Why I love leading retreats

In the first (what I call the first) Star Wars movie, from 1977, there’s a sound that the tractor beam makes when Obi Wan Kenobi pulls the lever down to deactivate it.  That’s the sound that I hear, over the course of several days, when I lead a yoga retreat. It’s the sound of the student’s nervous systems and their spinning minds begin to slow down and disengage from their busy lives.

This is why I LOVE leading yoga and meditation retreats. There’s an AHHH moment that all the students get to, eventually, when they realize the difference from when they arrived.  It may take a few days.  But this degree of change is not something that we can achieve during a regular, weekly class. It takes more time than that and also takes the right environment and support of those around us.  Each day brings a little bit more quiet, a slower mind, a deeper presence in their bodies and a dropping away of the the fight, flight, freeze mode of daily catastrophe living to reveal the AHHH.