Titania Veda

A Year of Whimsy: Living Off the Land, Ashram Style

Spirituality was never my thing. It lies up there with religion as something I’m not comfortable dealing with. Much to my mother’s dismay — she being a devout Catholic — the only comfort I ever found in church was its warmth on wintry days and coolness during summer heat waves. But then, I figured it was about time to face my discomfort. So I applied to WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Ranch (http://www.sivananda.org/ranch/index.html), a spiritual retreat cuddled within the Catskill Mountain range of upstate New York.

Mornings at the ashram are reserved for the soul. A good dose of meditation and chanting occurs before sunrise, come rain, hail or shine at a daily satsang . Yogis, staff and yoga visitors alike sleepily shuffle into a temple under blanket of darkness, amid the misty foliage, frosted grass and the biting cold of a mid-Atlantic dawn.

Sitting cross-legged on floor cushions, we breathed in silence for half an hour, facing the altar of a gleaming porcelain Indian deity Krishna. My shuffling limbs afflicted by pins-and-needles, I wondered why I couldn’t have stayed in my nice warm bunk bed instead. And rather than finding my center or a reason for being in the quiet, I found myself being almost blasphemous and suppressing giggles while listening to an orchestra of flatulence, famine (rumbling stomachs) and flu (seasonal snorts and sniffles). Meditation en masse was not working its charms on me. Being still doesn’t come naturally. I can barely keep still watching the television, let alone sit cross-legged for 30 minutes with nothing to do.

The resonant chant “om shanti shanti shanti om peace peace peace” came next, signaling the next part of our morning routine — the chanting.

A twig-thin guru, who resembled an absent-minded professor with his sleepy eyes and placid countenance, flipped open a harmonium and ran his fingers across the keys, all the while singing in Sanskrit. A yogi walked around the room, handing out instruments to whoever was willing to provide musical accompaniment.

A hypnotic riot of discordant accordion-like wails, cacophonic tambourines, and the rhythmic thrumming of djambi and bongo drums accentuated the incomprehensible yet divine intonations.

Upon first hearing the words “Hare Krishna,” I wondered if I had stumbled into the lair of those shaven-headed monks who I often see prancing down the streets of London’s Soho in orange duds and bare feet, belting out similar tunes. As I mouthed the words, I worried about what archaic incantations I was sending out into the universe without knowing their meaning.

But thankfully, spiritual healing through abdominal breathing and performing asanas wasn’t the be-all-and-end-all of why I came to Sivananda. I came to till the land, to work outside in the fresh mountain air, with the turning leaves of fall as my backdrop, where creatures and critters flitted with such speed that I was left unsure if it was the wind blowing a leaf. For such is Mother Nature’s sleight of hand.

After communing with my soul each morning, I was glad to spend my days ankle-deep in compost heaps, creating mulching out of manure and digging swales with my little red shovel. The only chants or prayers passing through my lips were ones that involved not pulling a city-girl muscle out here in the wilderness.

A French biologist, who took up yoga to expand his marital conversations with his wife outside of their work in land conservation, told me I should beware of spending too much time in the open air. “You may not be able to return to city life again,” he warned, as we watched birds the color of earth sweep and swoop, weaving imaginary ribbons in mid-air.

Here, going to work no longer equals traffic jams, buses or subways. Instead, it means walking through leafy vegetable patches, greenhouses and dirt roads with a wheelbarrow. When twilight falls, the sun bursts with a deep raspberry and orange sorbet of colors, bathing the fiery autumn foliage in gilded light. Every day, I’m fed freshly harvested broccoli and a variety of greens from the ashram’s greenhouse.

After only a few days, I could already feel a change. Admittedly, it’s all physical and nothing in the realm of the divine. If there was any spirituality to be found at the ashram, it is through my daily commune with Mother Nature.

I certainly wasn’t going to start wearing yellow T-shirts and pashminas, greeting everyone with “Om.” Instead, my creaky body is gaining strength it never had from breathing the air and living off the land. My muscles, though aching, are swelling into definition from shoveling dirt and dung, and I’ve turned the color of dark honey from toiling under the nippy afternoon sun.

Every individual finds their sacred self in their own time. This just wasn’t mine.

Titania Veda writes a weekly travel column. She is a former features reporter at the Jakarta Globe.

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