Embody Costa Rica
Embody Costa Rica is a retreat center in Atenas, Costa Rica run by two lovely individuals, Hema and DTO. Hemalayaa Behl AKA Hema is an incredible yoga instructor, transformational coach, and embodiment mentor and author. Dave Kemp, AKA DTO is a wonderful music producer, spanish language teacher, tour guide, and business/life guide in general. As a team, they hold a magical space of healing and spiritual exploration. Visitors are immersed in the experience of finding their inner balance and clarity while enjoying the vibrant area of Atenas, Costa Rica, a location which boasts the “best climate in the world” according to National Geographic.
The Embody Sanctuary includes a home with a guest room, a gorgeous yoga deck and a labyrinth. Here, visitors have the opportunity to explore their spiritual, intellectual, physical, and energetic realities through movement and conscious contemplation. DTO’s inspirational soundtracks paired with Hema’s intuitive instruction with journaling and movement, whether it be yoga or ecstatic dance, help individuals to tap into their inner child space and release anything holding them back. In their welcoming home, enjoy ayurvedic meals and wisdom, insightful discussions, introductions to powerful spiritual concepts and tools, and possibly professional massages and Spanish lessons! They live across from a wonderful hotel to accommodate for larger groups of visitors.
Hema and DTO will balance your time there with experiences around Atenas that make you feel like a local. The immersion in the culture, language and sights here will fill you with “Pura Vida” bliss, making you feel like you are indeed embodying Costa Rica’s essence of tranquility. They know all the best spots to go whether it be waterfalls, hikes, places to swim, restaurants, glorious mountain views or inspiring coffee farms. The coffee farm, El Toledo, was especially inspiring to me, as the family that runs it has made it into a permaculture food forest free of pesticides due to a heart-breaking and heart-warming family story. Creating sustainable abundance and holding tours to educate visitors on best practices for just that is so beautiful. Plus, their coffee, coffee wine and coffee jam are delicious!
The four main things I took away from my lovely experience with Hema and DTO at Embody Costa Rica were the following:
The power to free oneself
The freedom to be authentic
The clarity of authenticity
The embodiment of clarity
1. The Power to Free Oneself
Something that I have struggled so much with in my life is victim consciousness. As someone who had adverse childhood experiences, it has been difficult in the past to trust A. the people and world around me to be safe and kind and B. to trust in my own ability to improve or avoid unsafe or unkind circumstances for myself or to be able to overcome them. Due to the nature of living with trauma, even when life is absolutely full of blessings and goodness, there is still that pervasive fear and hopelessness that can seep in in many different emotional, physical, energetic, and intellectual forms because of how the brain developed and what it subsequently expects to face in life in response to those early, painful experiences.
Victim consciousness is believing that life happens “to me,” that I am at the mercy of the external forces around me, that I don’t have the power to make changes or withstand circumstances. An incredibly helpful quote by Hema was “What happened to me wasn’t my fault, but it is my responsibility to heal.” in much of Hema’s writing, she talks about owning your power, not compromising, having faith and self-belief, advocating for yourself, and being what she calls a “Resolutionary” or a revolutionary who is always finding and building solutions to be more aligned, authentic, and in one’s power.
One of the most powerful models Hema introduced me to was the emotional spiral, one that for most of my life I thought only went down, but taking a look at this model, it also goes up!
All emotion is energy, and if we can let it flow, give it space to express through movement, art, and communication, we can transmute emotions from one to the other. Hema and I did an exercise where we were going to do an ecstatic dance session, but depression emerged within me and I couldn’t move. She opened up the space where I could express depression as frustration, moving it into a higher energetic frequency until I was able to reach the neutral baseline of boredom and then move further up. I highly recommend working with Hema if you experience being stuck at a certain energetic level on the spiral often in your life.
Understanding that I had power over my experience as long as I take responsibility and action for transmuting my emotions into helpful ones through expression and staying true to my needs and desires out of life was incredibly freeing.
2. The Freedom to be Authentic
A strong limiting belief I discovered at Embody Costa Rica was insecurity; I had always thought that there was something innately wrong with me because of how I was treated as a child and adolescent, and how that treatment was never addressed as wrong by anyone else in my life. Rather than becoming justifiably angry, because I didn’t see anyone really be shocked or appalled at how I had been treated, I internalized that anger as hopeless despair, or depression, blaming myself and my insufficiency as a person for how I was treated.
What was once a bright and expressive young child became a fearful and reserved adult, believing that if I ever allowed myself to be truly seen as I authentically am, I would be condemned and mistreated as I was when I was younger. Thus I would hide myself, self-isolate, not make eye contact or get close to anyone, I would lie and pretend to be the way I perceived people would respond more positively to. I even put up with intolerable treatment because I didn’t believe in my deservedness to be treated better.
