costa rica Archives - Page 2 of 3

Six Ways to Make Your Yoga Retreat Unforgettable

Leading your own yoga retreat is a dream just about every yoga teacher has had at one time or another in their “yoga career.” If you live in the virtual world of yoga, its difficult not to find dozens of images crossing your computer screen each day of breathtaking beaches and stunning landscapes dotted with peaceful yogis mastering an amazing pose or resting blissfully in savasana. If you have ever thought to yourself, “That could be me teaching that class…” read on. Here are six ways to create an unforgettable yoga retreat experience for your students.

1. Set clear intentions and goals

As much as you want to offer an unforgettable experience for your students, you are also about to embark on a life changing journey leading a yoga retreat in a foreign country. Create clear intentions, goals, timelines for your self right at the start and this will help to ensure you are on track. Intentions and goals can include how many students you need/would like to sign up for your retreat, cultivating the focus for what you want to teach during the retreat, what kind of outside activities you would like to offer your group, etc. From manifesting the over arching “vibe”of your retreat from the day you say go, to knowing all of the details inside and out, this will help to grow confidence and faith in yourself as you set out in the unknown and the more confidence and faith you have in yourself, the more your students will have in you as their guide.

2. Make sure the logistics of the trip are effortless and easy

There is nothing worse than traveling to a different country with a different language, customs, etc. and not have the logistics of your trip organized with every i dotted and t crossed. Planning for scenarios A, B & C is often necessary, as there are times events don’t always unfold as planned. Make sure you have the support you need up front. Organizing your trip with an experienced travel company is important as they have the know-how to predict what could shift during your retreat and how best to put plans in place to keep space you are creating as contained as possible.

3. Add an element of service to your trip

We have led, supported and helped to organize hundreds of retreats over the last ten years. No matter how much energy and effort a teacher puts into creating an amazing experience for their students, when they incorporate the element of service into the retreat, the students always go away with that time being one of the main highlights of their journey. Creating a space for your students and yourself to be able to “give back” to the land and people is always a win/win. Do it.

4. Make sure to schedule plenty of “downtime” for your students and yourself!

When we say “downtime” we don’t mean mediations led by you. We mean “nothing on the schedule” downtime where everyone has an opportunity to soak in the experience they are having. And, almost always, you as the teacher will have some logistics to handle, so this ensures that you can take care of business and have plenty of time to swing in a hammock as well.

5. Immerse yourself in the community aspect of the retreat

Strong bonds and friendships will be formed on your retreat. Your students are having a “once in a lifetime” experience. Even in a weeks time, you will find that there is a unique community amongst your group. Making sure you are not tied up with too much logistics or too packed a schedule (see #4) will help to make sure that when you are not teaching or leading the group, you can just enjoy the experience with them as well. Teachers sometime feel like they need to remove themselves from their students if they are not leading a class. Immersing yourself in the sweet moments of the trip that happen “off the mat” will foster deepened teacher/student relationships as well as allow your students to see you being relaxed and, well, just you as you are (without your teacher hat on).

6. On the eve of your adventure, be ready to let go and go with the flow

You have planned everything perfectly, your timeline looks great, you have plenty of downtime scheduled, playlists are made, your surfing lessons are scheduled and tomorrow you board the plane to lead your first yoga retreat. (GO YOU!). Take a deep breath and be willing to let it all go. All of this experience is part of your own path as a lifelong student. It is inevitable that, as with life, there will be things that do not go exactly to plan. Be ready to go with the flow, be open minded and just have fun!

Teach for us! We are currently booking for our 2015 Retreat Season and would love to help you make your dream come true of leading a yoga retreat in beautiful Costa Rica! Check out how it works HERE.

The True Nature of Yoga – What is the Meaning of Yoga?

Yoga. The word alone conjures up all sorts of meanings and images. I bet you are thinking of someone doing a crazy yoga asana or pose right now, like standing on their hands or putting their legs behind their head. Yes, this is yoga, too, but in fact, the real reason humans have been practicing yoga for over 5,000 years simply reconnect with their innermost selves, or their True Nature.

We have a tendency to get caught up in looking outside ourselves for fulfillment, happiness, peace, etc. Yet something we all know deep down is that true joy can only be found when we are completely content internally. We get caught up in doing rather than just being.

There are many paths and definitions to yoga. We will be exploring these here in our new blog series – The True Nature of Yoga. One of our favorite definitions of yoga is…

Reflecting Through Poem on the Rhythms of Joy

Following the 2nd Annual Rhythms of Joy Retreat with Tiina Kivinen in January 2014, one of the retreat participants, Rick, shared with us this beautiful poem that he used to reflect on his experience with True Nature Education and time in Costa Rica. He spent a week on a birding expedition following his time on the retreat with us, during which he said he had ample time to process his time with us.

