I had been looking forward to WWOOFing at Yoga in Daily Life in Brisbane since I left the organization’s retreat in Dungog, NSW over five months ago. Something shook me on that retreat, something I can’t quite explain, but I wanted to explore more.

I was gripping onto that something as my travels took me on a whirlwind journey around Australia. I did some incredible things in the past few months and wouldn’t change any of it, but all the while, returning to the organization to explore a yoga lifestyle stuck in the back of my head.

It’s a lifestyle that’s not the easiest to maintain in society I’ve lived in (I don’t want to say western or modern, because it may be different for everyone). One that requires a bit more discipline than I would say most people are accustomed to, but one where the health and spiritual benefits are incredible.

Living a yoga lifestyle is much more than what I was used to at home. My experience with yoga at home mainly consisted of classes at the gym or small centre near me. But the practice of yoga in class is just scratching the surface.

My duties at Yoga in Daily Life in Brisbane include preparing the studio for daily classes (cleaning, setting up mats, etc.), cooking lunch for volunteers at the centre and helping with some office work.

My favorite part of daily duties is cooking. Only vegetarian food is to be prepared at the centre. It’s great to learn about vegetarian cooking as well as all the herbs, nuts and other food sources that are used a lot in Indian and vegetarian recipes. I’m learning a lot about the benefits of certain herbs and other food sources as well as learning how yummy cooking healthy can be.

Black bean Soup and baked stuffed capsicums is a delicious veggie lunch option. Photo by Bobbi Lee Hitchon

Daily duties only take up about five hours of my day, the rest is spent in class or exploring the city. I’ve taken advantage of all the classes the centre offers, ranging from level one to level five of the Yoga in Daily Life System. After just a few days of classes, I felt great, but as I’ve continued I’ve noticed a difference in muscles and body parts I never really thought about.

It’s amazing how forgiving the body is. I arrived at Yoga in Daily Life Brisbane about two weeks ago mentally and physically exhausted. Two months of working a lot, not eating well and not maintaining my usual healthy living habits seemed to have caught up with me.

The day I arrived, I hadn’t slept in two days, mainly because my flight was so early that morning I didn’t  want to waste money on a room the night before, so opted to stay awake instead. Plus I was coming off a pretty high bakery high. I hit up the 24-hour alley way shop one last time before leaving Port Douglas to savor my favorite veggie pizzas. I arrived at the centre around 10 a.m., jumped right into a class and spent the rest of the day trying to stay awake. I didn’t make it to the second class of the day, falling asleep at 6 p.m. and waking up the next day at 6:45 a.m. to an alarm, which means I could have gone longer.

Ana, another WWOOFer there at the time, said to me a few day after my arrival, “You have a new face from the day you got here.” I can’t think of a better way to put it.

I usually keep a healthy existence between food, exercise and mental rest, but every now and then I slip out of it and sometimes veer pretty far off the best route for me. Never anything extreme, but little things that I know will add to a healthier and happier me that I’m just too lazy to do.

I get annoyed when I fall out of good habits, but remember that I’m only human and I can always fall back into them with a bit of focus.

However, my next step in yoga is requiring a lot more than a bit of focus to learn and practice.

Meditation.

It always seemed so simple and easy. For the longest time I never even considered trying it. Looking back, I don’t think it was that I didn’t consider trying it, but I couldn’t imagine trying it. It was not until Dungog that I actually started to think about meditating, but I couldn’t bring myself to try there or anywhere else since visiting there.

I decided I would try at Brisbane though and luckily the centre started a 4-week meditation course a weeks after I arrived. In classes before the course started I put  a lot more effort into meditating at the end of my yoga classes.

Classes at Yoga in Daily Life in Brisbane are held in a massive room that looks like it was once a basketball or netball court. Photo by Bobbi Lee Hitchon

Once I started to try to meditate in class I noticed when my thoughts started drifting and tried to bring them back to focus. One of the teachers at the centre said this is one of the the first steps in meditation and a big one. Still, I can’t stop it and it’s really frustrating. I don’t know what triggers the distraction, but a minute after losing focus I’ll notice that I’m thinking about something extremely random like what groceries I need to buy or a memory that doesn’t even mean anything. I’ve found that it’s easy for me to sit still, but impossible to think still.

