Karma Yoga – Powerful Transformative Experience
I just completed a 3-month Karma Yoga program at an unlikely spiritual destination: the Bahamas. Located in Paradise Island, this extraordinary ashram shared the same stretch of beach as a massive 5-star resort (Atlantis) on one side and encircled by cruise ships on the other. Yet it maintained itself as a spiritual sanctuary and training ground for peace warriors.
The ashram had more luxurious aspects than any others I’ve stayed in and catered to vacationers and spiritual seekers alike. Lodging options ranged from camping to beachfront air-conditioned rooms. There were karma yogis, students in teacher training program and other courses, vacationing guests, and resident spiritual masters, making up a dynamic community.
My first Sivananda experience was in Quebec, Canada last summer (See https://www.stiffyogi.com/2017/08/27/sivananda/). The Bahamas ashram had some serious advantages: a long stretch of pristine white sand beach, lush gardens with rich flora, more elaborate food options, and a variety of special guests giving lectures and concerts.
Some of my memorable evenings included Krishna Das concert, Ayuvedic symposium, “The Seer and The Seen” lectures by a spiritual master, science of sleep, Pangu Qigong, Passover dinner, and classical Indian music festival. I also got a reading by the venerable resident priest, who pinpointed where I am in life and provided insights on where I am headed (was well worth $54!).
Karma Yoga
The Karma Yoga program here is highly structured and much more rigorous than the one I did in Canada. This program is free if you stay for full 3 months, including food (you may end up cooking for everyone) & accommodation (bring your own tent). You can also take any of their numerous workshops and core ‘essential’ courses if schedule allows.
Karma yogis here work 6-7 hours per day and participate in 6 hours of mandatory activities daily, including a 2-hour yoga class. That doesn’t leave you with a lot of beach time. You learn to prioritize and measure time by minutes. If someone asks for time, you give the exact time (“It’s 6:54”, not “almost 7”).
Karma Yoga is yoga of action. You learn to purify your heart by detaching from the fruit of your actions and seeing divinity in everyone you serve. That means you work selflessly without any expectations for gains (especially ego-feeding complements). This cultivates equanimity and inner peace and prepares you for meditation.
My Experience
A fellow karma yogi thought she was watching me go through a cleaning cycle in a washer. That pretty much summed up my karma yoga experience.
The good news is that I made it out of the washer in one piece, cleaner, stronger, and more elastic. And I even had fun and made many new friends along the way.
There is a variety of jobs you can be assigned to in helping the ashram operate. It is not uncommon to have one job the whole time. I went through five. (I would like to know what I did in my past lives to have such karma..)
My jobs ranged from kitchen and HR to drawing flowers, translating teacher training classes (into Japanese), and scrubbing ceilings. Every job came with its own joy and challenges, and there was equally strong supportive force from official and unofficial teachers.
Some of my most valuable lessons came in a form of physical injuries.
It started with an itch. I had an allergic reaction to insect bites, and before I knew, my forearm had swollen up. Ok, let’s not get the small things disturb my inner harmony.
Then I sliced off a chunk of my fingernail in the kitchen. It wasn’t until I was told to sit and rest I noticed my breath was only reaching the shoulders. My mind had apparently prioritized the job of chopping herbs over taking care of the wound and neglected to send me the pain signal. It took me good 10-15 minutes to regain full abdominal breathing and get my body out of the distress mode. So I needed to slow down and re-prioritize my mind. Moving on.
Within a week, I lifted a lid off of boiling oatmeal and got hit by a burst of steam in my right forearm. This one hurt a bit, but the extent of the damage didn’t become apparent until a few days later when blisters began forming. Even though the pain was largely gone by then, the blisters brought out distressed emotions, and I couldn’t help but to ponder why I was under attack by onslaught of injuries.
I was lucky I happened to have a dialogue with a fellow karma yogi who interpreted the symbolism of the accident (right side: masculine, arm: grasp, and ‘It’s a burn’). I immediately understood it was from my desire to control the outcome (attachment to delivering a perfect job in the end, instead of just doing the job). At the ashram, they teach you how attachment grows into desire, which can turn into irritation, anger, delusion, and ultimately self-destruction. Unless I learn to let go and focus on just performing the action, I will eventually burn from the inside.
This insight would help me flow through the rest of my stay with much more ease. My scar also garnered much love and help from everyone around and healed rapidly. It was not a coincidence that the scar shaped itself into a bright red heart, which eventually broke open from the center. Only a faint outline remains now as a reminder. Where else can you get a steam burn that turn into a heart tattoo?
Yoga Classes & Deep Relaxation
As I practiced Sivananda’s yoga daily for 3 months straight, I received many complements on how fresh and rejuvenated I looked. I attribute this to the emphasis on deep relaxation in Sivananda’s yoga.
Their yoga is classical Hatha yoga (hold each post for a long time). Classes may sound long at nearly 2 hours, but I never wondered how much time is left. They make you rest in-between poses, which may seem like a waste of time but really works magic by allowing your body to absorb benefits of the poses. They follow the same sequence, but somehow it never gets old and you end up going deeper.
The result: you feel completely rested and rejuvenated from within (more restorative than any passive restorative/yin yoga classes I have ever taken).
The ashram has many gifted yoga teachers, but Swami Shambu was a standout. He carried a calm yet commanding presence, stroke a perfect balance between effort and ease, and offered timely reminder to relax and smile. He spoke no wasted words. His gentle adjustments overflowed with kindness and revealed new limits for my physical body.
After 3 months, I am noticeably more flexible AND stronger and finally have somewhat of a backbend. They say you are as young as your spine is flexible. So I must have grown younger!
In summary, this place may be tiny compared to the surrounding 5-star resort hotel and cruise ships. But they can have a towering effect on you if you allow them to help you peel off layers and find your inner peace. That is priceless!
Thank you so much for reading my blog and letting me share my experience with you. May you all find your inner sanctuary.
Link to Sivananda Ashram Bahamas: https://www.sivanandabahamas.org/