Retreat

I started to write this post right after I got back from my retreat, before I opened up my inboxes that had been laying unaddressed for ten days and it was game on from there. This morning has been particularly hectic, feeling as it washed away the last remaining peaceful residue of the retreat I went on exactly a month ago. It feels like a good moment to capture—and, most of all, remind myself of—this very special experience.

I spent the past week on a yoga retreat at a stunning resort in Sayulita, Mexico, in a little enclave snuggled into a jungle and overlooking vast and rough seas. It was the first time I’d been on any sort of significant trip that doesn’t involve Disney princesses since I went to Bali in 2016.

Like any retreat, this one was designed as an opportunity to relax and unwind, and it was also an opportunity to disconnect from technology and the modern world. The casitas strewn throughout the jungle didn’t have any electricity, which meant my nights were lit by kerosine lamps and candles flickering against thatched walls. Cell service was available only at the highest point of the resort (and even then it was shaky), which took some motivation to hike up to. I made one call the entire time I was there, and otherwise lived phone-free.

Heading into the retreat, I knew that I (somewhat desperately) needed to relax and refresh, but without even being consciously aware of it, I also planned some work for myself while on retreat. Quiet work of the reflection and self-improvement variety, yes, but work nonetheless. And then I laid down on the hammock in my casita and started to devour a purely recreational book (I Have Some Questions for You—do yourself a favor and read it immediately if you haven’t yet!), and that was the end of that. For the next seven days, life slowed way down and I allowed myself to just be.

I found myself waking up naturally before dawn, and so every morning I walked through the jungle up to the glowing candle-lit resort kitchen, where I got a mug of spicy licorice tea and took it with me to go sit in the shala and watch the sun rise. My dad, who was a landscape photographer, always used to talk about the Golden Hour, and suddenly I understood it in a way I never had before. The way the sky changes so swiftly, from second-to-second really, coloring the world as it ascends. I’ve always thought of roosters as annoying little buggers, but as the mornings went on, those roosters went from being a chaotic-sounding annoyance to a serenade celebrating the arrival of the sun.

I haven’t been able to cry or grieve my dad’s death much in the year-and-a-half since he’s been gone. But each morning as I watched the sun rise, the tears flowed freely down my face. A release, an uncapping of love, a marveling at this world and how precious our time walking it is, how precious those people that we walk with are. A couple of times, I tried to capture the beauty that I was seeing rise before me on my otherwise-dead phone, only to realize how impossible it was to fit all of that majesty into a picture, and that really I was better to just be there in the moment, to absorb it. I suddenly appreciated my dad’s slow and methodical way of taking photographs—he could capture the golden light and that is an art that extends beyond just the mechanics of photography.

On this etreat far from home, a man I didn’t know approached me. “Are you Bob Van Noy’s daughter?” he asked. I told him I was, and he went on to share that he had known and worked with my dad; he talked about what a kind, gentle man he was. I took that as the final sign that my dad was there with me watching the sun rise, alive and well in spirit if no longer in body.

There was another kind of crying on the trip too, and that was laughter. I couldn’t even begin to tell you the last time I laughed so long an so hard, to the point where I was regularly gasping for breath. Aside from the group leaders, I hadn’t known anyone on this trip when it began, but by the end we were speaking our own little language. Jokes that wouldn’t have been remotely funny to anyone else struck us as deeply and profoundly hilarious.

I met with a shaman. I participated in a sweat lodge ceremony. I was massaged in a hut by the ocean. I hiked. I did yoga twice a day. I swam in an infinity pool overlooking the ocean, where it was possible to see whales and dolphins leaping from the water for a quick hello. I laid around on lounge chairs, talking and laughing with new friends. I ate food so fresh and so pure that it felt like every cell in my body was alive. And somewhere in the midst of all of that, with nothing but quality time with myself doing whatever I want to do, I remembered who I was. I realized that the long-ago parts of me and experiences that I had started to consider almost a separate person were and are still me. I’m still here amidst all of the noise and running and working.

On a retreat like that, when everything is so pure and clear, it’s easy to believe that day-to-day life can be like this too. But, of course, the world we live in isn’t occupied with only the sounds of the jungle and crashing waves; balanced, freshly-prepared meals three times a day; or time that seems to extend out as far as the horizon.

Over breakfast on that final melancholy morning before we departed for the airport, one of my new friends told me that over the course of doing many retreats, she’d learned that the goal is to take just one thing away and apply it to real life. Her one thing was a daily act of kindness for herself. I’ve been trying to do the same, and it helps me remember and stay in a more calm and quiet state. I’ve remembered that, for me, daily yoga isn’t optional, no matter what kind of deadline I’m on—although all of this is about so much more than just yoga.

Something that I already sort of knew was clarified on this trip, as well; and that’s that the phone is bad for me. It gives me anxiety, it takes me out of the moment. It took a few days after returning from Sayulita before I could even bring myself to pick it up again. A month later, I’m back on my phone again, but I’m more aware: I notice the very real impact it has on my degree of focus and anxiety, especially when I scroll the news. (But my thoughts about that are really an entirely different post.)

So, on this morning, a month after I left for Sayulita, when everything feels a little bit chaotic and overwhelming, it helps to recall what’s possible in those little moments when I can retreat away from the world and inside of myself.