Mellow in Kentucky: Report from the Heart of a Yoga Retreat
By Glenn Mitchell
Theresa and I were back in Kentucky recently for some time with her international TriYoga community and her teacher, Yogini Kaliji, at SoHum, TriYoga’s beautiful flow studio in the bluegrass fields near Georgetown.
After four days of what for me was an intensive flow of yoga, I was having trouble accessing my thinking function. Someone said I seemed mellow as they watched me on retreat. What I noticed was my body was not its usual project-driven machine. In a stretch of available time one day, between the morning and the afternoon programs, I had nowhere to go and nothing to do. I tried taking a nap, which is habitual afternoon behavior for me, but I couldn’t fall asleep. For more than once while on this retreat, I had too much energy buzzing to sleep. It is an interesting combination; I wrote in my journal, I’ve more available energy and far less focus. At the same time, I have no distractions. I’m not pulled toward anything in this moment. I feel fully available to what is here, while not attaching to any of it.
It is an odd place for me—present, open, available, alert, but not given to anything. The experience made me realize that I usually enter presence through the particular—a deep dive into a project, or a flower, or a bird, or an encounter with another human being. Everything opens from there, from that immersion into the one thing, I’m joined to all things. This current state seems to be more diffuse. It is an open awareness not rooted in any particular thing. I feel fully present with what is here. I’m clearly hearing the birds and seeing the freshness of the trees and the people around me, but none of it is leading me to anything else. Perhaps that is the invitation at the heart of it, a break in the need for the link itself.
I manage the thought—it would be different for me to live from here. It is mellow for sure. It is free of any list. It also feels aligned with the natural world, in a different way for me. I’m here today the way the grass is here, or the trees, or this breeze on my face—a participating presence absent of focused effort or the foundation of a why. Then I witness how hard chickadee works just to open one sunflower seed hull, and I wonder how to live the whole of life’s invitation. How can I remain fully open and available, not consumed by any expectations I might bring to the moment, while flowing forward with what is mine to do this day?
There are so many ways to kiss the ground, as Rumi understood. There are so many paths to take to the center of one’s life. I’m grateful today for my body’s offering, for this open pause. I’m grateful for this being here, present and available. And I pray for all that is flowing through this available presence, the seen and the unseen, the effortless and the efforted.
Love and Peace, Glenn
Glenn Mitchell is happily practicing retirement and spiritual direction outside of Spring Mills, PA, where he lives with his wife and TYCP Director, Theresa. Glenn enjoys attending the mystery overflowing around him, making things from wood, tending the garden, cooking, and sitting in silence.
Glenn’s PrayerNotes from the Homestead, where this piece was originally published, can be found at: https://glennmitchell.substack.com. Glenn can be reached at glenn@likeafeather.com.
Oasis recently published a collection of forty of Glenn’s PrayerNotes. PrayerNotes: Making Anew can be ordered by e-mailing: operations@oasismin.org