From Superyacht to Ashram

Two years ago over Christmas and New Year, I was working on a Superyacht.

My fifth Christmas spent working on a $650,000 (weekly rate) yacht, anchored off St Barths in the Caribbean, I found myself surrounded by celebrities. That very morning I had witnessed Leo Di Caprio having breakfast on the aft deck around the pool, with supermodels draped all over him, even though his soggy cornflakes were sticking to his Revenant beard.

While this might seem like an ideal situation to most, this was the most troubled time in my life. I felt completely disconnected to reality and so far removed from everyday life. I hadn’t seen my friends or family for years and my life belonged to our boat “Owners” a.k.a Russian Oligarchs. They consumed almost all our time 24/7/ 365 and no matter what they asked for we provided- at any given hour. Although there are perks in the game, these don’t balance with what we have to give up.

When I first started out, I was in my element, schmoozing with the rich and shameless and thought I was living the dream. It turned very stale very quickly. I was burnt out from hosting outrageous parties from St Tropez to St Barths, which went on continuously year round. I hardly recognized myself anymore and realized my life was controlled by someone who didn’t even know my middle name.

I got tired of the lifestyle and tired of the people.

I learned very quickly that most these people have no friends. That most the million-dollar “guests” were rented for the week or picked up from the club the night before. I started dubbing this lot “rent-a-crowd” as the fabricated friendships and manicured selfies were about as plastic as their faces and bad boob jobs. I saw another side to the industry, and I didn’t like it. It was dark and desperate and very degrading. These people lacked substance and genuine conversation and I felt I was going down with their sinking ship.

For the last two years, I planned to leave the yachting industry. But I had no idea what I wanted to do. I worked in Public Relations for 13 years before yachting but could not imagine going back to the corporate world in a big city, strapped to a desk and pitching the Media in their perfectly laundered Prada pin-stripe suits. Because I felt so lost and not sure what to do aprés yachting, I prolonged my time onboard, just diving deeper into depression. I was far from stimulated in my role as Superyacht Interior Manager and I had a strong urge to be grounded again – literally on land and not on the ocean.

During my breaks on board, I would find myself in my tiny cabin trailing through Amazon buying self-help books. I started asking the Universe questions such as “what am I here for” “where am I going” “what next” “show me what you’ve got”. I delved more and more into spirituality which initially started as my escapism, hiding from my predictable boat family at every chance I could. Without actually realizing it, I woke up one day and looked at my bookshelf and noticed I had a cocktail of books on wellness and spirituality.

During this spiritual “awakening” I started having very vivid dreams and started journaling everything. I created vision boards and without consciously realizing it had stuck pictures of resorts, retreats, yoga, healthy food and healthy bodies across the back of my cabin door. One day I woke up and without any conviction said to myself. “I know what I’m going to do; I’m going to run my own wellness retreats!”.

So during my time on board over the last year I started working on my project. I toyed with the idea of creating this unique retreat business, gave it a brand personality, started building my website and researching the market.

In April this year I took a holiday to Ubud, Bali for a month for a yoga detox retreat as wanted some solitude to contemplate my road ahead. While in Ubud, I met two Indian gurus/ yogis who both told me to go to India and do my yoga teacher training. At that time I had absolutely no plan to teach it or go to India.

I now know there had been a subconscious change in me during that time in Ubud (which incidentally means medicine in Balinese).

After my Bali break, I landed in Barcelona; re-joined my boat and 24 hours later I knew what I needed to do. I couldn’t bare being back on the boat or being The Devils Advocate. I took the leap of faith, pushed my fears aside and decided to get my retreat business on the road. From that day onwards I refused to row my boat backwards.

A day later, tasting the freedom I had afforded, I was online searching for yoga schools in India and was drawn to ‘Shiva Yoga Peeth’ in Rishikesh, the birthplace of Yoga. A week later I booked my ticket to India and two months later I landed in Mumbai. I decided to come to India – get out of my very comfortable zone – my $68m superyacht comfort zone- and explore this world of yoga and ashram living for a while, taking some well deserved time off to work on my project, namely ME.

My intentions to go to learn yoga in India were to get a full understanding of the practice so that when I launch my retreat business, I know what to look for, what sort of teacher I should recruit and what this yoga industry is all about. I thought hanging out in an Ashram in India would be very “Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love” and I would just be messing about on my yoga mat in creative poses, burning incense and chanting.

I’m a fast paced 100 mile an hour business woman.
I walk fast; l talk fast, sleep fast and don’t know anything apart from deadlines, working under pressure or working to meet goals. I’m your typical Raja-sic personality; I’m fiery, fast-paced and intense. If I were an internet connection, I would be fiber optic, not your 56kb dial up – as yogis tend to be.

