Saturn Returns - Part 5B: Going to the Ashram and We’re Gonna do Yoga ...

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 I lack the patience to wait for the toaster, and I’m quite happy with samplings of the cooked and salad selections.  Again, no need for seconds, I’m perfectly content with my plate of food and a cup of herbal tea.  Very strange.

This afternoon we take our first hike.  Hooray!  But first, post Brunch we are called to participate for an hour in Karma Yoga. Which is essentially contributing an hour (or more) of your time each day to help with the workings of the ranch. Which is essentially offering free labor.  (Ever the New York City cynic.  Actually, I later realize that participating in Ranch life brings the participant a sense of community, responsibility, contribution, and greater appreciation for the gifts we receive.  But more on that later.)  The staff seems especially eager to recruit workers in the kitchen.  Sorry, I’m on vacation, sort of; no way am I doing dishes. However, I would love love love to work in the garden.  I won’t prepare the meals, I won’t clean up after them, but yes – I will help grow them.

So I make my way the greenhouse to find a middle aged woman dressed in bright yellow attire whose Sanskrit name I was never able to remember, despite having worked with her a total of 4 days and 1 night.   I learned she is on her way to monkhood, just one level away I believe, and is in charge of the large organic garden and greenhouse.  Both were magnificent.  The greenhouse, bursting with basil and fat tomatoes and herbs, smelled like an enormous caprese salad.  The garden was a rainbow of colorful greens and reds and purples, and pretty trees just beginning to fruit.

My first job entailed uncovering and arranging a pile of compost.  Not smelly but still somewhat gross.  Here I narrowly avoided a yellowjack attack. Alas, the manager/monk lady did not, and bravely bore her bites.  One night I was tasked with another nasty job:  paper mulching - covering the soil with soggy newspaper – a large new lot to deter future bug and weed growth.  On the more fun side, I did get to plant a section of bibb (or was it Boston?!?) lettuce in the greenhouse, first turning and tilling the soil, prepping it with nitrogen, then spreading and gently covering the seeds.  I hope to go back in a few weeks to see how my lettuce is growing. I also picked kale.  Let me preface:  I don’t like kale.  I just don’t get kale - the taste, the texture, the toughness.  There are only one or two kale dishes on earth I can manage to gag down.  Nonetheless, I dedicated several mornings in the garden to commune intimately with several rows of kale.  And I came away with a whole new appreciation of this bold, beautiful, stately, strong, majestic, not-just-for-garnish-anymore green leafy. It lets you know when it’s ready to pluck.  The leaves, broad and firm and curly and deep green, come off with a clean “snap”; they feel sturdy and proud in your hand.  I came back several times to make sure all the kale was picked and packed at the peak moment.  Still, I don’t want it anywhere on my plate.

With the exception of one rainy day, the Yoga and Hiking Week people set out on our treks just after noon, joined by several young and gorgeous yoga trainees, ranch staff, and other guests.  Our adorable guide’s Sanskrit name escapes me; she invited me to call her by her Judeo-Christian name, Christa*.  Which perfectly suited her blonde, compact, perky Floridian persona.  We piled into cars and drove up to 45 minutes to the region’s better known hiking areas.  The first was an easy 3+ mile loop on a carriage trail up, down and around the waterfalls, pools and cliffs of Lake Minnewaska.  More like a walk than a hike, but very pretty, with a stop for a swim. Fine for today’s large group of diverse levels.  The next hike was a longer, wetter, steeper, more challenging climb picking our way up a trail though a forest to Vernooy Falls, about 7 miles out and back.  On the way down, I slip on a wet stone and land flatly on my ass and my phone into a Half Hero pose.  Which I generally skip in yoga class because my legs don’t fold in that manner.  The rest of the week, my left knee reminded me of that fall -

Our last hike took us to another section of Minnewaska State Park:  Sam’s Point, the Ice Caves, and Indian Loop or Verkeerderkill Falls, I can’t remember.  A little hot and a bit crowded at points with Hasidim dressed in long pants, long sleeves, long coats and high hats, but still the hiking week’s piece de la resistance.   First, Sam’s Point, a dramatic white promontory jutting out over a green valley of undulating hills as far as the eye can see.  Then up, over, around and through the light and water streaming inside the dramatic and claustrophobic Ice Caves.  And finally a sometimes challenging trek along a long, rocky crest cloaked in beautiful flora to a somewhat disappointing waterfall.  (All about the journey not the destination, all about the trek and the view.)  That was an exhausting, exhilarating 1o or 12 mile day.

After one of the hikes, Christa brought us to a country store to buy contraband.  Coffee, local wild blueberry pie, ice cream, chocolate chip cookies.  Oddly, I wasn’t jonesing for coffee or chocolate.  Though I did vow to pick up some wild blueberry pie before heading home … Christa had a turkey club sandwich.  OMG, meat.  She told us on the DL that the “ashram runs on caffeine”.  Shocking.  This information makes me so happy.

