Practice in Transit
I had the pleasure of spending the past few months on a yoga retreat in Thailand – read on to hear about my adventures at Agama!
About two years ago, I formed a steady yoga practice, founded mostly on my love for the style and the teachers of a particular studio, OB Namaste, around the corner from my old home in San Diego. When I moved away to travel in Southeast Asia, I knew that my practice was something I wanted to bring with me, as essential as my vitamins and bug spray. But it’s hard to keep up a regular practice while travelling, particularly when said travelling consists of long bus rides, cramped hostel rooms, exhausting hours exploring crowded streets and jungles on foot and by bicycle, and countless temptations from street food vendors selling everything from noodle soup to coconut pastries to fried… well, fried anything, really. Name a
street food in Southeast Asia and the odds that it’s either fried or cloaked in condensed milk are astoundingly high.
My travelling companion and dear friend Dana and I decided to try and beat the odds by starting off our travels with a month-long intensive yoga course in Thailand. I enrolled in Agama Yoga on the recommendation of a friend. For approximately $200 USD, I was committed to six days of yoga a week for four weeks – broken up into two hours of morning practice, and hour and a half in the afternoon, and an evening lecture. I didn’t know what to expect, but I assumed
more of the same as what I knew at home – fast, powerful Vinyasa flow, concluding in pools of sweat and a mind-clearing lightness of body. What I got, however, was entirely different.
Our practice at Agama began, literally, at the beginning, with teachings from the oldest yoga texts. The lectures explained in
painstaking detail how Hinduism and Buddhism related to, but were not the defining factors of, yoga. Energies, and our energetic relationship to the universe, were discussed at length, and this knowledge was intertwined with the slow perfection of each asana, holding poses for four to ten minutes and meditating throughout. The flow of information and practice was seamless, bringing a sudden, stunning, clarity to all the yoga I had practiced at home. It was like I had been practicing in a cave, blindly faithful, and only nowhad someone come by and lit a candle.
With such a beginning, Dana and I found that we couldn’t stop, and have since been following our new practice daily, leading each other through poses and meditation in a series of hotel rooms. The spaces haven’t been ideal, but we make do, and have seen our willpower increase exponentially as we’ve found more and more joy and solace in our practice. Travelling is beautiful, a long meditation of it’s own, but it can also be, let’s be honest, a pain in the ass, frought with pitfalls for the spiritual practitioner. The style of yoga I learned from Agama was perfectly suited for life on the road, keeping me
centered through bus malfunctions, interminable border crossings, jelly belly, and more. Staying true to my practice helped me to see the beauty of the land and the people, for the most part unblinded by my erstwhile travel companions, frustration and irritation. I can’t recommend a better way to begin a journey, whether in travels or in
life. Namaste.
Related posts:
- Saved by Sirsasana – the less obvious benefits of a headstand practice
- Laura Carrotti’s Journey to Agama
- Step Outside of What You Know & Watch Your Practice Grow!
- HELP: Not Your Average 4-Letter Word | A Practice in Seeking and Accepting Help
- The Practice | Warrior II w/ Erica Mather (video inside!)
