How a Yoga Retreat Lead to Honest Communication

So, I finally took a vacation that was just for me, myself and I. I have wanted to do a wellness retreat for at least the past 3 years, but I hadn’t found one just right. The one I ended up picking was a yoga wellness retreat set in Mexico. If you know me, I just picked up yoga right before the pandemic, but I wouldn’t call myself a yogi. It is part of my workout routine, but sometimes it falls off. So I am sure you’re wondering why did I think that this retreat was right for me, so let me explain.

Let’s start with finding the yoga retreat. First, I follow a yoga instructor, here in Houston, who has her retreats and I missed the last one she did. I honestly had FOMO and started to investigate some areas with their yoga retreats on different resorts in the US, Mexico, and Central America. I came across quite a few good ones, but they didn’t seem to jump off the page. It was either a retreat that had already passed, didn’t seem to focus on topics I was interested in diving deeper into, or lacked diversity in their groups and/or instructors. One day, as I was scrolling IG, that same yoga instructor was advertising a retreat she was involved with coming up. It was with a group named “Sisters of Yoga”. I looked at their page and saw that they focus mainly on black women and I knew I had to at least find the money to be able to go. At the time, I didn’t realize how important to me that one piece of information was helpful, but it just felt right at the moment.

Now, this is one of my pet peeves about signing up for this retreat. Once I put in my deposit, there was great communication regarding what we needed to provide, forms to fill out, and information on what to pack & agenda for the week. However, it went downhill from there. The owner of Sisters of Yoga wasn’t very responsive in the form she provided for communication and it took several weeks for me to get the exact location of where we were staying. I didn’t know if I had transportation to the resort and back until two days before I flew out. Seriously no bueno. I almost didn’t attend from the safety factor of me going to Mexico alone, not knowing but one person, and the lack of communication.

Now, outside of the lack of communication, the retreat was exactly what I needed. It was focused on the Wisdom of the Womb, which is an area I lack care and honesty toward. On the first night of the retreat, the food that was made for us for dinner just set the tone. It was fresh, clean, delicious, and clearly made with love. I was starting to wind down with this good food, but we start off strong. We did not waste any time getting deep with the group, which was so hard for me.  Throughout this trip, I had to combat emotions related to emotional scarring from the past and think about what I am going to do to move forward.

It is very hard for me, as a person, to release emotion in front of other folks especially women due to past interactions. I was seeing the other women just let go so easily and I felt like the odd one out. I am normally used to being the odd one out, but this seems to confirm I wasn’t being honest with myself. I thought I had passed over the hurdle of being in tune with my emotions and not being embarrassed by them, but I clearly was just still good at compartmentalizing. 

Though this retreat was focused on the wisdom of the womb, it really started to open more that for me. I was starting to realize a lot of blockages not only sit with my trauma but with my heart. I need to be honest in my communication to myself on being more vulnerable including expressing emotions. That is going to be an uphill battle for me because my anger can be so explosive and uncontrollable and I tend to push aside feeling sad in fear of it turning into depression.

So this month of June & July will be all about honest communication with myself. That means returning back to where I believe it all started for me and reviewing the patterns that have constantly shown up throughout the years.