Rick furthermore shared with us that, “I remember, during one of the (many) sharing sessions, comparing our group to a 15 petal lotus. It strikes me now just how apt that descrption – – – each perfect lotus petal finds even greater perfection in its place within the blossom. You were all perfect, and it was fantastic to bloom with you. My heart was emptied and then it was filled. Sweet blessings to all.”

A cold, dark heart, frozen by loss
Unable to grieve, unable to let go
The fragile ebb and flow of her life
The memories of her journey so new

Candlelit yoga with twelve gentle souls
Magic Moon’s words crack the shell
The vibration of kirtan like Jericho
My soul exposed, my centre revealed

My heart now opened to strangers
The pain unleashed but so welcome
The well of tears no longer held back
The depth of acceptance enveloped me

A mother not lost but transcended
As the cross through the woods revealed
She is with me, now a part of me

Her unconditional love surrounds me

On Synchronicity and “Being in the Flow”

You know when everything feels connected? Maybe you’ve run into a long lost friend at the grocery store who you’ve been meaning to catch up with. Perhaps your yoga class focused on the exact part of your body that needed your attention. You feel like you are in the right place at the right time, and things are going your way. I like to refer to this experience as “being in the flow.”

Being in the flow is when there is a sense of ease to your way of life. You listen to the plan of the universe, and you act accordingly. Rather than exerting a lot of energy to create what you think you want, the universe effortlessly provides you with what you really need. The truth is that being in the flow just feels good.

Currently, I am living in Costa Rica on retreat with True Nature Education, and life here is different. Conversations with people who I just met begin to feel like talks with old friends. I practice yoga effortlessly, and my ability to listen to my body is more attuned. My rhythms for sleep have matched those of nature; I wake up with the birds and the sun, and the stars and crickets lull me to sleep. Life has become a living meditation, and this is what being in the flow is all about.

As I experience this way of life in Costa Rica, I aspire to create a life at home that feels as consistently connected and in the flow as I’m experiencing here. True Nature is giving me tools to be able to tap into living with this essence of ease. On retreat, I practice yoga, have communal meals, and spend my time outdoors in nature. These are all meaningful ways that I will bring home with me, as a way to connect with the flow of life.

On Synchronicity and "Being in the Flow"

You know when everything feels connected? Maybe you’ve run into a long lost friend at the grocery store who you’ve been meaning to catch up with. Perhaps your yoga class focused on the exact part of your body that needed your attention. You feel like you are in the right place at the right time, and things are going your way. I like to refer to this experience as “being in the flow.”

Being in the flow is when there is a sense of ease to your way of life. You listen to the plan of the universe, and you act accordingly. Rather than exerting a lot of energy to create what you think you want, the universe effortlessly provides you with what you really need. The truth is that being in the flow just feels good.

Currently, I am living in Costa Rica on retreat with True Nature Education, and life here is different. Conversations with people who I just met begin to feel like talks with old friends. I practice yoga effortlessly, and my ability to listen to my body is more attuned. My rhythms for sleep have matched those of nature; I wake up with the birds and the sun, and the stars and crickets lull me to sleep. Life has become a living meditation, and this is what being in the flow is all about.

As I experience this way of life in Costa Rica, I aspire to create a life at home that feels as consistently connected and in the flow as I’m experiencing here. True Nature is giving me tools to be able to tap into living with this essence of ease. On retreat, I practice yoga, have communal meals, and spend my time outdoors in nature. These are all meaningful ways that I will bring home with me, as a way to connect with the flow of life.

The True Nature of Family

Just a couple of hours ago our Chant Together: A Family Bhakti Yoga Celebration with David ‘Durga Das’ Newman, Mira Newman, and Friends departed. It was a wonderfully rich week of retreat. Bhakti Yoga is also known as the yoga of devotion and love. The essence of this week was just that.

Standing on the incredible Finca Luna Nueva Lodge property, I gaze into the distance at the vast rainforest before me. When looking with one point of view, all I observe is a sea of green; when looking closely I see the intricate web of life before me, with the vast array of flora and fauna. Trees, flowers, birds, water.

The journey of retreat reveals a similar comparison. Each retreat in a way is very similar: a group of people coming together, practicing together, residing as a community, and then journeying onward. But, when we really move into the intimate intricacy of retreat, what beholds is truly an exquisite, unique experience to live through.

This week we explored a new facet – opening to the potential of sharing the retreat experience with families. Our retreat had three families with children: a mother and daughter, and another couple, along with some single adults. In the past I have had apprehension about the potential distraction that the family element might bring into retreat. I have been familiar for many years with a paradigm of retreat that was quiet, introspective, and focused towards a sense of personal time. I was curious about how this would be impacted with the element of children and family.

