To All Our Summer Lovers,
How many times have you looked forward to summer, made great plans and been counting the days to get on that plane and exhale? Then you get there. The plane lands, you find your ride, make it to your destination, unpack, settle in, adjust, only to well, meet yourself, your mind, your heart, the same person you thought you had left behind at home?
We may not have the chance to runaway this summer, but have we ever really?
Of course travel is one of the most wonderful experiences, but as with all things, it belongs to the eyes of the beholder. And because of that, you can find the same joy, the same exhilaration, the same abundance, the same expansiveness, right where you are.
I know we are a company focused on travel, but more than that we are a company focused on yoga. As we approach our first summer in 8 years without a single retreat to offer, I am asking myself, how can we find what we went around the world for, right where we are? Was yoga anywhere else but here?
Maybe all along, all of these retreats were really just there to prove to ourselves that no matter how far and wide we travel, the inner realm is what we are working with. Yes the tropical gardens of Costa Rica and the musical sounds of Italian in the jasmine filled streets of Panarea are irreplaceable, and are going to be deeply missed. There is sometimes nothing better than exploring. But do we actually go anywhere? Is there anywhere to go?
With nowhere to go, we meet ourselves. This is where we have been going all along.
Retreats have never been an escape. They are always a walking towards.
Retreats are about being with the triggers. Thats actually why travel is so helpful for retreats - because travel can be frustrating and exhausting. It’s part of why it works so well alongside yoga.
Yoga is about stirring the pot so that what is not supporting our growth and our compassion is dissolved and transformed. When the temperature is too hot or your luggage doesn’t come, or you don’t like the hotel or your plane is delayed, or you get sunburned, or you fight with your family or your lover the whole time you are supposed to be on a romantic vacation, this is where we begin.
This is what retreat works with. It’s about being with yourself no matter what the circumstances and realizing that even with paradise on the outside, the real happiness comes from within.
Look, when the doors open again to group travel, to the gatherings that fulfilled us on many levels, introduced us to friends near and far, of course we will be participating. The world is our home after all and we love sharing every corner of it with our global family.
Until then, there is still much to gain. Meditation and yoga are not about sitting in some peaceful place removed from the pain of the world. People have tried this, it hasn’t worked. To activate the spirit, one steps into the pain of the world and becomes part of the healing. No healing can occur by running away. Denial has never done anything for us. The solution is always embedded in the problem before us, but we will never apply it if we haven’t looked honestly and directly at it first. By catching the mind - how it punishes you or makes up endlessly painful scenarios about you or your world all day long - you have the chance to change it.
This summer is going to be just that : summer. Whether we like it or not, this summer is growing us. We may not have our typical escapes, but like every summer - escape filled or not - it can grow us. Allow yourself to grow. Know that wherever you are it is happening, and the sooner that you surrender the expectation and surrender the disappointment, the sooner you get the real gold - the growth.
Who gives a shit about the riviera if we aren’t our whole selves to receive it? How many times have you been in paradise fighting? Pissed off? Worried? Unfulfilled? Without that added escape - and guilt for not fully enjoying it - we can untie the knots inside.
Finally we don’t have to have the best summer ever. Finally we can let summer happen to us, rather than keep trying to do summer ourselves. That is what vacation and summer is for anyways - the undoing, not the doing. Why do we keep projecting our doing onto everything?
The world is going through a massive transition and dismantling. Sometimes, when there is healing and loss and upheavel, the best thing to do is to stay put. Is this that time? The transition usually lasts longer than we want it to. It’s almost never in the form we expected and it’s never comfortable. But it grows us. It truly does.
So let summer do you. Let it undo you, and then heal you. Stop messing with it. Stop planning it.
Maybe this isn’t going to be the best summer ever, but it’s still going to be summer. Do we love summer because of what we project onto it or because of what it just is?
Go there - which is nowhere. We are right there with you. Unraveling. Healing. Learning to love. Where we are. Right now.
Wherever you are, there are so many ways to take retreat - in a book, in a lawn, in a song, on your yoga mat alone, in a tree, with your cats, with your boombox, or at the dinner table, even if you are alone. We may find that all the spectacular things of life never leave us, no matter what the outer circumstances.
The reality is, we don’t know what summer will be like and we never knew. It’s not the plans that make the summer great, it’s not the escape, it’s how we are showing up for whatever is right in front of us.
Summer loves you. It has every year. Why would it be any different this year?
We love you. We love summer.
In gratitude for all that has been, is and will be,
Heather
