Lessons from the Jungle: Plan and then Flow

I just got back from a week in the jungle.  I co-led the Buena Onda Yoga Retreat at Mama Roja, a sustainable, ecological farm and retreat center in the jungles of Misiones, Argentina. It was a wild and magical experience.

It is spring here in Argentina and that usually means sunshine, nice weather, and butterfly season in the jungle. We all went into the week expecting just that. What we got, however, was the complete opposite.

The day everyone arrived for the retreat, it was down pouring. Not little, soft, sprinkling rain but giant, noisy, thunderous rain; the kind of rain that reminds you of the incredible power of nature. Living in a city, away from the elements, I forget sometimes how powerful nature can be. 

So, anyways, this rain was crazy. In three hours, trickling brooks (which were easily crossed in a truck) turned into raging rivers – two of which intersected the only dirt road into Mama Roja. The first one devoured our truck, so we continued on foot. The second, with rapidly flowing water reaching up to our hips, we had to cross skillfully, with the aid of a rope that we managed to tie up at either bank. Welcome to the jungle. And it continued to rain for almost four days, with only two short intermissions for the sun and the butterflies to come out.

The lovely yoga shala at Mama Roja

Over this week, I will share with you the reflections and lessons that I took away with me.  Here is the first:

Plan and then go with the flow. Planning is important but there is only so much you can plan ahead for. Then, there comes a point when you have to let go of your plans and respond to what is happening around you in the moment. Plans can only take us so far, then we must rely on our intuition.

On the first day, we planned to hold an opening discussion in the yoga pavilion so we could set the tone for the week and get to know each other. All of the gathering places in Mama Roja are open to the elements. And it was of course raining. We got started and then we were promptly interrupted by thunder. It was the kind of thunder that drowns out all sounds around you. Every time we tried to talk, the thunder grew louder and made it impossible to go on. So, our plan for a discussion had to be thrown out the window. Instead, we opened up the time for everyone to stretch on their own. And this put into practice one of our intentions for the retreat: to give people the space to be introspective and establish a self-guided connection to yoga. So, we planned and then adjusted as needed based on what was happening around us. We still reached our goals just in an unexpected way.

We continued with this approach throughout the retreat week, adjusting as needed based on intuition and understanding of what was going on with the environment and within the group. It turned into an intricate weaving of themes and lessons across the entire week. As a group, we created powerful connections and understandings based on nature and our place within it.

This balance of planning and leaning into our intuition is an important lesson for not only planning a retreat or meeting but also for the life plans we have. All we can really control is our reaction to the world around us. It is important to have plans and to know what we want to manifest in the world. But if our plans are so strict and inflexible, we can become stuck and unable to respond from a place of presence and deeper understanding of what is going on within us and around us.

Stay tuned this week for more lessons from the Jungle!