Meditation and McDonald’s

I’ve spent this weekend at the world-famous Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health.

With its silent breakfasts, farm-to-table meals, candlelit shrines, and slow walking, the place doesn’t exactly match my aesthetic.

I’m sort of like a bull in a china shop here.
A man without a country.
A misplaced, misbegotten vagabond.

I suspect that I’m the only person here armed with a Diet Coke at all times. I definitely swear more than anyone I have met so far. And I was the only person in yesterday’s sunrise yoga class wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

And yet I’ve had an excellent weekend here, teaching storytelling and performing in their main theater. And it appears that I will be back three times next year, including a weekend alongside Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love; another weekend of storytelling like this last one; and a weeklong advanced storytelling workshop in the summer.

Somehow, this place and I have found a means of coexisting. I think we may even like each other.

Still, it may come as a surprise to those who know me well to hear that yesterday morning, I sat atop a rock on a hill in the early morning cold and meditated as the sun rose over the hills.

While I meditate every morning, it’s normally done on the couch.

Lest you fear that I have lost myself entirely and become something I am not, I followed up this period of meditation with the trip to one of my favorite places in the world, forgoing the world-class cuisine of Kripalu for something more fitting of my personal aesthetic.