga, in addition to strengthening internal systems like the mind and the nervous system. To believe in one thing, doesn’t mean you don’t believe in something else. There is subtlety in us humans. We are not zeros or ones. we are practitioners.
Both the yoga and the gong training happened on the Blue Spirit’s top floor yoga shala called the Sky-Mind Hall with dramatic panorama views of the coast. Yoga practice was twice a day and each evening there was a gong relaxation session. Douglas usually wandered the beach to town after the morning session to rent a surf board and get some practice in whilst Lisa attended the gong training.
The Gong Therapy Certification training with Mehtab was a fun 15-hour certification program. We learned about different planetary gongs and how to use them as well as the role of astrology in yoga and gong therapy. In addition, we learned how to evaluate clients to create a healing gong therapy session.
Yoga, Gong, Surfing, Sunsets and Anti-Monkey Butt Powder abound. Okay, the last one is an interesting tale. We met a couple that had lived in Austin and then split their time between Austin and a town in Colorado and now call the later home. They were co-inventors a product for construction workers, motocross riders and just about anyone who need to keep Monkey Butt at bay.
We had three vegetarian meals a day included with our stay at the Blue Spirit. Black beans and rice were at every meal and there were scrambled eggs at breakfast and fish every other day. We found the secret to ‘bumping’ up these meals to be adding a local hot sauce to just about everything. Eventually animal protein called us and we found ourselves back at La Luna again, and, another day, at the resturant called Burgers and Beers for a couple of gourmet hamburgers.
One of the excursions that you could sign up and pay extra for was Zip Lining. Originally, we were going to pass on this since we’ve done it before elsewhere, but there was a sign-up issue where a couple of folks were being pushed into a second session the day before the main one, so we joined them- giving strength in numbers. The session we joined included a mother with her nearly 5-year-old, around 16 fitness, bootcamp “Warriors” and us 6 or 7 Kundalini yogis. The weather had moved in and by the time we reached the top of the mountain (or was it a large hill), rain and clouds moved in. We were all drenched before getting on the first of the eleven platforms. Sometimes the clouds were below us and sometimes above and sometimes you just saw a metal cable that you were hooked onto heading into a cloud bank with no sense of what was on the other side. From the beginning, you could see fear in some of the warrior eyes, and once we all hit the second stage, realized the wet cables have a lot less friction to slow you down, and had a member of our party and one from the warrior party fail a bit in slowing down, the warriors were very worried and were talking about other ways down. Our group, just hopping on each run, yelling “Wahe Guru” and letting it rip. By the last couple of runs, the mother with the kid were inverting upside down. It makes you wonder how that kid is going to grow up– Fearless? Adrenalin junky? And this leads one to the thought of how so much of what we become later in life is formed by experiences of youth. Finally, how does one break past the experiences and imagine boundaries of the past. It was obvious from the warriors, doing a hundreds of burpees and push-ups, can make you physically strong. But that is only half of the book of you. A book that is never finished while you are alive.
