Thoughts on beauty from a yoga retreat

I recently attended an 8 day yoga retreat in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Trust me when I say this solo trip was way overdue. 

 

 

I have a long history with yoga spanning back to my early university days when I first discovered and fell in love with yoga. With the gift of time I credit the deep breathing and meditation that are an inherent part of a dedicated yoga practice to my success as a young student. A graduation celebration trip abroad even included a yoga mat jammed into my backpack.

Post university and a move to Montreal, one of the very first things I did upon settling in was to source out a new yoga studio I could call home. I would let the waves of my homesickness wash over me while I sweated my buns off in that hot sticky humid Montreal air. 

Yoga again was front and centre when I became a first time mom with Hunter. I found a studio in town that was intimate, cozy and offered child care so I could relax, stretch, build strength and breath, all surrounded by the positive good vibes of a yoga community. My practice took a deeper step when I immersed myself (and my new young family) in a 3 week yoga teacher training in Tulum Mexico. Once again, yoga to the rescue, I found my way to my new sense of self as a mother, and was grounded and supported through yoga. 

Flash forward a decade or so and life got busy. Our second child, Marin, arrived on the scene, business bloomed and resources got scarce. Somewhere along the lines yoga became something at best tucked in occasionally at the gym. The philosophies and broader community aspect of the practice had faded away from the forefront of my mind. 

There’s a lot I could say about choosing to gift myself this recent yoga re-immersion experience and why it felt so necessary at this time. 

Not to exclude men from the conversation, but as a woman speaking almost exclusively to a female audience, here is what I know. We are constantly putting others' needs in front of our own, and over time it wears us out. This is something we all hear and read constantly, but that’s because it’s true. I think this is especially true when there are children involved. We prioritize the family well being above everything else, everything circles around it, every decision, every choice. It’s a million balls up in the air we are trying to keep floating; bills to get paid, meals to be planned, shopped for and prepared, celebrations to be organized, money to be earned, emotional health to be tended to, physical health of all to be managed. 

This time away to myself was needed, it gave me the space to just be and let the noise settle down.  It was an intuitive returning to the source of what has long been a path of grounding and stability. 

To meditate. To breath. To be in a beautiful environment abundant with lush nature.  

To not rush. To not plan. To not worry. 

What a gift. 

 

And as my mind had the freedom to relax I naturally gravitated to playing around with what the ideas of beauty really mean? What the intersection of yoga and beauty might mean. The relationship between our appearance, our sense of physical self and our inner spiritual self is a big question, one I believe is well worth exploring. 

We have these different points in life that somehow stand out above others - young adolescence, graduating from schools, meeting the person you end up marrying, children, pets, and as I’m now finding myself alongside my female peer group …the winding down of reproductive years - perimenopause. It’s a whole new stage of life to be navigating. 

This stage of life amongst many other changes, also brings front and centre numerous appearance realities. Hair is losing pigment. Wrinkles are happening. Bodies are not the sleek vessels they once were. Do we cling to what was? Do we just let go and let nature have her way with us? Do we still aspire to turn heads and be desirable? Do we strive to eventually embrace our crone years and accept a new identity above it all somehow?

I clearly do not have all the answers here. I grapple with these questions for myself and as one providing guidance to the women I counsel around beauty decisions. Even from a relatively young age I have always leaned towards a more natural appearance, to me a natural appearance is the most beautiful - it is the most free spirited and heart led way. Not forcing ourselves to appear radically different than we naturally do, it honours who we are, and frankly is also easier to maintain when we’re not denying reality. 

But as we all know from our personal experiences, within this natural appearance there is a wide range of decisions to still be navigated here. To Botox or not? To filler or not? Optional cosmetic surgeries or not? Hair dye? How much makeup we choose to wear? 

My roommate at the retreat was a wise woman whom I deeply respected. She is a hospice nurse and a counsellor and the kindest soul you could imagine. We were exploring these issues together one afternoon and she asked this clarifying question of the beauty actions we take:

“What is it costing you?”

This obviously isn’t intended to just refer to the financial cost alone (although that can be significant). There’s also the time spent, the effort, the worrying and the thinking. 

But on the other hand, we also explored that taking care of yourself represents cleanliness and discipline, to deny that our appearance matters is dishonest, amongst other points that require further thought. 

Through the course of life we find ourselves in different situations where our interest in how we look ebbs and flows, it’s not static.

At the retreat it was interesting to observe that there were far fewer mirrors around then normal, and the lighting was kept dim in washrooms where a mirror may be present. I felt minimal desire to fuss over my appearance almost that entire week. I enjoyed cute yoga outfits, fluffy ponytails, and some great swimwear, but I hardly put on makeup the entire week. The exception to my desire to wear makeup came on our final night for our closing ceremony and I was wearing a beautiful white dress, then I felt a natural pull towards choosing simple, sheer glowing makeup to mark the special occasion. 

 

Similarly, my roommate lives in a smaller mountain town and it is just not the norm to wear much if any makeup and she doesn’t think about it too much. Except for when she goes into bigger cities and is around a lot of people who are more dressed up, then there is a natural desire to want to dress up more. Or also in her case, she is dating again for the first time in many years and this is naturally putting more focus on her appearance, which doesn’t always feel comfortable. 

I had a conversation one morning after class with a wise, deeply experienced older female yogi, Maria, about her opinions on beauty and yoga. Her response was the importance of taking care of your health, healthy is beautiful at any age of life. She also expressed her own mild uncertainties about her own appearance as she ages, wondering if she should fuss a little more? And then she shared one final story of a yoga studio she visited in Guadalajara where the studio owner came to Maria and said that she had a challenge, many of her clients were wealthy women who had had numerous plastic surgeries and struggled to raise their arms properly or to sit properly because of implants. 

Maria and I both just kind of looked at each other when she shared that story. All of it is tough, it’s complicated. We want to feel attractive, we want to fit into the cultural definition of beauty where we spend our time. We want to stay young. And at the same time we are trying to be true to ourselves, to evolve, to mature. It’s not a clear cut path to navigate. 

At the risk of sounding cliche but I will say it nonetheless, true beauty is a radiant light that comes from within. Smiling. Peaceful. Confident. Kind. Joyful. 

What helps us get there? It’s many things. It’s knowing ourselves, it’s working on inner peace. It’s healthy choices. It’s beauty decisions that align with who you are and the kind of person you want to be, what’s important to you. These are such deeply personal decisions to navigate that are far from black and white, there are many shades of grey in between. 

To quote the iconic and glamorous French woman, Sylvie Grateau from the show, Emily in Paris (!!) “I’ve been living in the grey my entire life. You Americans always want everything to be simple, black or white.”