The best I’ve felt meditating at the centre yet was when a teacher led the class through a meditation advising us to focus on a time when we felt most loved. I started to think of memories of friends and boyfriends, then finally found the right one. It was me at about four years old swinging from the arms of my mom and dad as we walked to the Friendly’s near my house.

The teacher went deeper into it, but advising us to think about every little thing about the moment, from the color of our clothing to the feelings we felt.

The goal of yoga is self-relization, but I’m still unsure what the goal is with each meditation practice. I don’t know exactly what people are suppose to see or feel. Some people have told me they’ve seen colors or felt warmth.

I don’t know about any of that, but I know after that one meditation, I came back to the room and felt like I had just arrived from somewhere else. I felt a bit groggy and like my body was falling asleep but my mind was still awake.

It felt like I had reached something I never had before in my meditation attempts and I thought I could build on that in the following practices. No luck. Even during the course, where my only focus for an hour was meditation, I couldn’t do it.

It’s hard and it makes me hungry after each attempt, but I’m glad I have the chance to do it in such a peaceful environment.

I only have another week left at Yoga in Daily Life in Brisbane, so I plan to make the most of all the great things offered there. It would be great to stay longer, but my upcoming plans are too exciting to be upset about leaving. In a week I get to see my absolute favorite person in the world, my daddy, as well as my Uncle Paul, Aunt Peggy and my dad’s girlfriend Mary, all in Fiji. It will be my first trip to Asia and the first time I’ve seen my dad in eight months.

I’ve been pretty good at not getting homesick this whole trip, but for some reason whenever I say that statement, “the first time I’ve seen him in eight months,” I get choked up. Needless to say, there will be tears shed at the Nadi airport.

Located in the Blue Mountains, the Yoga in Daily Life retreat in Dungog, NSW offers people an escape from the struggles of everyday life. It allows guest to get in touch with nature, spend time away from technology, eat right and just be. But this tranquility takes a bit of work. In early stages of development, the property requires a lot of building and development. On top of that, spending time on your own focusing on spirituality, among other things you don’t usually think about, can be a bit of a struggle, mentally.

For some this retreat is an instant wonder. For others it may be a bit of a challenge. But people who embrace it may just leave with a little peace of mind and enthusiasm to continue practicing a yogi lifestyle.

First impressions

As soon as I arrived on the 640-hectare property, I was introduced to numerous things I had never heard of before. First, was compost toilets. These are dry toilets. People release on a seat, which is the same as usual toilets and waste goes into a hole in the ground, but instead of flushing, people throw some saw dust into the hole. It may not smell so great, but it preserves water and is a daily reminder that no one’s shit smells of roses.

A bucket of sawdust from inside a compost toilet at the retreat. Photo by Bobbi Lee Hitchon

Preserving water is a big part of the property. It has numerous metal tanks that collect rain water. The collected rain water is used for everything as there are no other sources of available for use there. The only drawback to using rain water is it lacks the minerals of water from the ground or streams. This makes the water softer, which is harder to wash with and is also not as nutritious as water with minerals. However, in a world of dwindling water sources, it’s a great option.

Water tanks connected to the kitchen at the retreat. Photo by Bobbi lee Hitchon

Since the faucets are hooked up to outdoor tanks, the water comes out at whatever temperature it is in those tanks. On hot days, it’s a bit warmer, but most of the time it’s cool. People need to bring a bucket of water to shower, so if they want a hot shower, they have to boil water on the stove. The same is true for washing clothes, which is obviously by hand.

None of these things bothered me. I figured it was just a lifestyle I needed a few days to get used to and it would be second-nature. I was most nervous about lack of electricity. There was some, but it was powered by generators, which were only to be run for a short amount of time at night. Further, there was no internet available for public use. Spending so much time online, I thought I would really struggle not being able to check my emails and what not, but I actually didn’t even think about it much. Between the work we were given, cooking, reading and learning about the other people there, there was plenty to do. In fact, the one time I retreated to my caravan to do some things on my computer I felt like I was missing out on happenings in the kitchen.

