I recently spent two months at a yoga teacher training course in Nicaragua, and it was one of the most unusual and intense experiences I’ve had in my life.

Now I realise that sounds a bit hyperbolic. But, for the 2 months that I was at the Ashram, I basically lived in the middle of nowhere, for the most part without internet or electricity, and with no mirrors anywhere. I ate only vegan Ayurvedic food, waded across a river multiple times every day, and was surrounded by an immense number of insects, many of which frequently feasted on my blood. I drank mud when I was sick, put turmeric into an open wound, and got very comfortable with cockroaches.

So I think it’s a fair claim.

In my last post, I wrote about the yoga teacher training course and what I learned within it. But in this post, I’m going to share some of the other weird, wacky, and wonderful details of life at the Ashram.

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How does a girl like me end up at a place like this?

Let me start this story at the beginning, which was sometime at the start of 2019. I was living in San Francisco, and I’d realised that I wanted to leave the US. I didn’t feel like I wanted to move back to Australia just yet, so instead I decided that I’d spend a few months in Latin America, learning Spanish and knocking a few other things off my bucket list.

But first I needed some time to just unwind and disconnect. And when I found this yoga teacher training course, it seemed like the perfect place for doing that. Check out this description:

You will be staying in your own private jungle cabin, placed in the gorgeous natural setting of the ashram. The cabins are a comfortable size, with a beautiful locally crafted bed, a comfortable mattress, and stunning river views. Comfort, yet close to nature. The ashram is a quiet retreat away from the noise of towns and cars. They have 12 acres of stunning waterfall (the largest in the area with 3 levels) and river land.

They have their own budding vegetable garden and fruit forest, a beautiful log fire circle, many secluded, private shady areas with trees, meditation, practice and relaxation areas by the river. Drinking water comes from a fresh water spring straight out of the rocks on the land. The yoga platform is surrounded by lush greenery and exotic animals.

Doesn’t it sound wonderful?

I particularly liked the sound of ‘comfort, close to nature’ and the mention of ‘exotic animals’ – which I hoped included monkeys and ocelots. I was so ready to spend two months out in nature, with delicious home cooked meals, fresh fruit, and lots of swimming and sleeping.

What I actually got was….well, not quite what I was expecting.

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My first impressions

I was both excited and nervous as we drove over to the Ashram.

Excited because for two months, I wouldn’t have to make any choices about where I should go that day, or what I should eat, or who I should spend time with. Two months in which I’d be following a timetable that someone else put together, eating food that someone else cooked, and participating in activities that someone else organised.

Nervous because, as we got closer to the Ashram, I realised that this experience was going to be far more remote than I’d expected. The road we took wasn’t even on a map. It couldn’t even really be called a road – it was such an uneven path of clay and rock that the only traffic we came across consisted mostly of cows and horses, although there was also the occasional pig or motorbike.

In fact, I learned later, most cars couldn’t actually manage the drive here. There was no public transport, there was nothing close by that I’d be able to walk to, and there were no taxis or Ubers that I’d be able to catch on a whim. Once I got to the Ashram, I wouldn’t be able to leave easily.

But as we made our way onto the property and pulled up at the main house, I felt my apprehension melt away. If I ever end up buying property in the country, I’ll make sure that the driveway ends at a really scenic location, because there is something so wonderful about stepping out of a car to find that you’re near the top of a hill, with a blanket of trees stretching out in front of you as far as the eye can see. It was breathtaking.

There was a garden just in front of us, abundant with flowers and fruit trees, one of which had a clump of papayas hanging off it that looked almost ready to eat.

To the right was a charming pond with some ducks paddling in it, and a tree leaning over its shores with a gently tinkling wind chime hanging off its boughs. There was a chorus of birdsong, accompanied by the sonorous chirp of cicadas, occasionally interrupted by the distant neigh of a horse or a cock’s crow.

A woman with bright red hair pulled into an unruly ponytail came over to greet us. She had a wide smile, tattoos spiralling up her arms and back, a plethora of piercings, and two white ink tattoos on her face. She introduced herself as Xian, our yoga teacher and the owner of the Ashram, and since we’d arrived just in time for lunch, she ushered us down to the dining cabaña to meet the others and eat.

