As I mentioned to many I decided to spend Thanksgiving in Joshua Tree National Park with complete strangers for a vegetarian Yoga and Rock Climbing retreat. I may just have to admit that that was the most wonderful way I could imagine to spend Thanksgiving (now if only my lovely family was there).
I arrived the eve of Thanksgiving after a pretty icky drive (I got within 50 miles of LA so of course that didn't help) but had time to pitch my tent before helping out in the makeshift kitchen with the vegetarian feast the kitchen team was set up to prepare. And you may not believe it but it was a huge feast even being vegetarian. We had soup and salad and beans and tofu and innumerable little sides that filled me up just as well as Thanksgiving without the icky food comma that is usually experienced. We went to bed that night underneath the stars and I reveled in the beauty of being able to sleep under the stars at the end of November.
The next day started with some fruit, snacks and hot tea to be enjoyed after retreating to the upper rocks of our campsite so that we could get into the warmth of the rising sun. Very soon though we headed to our morning yoga site where we practiced an hour and a half of yoga before spending 30 minutes learning yogic meditative breathing practices. Then it was on to a delightful breakfast of warm oatmeal, fruit, eggs and all sorts of veggies mixed into it all. Mmm.
After breakfast we hiked to a good rock range where the YogaSlacker team had set up some rock climbing courses. The rest of the day was spent belaying and rock climbing-gosh I loved it! Rock climbing is great because its such a test of both physical and mental problem solving and testing out different ways you can scale a sheer cliff. It was also fun to be part of because of the amazing trust that it requires you to quickly build with new people.
Then we'd finish up the time we had in the sun with some acro yoga, which I LOVE. As in love so much that I'm starting a student organization at UCSD next winter with the intentions of getting enough people together who are trained in it and passionate about it so that I have a good community of people to do it with. Acroyoga is a mixture of acrobatics and yoga that ends up being essentially team yoga-people working together to hold poses or lifting one another and then doing poses. Ha it's hard to explain so why don't you just go and check out http://acroyoga.org. The most important things is that I love it like you wouldn't believe-it's kind of like rockclimbing in that it is a nice mixture of physical and mental in its practice. (the greatest thing was the other night I talked my roommates into trying it out with me and we had a good hour session of trying different poses before going to Golden Spoon for some much needed frozen yogurt).
The nights ended around the campfire with another delicious vegetarian meal, music, and lots of campfire games and stories. Really just a beautiful way to end the day with great new friends and an exhausted body. There were a few people who really enjoyed the acro like I did so we'd ditch the fire for as long as we could stand the cold to do some more acro-yoga work each night. I definitely learned a few really cool poses!
Some cool things about the retreat included that I was the youngest person there by about 7 years (well if you don't count the elementary-school aged boys) and that I was pretty much the only non-certified yoga teacher. Hopefully that last thing is going to change though as I'm really finding yoga to be a passion that I have.
Anyway, the next two days proceeded the same way as the first and were equally as wonderful. A few of the people I was with on the retreat are planning to visit San Diego in the near future so I'm looking forward to hosting them and I have a trip for Tuscon (about 10 of the people at the retreat live there) planned for February, I have a few great places that I can stay!
Yoga is amazing, both physically and mentally and I'm so appreciative of the opportunity to have been able to delve further into it during this retreat!
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