From the blues to blue skies
After moving back home with a broken heart, Lorna Thornber turned to a Kiwi guru to help get her life back on track. She discovered blue skies behind the clouds . . . and a superpower for life.
The first time I booked into a wellness retreat I’d just moved back to New Zealand after a seven-year-relationship ended and was in a pretty bad headspace. I’d loved living in Sydney and the plan had been to move to London, so moving back home felt like moving backwards in my life in general.
It was a comfort being back among family in familiar surrounds at first, but I couldn’t live out the rest of my days in a cocoon. I needed to reformulate my life plan, but felt I could use some expert help. And a retreat sounded like a lot more fun than life coach sessions.
An Elizabeth Gilbert-style escapade through Italy, India and Bali would have been ideal, I thought. Or even a few days in Bali with a kind stranger who looked a bit like Gilbert’s future husband as so passionately portrayed in Eat, Pray Love, the movie by Javier Bardem. Lacking Gilbert’s budget though (not to mention Julia Roberts’ man-magnet megawatt smile), I went with what seemed the best option available to me: A long weekend at a small, off-grid retreat centre near Raglan run by an Indian ashram-trained yogi and her permaculture gardening, plant-based cooking hubby.
Its lonely locale at the end of a little-travelled gravel road overlooking the wave-battered black sands of Ruapuke Beach suited my mood perfectly. I only hoped my time there would help lighten it.
I wasn’t sure it was for me at first. Friday nights didn’t feel like Friday nights in those days without a few (too many) glasses of wine, and alcohol – along with caffeine and animal products – were contraband.
Instead of settling in for a wine therapy session, I found myself walking barefoot through the bush to a clearing where a large bonfire blazed and joining my fellow retreat-goers in a Sanskrit chant as we chucked herbs into the flames and envisaged the demons they were said to manifest going up in smoke. It was weird, but also weirdly intoxicating. And a far better form of stress relief and escapism, as it turned out, than wine.
Over the next two days, I rose before sunrise to bend my body into positions that slowly and sometimes painfully worked out some of its kinks, breakfasted on the likes of amaranth porridge in enforced silence (as an introvert suffering caffeinewithdrawal symptoms, not having to make small talk at such an early hour was no hardship), and did my best to clear my mind of its usual incessant chatter as I trod the boards of the ocean-facing deck.
I went for long beach and bush walks, read a book by the Dalai Lama, picked olives in the name of karma yoga (a form of yoga focused on giving back to the community), and let go of my inhibitions at a singing and drumming session which made for a pretty wild Saturday night. By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, I felt, not reborn exactly, but far better equipped to emerge from my cocoon.
I got over my micro-crisis and made it to London eventually, making good use of the strategies for remaining cool, calm and collected that I’d learnt at the retreat. More crises lay ahead of course, but mindfulness exercises, yoga, and words of wisdom from certain gurus helped me through those, too.
I suck at meditation, but have found that closing your eyes and decluttering your mind for even a few seconds can have a calming, clarity-promoting effect. Being able to retreat to a place of inner peace when the world gets too much is a handy superpower to have in times like these.
My one superpower needs to be recharged every year or so though, so I either book myself into a retreat or do a DIY version. Still waiting for my Lotto numbers to be drawn, I’ve only been to a handful of proper retreats since Ruapuke, but have found it can be just as beneficial to book a bach or Airbnb in the middle of nowhere for a weekend and bliss out.
Free online yoga classes, meditation apps, Spotify playlists from New Age festivals around the world, and podcasts on pretty much every health and wellbeing-related topic under the sun have made designing your own retreat experience a relative breeze.
This winter though I was lucky enough to spend six days at Aro Ha¯ in Glenorchy, one of the bestrated wellness retreats not just in New Zealand, but the world. If I’ve given you the impression that I’d become a turmeric latte-sipping, daily
I got over my micro-crisis and made it to London eventually, making good use of the strategies for remaining cool, calm and collected that I’d learnt at the retreat.
downward dog-performing zen master after that first retreat, I’m sorry to have misled you. I’m as partial to coffee, wine, meat and mindless Netflix binges as ever. Particularly when I’m stressed out. And stressed out is what I was when I checked into Aro Ha¯ not long after the nationwide lockdown had ended.
Like other famously effective wellness retreats (I’m looking at you, Gwinganna), Aro Ha¯ has a lot of rules. Caffeine, booze, animal products and sugar are banned, and guests are encouraged – although not required – to do without digital devices and stick to a fairly strict schedule.
You don’t feel much like drinking though when you know you’re going to be woken before dawn for an hour-long yoga session followed by a strenuous three- to four-hour subalpine hike. And the plant-based meals are so delicious – think rhubarb and tamarillo parfait with house-made granola and coconut yoghurt, and beetroot ‘‘ravioli’’ stuffed with almond ‘‘cheese’’ – that I forgot about the Fergburger I’d promised myself afterward.
It’s pretty hard to feel deprived when you watch snowy mountain-backed Lake Wakatipu slowly materialise through the yoga studio window each morning, enjoy a full-body massage after each hike, and end each day swapping stories with new mates (you get to know your fellow guests very well at
this retreat) in a lake-view spa under the Southern Cross.
The food and exercise alone have powerful therapeutic properties, but the included optional activities take things to another level. Think highintensity interval training sessions, plant-based cooking classes, and talks and workshops on numerous health and wellbeing-related topics.
Having a go at things that might seem weird, hard or even unappealing is encouraged. One of the best ways to reprogramme your brain, we were told, is to approach situations you instinctively consider unpleasant with a positive, or at least neutral, mindset.
Which is how I came to submerge myself in an outdoor swimming pool on a day with a high of three degrees Celsius after scalding myself to what felt like passing out point in a sauna. While an uncomfortable experience, the effect was instantaneously incredible. Emerging with skin tingling and my brain fog cleared, I felt as high as the proverbial kite. And the buzz lasted all day.
Another surprise highlight was the cacao ceremony, which I’d envisaged would involve us sitting around sipping dairy-free hot chocolate while someone waxed lyrical about spiritual stuff. Instead, my fellow guests and I found ourselves divulging our innermost insecurities – in some cases in tears – before throwing the lists of bad habits we’d drawn up into a pile to be added to the compost heap. It was the Aro Ha¯ version of the Ruapuke retreat’s Vedic-style fire ceremony. And one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life.
This summer I’m keeping things super-simple, planning to spend a couple of nights in an oldschool, off-grid bach down a windy gravel road somewhere within the vicinity of Whanga¯ rei Heads. There’ll be no gourmet plant-based meals or massages and, given the lack of wi-fi, no online yoga classes or Spotify playlists either. But there will be a lot of long walks and lying flat out on the deck in savasana (aka, corpse pose). Pure bliss.