There were 5 of us students in total. Ali and Sam were paying students, like me, and Sam had bought along her wolf-labrador-husky Leo. Eva and Semjon were Workaway volunteers, so they’d be doing classes with us, but would also be doing our cooking and other chores, and wouldn’t be getting certified. And there was Xian, our teacher, with her 4 year old son, Eelan, 4 dogs, 3 ducks, and 2 cats.

Everyone seemed nice enough, but there wasn’t that conversational chemistry you get sometimes where people just click. We were polite, and mostly talked about what life at the Ashram would be like. I hoped desperately that we’d all get along, and that we’d have some better chances to bond on a more genuine level.

Lunch was another surprise. The food, Xian explained, was all vegan and Ayurvedic. That meant that she completely avoided cocoa, garlic, freshly ground black pepper, black or green tea, coffee, chilli, and a long list of other ingredients, because according to Ayurveda, they were all stimulants.

I’d been looking forward to vegan food, which is delicious when it isn’t just tofu and beans. But Ayurvedic vegan food basically sounded like it would be tasteless – especially when Xian added that she also tried not to use any sugar, salt, or oil in her cooking. Where would the flavour come from?!

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Xian assured us that the food would still be delicious, but I wasn’t holding out much hope. Our lunch that first day was a big bowl of white rice (brown rice was also prohibited) accompanied by some boiled pipianes (a vegetable similar to zucchini). I comforted myself with the thought of fresh watermelons and papayas – no matter how plain the rest of the our meals were, the fruit would still be delicious.

After lunch, we went down to our cabins. While the main house and the dining cabaña were at the top of the hill, our cabins were tucked just inside the jungle, next to the yoga platform. To get there, we had to go down a steep hill covered in loose rocks, follow a meandering path down to a river, wade across the river, and then follow the path up to the cabins.

The cabins were rustic, to say the least. They were made out of bamboo poles nailed together, with a thatched roof on top. The bamboo poles had large gaps in between them, so that anything could fly or crawl in, and the doors were kept closed by placing a large rock in front of them. The ‘floor’ was unevenly laid with outdoor pavers, and the only furniture was a bed topped with a thin foam mattress and a mosquito net hanging over it. As you might guess from my description thus far, there was no running water or electricity here.

I don’t know if this really counted as ‘comfort’. It felt like ‘basic’ would be a more accurate description. But I set about unpacking and trying to cosy it up. I rigged up some lighting by stringing my bike light on a lanyard and hanging it off a nail in the wall, and draping my battery powered fairy lights over the door frame. Side note: fairy lights are such a great thing to take traveling with you because they’re so small and light, but they make any space look magical.

The next order of business was to figure out the toilet situation. There were only two toilets on the property – one near the cabins, and another all the way back up the hill, near the main house. But we didn’t really need more, because as a sign next to one of the toilets said ‘If you need to pee, look around, use a tree.’ The toilets were both composting toilets with cute paintings on their walls and fantastic views outside of them. I quite liked them.

The ‘shower’ was an open air platform, set down a path and nestled amongst a shroud of trees. It was just a pipe diverting water from the waterfall, so the water was always cold, a little silty, and came out in uneven spurts. It was very pretty, although it also attracted a fair number of spiders and bees. The other option, if we didn’t want to shower there, was to bathe under the waterfall itself.

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So okay, there were some things about this place that would take a little getting used to. But as I sat by the duck pond that evening, watching the sun slowly go down behind the trees, and writing in my diary, I felt so at peace. I was glad I was here.

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Things get a little harder

My positive first impressions of the Ashram were challenged just a few hours later. What had been so tranquil and serene during the day completely transformed at night. Up in the dining cabaña, as we finished dinner, we were caught up in a maelstrom of bugs.

I don’t like bugs. I never have. They creep me out. But I’m sensible enough that I don’t really let them bother me, most of the time. This was not most of the time. Once night fell, so many bugs would get attracted to the light in the dining cabaña that they’d frequently run into me or crash into our plates.

Many of them were large and loud and would sometimes get caught in my hair, buzzing and flapping around angrily while I frantically shook my head, trying to dislodge them. Others would manage to get down my top, or, on my way back to my cabin, into my mouth or up my nose. I learned very quickly not to open my mouth too wide when I was speaking, and to hold my light far away from my body.