Hiking not only allows one to connect with nature, it affords hikers the opportunity to connect with each other.  During the long stretches picking our way up and down rocky trails, through the trees and ferns and shrooms, along vertiginous crests and inside caves, we got into some heady, heavy conversations about yoga, the ranch, work, life.  Perfect strangers became perfectly at ease with each other, sharing stories and snacks. When I tweaked my knee, Rasheed let me borrow his Tiger Balm for the rest of the Week.  I learned that Alex works at the UN; the other Alex does speech pathology with the people of Cree Nation in St. James Bay, Quebec; Janice is winding up her career as a school psychologist and looking for what’s next; the yoga trainee Beto, who incidentally is one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen, is a classical violinist from Mexico who studied in Europe; the other Beto lived in NYC as cultural attachee for Spain, has moved back to Madrid, and give me a list of must-sees and must-dos in Porto;  Diana plans to bring her yoga training back home to Columbia.  (Initially, my exchanges with Diana were done in nods, hand motions and smiles, as she was in the middle of a Week of Silence.)

Each hiking day, we managed to get back too late to take the 4pm yoga class.  Instead, a much needed and much deserved shower and a little chill time reading on the porch before dinner.  Eight hours and many miles since my last morsel, and I’m peckish but not ravenous. Curiouser and curiouser.  This perplexed me:  why am I not experiencing my usual daily overpowering salt and sweet food cravings?  Or the incessant nagging  mental loop obsessing about coffee and ice cream?  Or the need to dip into the stash of chocolate I smuggled in?  

Especially when each meal mirrored prior meals, variations on the same themes?  Why are these strange, foreign flavors so delicious and satisfying - Baby Bear “just right” - without having to stuff myself with them?  It’s a mystery.  Until I learned the secret during our last hike from Christa, who worked in the kitchen for several weeks.  The answer seemed to be the Ranch’s ayurvedic approach to meals.  

Ayurveda comes from the world’s oldest holistic healing system, developed thousands of years ago in ancient India.  Broadly speaking, it focuses on creating balance between body and mind, heart and soul, as well as with our environment and each other.  It starts with understanding one’s own physical and emotional nature, or Dosha, and adjusting from there.  Food is an integral part.  What we put into our body can create balance and health and beauty, energy and longevity, or it can allow dis-order, dis-function and dis-ease.  

But this isn’t about the philosophy and benefits of Ayurveda.  That would take pages and pages, a lifetime of study.

This is about how my usual, overwhelming food and drink based habits and cravings virtually disappeared for five days.  I learned from Christa and others at the Ranch that instead of the four or five taste centers prescribed by western science – bitter, salty, sweet, sour, and sometimes umami (savory, rich, smoky, meaty) - Ayurveda says that there are six taste centers – bitter, sweet, salt, sour, spicy (hot, pungent) and astringent (sharp, dry).  At mealtime, when all six taste centers are subtly, evenly addressed and sated simultaneously, none is neglected and left wanting.  And the body and mind are content, they crave nothing.  For hours.  Ayurvedic cooking creates this taste balance in your bowl, in your body and in your soul.  A bite from bitter and dry greens and bean, some heat in the spiced sauce, a bit of sweet from the carrots, beets or yams … Just right.  Unlike at home in the West.  Where one or several but not all taste centers are heavily featured – think of that big, salty, savory cheeseburger and sour pickle that leaves you stuffed but still hungry for a sweet dessert.  Where our food is studied and processed to keep us off balance and craving and never satisfied and constantly wanting and buying and consuming.  At the Ranck, with two light mostly vegan ayurvedic meals a day, I felt no hunger, neither mental nor physical.  No desire.  I didn’t miss meat.  Nor was I distracted by thoughts of rosé or Rocky Road or cups of Joe.  Miraculous.  And so simple.

After dinner, Satsang.  Always in the barn.  Always with the impassive saffron-clad human statues on the adorned stage greeting us with solemn silence as we enter.  Always beginning with the greeting chant, followed by silent meditation, followed by more chants, a short homily, closing chants, arati light ceremony, and a little snack as we file out …

At some point during the Yoga and Hiking Week it dawns on me that I’m not on vacation, or even at a yoga intensive.  I’m at an ashram, a religious retreat, performing ancient transcribed rites and rituals.  Like a monastery, only Hindu.  The yoga, the vegan cuisine, the Karma Yoga, the formulaic chanting and ceremony at sunrise and sunset, form part of a whole, a tradition, an approach to living, a submission of ego for a purer, simpler, purposeful and more joyful state of being.  I’m still not chanting, but am I worshiping these deities, Vishnu and Shiva and Brahma and Krishna and Ganesha and Saraswati, by just being in the presence of all this chanting?  (No.)  Is this, like, Hari Krishna?  (Also no.) Does this piss off the Judeo-Christian God I grew up with?  (I hope not.) Yoga trainees and ashram staff claim Sivananda is a not-really denominational retreat welcoming any and all who want to explore an immersive yogic experience.  The website, which I didn’t read fully until well after I returned, describes it well:  https://sivanandayogaranch.org/about-us/.  The practices and prayers are vehicles to cleanse, purify, strengthen, serve, en-joy. How could any god be upset by that? 

I’ve been back for a few weeks now, and I feel much less inclined to drink alcohol, even wine.  Coffee feels more like a pleasure than a necessary.  Alas, I haven’t found the ayurvedic balance in food; salt and sweet cravings, still my Achilles Heel.  I try to fit in two to three yoga classes a week.  Oddly, I kind of miss the experience of the chanting, without actually have chanted. The music and foreign lyrics pop into my head fairly regularly.  I will probably be back again, I miss the structure, the lightness, the balance, the focus on purity and community and peace. Laugh a little, work a little, study a little, exercise a little, rest a little, help a little, live a little.  Would that it were all so simple.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.  

© 2019  Tess Quadrozzi, A-Muse-In-Manhattan