David brought forth a beautiful reflection through his teachings this week. Sharing with us the profound transformation he had experienced over the past several months, his message was that “we all have the opportunity to awaken to the perfection of our ordinary selves.”

This message was a perfect teaching for this retreat, which was filled with

Chanting Together in Costa Rica

We’re nearing the end of our Chant Together Kirtan yoga retreat with David Newman (“Durga Das”) and Friends, and it has been such a delightful journey! Our group is wonderfully diverse, with participants ranging from age 2, all the way up beyond 60. It has been so sweet to have parents and kids, husbands and wives, and friends all here to chant together.

The power of retreat is something I wish everyone could experience. Feeling the support of the community and taking part in daily practices such as yoga, satsang (“discussions of truth”), and kirtan (“chanting”) have all added the fullness and richness of this True Nature Experience.

It has been such a blessing to spend the week on this magical land near the Arenal Volcano at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge. Everything is so lush here. This is a place where trees grow on trees, toucans with bright yellow beaks fly overhead, and a three-toed sloth makes an occasional appearance. This is a place where all you have to do is sit quietly and watch, and magic will present itself.

The other day we went to a local village and worked on projects for the school’s community garden. The school is responsible for feeding the students lunch, and it has become a necessity to grow food to support this. It felt great to help out with the project. We also made sugar cane juice and drank from coconuts straight off the trees. After our work (which was mostly play!), we enjoyed a home-cooked meal where we made our own corn tortillas.

Today, we spent the morning at the Tabacon Hot Springs. We soaked up the warmth of volcanic water, as it poured through rivers and waterfalls that meandered through the trees and vibrantly colored plants. Our afternoon ended with a sunset horseback ride to a waterfall.

It has been a wonderful week blending lots of time relaxing, chanting, and adventuring. It is always sweet to get to know other people (and ourselves) better. It is a gift to be able to spend a week away from our day-to-day lives and to live in a way that more deeply connects us with our own True Nature.

Eliza Volk
Asheville, North Carolina

Just For Now: Wrapping Up the Mind|Body|Yoga|Fitness Retreat

Just for now, without asking how, let yourself sink into stillness.

Just for now, lay down the
weight you so patiently
bear upon your shoulders.
Feel the earth receive
you, and the infinite
expanse of sky grow even
wider as your awareness
reaches up to meet it.

Just for now, allow a wave of breath to enliven your experience. Breathe out whatever blocks you from the truth. Just for now, be boundless, free, awakened energy tingling in your hands and feet. Drink in the possibility of being who and what you really are so fully alive that when you open your eyes the world looks different, newly born and vibrant, just for now.

I shared this poem by Dana Faulds in class in Costa Rica, reminding the group to allow themselves time to really be in the beautiful magic of Costa Rica and use it as a space and time to take care of themselves and to get back to who they are.

Over the course of the week, we softened our grip on our lives and responsibilities and let ourselves sink into stillness (or something similar). Staying at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge, a biodynamic farm, allowed us to have a direct connection to nature. We ate food that was grown and compassionately raised by inspiring land stewards; we practiced yoga surrounded by the cacophony of of the rainforest; we observed nature in her own pace – the sun rising, the sloths traveling up and down trees, watching the weather shifting constantly.

We explored beyond Finca Luna and our comfortable limits: stand up paddle boarding on Lake Arenal, the world’s largest man-made lake, hiking the resilient ecosystem that surrounds Arenal Volcano, rappelling down waterfalls, rafting the rapids, and sinking into the healing warmth of the hot springs.

Between our multiple yoga practices each day and our explorations, we found time to practice sinking into stillness – massages, reading, walking & running on the property, and napping in hammocks.

Throughout all of this we discovered “moments” in which we had insights into who and what we really are. Some of these moments were in the quiet reverence of nature, and many were in the time we spent together at meals, on bus rides, on porches, and during our yoga practices.

These “moments” were revelations that we are boundless and free and that we have access to the energy within us.

These “moments” showed us that maybe we do give too much of ourselves and offer ourselves too little protection. Maybe we don’t make enough time to do the things that make us happy. Maybe we don’t step out of the cacophony of our wired trance to see, hear, and experience our lives as unique. Maybe we don’t recognize how much energy we have to spend on our own lives and how beautiful life is.

This energy and these insights are not to be squandered – they need to be nurtured and protected. Leaving Costa Rica, we understand that this is special and belongs to us. It should not be doused by jumping back into old patterns that block us from this knowledge.

So, pardon us if we seem a bit different as we return from Costa Rica. Excuse us if we become more deliberate like the sloths. And don’t mind us if we take more risks and have different perspectives on our day to day lives. We just got back from Costa Rica – newly born and vibrant, just for now.

We send out much gratitude to the staff of Finca Luna Nueva, True Nature Education, and the dozens of Ticos that made our trip to Costa Rica so wonderful. PURA VIDA!