Back in my room, I tried to avoid the bugs by settling into bed under the mosquito net. But there were so many holes in my mosquito net, and the bugs seemed to be very good at finding their way in. There was just no escape.

I also discovered that despite using copious amounts of insect repellant, I was getting bitten by hordes of mosquitos, gnats, sandflies, and ants. I had angry red welts all over my legs and arms and back and belly and they itched so badly that it would frequently wake me up in the middle of the night.

We didn’t just have your standard, run of the mill creepy crawlies to worry about either. Xian warned us to watch out for scorpions, spiders, and snakes. Check your bed every night before settling in, she instructed, and don’t put your hand into anything without making sure that there aren’t spiders or scorpions in there first.

My first nights after being told that were incredibly tense. I felt so on edge. Would I find a scorpion tucked amongst my pile of shirts? Would I find one in my bed? Would one bite me as I slept?

It didn’t help that there were so many large bugs everywhere. Huge grasshoppers, cicadas, preying mantises, stick insects, tarantulas, whipspiders and a whole host of other creatures frequently found their way into my cabin and onto my things.

The worst were the wasps in the toilet. Soon after we arrived, a couple of wasps took up residence in both the toilets. At first, I hoped that maybe if I went away and came back later, the wasps would be gone. They weren’t. They had settled in permanently. So I had to learn how to deal with them.

I discovered that if I shook the curtain to create a strong gust of wind, the wasps would fly off the toilet seat and circle around. The key was to move quickly and sit on the toilet seat before the wasps settled back down. Once you were seated, the wasps would either buzz around your head, or sit themselves on the back of the toilet seat, until you got back up.

One time when I flapped the curtain, I also startled a snake that had been pressed up against the back wall. I hadn’t noticed it until it started slithering away. I saw only two more snakes during the rest of my time at the Ashram – one was black and red, just outside my cabin, and turned tail as I approached. The other was a browny-grey, near the other toilet, and hurried off in the other direction as I ran over.

But snakes and wasps weren’t the worst toilet guests. That distinction went to the cockroaches. There were frequently cockroaches climbing out of the toilet, or hanging out just under the lip. I learned that if there was a cockroach close to the top, I could slap the seat and it would run further in, giving me a few moments to use the toilet in peace.

Then one night I flashed my light into the toilet and realised that there were literally hundreds of cockroaches in there, scurrying all over the walls. Luckily, I’d already used the toilet enough by this point to know that they weren’t going to bother me – or so I thought.

Just before I left, a cockroach climbed out of the toilet while I was sitting on it, clambering its way up right between my thighs. That was not a pleasant experience, but I was pretty proud of myself for calmly finishing my business and walking out without making a fuss about it.

But bugs and bites weren’t the only difficulties I had to deal with.

In the first week, all of the students managed to get diarrhoea. I had it for the longest time – over 10 days. It came with such bad cramps that would wake me up numerous times in the middle of the night. And despite needing to continually run to the toilet and feeling tired and weak and in pain, I still had to go to class every day, and still had to teach my own classes.

At one point it also rained so much that my cabin got mouldy, as did most of my things. I had to move to a different cabin, which I also had to clean first, and then move my mattress and mosquito net into. Then I had to clean all my things, which involved washing them, spraying them with vinegar, and drying them in the sun.

This probably doesn’t seem too hard until you remember that we didn’t have running water in our cabins. I had to lug everything up to the main house, carry water over in a bucket from the shower, and hand wash them all in batches. It was tedious, tiring, and time consuming.

After that, I left most of my things up in the main house and took only a few sets of clothes down to my cabin with me. Every evening, after I showered, I would hand wash the clothes I’d worn that day, and hang them up so that they’d be dry by the following afternoon. Using the river water meant that the clothes never really got clean – some came out browner than they’d gone in – but at least they didn’t stink of sweat anymore.

The only place on the property with electricity was the main house, and even that had frequent outages. We weren’t allowed there after dinner, and we needed our phones in the mornings to film and watch our classes, so I had to put my phone on battery saver and flight mode, and would constantly run up at meal times to give it a little more charging time.

Initially, I only had one charging cable and had to juggle charging my kindle, bike light, and phone. Then I managed to break the cable when I dropped my Kindle, and had to share the others’ cables when they weren’t using them.

