A friend from the retreat asked me if I’d been able to keep up my meditation practice while we were in Tobago.

The answer is yes, and no.

The first week, I read the fantastic Breathing Underwater. One of Rohr’s observations was that when you find positive practices for your life, you should find that you need less of them over time to get the benefit, not more.

For a while now, it had felt that the law of level of diminishing returns was starting to apply to my meditation, yet I was afraid to scale back and lose ground. In the weeks before our trip, I’d gone from an hour and a half to 2 hours a day down to about 1 – 1.5 hours. I’d been keeping up with an hour plus a day since we’d been on vacation, but was trying to figure out how Rohr’s idea applied to my practice.

Then, we moved to a different guest house for the last four nights of our stay. It was smaller, and as our trip drew to a close, more of our time was spent out, at the beach and hanging out with family. I was no longer at a home base at the times I usually meditated, and the only room in the guest house that I could get to myself didn’t have any natural light.

I ended up on a starvation meditation diet those first couple of days at the new place – I often got a morning session in, but it had to last me for the whole day. Sometimes I could get a second, shortened session in. Each day, it seemed harder than the last to find space and time. I didn’t want to take time away from our activities. And those activities, for the most part, were so fulfilling that I didn’t need as much meditation.

For the entire trip, one of my goals had been to meditate outside. I hadn’t been able to do that back in New York yet because like I mentioned in this post, I’m not down for meditating in the snow. And our first guest house, while beautiful, was downwind from the bush, in the dry season, and there was cow itch. Cow itch is a vine with pretty flowers. It also has itchy fibers that are invisible and become airborne when it is dry. You have to wash with soap and water to stop the itching once it starts, and sometimes you need itch cream as well.

We spent a lot of time in the pool at the guest house, but anything more than 10 minutes or so outside the pool left us scratching. I wasn’t willing to challenge my meditative superpowers by trying to overcome this unseen enemy.

The second morning at our new place, I knew I had to do the outdoor meditation or I would run out of time. I walked out to a gazebo in the front courtyard, an unsightly expanse of tile, and sat down on the ground. My only regret from there out is that I didn’t bring out a beach towel to sit on. I don’t think we had a dry one, anyway.

There was a breeze blowing. I sat cross legged, put on my headphones, and closed my eyes. As soon as I started, I could feel my body flickering, as if the wind was blowing right through me. Even though I was grounded by the sensation of the hard tile underneath me, I didn’t feel like I was stuck to the ground. Those cartoons of people floating while meditating? That’s what it felt like.

The next day was our last full day in Tobago. We had a disjointed morning. I’d done a shortened meditation in the dark room of the guest room so not to take away time from our planned beach trip that day. (I would have preferred a longer session in a room with natural light or outside). We rushed, trying to get out the door to the beach.

We went to a beach we’d had a great experience with in the evening a couple of days earlier. During the day, jet ski, beach chair, and glass bottom boat tour hawkers accosted us one after another from the moment we arrived. By the time we had paid for a pair of beach chairs, something that didn’t feel optional with all the beach’s real estate taken up by the rental chairs that had been packed up before our arrival the last time we visited.

We hadn’t even had a chance to look around properly, and our smaller kids were inching, and in some cases, running toward the water. It didn’t take long to realize the calm, quiet, nearly empty beach of a few nights ago was a rough, cramped, and blinding beach by day. A lifeguard approached us to let us know due to the rough water, we’d have to stay close to the kids at all times. The waves were coming up so high on the sand that there was no room for smaller kids to play on the shore. I longed to make a run for the foamy, energetic waves, but we decided to take the loss on the beach chairs and go to a different beach after the baby got capsized just inches from my leg by a rogue wave not long after we arrived.

The second beach was a better fit. We arrived disgruntled and out of sorts. The kids were crabby from the false start, and the grown ups were even crabbier.

I went on a brief, thrilling jet ski ride with One, which soaked me and helped me work out my feelings about how the day had started. I watched the kids play for hours in the water. We all started to chill out.

When we started to talk about leaving, I decided to go into the water one last time. After hanging out with the kids in the shallows for a while, I swam out past the other bathers to toward the open water.

I floated on my back, ears submerged. A glass bottom boat was cruising by on the other side of the swimming enclosure, pumping soca music that I could hear under the water. There was only blue sky, turquoise water, and music. I let it roll over me, focusing on the breath. My mind stayed blessedly empty. When I finally popped up to swim back to shore, Two called out to me, “Mom! It looked like you were meditating.” I smiled. “I was.” It was for just a few minutes, but it was so good.

A busy evening followed. After the kids were in bed, the Chaplain and I headed out for a late dinner with my in-laws. I was feeling overstimulated after a busy day and hadn’t had a chance to do another meditation other than the brief, but wonderful, water meditation that afternoon.

I was feeling regret about having to leave, and exhaustion from the full days beach trips followed by date nights with live music and DJ’s going until the wee hours of the morning.

I talked to the Chaplain. He told me I should meditate right there, in the car. I closed my eyes as he talked me through a brief, guided meditation. Then, he was silent. The window was open, with a cool breeze blowing in. Soca and calypso music was blasting from businesses and cars along the way, one song fading into another. When we arrived at the restaurant, I was feeling centered and calm.

The driving meditation was my last session before we arrived back home the following afternoon.

In my days back at home, I’ve been able to take the good vibes from the trip and plug them back in for some amazing, floating, body-disappearing sessions.

The trip helped me re-evaluate my practice and figure out how much meditation I needed to stay chill. I’m using that information to inform my habits going forward – and I’m not beating myself up if I miss a midday session.