Adapted from the Mind|Body|Fitness Yoga blog. Update On-Retreat with Andrea Dyer on her 4th Annual Mind|Body|Fitness Yoga Retreat with True Nature Education:
We came to Santa Teresa this year to listen. The sound environment in Santa Teresa is rich with layers of the ocean, wind, monkeys, birds and life in the hotel and village.
I’m sitting in the hotel’s open air restaurant – using wifi and listening to layers of sound. The backdrop is the non-stop waves in the ocean about 100 yards in front of me through the glade of palm trees. There is the din of silverware, Bob Marley and the chatter of the restaurant staff, the gurgle of the pool water and the call of birds in the trees. The monkey raised their voices in the pre-dawn hour.
There is no electronic curtain of sound here (other than the sound and bass of Bob Marley music). There is clarity and a distinct evidence of nature here. Human voices are hushed and relaxed.
My ears have always been invited to soak in the sounds available. There is nothing better than to rise with the monkeys and walk down the path to the beach and sit and watch the sun rise to the left over Mal Pais. The sound of the surf is soothing on a soul level. It invites you to listen more closely to your heart and soul.
So I have invited our retreaters to listen this week. Hear the sounds of Costa Rica and listen to themselves having this experience. Taking a sacred pause to soak in the sounds of contentment, excitement, and the silence in the space left when all the plans and analysis that kidnap us most days.
We took some inspiration from Milerepa and his iconic leaning toward the music of the soul in meditation, and from Rumi:
Where Everything is Music
We have fallen into the place where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes rise into the atmosphere, and if the whole world’s harp should burn up, there will still be hidden instruments playing, playing.
This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl somewhere on the ocean floor.
Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge of driftwood along the beach wanting, wanting.
They derive from a slow and powerful root that we cannot see.
Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest and let the spirits fly in and out!
This is my fourth trip to Costa Rica and each time I get here I am more relaxed and at ease in meditating and listening. Listening is dear and sweet to me here.
On retreat tons of pictures are captured to take the beauty and good feelings back to our regular lives, but I have taken to recording and journaling about the sounds here – somehow if feels closer to my soul. There still are pictures, but I am taking them as placeholders for the sounds so I can reconnect to the sounds and my soul when I see them. It’s my wish that everyone on this retreat will be able to open the window in the center of their chests and let the spirits fly in and out – like the sweet sounds of Santa Teresa.
Pura Vida!