We only got internet twice a week for 20 minutes at a time, and it was such an awful connection that sometimes it would take half that time just to load a webpage. Most of my apps didn’t work. None of that really mattered because I was quite happy not to use the internet for the most part, but it was frustrating when all I wanted to do was download a book on my Kindle, or an audiobook on my phone. Sometimes it would take multiple internet sessions to download anything.

My hair was getting seriously damaged by the river water – probably because the local village, upriver, would do all their washing in it. My hair got so tangled and brittle that it felt like I had a bird’s nest on my head, and my strands were literally breaking apart in my hands. I was losing so much hair that I legitimately wondered if I’d end up bald soon.

And to top it all of, my new place got a lot more visitors than my old one. I had a permanent whipspider that mostly hung out on the door frame, who I named Josh. Another night I came back to find a giant hairy tarantula sitting in the corner, which I thought was a bit rude given that Josh had already made his spider-claim on the place.

I also had a toad, who I named Stan. I’d kick Stan out of my room all the time, but he’d always come back in. I wouldn’t have minded, except that he’d usually sit on my tube of paw paw ointment or on my pack of baby wipes, and would leave a slimy residue on them that I had to constantly wash off. He also pooped on my floor, which I swear he did just to spite me.

There were constantly new things going wrong. My sandals started to fall apart. It was so hot sometimes that I struggled to fall asleep at night, and would feel so sluggish during the day. I would wake up 5 times a night to pee. My new piercing got infected. I got diarrhoea a bunch more times. And on top of that all, classes were so intense so that some nights I’d be too busy studying to have time to shower.

We only had one day off a week, so we had to be super switched on and so productive every single other day, regardless of what other challenges we were dealing with. It was a lot.

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Settling down

Despite all of those things that I just mentioned, I loved being at the Ashram.

Sure, classes were intense. But it felt great having such a singular focus. I didn’t have to do a bunch of context switching. I could get into a flow state, and completely lose track of time, in the most satisfying way possible. And it felt so rewarding to see my progress and notice all the tangible ways in which I’d improved.

I never grew to like the bugs, but being exposed to so many of them was a bit like exposure therapy. They made me so antsy and nervous at the start – I’ve hated bugs all my life – but eventually I got mostly desensitised to them. I ended up seeing so many scorpions – one in particular seemed to like hanging out just outside my cabin – and after a while I started to think of him as another pet.

I learned to use the mosquito net properly, tucking it in around the mattress and folding it over wherever there were holes. I still got a few little moths and tiny gnats getting in, but it was far better than before. I got into a really good habit, every night before I slept, of first writing in my diary, and then either doing some non-fiction reading, or listening to a non-fiction audiobook. It was a great way to wind down.

It felt especially magical when it was raining. I loved the gentle patter of raindrops on my roof as I lay in bed, bathed in the soft glow of my fairy lights. Some nights I’d also get a few fireflies coming into my room and flitting about. I think they were fascinated by my fairy lights, since they’d dance around them as if trying to coax them into a game.

I’d never seen fireflies in real life before I came to the Ashram, and no matter how many times I saw them there, they still filled me with such a strong sense of wonder. My favourite thing was when I’d stand alone in a clearing at night, with no artificial light around, and I could see hundreds and hundreds of stars twinkling down from afar, and a handful of fireflies twinkling down from up close. I know it sounds incredibly corny, but it made me feel so full of joie de vivre.

The food, as Xian promised, did actually turn out to be delicious most of the time. Doña Dascelli or Valesca would cook the lunches, and they were both Nicaraguan and used to cooking with these restrictions, so whatever they made tasted fantastic. Plus there was salt on the table, so I could (and did) add more salt to my food.

Breakfasts and dinners were cooked by Eva and Semjon, the volunteers, and at the start the dinners were a bit plain, but as they got more used to cooking within Xian’s rules, the food really transformed until it was legitimately at restaurant quality. I was so impressed.

The rest of us also got involved in the kitchen to varying degrees. I was pretty proud of a mango, cabbage, and cucumber salad I made with a lime vinaigrette. I also put together a decent stir fry, a Moroccan-inspired tomato and eggplant stew, and a banging coconut curry rice with lots of veggies and lime.

