Walk with me, amongst the prehistoric creatures of the jungle, where sloths blend into bark on banyan trees that scrape the sky and spinous iguanas hide beneath the waxy green foliage. The scent of sticky, sweet orchids flood the air along with the earthy citrus of tamarindo juice made fresh daily. As you walk to the yoga sala, don’t forget to duck under the complex housing development of the local spiders, weaving gauzy death traps between forested doorways. Those helicopter propellers that dip between trees, is non-other than the heady flap of the toucans leading their mate to a high perch, and whose banana beaks can be spotted from afar. Don’t be alarmed when the colibri’s careen towards you with bodies buzzing so close you nearly kiss their green sheen, an easy mirage when sunlight catches feathers. They are gone as quickly as they came.

 Can you see the rebirth that manifests minute-by-minute; where the shell of a spider carcass rots will soon become a breeding ground for ant hives and feeding lizards. The cats, too, have a muse with both the living and the dead. While you sink into your hammock and gaze up, there will be a fleet of raptors, vultures catching the wind channels, so far away they seem to be a smudge on your iris. But no, the death-obsessed predators are really there, tipping paper-thin wings into invisible currents with an infinite flight path; a quality that appeals the international traveler. This is the tropical rainforest set just above the syrupy blue waters of the Caribbean Sea; so electric it hurts the eyes on a sun-soaked day.

As you bring your focus towards the canopy that bows down to make contact with its guests below, you might see a half-moon during daylight sitting a palm branch below a bunch of ripening bananas. The pregnant flower dropping downwards, and the waxing moon, she too is growing towards fullness against the burning sun. I sit here between them both, a transient planet finding her place in a galaxy far, far away.

This is Samasati.

It is a place I could have never imagined, if I didn’t know it already.

I am coming to this eco-retreat in Costa Rica for the second time in my life; to re-visit these vast corners of jungle that captured my pen last May. I am also coming back to re-visit my grief; to touch down to a place that holds the pieces of my heart—for this is where it broke. 

Last year, the Spring of 2019, was when I first came here to complete a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at Samasati. On my very first day, after a 5-hour bus-ride across the country and a rowdy Jeep trek through the dirt roads to the sanctuary, is when I got the call from my father. With strain and sympathy in his voice, he told me that his mother, my grandmother, Shirley Hooson was sick. The cancer was back, in her liver this time, and it was safe to say that she was going to be saying her goodbyes in the coming weeks. His words were vacant as they fell on my ears; a message of such significance delivered from such a far distance didn’t seem possible, like hearing a mother giving birth, broadcast from a broken stereo.

“…the day my dream was being fulfilled was the first day my heart began to slip between the ribs.”

I had just arrived. This was the beginning of my year-long solo travel across Latin America: the day my dream was being fulfilled was the first day my heart began to slip between the ribs. The brain’s logic and the heart’s sorrow would have to make a decision together. To take a direct flight to New York and be by her side, waiting for the terminal illness to consume her or stay for the training, to show up in the way that I had committed to. Between foggy eyes, a sinking heart and the torrential rain that came heavy that week, I would decide to stay. It was like choosing one half of a broken heart, because no matter which way I went, there were two pieces severed at the center.

Time at Samasati slows down like honey in winter. Our teacher training would be dilated into long days spent hunched together, five women, learning, teaching, holding space, healing from childhood wounds and current trauma. We committed to the practice and walked through lessons and handstands and philosophy, together and separately, each applying the sacred school of thought into our own framework. Mine was etched with death, everything came back to dying, to release, to loss, heartbreak, body aches and weepy tears for the world’s collective sorrow. It was heavy. But I made it out. Receiving my certification, a week early, within the same hour that Grandma Shirley would take her last breaths in Clinton, New York: 2:22 on May 17th. My journey would continue from that day but with a shift in the heart’s capacity. I wouldn’t see it then, but it would only open me further to what lie ahead.

I walked away from Samasati with the support of a Yoga practice that once just felt good in my body, but now would nurture the naked space in my chest.

