On a crisp Sunday morning in Grand Lake, the last yoga practice of our retreat was winding down. Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be” had just went over and suddenly a voice like an angel comes out of the speakers, “I’ve done so many things wrong, I don’t know if I can do right.” A yogi next to me let out a sigh, and then our yoga teacher at the front of the room said, “I’m not fucking around.”
Meaning, she’s bringing it with this playlist.
And so I settle into the pose.
A few days earlier I was at work at the University of Colorado prepping for the start of another school year when a group text came in from the duo known as Rock Your Bliss: Jacki Carr, a local motivational public speaker and goal coach, and Mary Beth LaRue of renowned Wanderlust yogi fame. Together they are Rock Your Bliss, a company that “makes shift happen through their unique combination of yoga and coaching which brings action to intention.”
The ladies were inviting me to their yoga retreat courtesy of Carbon38. I think it took me a total of two hours to ask my boss, set up my out of office email and tie up a few loose ends before I was out of the office and heading home to pack for a four-day weekend in the Rockies! I needed this break; although it was summer, I had been having a stressful bout at work and I was happy to have a break before school was about to start again. I was ready for fresh mountain air, bonding with strangers, and if this retreat was like others I’d been on then I was sure I would find something about myself to “work on.”
The retreat began with a metaphor that would carry through the remainder of the weekend. Jacki talked to us about the Sequoia trees and how they need fire to reproduce, how the seeds grow from the ashes. She said, “Sometimes we quite literally have to burn shit down to grow.” And it was then she introduced the idea of limiting beliefs and offering them up to the roaring fire in the old wood burning stove in our cabin.
I thought of old beliefs I had at one time carried before I found yoga, before I worked with Jacki, thoughts like, “No one will ever want me because I’m reproductively challenged.” And I thought for a moment, is that thought still true? No. And others came up, things like, “I’m too ‘crazy’ to be in a loving relationship.” And I thought, is that still true? No. At the moment I was happy in a fresh new relationship. And so I thought some more, what is true? And it came together… maybe something that had been brewing beneath the surface, my body trying to tell me. I had a limiting belief, and it was “I suck at hiking.” And I knew I had some fear around the hikes we’d be going on this weekend. Last year I had fallen on a snowy hike that I was wholly unprepared for, and it had set off a chain of events in my body. I was already signed up to do Yoga Teacher Training at the time and so I pushed my body to its physical brink on a leg that I was healing myself (I have another limiting belief about western medicine- but that’s a story for another time). And because so many parts of my body were compensating for my leg, months after teacher training I noticed my back kept seizing up in savasana, and so I had quit doing yoga. I realized all of this stemmed from my, “I suck at hiking” belief and so I wrote it down and threw it to the flames and promised myself I’d make it on at least one of the hikes on the retreat.
The next day on the hike I definitely brought up the rear of the group, always the last to arrive at the spots Jacki had designated to talk to us about the forest. I was fine until she told us that on the next leg of the hike she wanted us to hike in silence — it was in this silence that I could hear my heart beating hard and my lungs grasping for air. I began to panic. I told my hiking mate, the amazing community cultivator at Rock Your Bliss, Jenny Newell, that we needed to keep talking because I was freaking out and hearing myself struggle for air was making me have more anxiety. So we broke the rules and chatted since the rest of the group was far enough away they wouldn’t hear us.
But that’s it. A fear of hiking and an out of shape body.
Overall, mentally I was doing relatively well … at this point in my life (the title track of the aforementioned song played in the last moments of the retreat).
Doing well. Me. If there were no demons I was there to conquer besides a fear of hiking, how much space did that open up? Suddenly I was able to be present. The past not pulling me back into its darkest moments. I was able to laugh, to make others laugh, to unabashedly wear my swimsuit in front of others, to dance (on chairs even), I was able to listen to others, to hold space for their stories too. I was able to vision a future of myself being brave enough to love someone and let them love me, and to build a future together. At one point one of the fellow retreaters even called me a “light keeper.” If you know me well you know no one would ever describe me that way.
But maybe this version of me is the real me.
Mornings on the retreat were for yoga, led by Mary Beth. Mary Beth teaches very feminine flows, full of sultry beats and little drops of nectar — words that dance with Jacki’s teachings — so that we are always being mindful of what we were there for.
After the first full day of the retreat I awoke the next morning my body completely sore all over and so I listened to it. I opted for a more yin practice instead of the flow of vinyasa. And instead of another hike I walked my sore self right down to the hot tub.
For meals we were fed by the nourishing soul that is Lauren-Claire, owner and chef of Seed Nourishment of Denver, a catering and private chef operation. LC had help from Jenny Barber. Together these two fed us whole foods spanning all the colors of the rainbow. There were options for gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan and even for the meat eater! But no matter what we ate, all of it was ethically raised, made of the finest ingredients and delicious!
This is what retreats are for: a place where everything supports who you could be if you were given the time and space to be the very best version of yourself.
This is what retreats are for: a place where everything supports who you could be if you were given the time and space to be the very best version of yourself.
The version that sits quietly on a yoga mat, coffee mug in hand, and can notice the shadow of the aspen leaves dancing on the floor. The version that knows that if she looks back on this moment it can be enough to sustain her.
I’d drive down those mountains that day.
School would start back up again.
Traffic would return to Boulder.
The Broncos would wrap up a pre-season with a win.
My new relationship would come to an end.
Soon those Aspen leaves that danced will turn yellow and fall.
I reactivated my yoga membership.
And I haven’t quite finished that book that I started reading on the retreat.
And it all just reminds me that things overlap, end and begin again. Ebb and flow.
And that for a moment in time, on a Rock Your Bliss retreat in Grand Lake, I got to feel what it felt like to be a light keeper and as Tracy Chapman sang, “And right now I’m doing the best I can … At this point in my life.”
