Power Living Yoga Retreat by Cameron Wilson

“By the end of the weekend, some of you are going to hate me.” Duncan Peak, instructor and ringmaster of this, my very first yoga retreat, is nodding his way around the room. “That’s cool, because you’re going to have breakthroughs too.” Hate? Breakthroughs? I was just hoping I might improve my flexibility. Perhaps I should have taken more account of Duncan’s background, as an officer in an elite army parachute regiment, before signing up for my first two days of Power Yoga. But it’s Friday evening, the mats are being rolled out and towels handed round, so it’s a bit late to think about that now.

I’m at Govinda Valley, the rather Spartan conference centre an hour’s drive south of Sydney that hosts at least one yoga group every weekend of the year. The property reminds me of church youth camps I attended in my teens – four beds to a room, basic communal bathroom facilities and a big dining hall. But I remind myself I’m not visiting a holiday resort; and judging by the number of BMW’s parked outside there are people here who will be doing it tougher than me this weekend.

“What comes out when you squeeze an orange?” asks Duncan as he prowls the room, part centred yogi, part gimlet-eyed soldier. “Juice!” a dozen obliging voices roar. “We’re going to squeeze that juice out of you!” he responds.

My Upward Dog is holding together okay but my Downward Dog, compared with those of my seventy-one new yoga buddies, is pretty ordinary. This is inconvenient, since these postures are used repeatedly to segue from one group of movements to another. Fortunately I can take refuge in Child Pose (kneeling down and settling face-first onto the mat to rest for a bit), which I do often while hefty blokes and skinny girls continue to stretch up a storm as the condensation runs in streams down the windows.

At session’s end there’s just time for a shower before we troop upstairs for dinner. The food, prepared by Govinda Valley’s own volunteers, isn’t flash but it’s undoubtedly healthy. I’m told the cooks sing while they work in order to impart love and positive energy onto the food. It sounds a nice idea, but faced with a plate of steamed broccoli and baked pumpkin, it seems to me someone could suggest they swap the kitchen song-sheet for a decent vegetarian cookbook.

After washing our dishes we’re back on the yoga floor seated on scatter cushions, and Duncan kicks off a discussion about how we experience fear, love and compassion. I’m sure it does no-one any harm to contemplate these things, but I can’t help thinking this sort of stuff belongs at an Anthony Robbins seminar. Mind you, as Power Yoga is proving a big hit with men in particular due to its physicality, perhaps a little personal development on these retreats is no bad thing.

Saturday morning’s session begins early and I find myself doing quite well on balance postures such as Eagle Pose. Just as I’m struggling to get my left arm tucked inside my right, Duncan appears in front of me. “You can get this” he says. “Remember in yoga, the posture begins the moment you want it to end.” I concentrate on breathing into the muscles in my shoulder, and miraculously my hands come together. Duncan grins. “Congratulations, you just had a breakthrough.”

At the end of the session I’m utterly spent, and every person in the room is either guzzling water or wiping their sweat from the floor. It feels like we’ve been doing Power Yoga for three hours, which of course is ridiculous. When I check my watch I discover it was actually closer to three-and-a-half.

By mid-morning Sunday I have to head home. My juice has been squeezed, no doubt about it. Like someone going through detox I have a throbbing headache and I’m feeling decidedly delicate. Heading for my car I spot Tim, the friend who invited me on the retreat. I apologise for leaving a bit early and for wimping out in some of the sessions. “Mate, are you kidding? For someone who’s never done this before, you did great. Trust me; this is the Olympics of yoga.”