How much would you pay for an orange?

I spent my long weekend away at the beautiful Bamarang Bush Cabins just outside of Nowra at my first yoga retreat. It took me a while to work out what to write here… should I write about what I personally got out of the retreat? give advice to anyone wanting to take the next or first step on the journey? cover the activities? the ecologist that visited? the type of yoga we did? the food we cooked and ate? or the Sotai Therapies team that put it all together? Well no doubt I’ll work some sage words into future posts like, ‘chew every mouthful of every meal 30+ times’, but one of the main things I thought about was the openness of the people I met, not so much in sharing the details of their lives necessarily, more for coming to the retreat in the first place. For many, they had never done yoga before, were not vegetarians and had not really been exposed to the philosophy or lifestyle that is yoga.

It seems that as we go through life our base or sense of ourselves should grow stronger, enabling us to be more open to new experiences than ever before. However in many cases this is the other way around; as people grow older they become more closed off to new experiences. Surely new experiences are what life is all about? Without this, what is this life that we are leading? The people that I met, many of whom had never done any yoga reminded me of this, as did my partner who made no attempt to rebuke my new-found Zen yoga bliss on my return to Sydney. I’ve been practicing yoga for almost ten years (inconsistently) and I wasn’t sure that I would be cut-out for the experience, so I reflected on my own expansiveness, or lack thereof and the bravery and ‘give-it-a-go’ spirit of my fellow retreaters.

I also found myself pondering the nature of a retreat as a way of finding this. The oxymoron is obvious… so you retreat (withdraw) to be open? More on the Bamarang in future posts.

The answer to the question, “How much would you pay for an orange?” is $25 if you were on the retreat, hungry and going through withdrawals related to sugar, caffeine, alcohol and removal of the ‘convenience lifestyle’ in general. The second night over dinner I mentioned that I had a bag of oranges in my car and the bidding began! In the end the same 12 oranges that came down to Bamarang with me also came back with me.

The beautiful pictures in the post were all taken by Bernie. The painting is one that I have made since returning, it relates to my experience of the retreat.