By Christine Russell
889 Yoga + Wellness Spa co-founder with my amazing sister @889emily
@889christine
What a warm welcome back to Squaw Valley. Feels so great to be back in the Valley. I focused a lot of my energy in my past work life (pre yoga innerpreneur!) loving this place and helping to make the village the happy place that it is. The mountains creating the valley are as abundant and majestic as ever. It is special to return to celebrate its magnificence with so many shiny, crazy yogis at Wanderlust.
A 12-hour journey to get here (VW bus driving is a little slower!) made it feel unbelievable to arrive and get right in the flow. This was my welcome pick-up at SFO. Just doesn’t get better.
Friday morning began with a healthy breakfast at our campsite (fresh green juice, hot drinks to sip, and greek yogurt and quinoa granola). Our first class was in the Gaiam tent led by Robert Thomas, a zen buddhist of the Theravada tradition (the one which my husband and I like to follow) leading a Guided Meditation on Deep Listening with the Entire Body. We chose this meditation because he is the author of “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind“, a book which we have on our our 889 Living Yoga Program reading list for 2012. I’m deep into it. Cool to sit with the author.
He left me with two things to think about:
The first was a question he asked, ‘How do you make yourself available?’ It was in the context of community and listening - how do you listen. Do you help from a place of listening, or from a place of telling. This was a powerful theme throughout one of my entrepreneurial classes at MIT just this past June. Professor Bell, a wise master of Leadership, spoke about the power of listening, and the best leaders in the world are the best listeners in the world. Powerful to see alignment of thought and message in a classroom at MIT and in a tent in the mountains from a Zen buddhist master. Both shared that listening reveals…
Rob also spoke after a sit about listening and what do our eyes grasp on to? What to we grasp/cling/relate to in order to formulate ‘what is’ in our minds? He gave an incredible analogy to crystalize this point:
When we are in the middle of the ocean, in a boat, and we look all around us, the ocean looks round. But we all know the ocean is immeasurable and is all around us. It’s not just round. But we don’t see that in that moment on the boat. We don’t see what it really is - what is infinite. His point, is therefore, when we allow ourselves to “receive” and not fixate on something, rather see all, we have freedom and we allow ourselves to truly see. It allows us a broader range of capacity.
This is not easy to do because our habit energy wants to grasp and know, right? We often believe things are as we see them, and don’t listen well enough (or at all) to realize that maybe there’s more.
This sat with me all day.
Even in the hammock.
Next up we went on a nature silent meditation hike up Squaw Valley with Mark Coleman, another zen buddhist teacher who teaches at Spirit Rock in northern California and is author of ‘Awake in the Wild.’
We hiked with a group of 25 yogis and enjoyed a slower hike on a path up the mountain, stopping three times for a 15 minute mindfulness meditation sit in nature. It was awesome to experience the feeling of letting-go increase with each sit, and the ability to love and soak in nature more as we ascended. My first sit I was pretty distracted (Wanderlust is just SLIGHTLY overwhelming!!! I was buzzing on a total festival high!!) We finished at a beautiful natural water hole in the river flowing down the mountain and there were children jumping into the water as we sat in silence.
Post hike called for a raw, vegan picnic thanks to Lydia’s organics from Petaluma. DELICIOUS! We grabbed some grass and some shade and chilled out.
We retreated after lunch to the Healing Sanctuary - a series of tents with body healers and massage therapists - for massages. The 12 hours of travel for each of us left us with stiff bodies and we both love a little spa. My massage was remarkable. It was outside in the open air and I could hear the smooth DJ beats of the festival behind us. Dan, my therapist who was in for the weekend from San Francisco, used coconut oil as his massage carrier oil, and mixed a blend of organic lemon, eucalyptus and peppermint essential oils for me. All of my faves. A massage from yogi hands is powerful. The end was the best - he offered me a chocolate covered espresso bean. Perfect end to bliss. Lucky me!
Lucky me. I felt this a lot today. Also felt this in the hammock.
From this, still no yoga yet (!), we sat and were privledged to spend an hour with Dr. Wayne Dyer. Hundreds of yogis just sat in awe. When a 72-year old man with Leukemia tells you you need to look at yourself as “Divine Love”, you listen. Wayne began by sharing that he believes there’s a higher place we can all reach while we’re here on earth. His belief is that we are all spiritual beings, having a human experience, not the other way around.
He spoke about manifestation. Not “The Secret” kind of manifestation. He believes that you attract what you ARE, not what you WANT. I appreciated this. I have always been unfulfilled by The Secret’s message about manifesting, because it is totally focused on what you “want” which doesn’t seem like a satisfying journey. He believes you attract what you ARE in your life, and this is how you manifest. Powerful stuff. One of his main principles on manifesting is vibrating on what you wish to manifest as if it’s already there in your life; as if you have reached the end and you are working backwards. Another principle is that you must be able to “feel” this in the body, not just think it in your mind. It must be felt.
His most powerful quotes for me were:
All you have to do is treasure your own magnificence.
Your imagination is the greatest gift you have been given.
Are you a hostage to your own ego?
He shared that you don’t have to accomplish or win, you simply need to treasure your own magnificence. He believes that our imaginations are it. Without them we can not create. And on the ego - he said DUMP IT. This made me think, what about my ego am I attached to? I made a few notes in my journal.
And before you go to bed at night, he shared, spend the last five minutes before you rest meditating on positive, beautiful things because you are about to program your mind and subconsious for the next 8 hours, so make it positive and make it bright.
Last stop was “Rock your ASS-ANA” with Les Leventhal from San Francisco. It was a power Vinyasa class set to the live tunes of DJ HiFi (was fun to re-connect with him as he’s DJ’d with us at 889!). Felt so good to flow, sweat and breathe. Loved some of his creative sequencing. My body was craving to move.
Our final stop was a visit to the Off the Mat, Into the World party. Davian invited us to come hang out.It was great to catch up with Seane and celebrate with the OTM team. We’ve got lots with them tomorrow. Davian and I were pretty excited to unite!
Back to our campsite for some dinner: scrambled egg and avocado burritos with organic caprese salad, coconut water, and my FAVE dark chocolate we can only seem to find in the Bay Area, Poco Loco (try the Aztec Chile).
Ready to rest under the stars, snuggled into my sleeping bag in my fleecy long undies!
Sipping tulsi ginger tea as I type from our home on the road. Heaven.
Will write you all back tomorrow to share the adventure…
Yoga love and California sunshine,
Christine