There were three main reactions I had to this crippling insecurity.
The first was that I felt as though I needed to run away and hide or else pretend to be exactly how people want me to be through inauthentic expression and behavior so I could avoid mistreatment and abandonment
The second was that I felt as though I needed to justify my existence by being excellent or beneficial in every way I could be.
The third was much darker. It emerged from a hopelessness that I would ever be able to succeed in the first two methods; the third was that I felt I should die.
It took me quite a while to realize exactly what depression and suicidal ideation really are. When a person has depression, the brain stops producing serotonin to inhibit the cell growth of brain cells that are hopeless. It’s like God’s flood of the Earth, a hard reset that the brain uses to try to communicate that the line of thinking the depressed person is on will kill them. Things reach a critical mass of emptiness until something has to break and give way.
Suicidal ideation was the mind communicating to itself that its current mental construction of reality and its perception of self needs to change. It wants to die. Not the person itself, but the identity and way of perceiving the world that the mind has currently created for itself.
This is why those in the spiritual community see a massive breakthrough in the moment of experiencing “ego-death” when their mental construction becomes see-through and they remember that they are more than just an identity or a map of concepts, they are the universe experiencing itself through a divine spark of existence.
Insecurity dissolved the moment that I allowed my neural pathways to shift. When I let my identity fade to nothing, when the foundations of meaning I had built my very sense of self and reality on crumbled into nothing, it was only then when I found peace.
Insecurity was a hell of my own creation I only fully escaped from when I allowed myself to fully be myself; no bells or whistles, no placation or people-pleasing. Ecstatic dance is a powerful tool for releasing the many cages we are introduced to as children; not to be too wild, too loud, too energetic, too silly. There is a great freeing power in taking up space and expressing without judgment, censorship or punishment just for being. Shifting the power from the judgment of others to my own determination of self and creation allowed me to release the many masks, shackles, weights, and cages I submitted myself to thinking I had to to be palatable for others to avoid shame and mistreatment.
3. The Clarity of Authenticity
The realization that I was a conscious co-creator of my reality through language and meaning-making, and that I had built a prison for myself based on the ignorance of others in the past, I also realized that I had an incredible power within myself and that I could just as easily rewrite that story and play with the fluidity of my identity to begin enjoying the collaborative, experiential art-piece that is being alive, being part of the universe.
Once I found my inner wellspring of power, I was able to ease into my authenticity without fear of judgment, and from there I felt as though I could more easily express what I wanted out of life and who I was really meant to be in this world. In the past, when people ask me what I wanted, I would often say “I don’t know” and defer the decisions to others, not feeling as though I had the authority or worth to have decisions made according to my own desires. I also had no idea what my own desires were, being so used to suppressing them so often.
Luckily, Hema introduced a journaling exercise using really helpful questions for someone like me who would benefit from finding clarity in what I want and I ended up making a list of my ideal life situation:
I would like my life to be safe, secure, peaceful, loving, beneficial and purposeful.
I would like to create things that are full of meaning that make a positive difference.
I would like to be open and vibrant, to have the people around me be healthy, kind, safe, supported, and happy.
I would like to be in nature, having deep, meaningful conversations and nurturing, genuine connections.
I would like life to be simple and abundant, warm and joyful.
There would be music and animals and a community that collaborates peacefully for shared well-being.
I would feel valued and connected, allowed to be myself, have days when it’s okay to not feel well or to take a break and be given the grace to be human and fallible.
I would feel understood and unconditionally loved, and I would be supporting others from a place of being supported by others as well.
I would get to be generous and adventurous, silly and expressive, and everyone around me would handle conflict with compassion and grace.
I wrote, “I’d like to keep visiting healing centers and intentional communities around the world and learn, connect, and create pieces of writing/videos/art with what I’ve learned and experienced about intentional practices and philosophies for individual and collective well-being…The challenge feels to be embodying the spirit, soul, mind & body who identifies as someone who does that.”
4. The Embodiment of Clarity
Now that I feel powerful, free, authentic, and clear, I continue to move in ways that are aligned with my truest expression and desires. Most importantly, I practice having faith both in myself and in the external circumstances that will come my way, knowing that with compassion, curiosity, and creativity, I can continue to build living experiences that are true to who I am and what I want to accomplish inwardly and outwardly in this lifetime.
I only shared a few of the incredible experiences to be had at Embody Costa Rica with Hemalayaa and DTO, you will just have to go and experience it for yourself! Here are their offerings and links to book your experience with them if you are so inclined to do so:
Tantra
Yoga
Embodied Movement
Ayurveda
Massage
Journaling
Spiritual Tools & Resources
Language, Culture & Sights Immersion in Atenas, Costa Rica
