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Love Soul: yoga retreat, baby!

This morning I woke up and didn't have to go to work.  Personal day of the mental health variety.  It took all my willpower to get my butt out of bed, but I managed.  I grabbed my yoga mat and trekked over to YogaWorks SoHo to meet up with my coworker, SeryiStar for our makeshift yoga retreat.  It's not just a workout -- it's my attempt at accomplishing the Love Soul feat, which is not exactly an easy task considering I'm an atheist who laughs at the word soul.

The basic idea was to have one of those ahhhhhhh moments.  I've had a handful of those in my life:  jumping into an icy cold plunge pool, going for a run in the mountains in Pennsylvania alone, watching the sun come up over Manhattan while running across the Brooklyn Bridge.  While I hesitate to call them "spiritual" moments, they were moments that warmed me to the very core of my heart.  That's as close as I will ever get.

So here's how my big day went down:

• 9:45am - SculptWorks
• 10:30am - sauna & a shower
• 11:45am - Restorative Yoga
• 1pm - lunch at Souen
• 4pm - 10 minutes of total silence / meditation
• 5pm - Vinyasa 2

Sculptworks was a total strength training class using resistance bands attached to a yoga wall.  Awesome workout, and waaaay more intense than I was expecting, but definitely not spiritual.

The sauna seemed like a good place to have an ahhhh moment.  Didn't Native Americans do the whole sweat lodge thing?  Still, no dice.  Seryi and I chatted in there and sweated up a storm, but there was no spirituality.

I was starting to think there wouldn't be a special moment that day, and then I found myself lying on a folded blanket with a bolster under my knees, feet on a block with soles touching, arms thrown out cactus style.  The teacher told us to become a sponge, to feel the pores opening and your skin blending with the air around it.  And, I shit you not, I felt it.  One minute I'm thinking about how the air around me is the exact temperature as my skin, and the next, it's like my body no longer exists -- like the whole room is one big....fuzz. 

I know it sounds totally hokey, which is how I know it's the real deal.  *Le sigh*

Incidentally, I also fell asleep briefly during that class.  I think I've napped maybe twice in my entire life, and this caught me so off guard.  Life was amazing.

After Restorative Yoga, we went to lunch.  When we got back, we decided to just sit there for 10 minutes in silence.  10 minutes of meditation.  It was AWESOME. We just sat there with our green teas, not saying anything.

And finally, we went to Vinyasa 2 where I did my first ever side crow.  I felt like such a yoga badass ^_^

So there you have it -- my first ever yoga retreat, my first ever restorative yoga class, which led to my first check mark for the Love Challenge.  Hoowah!