WHY THIS RETREAT IS NEEDED
​April 6, 2020
Every year for the past 22 years, we have gathered for a Spring retreat at Breitenbush Hot Springs. This year, as with so many other retreat centers, schools, and restaurants, Breitenbush is closed due to the global health crisis.

Over these last 2-3 weeks as I have been teaching online yoga to keep our community nourished, sane, and courageous, I’ve very much enjoyed the conversations we have at the end of each class. After the Zoom class is “over” we stay on in our “Zoom Room” to visit. It’s been amazingly possible to talk with 30-100 people in a Zoom room. (People are good at taking turns and giving compassionate listening and heartfelt sharings after they have a yoga practice, a deep savasana, and a grounding meditation!) ​

Daily, I continue to feel a rising urge to speak about the Covid-19 through the lens of the chakras and the doshas. This is an extremely potent time - the entire crisis. Looking through the lens of yoga, which has a beneficial perspective, but also a provocative one, we could have predicted this crisis. 

Our global ecology is in distress and though we are completely dependent upon the viability of our planet and the ecological majesty that has made our planet habitable, our species goes on mostly in ignorance and denial. The doshas of our planet have been damaged by our collective unconsciousness and our unwillingness to live as a global tribe which would have included a deep consideration of the welfare of humankind.

In many societies, the importance of the kapha dosha has been dismissed as we pursue the “glory” of the pitta dosha - acquisition, merchant culture, productivity, and greed.

The rise of “electronic everything” has pushed the vata dosha out of balance. We experience insomnia, anxiety, fear, and increasing percentages of neurological conditions from ADHD to Parkinson's.

Our young citizens are showing rising signs of anxiety, childhood obesity, bullying, and earlier onset of puberty. Our elders are housed in care facilities away from multi-generational living.

In the middle, that stage of life which was meant to be a time for our adult life of parenting, collaboration, contribution, purpose, and living in such a way that we would become a wise elder, instead has become fraught with angst, increased auto-immune conditions, headaches, digestive disorders, sleep disorders, mood disorders, opioid dependency, & more.

As a species, we have the symptoms of out of balance chakras. I realize this may not be reflected in your own life directly, but if we look around at modern life, the evidence is all around us.

Our first chakra shows symptoms: We are living in fear; including fear of each other. Fear of never being good enough. Fear of not getting it all done. Fear of not keeping up.
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We feel ungrounded. Our circles of care and neighborhoods with generations of families, traditions, and cultural heritage has declined in favor of more independent living and personal mobility to live where we want to be - often a great distance from our original “village”. 

Our second chakra houses the sorrow: Unresolved emotions, long-held unmet needs, our inability to recognize and grieve the losses, the lost art of gently meandering like a tranquil river in nature, replaced by the wildly swinging pendulum of grasping and aversion, clinging and craving. Our vitality is tapped and we keep wondering why. The adrenals are shot and it perplexes us. 

Our third chakra roars with the makings of burn out, implosion or explosion. While we may not be inclined to pursue greed, power, status, money, consumerism, reputation, admiration, or acquisition of “things”, we live in a world so seduced by this that even those who are not tempted are exposed to the consequences too. The economic divides are too great to have a global community of caring for the welfare of all, even if noble individuals continue to reach for it, the shadow made by this fire is too big for small scale solutions. ​

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Though we want to be involved in healing, and even to see this as a healing crisis,
which I celebrate and find to be good and noble and wise,
we must pan back our wide angle lens and look at human nature:
When it has felt oppressed, suppressed, controlled or deprived, it has a boomerang effect -
possibly to an escalation level that bypasses the former imbalance. 

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This is one of the reasons why it is SO essential that those of us who are committed - to increasing resilience, compassion, equity, inclusivity, harmony, and new solutions for that which is ailing human nature -  we must stay with our practices, deepen our understanding, and consider our stamina, our vitality, and our need for being a part of a healthy community, one that can enable us to sustain a new way of being.

Being a yogi is going to mean a lot more than just being on our personal paths. It is also going to mean being a role model in bigger ways. Having a clear voice that we can use to encourage others. 

Now is a time for this crisis to become
a healing crisis, for us all. 

If we are to rise into the fourth chakra:
where compassion means action; 
the fifth chakra: where our voices are used for truth, clarity and collaboration;  and
into the sixth chakra, where we have access to wisdom, clarity of sight, and the inner sight that is larger than our own; we must do it together. 

Being a lone yoga warrior will not be enough.
(It’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong here.
​It just isn’t enough.) ​

Retreat Details HERE

DAYA YouTube Channel

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Yoga is a ​Daily Practice.
We don't do yoga. It does us.