salty bake club

Finding Joy Amidst the Underworld

• sara grace

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Here is where you get in touch. Work with me, share your experience or requests > this is how to reach me. Love, - Sara

Recorded at 1:26 AM from the car after a delayed flight home, this raw and unfiltered episode offers a glimpse into the messy, beautiful reality of expectations versus experiences. 

Fresh from two weeks away—first sailing with my lover for a complete nervous system reset, then attending a yoga retreat in Greece—I share how my quest for relaxation led me somewhere completely unexpected. The retreat, focused on embodied flow and Greek mythology, literally took us into Pluto's Cave where Persephone descended to the underworld. While the facilitators were phenomenal, I found myself struggling with an unexpected challenge: holding back my own abundant joy to make space for the pain and suffering others were processing.

As someone accustomed to creating and holding space for others professionally, I unconsciously slipped into facilitator mode instead of fully participating. When another attendee commented on how quiet I was, it struck me deeply—this wasn't my natural state at all. Had I dimmed my light too much? Where's the balance between holding space and taking space?

Perhaps most surprising was discovering how much I missed home. Having spent most of my life comfortable with leaving and traveling independently, I've recently created a true home with my partner that pulls me back with unexpected force. This new foundation has transformed my relationship with travel in ways I never anticipated.

Though the retreat didn't deliver the nurturing experience I'd sought, it offered different medicine—revealing shadows and aspects of myself that might otherwise have remained hidden. Sometimes we need to visit those underworld places, stir the pot, and sit with discomfort before we can fully celebrate being alive. What are you discovering about yourself in unexpected places? How do you balance making space for both joy and pain?

Speaker 1:

Hello Bay Club. I don't even know how to begin this episode. I want to say good evening, good night. It is 1.10 am here and this video has very much a vlog character because I'm in the car. I was flying home today and my flights have been so delayed that I was not able to record this podcast at home. So I'm super lucky because my, my lover can I call you my lover, I don't know always when I say boyfriend, I feel like a 14 year old girl, and when I say my partner, I feel like one of these oh god, one of these ubud sex party people. So I'm just gonna go with my lover. So my lover has picked me up from the airport, equipped with my podcast equipment, and I going to do this as good as I can.

Speaker 1:

I'm coming back from a two week streak of vacation. The first week was me and my lover have been on a sailing boat with his brother and a friend for an entire week and it was the ultimate nervous system reset. It was so good to be on the water, sail away and do nothing. And the past week now, I very spontaneously booked in a retreat and I want to give you a little life update and a little bit of my experience about that. This week's episode is going to be a little bit shorter, a little bit messier, a little bit quicker, and there's not even a pastry that I can serve you, but thank you for being here with me. Let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

So I booked this yoga retreat with the intention of coming out nurtured, replenished and totally relaxed. Well, that isn't the case. Well, the retreat itself was amazing. It wasn't so much a retreat. I spent the last week in Greece with a really big group, a community, a Kula, that I have never before been a part of but that I've always admired. The teacher is phenomenal and I adore her ways of teaching myth and movement, and that was also the very core of the retreat. We connected embodied flow with Greek mythology and, let me tell you, these Greek myths really came to life and I did learn something. I feel like I need a vacation from this vacation, but I have gotten some really beautiful drops of medicine from my time in greece.

Speaker 1:

So we've been moving along and walking through a lot of those ancient myths and if you know me, you know that I love to teach in and with story with these archetypes that I myself have noticed, come to life if you invoke them, if you feel them, if you connect to them, and that was very much what happened over this past week. So the entire group and I believe we were 20 people we collectively descended to the underworld, and I'm not just saying that, we literally have been to pluto's cave. That is the very place, and maybe these names and these myths don't mean anything to you. Please let me know if we should do a, a catch-up episode on that. That might be fun. Um, but that place pluto's cave is the, the very place where it's. It's been told that persephone has, um, has been returning to hades, like this is where the earth has opened up and this young goddess has been drawn into the underworld.