The restrictions meant you had to be creative – so instead of using sugar, maybe you’d put in some bananas. Instead of cheese, you could try some nutritional yeast. To make something sweeter, you might caramelise the veggies, or to make it a tad more bitter, toast the peanuts a little more. There were no recipe books, it was all trial and error and tasting and changing, and it turned cooking into a kind of game – which was lots of fun to play.

Xian had picked up recipes from previous students and volunteers from around the world, so occasionally we’d get to relax the Ayurvedic rules to make things like spetzle, pizza, and naan. I did still miss freshly cracked pepper, but apart from that, I didn’t feel any loss.

Mealtimes very quickly became my favourite parts of the day. In part that was because it meant a break from class, and because I’d get to eat. But it was also because of our pre-meal ritual. We’d close our eyes, hold our bowls or plates up to our noses, breathing in deeply and enjoying the smell and the warmth of the food. Then we’d go round in a circle and each share something that we were grateful for, before wishing each other ‘bon provecho’ and digging in.

In class, we talked about how contentment isn’t just a state you reach, but something that you can cultivate. I think rituals like this, where you remind yourself of all the things you’re grateful for and actively think about how lucky you are, really help put you in that kind of mindset.

It definitely did for me – maybe I’d wake up grumpy because I’d slept badly the night before, or maybe I’d be annoyed about Stan leaving slime all over my things, but as soon as we sat down for a meal and shared what we were grateful for, I’d feel equanimous once more. And because we did it with every meal, three times a day, it’s like we were training our brains to keep thinking that way.

There was another thing Xian said about doing everything with joy, which stuck with me because I’d been reading a book called The Happiness Trap, which mentioned something similar. The author, Dr Harris, suggested that when you have to do something you’re not particularly enthused about – washing your laundry for example – focus on the sensations of doing that thing. The feel of the water on your hands. The sound of the wind in the trees. The way the muscles in your arms feel as you scrub and wring out the clothes. Really be mindful and present in the experience, instead of letting yourself indulge in feelings of resentment.

I started to do that when I had to do my various chores, and it felt strangely good. I’m not saying I wanted to do chores – I would have been totally happy if Xian suddenly got a washing machine or if someone else was going to change my sheets each week – but I did kind of enjoy doing them. It felt meditative. Instead of trying to do as quick a job as possible, I tried to do as good a job as possible – like, for example, making my bed really nicely, as if it was a bed at a fancy hotel.

The other great thing about the rustic life was that I realised how little I needed, and how many things I could either make myself, do without, or improvise around.

For example, I ran out of conditioner in my second week at the Ashram. In one of our internet sessions, I looked up water-only washing, which involves lots of rubbing your scalp to prevent it from getting greasy and to distribute the oils through the rest of your strands.

I gave it a go, and it worked really well! It wasn’t great for untangling my hair, (I figured I’d buy some more conditioner once I left the Ashram for that purpose) but turning my head upside down and rubbing my scalp every night worked just as well as using dry shampoo. My hair felt less greasy and more voluminous.

Another time, when the bites were getting really unbearable, I mixed some baking powder, chamomile tea, and aloe vera into a paste that we could apply on the bites to get a little relief. It worked better when it was fresh so it wasn’t the most practical solution given that I didn’t want to keep remaking it every night, but it was fun to play around with. Another natural remedy included putting turmeric on my new ear piercing, which worked wonders and had it looking healthy in a few days.

I wouldn’t have tried any of those things if there had been a store nearby where I could buy the kind of conditioner I like to use, or some calamine lotion, or some aftercare cream for my piercing. But I’m really glad there wasn’t because so often when I’m faced with a problem I buy something to fix it. I want to reduce my consumption and my carbon footprint, and this experience reminded me to try to make do with what I have first.

Speaking of reducing my consumption, I also spent the whole time wearing only 5 sets of clothing. During the day, I’d wear a sports bra and leggings. I had three sets that I’d cycle through, so that if the set that was drying got rained on (which happened frequently) I still had another dry set to wear. Then I had two loose dresses which I’d wear in the evenings after I showered, so my skin had a chance to breath after being wrapped up in lycra all day.

Having so few clothes meant that I never had to make any decisions about what to wear, which I loved. I grew to feel so comfortable in my handful of outfits. This was probably helped by the fact that there were no mirrors on the property, and almost no other reflective surfaces, so I had no idea what I looked like the entire time I was there – well, except when I watched my videos, but they were dark and grainy so I couldn’t see any fine details in them.

