How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by Mehtab, Yoga Yoga Founder

As you practice yoga for awhile, it has a sneaky way of getting into the rest of your life. You start to rearrange your weekly schedule to make room for your yoga class. You visit a new yoga center when you go out of town. You may even clear some weekends so you can take an extended yoga training.

Life starts to revolve more and more around yoga as you become hopelessly addicted to the feel of the mat beneath your feet and the warm embrace of a deep relaxation.

And then one day you feel the pull – to give yourself over completely to a full blown yoga experience, to indulge yourself in yoga for days on end, and to give up all pretense of a normal life. You decide to take a yoga vacation.
It happened to me 13 years ago. I have not been the same since.

Austin Solstice Group Summer 2006

In 1994 my wife and I decided to go to the Kundalini Yoga Summer Solstice celebration in the mountains of New Mexico for a week long “vacation.” I had been to one of these yoga celebrations 20 years earlier in 1974. I dimly remembered a bunch of hippies doing yoga for 8 days in silence and taking baths in the river. In those days, that could be considered a vacation. When we showed up at the yoga camp, over 7,000 feet high, we discovered almost 1000 other people from around the world there who came to do yoga with us. For seven days we camped, ate, danced, and did yoga in the wilderness. It really was not a vacation – it was like an extended yoga class that went on for 24 hours a day. Lots of changes, challenges, and chores. But at the end we were transformed forever. You know how you felt after your first yoga class? Remember the last great class you experienced? Multiply that by one million.

The in-depth immersion into doing yoga every day, living yoga every day, and just being in the yoga space every day was completely amazing. We have gone back every year since. Wouldn’t think of missing it. And if you like Kundalini Yoga (because that is all Summer Solstice is about), you should get yourself up there this June. Click here to find out more!

With all of its intensity, however, you really cannot call Summer Solstice a vacation. It is more like an initiation. If you survive it, you are stronger, wiser, and brighter. But it is hard work – emotionally, physically, and mentally. So, no – it is not a vacation.

We took our actual first yoga vacation the following year in 1995. Off to the Caribbean for a week on St. Johns and yoga classes every morning and the evening. Snorkeling, swimming, and relaxing while eating delicious food every day and just making friends with people who love yoga. It was a real vacation and the best ever. So when we started Yoga Yoga in 1997, having yoga vacations was high on our list of things to do. We had our first one a few years ago in Costa Rica and fell in love with the country so much that we go back there every year (and twice a year when we can). The last trip past January was what a great yoga vacation should be: a pristine natural environment, amazing fresh food, great company, and hours of yoga every day for those who wanted it.

Yoga Yoga teachers at a Costa Rican Waterfall, 2005

So next month we are off to Summer Solstice again. And if you are a hard core yogi or Kundalini fan, you should definitely join us in New Mexico next month.

And if you want a vacation, a place to play and recharge yourself, then give yourself the treat of a Kundalini yoga vacation in Costa Rica. We are going there in January 2009 and have room for you! Love to have you join us and the other Kundalini Yoga Yoga students and teachers who will be there!

And it’s a great story to tell people when they ask you: How did you spend your summer vacation?