Living in a caravan was nothing out of the usual. The beds and other things were the same as what most would expect at most homes. The only thing I didn’t like was having to walk outside to the toilets at night, because there were leaches on the ground among other wild life, plus it was cold. But even that I got used to and actually enjoyed after awhile because the sky at night was like nothing I had ever seen before. One night a bright moon was out surrounded by clouds, allowing the stars to shine extremely bright as well. It’s hard to keep your head down.

Lise and my caravan at the retreat. Photo by Bobbi Lee Hitchon

In fact, it’s hard to stay focused on wherever you’re going all the time, because the views from the retreat are so incredible. Sometimes the sky would be blue and we’d have a clear view of endless mountain ranges, which indeed looked blue. Hence the name I suppose. Other times it be a little cloudy/rainy and there would be a mist over the closest mountain to us. The rain sessions always ended with rainbows, which were the largest I have ever seen. Finally, there were two times when it was so foggy on the top of the mountain, I couldn’t see ten feet in front of me. It looked like the whole retreat had been swallowed by a cloud.

I saw several rainbows at the retreat. They made all the rain worthwhile. Photo by Bobbi Lee Hitchon

It was unusually cool while I stayed there and it rained a lot. It really felt like Autumn in Northeast America without foliage. My favorite thing to do was sit on the kitchen balcony, which of course had a brilliant view of the Blue Mountains, feet dangling and a warm, large porcelain cup of tea in hand, which I held with my sweater-wrapped hands. I’d sit out there before dinner and would come in when the aroma from the kitchen smelled too good to avoid.

Great food, no meat

Only vegetarian cooking is allowed on the property. Lakshmana, a yoga monk living at the retreat, explained that in yoga not eating meat is important, because it helped people form compassion.

I’m currently not a vegetarian. I’ve tried in the past, but failed. I wasn’t at all upset about having to eat vegetarian while staying at the retreat. I just didn’t really know how to cook for a vegetarian diet. Vegetarians must consider adding things to their diet to replace the protein lost by not eating meat. This basically means replacing pork, beef and fish with lentils, beans and chickpeas, so it’s not that hard.

Anyone who is thinking, “Yuck, vegetables,” or “I just can’t live without meat,” should think again. I like eating meat. I love cheesesteaks and gyros, but the food at the retreat was some of the best I’ve ever had. Almost everything involved turmeric. Plus there was a lot of experimenting with other spices by people from various cultures.

WWOOFing at the retreat were Veronica, who is from Italy, Lise, who is from France and myself. Unfortunately, I’m hooked to cookbooks at this point, so I didn’t really contribute much. But Veronica and Lise, who act like it’s nothing, are wonderful cooks. Maybe it’s just part of their cultures to know about spices, what goes well together and what not. None of us were chefs, yet they knew so much about it and I had absolutely know idea.

Further, since yoga is based in India, there were a lot of Indian influences. Lakshmana has been to India several times and had recipes to share, such as bhati. Suphduvmuni, another yogi that used to live on the retreat and now lives close by, shared chapati-making with us. Veronica, who also WWOOFed at Yoga in Daily Life in Brisbane, shared some recipes she picked from people along the way. Finally, Lise made this pumpkin soup, which tasted a little Indian-influenced, but came from a New Zealand, vegetarian cook book.

Lakshmana made curry to go with the chapatis. Photo by Bobbi Lee Hitchon

Pumpkin is very popular on this side of the world. The vegetable, which I only really used to make jack-o-lanterns up until about a year ago, is used in heaps of dishes here. We ate quite a bit while I was at the retreat as well as yams. I said almost every night there, “I feel like it’s Thanksgiving!”

Lantana in Daily Life

All the great views and food came with a price though. WWOOF is an exchange. WWOOFers exchange many things with their hosts, but first and foremost is work for food and accommodation. I guess since the food was so great, the work had to match it.