Xian had explained that the reason she avoided mirrors was that if she couldn’t see how she looked, she just assumed she looked great and would feel great as a result. This is different for me – if I don’t have a mirror, I assume I look awful.

But not being able to see myself meant that I wasn’t reminded of how I looked. It probably also helped that we were in the jungle, away from any billboards or advertising. We were so focused on yoga, and philosophy, and these other things, and how we looked never came up.

I don’t think I can adequately explain how much of a difference this makes. When I was in SF, a lot of people didn’t dress that well, but I was still constantly bombarded with images of perfect looking people on billboards and on Netflix and on food packaging. There were shops everywhere selling clothes and makeup, the very existence of which implies that how we look matters. There are so many things in society that reinforce the idea that you need to care about how you look, and that how you look is a big part of what you’re worth.

But here at the Ashram, there was none of that. We didn’t see any advertising. We didn’t see any packaging. We didn’t have mirrors, nobody dressed well, and we didn’t talk about how we looked. I walked around with my belly sticking out over my leggings, my frizzy hair plastered to my sweaty skin, my clothes stained brown from the river water, and I felt amazing.

Having restricted access to electricity and internet was also great. I couldn’t use my phone much because I needed to conserve battery. Phones can be so interruptive – even if you turn off all your push notifications, just looking at your phone can remind you of all the things you could or should be doing. And because I couldn’t just Google things, I had to figure a lot of things out on my own, although we all also had ‘internet lists’ – things that we would look up when we did have a connection.

Very often I’d add something to the list, then realise later that I didn’t actually care about it enough to use up my valuable internet time on it. Usually, as soon as I wonder something, I’ll Google it, and it means that I spend a lot of time online unintentionally. But without being able to do that, I spent most of my free time reading books, and writing, and just sitting around watching the ducks or butterflies.

I had fewer things competing for my attention, and fewer distractions. So when I read books like The Happiness Trap and Thinking Fast and Slow, I had the bandwidth to really think about what I was reading. I spent a lot of my time thinking and reflecting back on all the ideas I was getting exposed to – from the course, from Xian and the other students, and from the books I was reading.

I loved it. I felt so present. It’s not like things weren’t hard, because they were, often. But despite that, I felt fulfilled and relaxed and just really happy to be alive. There were so many moments when I thought ‘this is exactly where I want to be right now, and this is exactly what I want to be doing’. I was content.

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The people

I remember, a long time ago, reading about the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. Epicurus had this idea that money and fame and success aren’t what bring you happiness. Instead, he said that happiness was attained by living a self sufficient life surrounded by friends and with lots of time to discuss and reflect on philosophy.

Staying at the Ashram reminded me of Epicurus a lot. I’d thought, previously, that I would go crazy living such a simple life, surrounded by just the same few people. But in reality, it was wonderful.

I mentioned earlier that our little group didn’t have that immediate chemistry that you sometimes get when you instantly click with people. But we opened up slowly.

At the start of our course, we weren’t doing much physical activity, so Sam suggested that we make time, three times a week, to workout together. Exercising together is a nice way to spend time with people because you encourage each other to keep going, and it gives you this sense of being on the same team. And every time we’d plank, we’d swap embarrassing or funny stories to make the time go faster and to take our minds off the pain.

Mealtimes were also good for bonding, although the thing that actually bought us all together the most was getting diarrhoea at the same time. Talking about your poop that much does a lot to break down barriers. We made a lot of scatological jokes, and shared a lot of detailed information with each other about our excretions.

One of the funny memories I have is of Xian taking poop samples into town to test them. She didn’t have proper sample containers, so she passed around empty jars of peanut butter, which we all pooped into. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at another jar of peanut butter the same again.

I have so many wonderful memories with everyone that don’t quite translate into words. Like the girly chat session we had up in the dining cabaña as Eva cut Ali’s fringe and then very patiently untangled and cut my hair. That time Ali, Sam and I filled up buckets with hot water, salt, and essential oils and soaked our feet up in the library, then tried to be super sneaky about emptying everything out because we were worried Xian would get angry at us for using so much salt and water.

Slacklining down by the river while eating cake. Playing ‘table salt hockey’ with Semjon at the dining cabaña before dinner and seeing how fast we could slide the salt across the table before it would tumble off. Listening to the Non-Violent Communication audiobook together in the evenings after dinner, then quoting Marshall Rosenberg in class the next day.

