Yoga booze fests

WINE BOTTLES CLANG as José Manuel cleans out the recycling bin from the previous night’s post-dinner gathering. I am keenly aware of the high-pitched sound as each bottle drops into the bin when only three out of 12 people show up for morning meditation.

The clatter continues and distracts me from my meditation. 
I am to observe, not react.

I observed that 10 people routinely consumed over 10 bottles of wine per night. 

Here’s where I am reacting. 

We’ve witnessed that abusive behaviour and alcohol consumption seems to go hand-in-hand with yoga “retreats.” We’re not austere or particularly fundamentalist about yoga practice or yoga retreats. But, seriously, is drinking so important during your “yoga retreat” that your yoga practice becomes optional?
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“Have we once again fallen prey to the lure of always needing more? Always needing to enhance our experiences, instead of enjoying them for what they are?” an editorial posted by drinktank.org reads.

But, are we alone?
"We pretty much allow anything as long as you show up for class, even if that means that you just lie on the floor and sleep," said Heather Lilleston, the co-founder of Yoga For Bad People, in an article penned by Mia Adorante in W magazine.

Look, we’re not anti alcohol or anti fun. We highlight local wines (hey, we’re in Portugal after all!) and even dish out our home-made liqueurs during our dinners. We develop yoga programs that include opportunities for leisure and adventure. Our higher aim is to help people to Discover and Feel the Azores, not discover and feel another hangover. 

In the 35 yoga retreats we’ve organized and hosted in the last three years we have witnessed addictions, abuse and overstimulation during many of them.

So, I don’t know if I buy the “anything to get someone in my retreat” or “at least they’re trying yoga and starting their journey” mantras.

Not when it seems that the transformation we hoped for isn’t happening.

Our higher aim is to help people to Discover and Feel the Azores, not discover and feel another hangover. ​

Once during a retreat here I heard a shriek from our innkeeper upstairs. One of the retreat participants partied so hard he literally shat himself and left the soiled underpants in the middle of the room.

During another retreat the cleaning staff informed me that nearly half of the participants had been regularly vomiting from over drinking and we needed to call a plumber to clear out the system. 
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For some groups the abuse is coffee and overstimulation. During a retreat we averaged about four mugs of coffee per person at breakfast. In another retreat the addiction was overplanning, where every moment of free time during the retreat was planned and often double-booked with a constant low-level anxiety and FOMO.

The real problem
How did we forget to just BE? How did vacationing turn into more ways we abuse and overstimulate ourselves? After a recent read of How Much is Enough, the authors refer to John Keynes famous economic essay from the 1930s that (wrongly) predicted after the Industrial Revolution man would move to a four-hour work week. But he (correctly) predicted that man would be faced with his real dilemma: What to do with his leisure time? 

Abuse and addiction are labels many of us distance ourselves from. But without the labels we can recognize them in their many forms: The way our inner voice incessantly criticizes us, the way we eat or don’t eat nourishing foods or control our diets. Addiction can include over-stimulating with caffeine or busying ourselves with endless plans and to do lists. If we constantly busy or numb ourselves in our free time we never have to face up to the fact that we may not be living our best life.

Brene Brown says, “Numbing vulnerability also dulls our experience of love, joy, belonging, creativity, and empathy. We can’t selectively numb emotion. Numb the dark and you numb the light.”

Sober curious founder Ruby Warrington shares, “What I’ve realized is that while I was drinking regularly (meaning 3–4 times per week, like most people I knew), I was living with constant low-level anxiety that the fake alcohol ‘high’ simply numbed out for a few hours. Without alcohol in my system, I am able to feel everything, all the time, and this actually means many more ‘ups and downs’ — the ups being sustainable and genuine, and the downs being so much more short-lived and easier to handle.”

Maybe our life really does suck. But we can’t be present to follow the path to better our life when we’re drunk, high, over-caffeinated or running from one plan to another. 

So why do we care?
In all of these retreats our guests left with smiles on their faces and even left us glowing reviews. Many of them did Discover and Feel the Azores and many had positive transformational life experiences. Nothing on our property was broken or damaged (other than the clogged toilet issue…) and so no harm, no foul, right? 

Well actually NO. We put a LOT of intention into our property. We routinely hold ceremonies of gratitude and reflection. We set an altar for each group inviting in “good energies.” I put Reiki in the rooms before guests arrive to welcome them with good intentions. We are a sacred space. So making money off of people abusing themselves literally makes us sick to our stomach.

Maybe it’s because we live on-site and our center is also our home, but when people abuse themselves the pain reverberates through the property. We feel it.

And while we’re going on about the Amazon burning and Climate Change, did you ever stop to think that the way we treat ourselves directly affects the planet? Everything is connected. If you can drink a bottle of wine a night whatever self-hatred or lack of self-care reverberates down to how we treat Mama Earth.

So let’s embrace the light. Let’s embrace the truth of our addictions and on retreat let’s nourish our mind, body and spirit so we can safely go deeper and face the challenges, fears and pain that nudge us toward addiction. 
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As Yoga or Retreat Leaders let’s set the tone of our retreats. Let’s be clear on our intentions. Let us lead with love but not turn a blind eye when we see our participants’ retreat behavior out of line with our ethos for self-care. We can enjoy a glass of wine and savor it with our farm-to-table meal. We can also go to bed rested and fresh for the day of adventure and exploration ahead.