Wanderlonging

The Wanderlust buzz has started.  Emails are showing up about the annual festival from the organizers, from teachers, from studios, from friends.  The Facebook chatter is beginning -- while some people are talking about whether they won tickets in the Burning Man lottery, others are beginning to plot our trips to yoga camp.  I've been injured since December (piriformis) and not practicing as I try to heal, but still I'm feeling swept up already in the dreaming of being back at Wanderlust this year, to see if I can replicate the most excellent experience I had there last year.

I consider myself an unlikely convert.

I went prepared to Wandersnark, and truly, there was plenty I couldn't relate to or really didn't care about, as the following sampling of Facebook status updates demonstrates.  I'm generally suspicious of the lifestyle-marketing, and always a little wary in a big cohesive group, wary of our very cohesion, alert to any sign of cultishness.

The long, hot Wanderlust days passed in a blur of class, heat, laughs, class, more heat.  I spent my entire time in Village Anusara, my yoga home, venturing to other classes only once -- no need to go elsewhere.  I fell completely head-over-heels in love with Amy Ippoliti.  I felt too busy the whole time, unable to take in everything happening around me, only able to focus on one ring of the multi-ring circus.  I never went to the tea house, didn't eat from the Dr Bronner's food truck, didn't take the tram to the top, didn't bla bla bla.  Watching videos afterward, I was amazed at all of the things that happened that I missed.

But what did happen for me?  I practiced, a lot.  I enjoyed back-to-back classes, some with music, classes packed with people, with a breeze blowing by.  I laughed and jumped around and generally was so happy to be at camp, doing nothing but yoga with my friends, practicing with new teachers in a gorgeous setting.  There was art happening everywhere.  In every class, the yoga was a form of expression.  As usual for Anusara, it was never just poses on a mat.  It was always what can you express in this pose, how do you make this the purest expression of who you are.  And people were expressing themselves all over, whether in class or out, stilt-walkers, painters, acrobats or just whatever get-up any given person was wearing.  It was, even though not 100% my scene, still deeply beautiful.  Damn it, like a Ren Faire of yoga, but sweet.  An entire self-sufficient little universe.  I wished to be there longer.  When it came time to go, I was ready to be home but also sad to leave.

And the next morning, as I sat at my desk at work, the little bomb detonated -- this little bomb I'd been seeded with while doing yoga in the mountains with my friends went OFF.

Completely unexpected.

Facing a day of spreadsheets and invoices and the cool and usual satisfaction of numbers, I sat in my chair and stared, dumbfounded, at this realization: 

I am an artist, and this is what I do all day?

Yes, after four days at Wanderlust, that four-day immersion in art, I came back changed in that one most-significant way, suddenly and uncomfortably aware that I am truly a creative person and that I absolutely have to make that existence for myself in which I make a life and a living from what I truly am.  It was a flower bomb that went off, but a bomb nonetheless.  Yes, I can do the spreadsheets more artfully (believe me, I do), bringing every bit of creativity to that process I can, but really, end of the day, bottom line: that ain't it.

There's more.  There's more and like those pesky little seeds, that more is germinating and clamoring for light, pushing its way out, knocking other shit out of the way, all in the interest of expressing itself.

Damn.

That's a long way from "I will not slackline," right?  The thing that's so cool about it for me is that I never had to buy all of it -- I never had to slackline or get feather extensions or park my intellect at the door.  And *still* I had a life-changing experience, the one that I needed to have.  I got the bomb with my particular name on it.

And that is something fierce.

So even though I'm hurt and unsure when I'll ever be really, fully back on my mat again, let alone capable of rocking back-to-back intense 2-hour classes, I am dreaming of the next Wanderlust, hoping to be strong enough, wanting to re-create the feeling I had there last year at yoga camp.  I won't be nervous about it like I was my first time, trying to figure out how to work it, how to have an experience that is not the full-package of daytime enlightenment + poolside debauchery.  I won't care.  I'll just know that I'll go and have whatever experience is there waiting for Just Me.  I'll pick up whatever bomb has my name on it, and see what happens next.

It'll be good no matter what.  It'll be bombs and flowers all over again.  In the meantime, I'll content myself with the little reminders I keep around and this profound shift in how I feel, who and what I know myself to be.  Oh, the fruits of practice are so many, and sometimes so unexpected.   Who knew I'd go to camp for four days and come back so resolute, my inner artist awakened?  Who knew that even 7 months later I'd still be feeling the glow?  That three-day Seeker ticket was just right.  I found what I didn't even realize I was seeking: a glorious sense of Me, one that's still with me, one that ticks and throbs just under the surface of every single moment since.

XO