Our job at the retreat was to weed lantana. Like many things in Australia, this is a weed brought by the English, that flourished beyond expectations. It’s everywhere in the bush. There’s even more lantana then there are blackberry bushes.

The amount only adds to an already frustrating plant to weed. If you’re picturing a few girls walking around pulling out flowered weeds with their hands, think again. These weeds are actually trees. Their roots can stretch meters. So instead, picture three girls with axes and poison, cursing in three different languages.

Lise, in the driver's seat and I, on top of the ute, unloading the last of the lantana. Photo provided.

Further, this weed is deceptive. It has thorns. Unlike blackberry bushes, they’re very small, but just as destructive. In fact, the three of us looked like we got into a fight with a pack of wild cats after just a day of weeding. Scratches all over our arms, some on our necks, faces and so on.

Finally, there really was no rhyme or reason to where or what we weeded. We were weeding the sides of the 1.5 km road up to the retreat. This needs to be done to coincide with fire regulations for fear of bush fires. I don’t know how to explain it other than to say we weeded the bush.

Before I came to Australia, I read a lot about venomous snakes and poisonous spiders. What I found is that these things are usually in the bush, so I thought, “Pshh, I just won’t go there.” I recalled this thought when my head was in a lantana tree, a spider was on my back and any number of snakes had the perfect opportunity to hunt human. Somehow, someway, I didn’t see any snakes. I saw heaps of spiders, but none were poisonous, I think. The only thing that really bothered me were leaches, which live in the grass and come out especially in the rain. These were tiny leaches with stripes.

Luckily there were heaps of kangaroos to make up for all the creep critters. I loved riding in the back of the ute to work in the morning and watching them bounce in front of or beside the truck. With my thick wellington boots on, an ax close by and long gloves, I felt like I was on a safari in Africa rather than bush-weeding down under.

Yoga and spirituality

The food and lifestyle at Yoga in Daily Life is all part of yoga. I’m only going to explain what I learned there, because I am obviously not knowledgeable enough about yoga to give a full explanation, so take this section as you did the rest. If you want to learn more, please look into other sources and form your own opinion.

Obviously yoga is the most important thing at the retreat, but “yoga” may be different from how others practice and perceive it. The only view and experience I had with yoga before coming to the retreat was through classes at my gym and centers. I saw it as a great stretch and sometimes even good workout. I heard the instructors talking about the poses and sometimes spirituality, but kind of avoided it.

So when I came to the retreat and saw how earth and animal conscience they were, it kind of made me feel like all these practices I had done only brushed the top of what yoga is and almost a lie. People in the classes I went to would relax from their hectic lives, sometimes even wearing the stereotypical clothing, to take part in this ancient practice that is really just one part of the whole thing, only to hop in their SUVs, destroying the earth with gas emissions and stop at Starbucks on their five-minute drive home. It really got to me, because that was me (except with a Honda).

I learned at the retreat that the “exercise/stretching” aspect is an important, but small part of the overall practice.

The first morning at the retreat, Lakshmana asked Lise and I if we were interested or had any experience with yoga. I told him mine. Lise had none. We were both open to listening and learning about it. Then he asked us if we believed in an after life (Do you believe you die or just your body). We answered and he said, “There’s no point in committing to it if you don’t.”

The goal of yoga is self-realization. Through meditation, a lifestyle that’s courteous to the land and other species and education people spend their lives achieving wisdom about more than just tangible things. It’s not the unknown, because they say things really happen in meditation, etc. but it is things most people don’t see. I say, “They say” not to demean, but because I have never experienced it myself.

All this is to be not rewarded but wiser in the after life. I assumed this meant reincarnation, but Lakshmana said it’s any form of after life. With that in mind, yoga opens up to more religions then Hindu.

There are other organizations led by other gurus, but Yoga in Daily Life is led by Paramhans Swami Maheshwaranda. One of the things the organization and he is well-known for is spreading the practice to the West. Originally from India, Swami is based in Vienna and visited the Eastern Block a lot during communism and still.