I called my business "Stellar & Luna" (Luxury Pop-Up Wellness Retreats.)

We are a place to eat healthily and improve wellbeing. We off time to get good quality sleep and rest and we're a haven to retreat and recover from a busy and wild lifestyle. A less intense sort of rehab!

While doing my 500 hrs of Yoga Teacher Training in India, it’s as if miraculously my puzzle started piecing itself together. My learnings have been phenomenal in many ways. The intensive program has justified my strategy for my business. The most important aspects which I have had the most difficulty while doing the training were eating, sleeping and retreating.

EAT

I’m not a fan of eating off someone else’s menu, instead of tuning into my body.

Most foods labeled sattvic cause my body harm and distress. Just because it’s on a list of sattvic foods does not mean it’s going to make everyone feel serene and ready to meditate (which is a top reason people want to eat sattvic foods — so they can meditate without being agitated or drowsy).

I felt fragile and unresponsive when I needed my energy on the mat. My skin broke out in spots; my hair started falling out from lack of protein, and my overall aura was completely depleted. I dosed up on supplements to feed my body the nutrients it was not receiving from the sattvic diet at the Ashram. On top of that, I got E.Coli – a nasty form of food poisoning which causes deaths- even in first world countries like the States or the UK.

I’m gluten intolerant, so my body can’t absorb the chapatis, pasta or rice, I’m also iron deficient so need iron found in red meats and green leafy vegetables. I am dairy intolerant, and my body cannot absorb the lactose found in milk, similarly most sugary foods cause gut inflammation and extreme pain, so eating most fruits is not an option for me.

Going cold turkey on the foods my body needed most with my only option being foods I couldn’t eat did not work for me, physically or mentally.

I totally get that for purposes of meditation; the food should be light, nutritious and Sattvic. However, I am a firm believer that “Evolution is better than revolution”. You should not make drastic, extreme, sudden changes in anything, particularly so in matters about food.

Just as you learn to listen to your body on the mat, so you must listen to your body at the table. It’s essential to listen to your body so that you’ll know what kinds of foods might serve you best in each moment. Remember, yoga is about freedom. One size can’t fit all. The most important thing that yoga’s sister Ayurveda teaches us is that each one of us has a unique constitution.

SLEEP

I believe that sleep is a spiritual practice.
When I have sleepless nights, I wake up feeling blocked and energetically disconnected. It is so detrimental for us not to have a good nights sleep. When we have enough sleep and wake up feeling refreshed and energized as night has been restorative we have the capacity to hold more and receive more. But the moment we wake up feeling tired and groggy and pumping that caffeine or chai tea to wake us up and that energy deflect bringing the greatness towards you.

My last two months here have been so sleep deprived.
I’m a 9-hour girl and realistically if I have to be up at 5 am I would need to be asleep by 8 PM. The noise on the streets, the dogs barking through the night and the parties on the Ganga have kept me awake most nights. This has been so challenging to try and wake up for a day filled with 5 hours of Asana classes and another 5 on theory (philosophy, anatomy etc).

RETREAT

The word retreat means “a quiet or secluded place in which one can rest and relax” or “a period or location of seclusion for prayer and meditation”.

My journey to India and Rishikesh was the perfect retreat for me. I went to seclude myself from my crazy lifestyle of yachting, with the pure intention to research the yoga industry for my own business. My company aims to be located in secluded venues where people can come and retreat from their hectic lifestyles.

Falling very ill and ending up in hospital on a drip for 6 hours forced me to slow down and retreat. My hours in a hospital were very reflective, and suddenly something hit home. Even while out here doing my yoga training I was pushing myself, putting unrealistic goals on myself and having ridiculous expectations on everything around me. Falling ill forced me to BE IN THE MOMENT. Something very very foreign to me. I’m always planning ahead, plotting the next move and itinerating my life.

So just like a miracle I was led to India and the hardest challenges I faced were unexpected- it wasn’t trying to do a handstand or to meditate for hours, but merely the eating, sleeping and retreating.

The training has taken me to places I never thought I would go emotionally and gave me more than I ever expected. I left Rishikesh on Sunday with 100% justification that I am in alignment by living and experiencing this all first hand.

Not only can I now honestly, authentically and proudly justify my business model but I walked away having learned patience, perseverance and acceptance- on myself and others.

Life is all about balance, about yin and yang.

I will never be the calm, passive 56k dial up as most Yogis humbly are, that’s just not in my DNA. However, I’m now willing to downgrade my fiber optic fuse and willing to learn “slowly slowly” other ways to connect to the world, through the modality of yoga.