It is March, 2020. I am back as the resident teacher at the Samasati. Full-circle, whew, ain’t that a thing? I am staying in the Leelah House, a rustic space for on-site employees to rest, where laundry is spun daily in the downstairs wash room and teachers and healers come to camp out for work opportunities at the hotel. My accommodations are simple, a one-bedroom on the first-floor, clad with an essential mosquito net draped over the bed, dusty windows and a creaky floor that extends out to a wraparound patio that looks straight into the face of the jungle herself. I moved a shiny red-wood desk outside to type away on my laptop and enjoy morning teas and many midnights spent watching the fireflies flicker across the lightless forest. Three meals a day made by local Caribbean women would keep me nourished and always full with seasoned patacones, mango juice, sliced pineapple, spicy juevos, gallo pinto for every meal along with mushroom soup, cheesy lasagnas and key-lime pie baked into personal bowls.

An acoustic guitar would entertain me for hours during this digital detox where I would rest my head early and rise each day with the sun at 5am. Our class would commence at 6:30 on the dew-splattered patio or in the shady sala above the Buddha Trail. Between morning and evening classes, there is time spent studying postures and philosophy by the infinity-edged pool, walking the backroads searching for monkeys and sloths bathing and breeding and jaunts to town to post-up at the beachside reggae bar to plug into their WiFi to edit and write content for the publication that employs me. I am finding rhythm and flow in this first week here, adjusting to teaching, connecting to strangers and re-visiting the gorgeous faces I left last year. The women that work reception at Samasati who showcase style and attitude in a range of color and expression; whose every word I hang on as if it was sustenance itself. A brief visit with my own teacher would leave me with memory of last year’s training, the profound moments of awareness guided by Stephanie and Becca, as well as the encounters with sorrow that swept me right across the studio floor. I remember Stephanie’s words, “The only way to the self is through the self.” She would nudge this mantra into our vernacular during our time together. I was beginning to learn that grief, too, may only be understood by going through it. Samasati has called on me, to turn towards my own heart that holds such optimism and hope but also, unturned grief and loss. An unprocessed death that I am determined to find my way through.

I open our yoga classes with our hands high, chin lifted towards the sky, straight spine, grounding through the feet, then leading with our chest, flat back, we bow towards each other, towards ourselves. Knowing that the healing has only just begun. We sink low into the hips, forward folds that feel easier to surrender into while in the humidity of the rainforest. We flow through surya namaskar’s, standing postures and floating warriors. I spend time inviting us to expand through an inhale, deepen through the exhale. My prose on the page leaks into my spoken cues during class; words fill me, and these classes allow me to get them outside of my own realm and into the palms of students who are open to listen. I am leading and being led, a duality of ground and sky, sun and moon. Yoga mimicking life. I stand where I am, with grief on the outer edges of my heels and an honest concern for these students well-being. These women and men who have showed up from distant places to be here, truly, to do their own version of healing. Mothers going through grueling divorces, first-time yogis learning about their bodies in slow-motion, experienced practitioners with perfect form and 60-year-olds with decades of poise. There are young twenty-somethings on holiday, news reporters from Washington, D.C. here on a solo trip, retired doctors, paralegals, lawyers and single women here for respite and reflection. I am shook by the privilege to guide, to use my yoga voice; one whose tone has softened with age and self-awareness. During class, Luna the cat may roll over your mat and kiss your heels with a pink nose. Mornings in the jungle ring with sharp calls from frantic parrots and toucans dip low as we bow in balasana. We surrender into a long savasana and wake up covered in dried flowers that have fallen from above. After each class, with eyes still closed, I see the invitation to quiet the ego and let go just a little more. “I came here to teach.” I remind myself. And also, to be a student of grief.

Within a week of being at Samasati, I can feel the veil of death that cloaked this place last May begin to lift. As if a tapestry of light has been hung from eye to eye and all I see is possibility and untouched potential in the vastness that is…gratitude. Yes, that’s it. This is gratitude and determination, to acknowledge the judgment I hold towards myself, for not healing fast enough. This is where those jagged edges of chipped shoulders start to soften and this is my opportunity to re-connect with the love that is my grandmother. She is the gentle voice beyond thought telling me it’s ok to be here, it’s ok to use my voice. She is there beyond my room’s edge as I type away under the rotting roofline and under a cloud of incense to keep the bugs away. She is in the lyrics that flood my head late at night and rush out with the amateur strum on a found guitar, she is the length of silence between breaths and the constant buzz of the colibri, the seeker of sweetness and bearer of love, the Hummingbird.

This is where I am reminded that nature endures, people are resilient and now is the time to reflect; dare I say, to heal. This is the invitation to see life without the confines of what was and allow a widening in the heart space to ask: what will become?

Snaps of Samasati Retreat