Costa Rica Yoga Retreat Featured Teacher - Jessica Proulx

Exciting news Yogis! We have our first guest blogger this week, Jessica Proulx! Jessica is hosting a 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training with us this August 3-23. Read about her deeply transformational experience on retreat at The Sanctuary at Two Rivers.

That Moment 

by Jessica Proulx

There is a particular moment that you miss as a practiced yogi. When you spend years peeling back the layers, moving, meditating, discovering, and learning, you miss that moment in savasana of utter release. You miss the choked up feeling, that lone tear that runs down your cheek at a song lyric or a flutter in your chest when you really and truly take a deep breath.  There are times when you first start to practice and delve deeper and deeper that you are shocked by the things that come up for you- and even more by the way in which they come up. I am someone that doesn’t like to cry in public, that will choke back a tear and try my best to be strong, and yet in yoga, I was always able to just be ME;  to let whatever comes up come up for me. If ya can’t feel it ya can’t heal it, and in my practice I never shied away. 

In recent years, the deeper I got into my practice the less and less I had those moments. A good thing I thought, I have let those layers go, but there were times I was almost envious of the teary eyed yogi next to me putting her shoes on after a practice of sheer emotional release. My practice changed in a great way. I instead had practices of being so present that nothing could come up for me because the moment was perfect. Times where savasana ended, and I knew, and I continued to lay there because the bliss of the moment was too beautiful to pass up. The practice was different and wonderful and yet I still missed “that moment”.

 And then…The Sanctuary. The journey started as I walked down a short path to the river’s edge. The moment my toes touched the water- THAT MOMENT happened. A flutter in my chest, my face warmed, my eyes widened, my lip quivered, a tear and my practice there began. During my first class teaching, I laid in savasana (abnormal for me while teaching) with my eyes wide open. This was a moment unlike I had ever experienced. I was lying on this expansive yoga pagoda that felt like it was floating in space in the middle of the jungle. I could see and hear monkeys and birds and there were so many shades of green I couldn’t imagine being able to name or count them. That night in child’s pose, I cried. The first tears of release and joy I had cried in recent memory. On a day off, my co-teacher and friend Jimmy and I went to lunch at a beach side restaurant- both in tears for half the meal. As I was teaching a class, I let it all go and broke down, something I would have never allowed to happen at my home studio. I cried in gratitude, I cried in acceptance of myself and my countless perceived flaws, I fell in love with myself and with my students, with my fellow teachers, with the staff at the Sanctuary, with the land, with the water, with the people of Costa Rica… I FELL IN LOVE.

I was unsure if that moment would ever come back to me, and in the Costa Rican jungle I found it in everything I did, every bit of food I ate, every yoga pose, every breath, every hug, everything. I did and saw and accomplished and achieved so many things while I was there- but “that moment”- that was the best part!

For more info about Jessica, visit her website www.noplacelikeomcenter.com