On the beach in front of the ashram, with Atlantis to the right.
This one of the oddest co-incidences in my life. Over ten years ago, I was a shipping journalist, specialising in the cruise industry. Every year, I would go to Miami for the cruise conference, spending all day traipsing round the stands in my Italian suit and all evening entertaining inebriated businessmen. One year, I was a given a free weekend cruise on a Carnival ship, stopping at Nassau. When the ship docked at the cruiseport on the island, I walked down the main street, lined with shops selling designer jewellery, Bob Marley memorabilia (apparently he was shot there), and t-shirts in the national colours of black, turquoise and canary yellow, oblivious to the fact that a minutes’s boat ride across the water to my left was the Sivananda ashram.
In January this year, I returned to Nassau (which, with Miami, are still the only places I’ve visited in both North and South America), but this time I was ferried across the water to the ashram on Paradise island by a monk (I knew he was one because he was all dressed in yellow). I was staying for five weeks for the advanced teacher training course.
The ashram is a complete incongruity in the Bahamas, whose natives for the most seem fiercely Christian and tourists robustly materialistic (just down the beach from the ashram are the dark pink towers of the Atlantis Resort, boasting the some of the most expensive hotel rooms in the world and a casino which featured in a James Bond movie). It’s a rather higglety-pigglety affair, with tents pitched among the lush tropical vegetation, rather amateurish murals of Indian gods and goddesses (well, I guess they are all painted by volunteers), and a large cracked slab of concrete in the centre. Apparently it used to be tennis court, as Swami Vishnudevananda, the founder of ashram and South Indian native, wanted to know what Western people liked to do on holiday. Someone told him “play tennis”; thus a court was build, but never used. The ashram itself is the result of a wealthy doctor bequeathing his beach-front property to the Sivananda organisation. The doctor’s former house faces the beach and is where the offices and some of the more monied guests stay. I stayed in an ‘Om’ hut, a small dormitory of two sets of bunk beds (I wasn’t going to drag a tent all the way from the UK). The bathroom was a busy building with just two showers. Yoga is practised on various platforms hidden among the foliage or jutting out onto the beach, and there’s a low-ceilinged temple, which was always packed to the rafters (the ashram is very popular in the high season, with teacher training courses starting every month).
Nawang Khechog, a Tibetan musician and one of the satsang guests.
The day begins and ends with satsang, which is usually half an hour of meditation, lots of chanting and a talk/performance. The ashram can get very good speakers or musicians to lead satsang. They pay their transport, give them a room for free, and they come to enjoy the same white sands and clear waters as the guest in the $250+ per night Atlantis resort. We had motivational speaker Joe Dispenza, sleep guru Rubin Naiman, gospel singers, Tibetan musicians, kirtan ensembles and a Sufi musician whose music I gyrated to behind the temple with a woman with the same spiritual name as me (Bhagavati).
Food is spooned out at 10.00 and 6.00, as is normal in a Sivananda ashram. I thought it was pretty good, considering it was all cooked by volunteers (but I have been vegetarian for over 20 years). If you get there on time, there’s lots of it. You get two yoga classes a day: at 8.00 and 4.00, and there’s usually a lecture in the afternoon as well. My one gripe is the extortionate prices charged by the shop. Four dollars for eight t-bags! One dollar for a sanitary towel! (This particularly irked me as it’s not a luxury item). The plus side is the authenticity of the place. Everyone, except for some of the native housekeeping staff, is a volunteer. It’s run by Swamis and Brahmacharyas (I don’t know why, but a lot of them are Israeli). There’s a South India Vedic priest who will give you an astrological reading, and an ayurvedic doctor who will tell you your constitution and suggest dietary and lifestyle changes.
I’ve been to the Sivananda ashram in Kerala, and in a way the ashram in the Bahamas seems similar, due to the decor and vegetation. You would never to expect to find this South Indian enclave hidden among the leafy palms, within sight of the gleaming white hulls of the mega-cruiseships, lined up along the dock.
I paid $428 for four nights to stay in a four-bed dorm. This included a $29 per night vacation fee and 10% room tax.