(originally sent 22/06/26)
Years ago, I found myself on a yoga immersion in Switzerland, experiencing megalophobia for the first time. We were practicing in fancy resort town in the off-season, nestled at the foot of the Swiss alps. During our lunch breaks, my fellow yogis would mill out to the balcony and admire the pristine soaring views, while I cowered in a corner feeling completely overwhelmed by the sheer size of the mountains.
But that’s not what this story is about.
Sas and I were practicing with two of the most senior teachers in the Jivamukti Yoga method – Yogeswari and Lady Ruth. It was an honour to sit at their feet and I clung to every word they said. I still have notebooks scribbled with a-ha moments from this retreat.
One teaching that has always stayed with me from this trip came from Lady Ruth, who was talking about the importance of immersion. She used the analogy of stepping into a body of water. For a land-locked country, Switzerland has some absolutely stunning bodies of water in the form of lakes.
When we are learning, it’s helpful to start by getting a broad view, the lay of the land; looking out across the lake. But if you want to understand something more fully, you have to get in. Stepping into the water will give you a sense of the temperature, the texture, and you’ll feel your body responding immediately. But to really know something, you must immerse yourself fully; properly get wet. Put your head under, hold you breath for a while, and then come up for air.
This is the benefit of doing something immersive — you go much deeper than surface level. One meditation sitting is beneficial, but sitting regularly over time has a compounding effect, and going on a meditation retreat with accelerate your practice tremendously. Attending one yoga class every now and then is good, going to a workshop once in a while is great, and then immersing yourself in a retreat or training will catapult you to someplace you didn’t know existed.
Of course, it’s much easier to stay on the surface, especially because we’re busy, and scared of the unknown. But I’m personally much more interested in depth, or as my patron saint of the arts Lady Gaga sings “far from the shallow”.
So when the yoga immersion in Switzerland finished, we went to the lake (Lauenensee), and we swam. I dove in, put my head under and my fear of the mountains vanished, if only for a while.
(photo: Sas and I with Lady Ruth in Switzerland, 2017)
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