Finding What Feels Good: What I Learned From Attending a Yoga Retreat After a Health Scare

This August, I spent a weekend tent camping at the Omega retreat center in Rhinebeck, New York. It’s taken me some time to process the experience, for a number of reasons, not least among them the events that led up to the trip.

Just before my move, I developed a dull headache and sharp, stabbing pains at the nape of my neck. When these symptoms persisted, I saw a doctor and was diagnosed with occipital neuralgia, a relatively rare primary headache disorder, according to WebMD (which my therapist has since banned me from using — rightly so).

Long story short, the first run of medication handled my pain symptoms but had a slew of nasty side effects that led my doctor to recommend I see a neurologist. The neurologist agreed with the initial diagnosis, but recommended an MRI to rule out additional potential causes of my other symptoms. Those causes? Oh, brain tumors or Multiple Sclerosis.

“Any other questions for me?” the neurologist asked at the end of my appointment.

I felt silly asking, but I had spent a lot of money, and I needed to know. “I have a yoga retreat coming up next weekend,” I told him. “Do you think it would be okay for me to go?”

“I see no reason you couldn’t go,” he replied, to my delight. Until that moment, I’d been unsure I actually was going to spend the weekend practicing yoga with Adriene Mischler, the online yoga teacher who’d sparked…