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We had so many great adventures together. We did Full Moon ceremonies where we’d light a big fire and bake stick bread over it. We went to what we affectionately dubbed ‘Mango Paradise’, a neighbouring field full of mango trees, where we ate ripe, sweet mangoes straight off the tree, then piled more mangoes into sacks that we hauled back to the Ashram and feasted on for weeks afterwards. And every Monday, on our day off, we’d go explore other parts of Nicaragua – although I’ll write about that in another blog post.

We were all from such different backgrounds, but everyone was kind and respectful and willing to help. And everyone had time for everyone else. When I was in San Francisco, people were so busy all the time. Even if you’d organised to hang out together, they’d often cancel at the last minute because they were too busy. Organising anything was hard – people had so many different needs and requests and would change their minds constantly.

Here at the Ashram, if you wanted to do something, everyone else almost always said yes. Everyone jumped in to help without needing to be asked or told. Organising things was easy – everyone was flexible and they’d all take responsibility for things on their own accord. We felt like a team.

I’d worried that we’d clash over our different beliefs, because some of the others were into more esoteric things like energy healing, or were anti-vaxxers, or didn’t believe in global warming.

I’d been reading Thinking, Fast and Slow, and the book mentioned that if you get into an argument with someone where you’re trying to prove that you’re right, you’re unlikely to change their mind even if you win the argument. People don’t change their minds when they have to defend their point of view.

But if you start off by both accepting that you don’t know everything, and that you’re interested in learning from each other and and coming to a better understanding of the topic together, you make it safe for both parties to discuss why they believe certain things and examine whether it makes sense for them to shift their beliefs. So I tried to do that. I didn’t do it perfectly, but I did okay, and I got better at it the more I did it.

I’m glad I didn’t write anyone off because of their beliefs. Even though we didn’t agree on everything, I found everyone inspiring in different ways, and I learned a lot from them.

Xian, our teacher, had lived such an unconventional life, traveling and living all over the world. Sometimes I’d get so frustrated when she’d talk about conspiracy theories or claim that fluoride was poisoning our brains, but on the other hand she also had a lot of wisdom to impart.

She’d started the Ashram at the same time as she’d had twins, one of whom was almost entirely disabled. The twins’ father left once they’d learned about the disability, leaving Xian to build and run the Ashram entirely on her own at the same time as taking care of the twins. The disabled child had then died at the age of 3. And yet Xian wasn’t resentful about any of this. She said that everyone entered your life for a reason, a season, or forever.

She urged us to be willing to let go of people and things graciously. And she told us that just because something ends – a friendship, an experience, a romance – that doesn’t invalidate all the joy and wonder that you got from it. Appreciate things for what they were, and what they meant to you, without needing them to last forever.

I learned a lot from the other students, too. Ali was really good at communicating and stating her needs, and doing it diplomatically. She was also, unintentionally, very funny. Sam was fearless and willing to do anything, even if she was unprepared. She was insanely confident. Semjon was always asking questions and wanted to try everything. He’d talk to anyone and everyone, and soaked up knowledge like a sponge. And Eva was so kind and put in an effort with everyone. Even though she didn’t speak that much English or Spanish, Eva got to know all the locals, and everyone loved her.

It wasn’t perfect. We had moments of tension and disagreements, and did things that annoyed each other. But it felt like a family. So often, when we were going round the table before a meal, sharing what we were grateful for, we’d talk about how grateful we were for each other, and for the time we got to spend together.

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The two months I spent at the Ashram really changed my outlook on a lot of things. For one, I realised that I don’t need that many things. I could be perfectly happy with very little. In fact, I’d probably be happier with fewer things.

I realised that even though we can’t control what happens to us, we can control how we react to it. That we can make a conscious decision to cultivate contentment and to do things in a joyful way.

And most importantly, I realised just how much people matter, more than almost anything else. It made me appreciate my friends so much more, and even though I didn’t get much internet time when I was there, I used the time I did have to send deep, meaningful messages to the people I love.

I’d booked this yoga teacher training course with the hope of giving my brain some time to unwind, and with the intention of figuring out what my values were. The experience was nothing like what I’d been expecting, but I think I got everything I needed from it.