Canyon Ranch, Lenox: The Experience

Epiphany posts require sweeping sunrise shots, don’t you think?

Canyon Ranch, Lenox certainly was an experience–and I cannot tell you how fortunate I feel to have been given the opportunity to attend.  Yes–I said ‘attend’.  Both ‘visit’ and ‘stay’ are verbs that are far too passive.  Attending Canyon Ranch is active.

Very, very active.

And I learned a great many things.  So many things, in fact, that there is no way I can contain them all in one post.  So for the next three weeks, I will feature a Canyon Ranch Lessons post each Monday–the first with a focus on the Mind, the second on the Body, and the final installment–yes, you guessed it–with a focus on Spirit.

There was one lesson, however, that I feel does not fit into one of these neat little categories.  Instead, it permeates all three.  I shall call it…

My Canyon Ranch Epiphany

I am an extremely independent person.  I am also fairly humble.  And, ok, I’m pretty darn stubborn, too.  What all of that often means is this: I have a hard time asking for help.  And by ‘help’ I mean ‘anything’.  For example, if there’s a fly in my soup (which, thankfully, there never has been) I’m far more apt to scoop it out myself than send back the soup.  I wouldn’t want to inconvenience the wait staff or the kitchen and, well, how difficult is it to deal with a soup-fly?  Not very difficult at all.

But then I’m still eating fly-soup.

I arrived at Canyon Ranch with this attitude of do-it-myself-ness.  And then I sat back, looked around, and observed absolutely everyone else asking for help or advice.  That’s what we were all there for, after all.  To improve some aspect of life or self.  And for that, sometimes you need help.  No one there–aside from me–had any trouble asking for that-which-they-needed.

Now here’s the thing–Canyon Ranch isn’t cheap.  If you are there, you have at least two things: a strong desire to improve your life or self and a few more zeroes on your bank balance than most people (or at least most people I know).  Which leads me to believe that most of the people I was surrounded by at Canyon Ranch were people who had become fairly successful in their life and in their respective fields.  I feel this is a reasonable assumption.

And all of these successful people had no trouble asking for advice, help, or improvement.

Ergo–successful people ask for help.  To be successful at anything–be it my career or a specific yoga position–I need to ask for help.  So that’s what I started doing.  And do you know what?  I didn’t melt.  It didn’t burst into flames.  In fact, I found it was rather pleasant.  I got to interact with people I’d typically not interact with (cowering in the corner as I was), I learned more than I would have had I not spoken up, and–oddly–I felt even more independent.  Because I was doing what I knew I needed to do for myself.  And working, in some small way, towards some small version of personal success.

If that was the only lesson I learned during my time at Canyon Ranch, I’d consider that time well spent.  But of course that isn’t all.  So stay tuned for next Monday’s Canyon Ranch installment, number one of three What I Learned posts.  Up first, Canyon Ranch Lessons: Mind

Disclosure: I was hosted for the majority of my stay at Canyon Ranch and paid a reduced media rate for the remainder of my visit.  However, all thoughts and opinions stated here and in the future are, as always, my own.  And I was/am under no obligation to write any specific piece.  The whole ‘Mind, Body, Spirit’ thing was all my idea–cute, eh?  (Cute, cliched…same thing…)