I Just Led My First Retreat Since the Pandemic and This is What I Learned

In December 2021 I was very fortunate to be able to host my first retreat since the pandemic began in early 2020.

How to describe the experience…It was a lot of pent-up desire for travel, change, humidity, and hugs that flourished in a beautiful week of community togetherness. 

Our retreat location was Nosara, Costa Rica, one of the 5 “Blue Zones” or areas of the world where more people live to be 100 years old than in any other place on Earth. So there was that!

Despite my 24 years of yoga teaching experience, I was really nervous and uncertain how teaching a retreat in person after almost two years of exclusive online teaching would go. 

I worried that I’d be rusty, that I’d forget how to teach all the things we used to be able to do in person, and that I’d be at a loss for words.

Well, I was rusty. And it took some time for my brain to catch up with this new 3D, technicolor experience of teaching, but as soon as we were all together in that yoga shala, the “in-person” teacher inside me re-awakened, much to my relief and wonder.

The safety tides with the pandemic are continually shifting, but when it is safe to host yoga retreats again in your country, I’ve compiled some of the things I learned and experienced and what might be helpful for you on your next retreat.

 

The power of human interaction

We are social creatures who need to be around other humans. After having meals with our group three times a day, yoga classes twice a day, and countless little interactions in between, I noticed my brain started getting sharper, just from being around other people! 

I wasn’t even the one getting to take the retreat and practice all the yoga – but by the end of the week, I couldn’t believe how much more focused I was and how much less absent-minded I’d become. The brain fog I’d been experiencing at home was gone. Apparently, the students were feeling this too. 

Feeling ridiculously grateful while being on retreat is a common emotion, but this year the sense of gratitude and relief for being together was far more intense and palpable! This was something we all reveled in and lapped up like taking your first drink of water at an oasis in the desert.  

 

Being seen and heard

With the more limited human interaction that many of us have experienced in the last two years, it quickly became apparent that people needed to talk and be heard For this reason we made sure our group had the opportunity to share their pandemic experiences in small triads, to discuss what they’re processing, what was challenging, and what’s next for them based on their learnings and experiences. 

In a more ordinary year, we would have dedicated check-in and sharing time solely at the beginning and end of the retreat and focus more on “getting down to business” in our yoga practices, but this year was, of course, different. To accommodate people’s need to interact, we decided to sprinkle many opportunities throughout the week to chat and verbalize with each other. This allowed people to relax into the experience and to be in the practices with more ease. 

 

We all miss touch

Remember hands-on assists? Across the board, our retreat group was wanting touch. Since the support faculty and I are only so many people, we opted to weave lots of partner work and hands-on assists into the daily practices. The teachers and non-teachers in the group were able to quickly pick up on the partner work and were able to help each other go deeper into poses and get into poses they couldn’t previously do. Human touch added a wonderful and much needed element to the retreat and contributed to a sense of belonging and togetherness.

 

Pre-retreat bonding was key

One of the benefits of the pandemic is how familiar everyone has become with the various technologies that allow us to connect online. For the first time ever, we realized we could start our retreat connecting early with a Zoom orientation meeting before we left!  We also set up a Whatsapp group thread for everyone attending to communicate. This gave folks an opportunity to meet each other prior to travel, set up ride shares, put names to faces, and get out some of the pre-travel jitters before hopping on a plane. Once we got to Costa Rica, it was like we had all known each other forever! 

 

Safety

The retreat center we stayed in was almost completely open air. We ate in a covered dining area without walls surrounded by jungle, we practiced in shalas open to the fresh ocean air. This, coupled with an entire group of fully vaccinated people, helped to create a sense of safety that most of us haven’t felt in a very long time. We all were able to relax into this safety much more than I was anticipating, and it was amazing.

 

Being in the moment

I’ve led dozens of yoga retreats, and I always plan the whole week well in advance. This retreat was different: After so many months of online classes with limited ability to fully “see” the students, I was so ready to respond to who and what was there, in the moment. I found myself planning on the fly as I got to know the group, sometimes mapping the day’s classes that morning based on what I observed the day before.

I also noticed that the students had a big pent-up need to do things, not just yoga. They were ready to do all kinds of things: dancing, surfing, horseback riding, shopping, swimming, and even getting tattoos! 

With so many things suddenly available to do safely, people definitely overdid it, run down, and needed more rest than usual. By not over planning I was able to respond to this need and incorporate more restorative practices into our daily classes.

With so much darkness, uncertainty, and painful division in the world right now, we felt so lucky to have had this opportunity to experience a week of safe interaction in paradise, and to be able to bring back a bit of that sunshine, kindness, and generosity back to our respective families and communities. 

As long as it is relatively safe to get on an airplane, if you can get somewhere warm and open air, retreats may just be the way we gather safely during the time of the virus and continue the good work of being recharged in order to light up a darkened world.

 

Photo by Katrina Kopeck