A-Musings

Day 1 at the Yoga Ranch.  Up since 5:30am.  We’d already walked in the woods, meditated, did 2 hours of Hatha-based yoga.  I’m a bit hungry.  It’s now 10am, ashram Brunchtime.  Which looks and smells very much like yesterday evening’s Dinnertime.  Again, the weather’s fine so we dine al fresco near the platform; again, we self-serve from a vegetarian menu that is similar but not the same as yesterday evening; again, selections are presented unadorned in large metal pots and pans; again, it features a soup, greens from the garden, and a few cooked vegetarian dishes, and I think a potato pancake of sorts.  Again, it smells exotic and different and delicious.  Again, it is.  Or, is breakfast so tasty because I haven’t eaten in 16 hours?  Not sure.  Morning also offers more breakfast-like choices such as sourdough and multigrain bread, peanut butter and jam spreads.  But ...

Summer was slipping away. Its end was beginning to exert itself, especially in the evenings when a cool snap would push through the midday sultry air … I wanted to get away. I hadn’t done much this no longer new year, no great work, no cool projects, no real summer vacation other than a few weekends out of town. I yearned for something simple, close, but  depaysant .  Something fun and physical out in nature.  Something cleansing physically and spiritually, something to help distance myself from my unhealthy habits and cravings and uninspired, automatic thoughts.  Something to create some space for something new.  And then it hit me. “Why, yoga!  Of course! In the mountains!  At one of those ‘centres’ or ‘institutes’ with the exotic names like Kripalu, Omega, Sivananda!” Unlike year’s past, when I was working fairly consistently, traveling abroad regularly, dating steadily, and engaged continuously in so...