Does Travel Heal Your Spirit?

What is it about traveling that allows our spirits to soar?
As most of you know, I have lead programs at Kripalu for about a decade and received my yoga training there more than a decade before re-landing there as faculty. I have also studied with a teacher who loves to travel, and her inspiration has enabled two trips now that I will never forget – going to Damanhur in Italy for a dandelion initiation, and to Vieques to commune with the tropics and the ensparklated biobay there. Oh, and I lived part time on Kauai, part time on Nantucket for 13 years.
When guests come to Kripalu, it is often a spiritual pilgrimage. They save, sometimes for years, to be able to come. They dream of the transformation that getting away to a beautiful place, with loving expert teachers and guides, to practice soul-work with other aspirational beings, enables. Then they come, and it happens. It happens.

So, it is a milestone for me to offer my first tropical retreat. A group of us are going to a beautiful spa in Costa Rica in February, that magical land of mountains, tropics, monkeys in the trees, cloud forests and volcanos. We are going to have fun, do some yoga, connect with the medicine gardens at the spa where we will be staying, watch monkeys dance in the trees, meditate, clear, connect and recharge.
There is something about stepping out of your life, particularly to take a spiritual journey. It’s an opportunity to look at your life, appreciate it, and fine-tune your path. Somehow, meditation is more accessible. Somehow, insight is more accessible.
I know from the years I spent on Kauai and in other tropical locales that there is an energetic activation that also happens. The simplest way to say it is that it opens your chakras – the energy organs of your body. The tropics are incredibly expansive. So, doing energy work (like we’ll be doing in Costa Rica) allows big shifts to happen. It literally gives you an opportunity to re-arrange the building blocks of who you are.
So, for those of you going with me to the south, I am honored and eager to guide you on a gentle expansion – and for a few of you I’m sure, a great bursting open into new ways of being. I am creating ceremonies and rituals to guide us, speaking with the master gardeners there to ensure we connect with the magic of Costa Rica’s magnificent plant world.
As of this writing, there is still room in our tropical retreat. Interested in joining us? Check out this page for more information and to reserve your spot.
Whether you come with us or not, arranging your spiritual life with a collection of daily practices, regular connections and occasional journeys is a excellent mix that sparks and strengthens the soul and charges the spirit. May your path have more pleasure than pain, and take you home.
Namaste!