Yoga, the way I knew it, is for good health, but is also a supplement to meditation, which seems to be most important.

In the beginning, when I felt like I was living a lie, I kind of wanted to stop the practices until I learned more about it and whether it was what I believed. I told Veronica about it and she said, “It’s not so black and white.” For some reason that really stuck with me. Yoga is proven to be really good for the body and if the relaxation can give people at least some peace of mind, isn’t that part of the overall goal?

I am going to continue practicing yoga but be more mindful of my place in the world and how everything in it corresponds.

As for religion and spirituality, it’s hard for me to give a definitive answer right now. I was raised Christian and I am definitely not an atheist or agnostic, but my relationship with religion is shaky. I’m not really sure what I believe, but up until the retreat I made every attempt to avoid thinking about it.

Discussing it with Lakshmana and the other girls so openly, made me feel safer to start investigating my beliefs. I think this is because for the first time in my life, religion/spirituality was discussed without any kind of pressure. Lakshmana answered my questions and told me his beliefs, but that was it. It was there for me to take it how I may.

Throughout my stay at Yoga in Daily Life I kept thinking how I wanted to share it with others. I’m extremely happy I went, lantana and all.

When I told people my plans to work on a farm in Australia, their responses were usually doubtful.

“But you’re not a farmer.”

“You won’t last a day.”

“Do you have any idea how hard farming is?”

They were right about one thing. Farming is tough! Some of the work is straining, but mostly it’s just tedious and time-consuming. It’s harder than the nay-sayers said it would be and harder than I’ll ever know given that I’ve done so little.

However, what those people neglected to tell me is how rewarding and soulful farming can be. You’re in the great outdoors, basking in the sun and working with the land. The work you do is evident. There’s nothing like looking back on a days worth of weeding blackberries and seeing with your own eyes all you’ve accomplished.

2/21/10-Can you tell which row of vines has been weeded? Photo by Bobbi Lee Hitchon

Further, there’s not much thought in most of the work. Once I got into a groove, it was basically just repetition. That gave me a lot of time to think about…everything.

People in my life, things I’ve accomplished, people I’ve met, what I want to write about next, how I’m going to write it, things I’ve said, analyzations of why I did something, how I wish I did it differently, my favorite moments, my favorite sandwich, my first love, friends, family, what I want to accomplish, how I’m going to do it, things I wish I had said, why none of that matters, how I’ll do things differently in the future and I wonder if it’d time to eat yet.

In the midst of it all, I’ll look up for a moment and just go blank at the sight. In the afternoon when the sun is setting, it shines through the leaves and grapes just right to brighten the colors. The mix puts me in my place as to how lucky I am to be here.

2/24/10-The grapes and leaves look especially impressive when the sun hits them just right, usually around 5 p.m.

All that thought, can really give a person peace of mind. It comes so naturally too. I don’t even realize I am so into my thought until I look back at meters and meters of completed work and think, whoa how did I get from there to here. It’s extremely relaxing, minus the random pricks from the thorns on blackberry vines.

The soul-searching is only going to get more intense as Lise and I are heading to WWOOF at a yoga retreat center three hours outside Sydney next week. If we thought we were in the middle of nowhere at Kancoona, I think we’re in for a rude awakening.

When I say we’re going to WWOOF at a yoga retreat, I mean that theoretically. There isn’t actually a yoga center there quite yet. We’re going to help built it. I’m not sure what resources are available at this place, but I’m sure not many if there isn’t even a building on the site.

But none of that matters. It’s just another adventure and learning experience in Oz and this one comes with group yoga and meditation.

I’m pretty excited for the trip there as well. Lise has a station wagon, so we’re driving to the center. It will be my first time kind of road tripping in Australia. The place is ten hours away and we are doing it all in one day, so there’s not going to be a lot of time to stop along the way. From what I hear, Australia has a lot of interesting things along its highways, including a massive lobster. From what I know of this country I’m banking on open roads surrounded by grand landscapes.