Speaker 1:

And when I say we collectively descended to the underworld, I mean that we were so sat in that and here I might need your opinion too, because I believe I have not decided and took my actions and steps accordingly. Because took my actions and steps accordingly because, honestly, my life is so freaking great at the moment. I'm feeling an overwhelm of joy and that is my baseline at the moment, so I'm doing pretty well. But I felt almost cautious of that. I felt that I had to hold my joy back so that I wouldn't impose it on the pain that was in the room, the suffering, the hurt, the trouble, the anger, and there was so much of it that it really became a theme. And you know, if you've been in a yoga retreat or if you teach yoga classes, you know that it's always the accumulation of people and of stories that create the retreat. Right, you can have an intention as a retreat or, let's say, as a facilitator, but honestly, it's the people that create the vibe, the color, the energy that will flow through the room. And also, this is my experience. Right, it could be that somebody else who was on that retreat experienced it completely differently, but my experience was that there was a big headline of pain and suffering and it was beautiful how that was held. I really want to emphasize that this Kula, this Sangha, is so strong and so so well held by the facilitator. This might also be a really good place in doing some sincere and genuine promo Because once again, those facilitators the main facilitator being Colette Davis and Chris Skidmore were absolutely phenomenal I mean top-notch facilitators and they've held and guided that group really beautifully.

Speaker 1:

But back to my experience. I was, I found myself in that group, in that retreat space, in that energy, and I really struggled because I suddenly dipped into my role as a facilitator, because that's what I do, that's my life, and naturally I held down my own story to allow whatever had to come up from those dark and really harsh places to arise and to unfold, because that's so freaking important. It's so important that everybody's able to express themselves and find themselves in a safe space where, where trauma and heartache can live as well. Right, I don't want to. I don't want to say that. You know, there's way too many good vibes only yoga studios, cultures, communities out there. So it's really important that there are spaces like that.

Speaker 1:

And my lived experience in this retreat was that I couldn't really navigate what my role was because I hadn't been just a participant of a retreat in such a freaking long time. So I almost silenced my joy a little bit and I know this is a very, very, very privileged problem but I became less joyful. I became quieter to the extent of where, at the middle of the retreat, one woman walked up to me and she's like Wow, I've noticed that you are one of the more quiet ones, and that really struck me, because I'm usually not I'm usually certainly not one of the more quieter ones. And I just noticed how, in that retreat that I had invested in became covered by my role as a facilitator, which was certainly not my role. And, once again, I know I have agency, I know I am responsible for my actions and I'm showing up here in my little imperfect podcast setting to tell you again about a little struggle and about a very imperfect moment of my, my last week, my life experience. So I I don't know, I I'm not even sure where I want to go with this, but I would love, like, really genuinely love, to hear if anybody else out there has had some experience like that or can relate. And it would be even more interesting because I know I know a lot of you trees and stories. People are here like you guys. I love you so much and I'm I'm cherishing, um, I'm cherishing our exchange. You know that. So I would extremely value if there was something within our shared time where I was a facilitator that you could mirror and reflect back to me. So, yeah, that was quite intense.

Speaker 1:

I I will also, um say that those last few days it's been it's been said numerous times that this retreat will not be called a retreat in the future. It's more of a pilgrimage or an immersion or something that really goes deep. But you know, I had my intention. It was not fulfilled, and I've been taken to such a different space, to such a different learning, and I have seen and noticed different shades and sides that would have otherwise stayed in the dark. So I, even though I would have probably been happier at home, I am still very glad that I did it.

Speaker 1:

I also and this is quite hard to admit, and especially admitting that publicly I pride myself in being a very independent, grounding, self-sufficient woman, but it was so effing hard that I was away for an entire week no, a week and two days from my love here, two days from my love here. I was not prepared how this could feel, because I've never felt that and I know that that doesn't take away from, you know, my independence, but it does feel vulnerable because, again, I have never been confronted with that feeling. I was really, really good in leaving, in traveling, in doing my own thing, in walking off in this world, and you know whether it was family or somebody that I dated, in just doing my own thing. And recently I, or we, have created a real home Like and I mean that in so many layers we have created a place that I feel deeply at home at, and I haven't had that for such a big part of my life. So it's very, very, very freaking, um valuable to me, and each time that I've traveled in the past four months, um, and even if if my lover here was with me, I have felt a sensation that it's nice to travel, it's nice to get out there, like we were in berlin together, we had my birthday trip in um to italy and I don't know, probably something else, but I've always felt that sense of it's nice to travel, but I would be absolutely fine at home as well. I've never felt that in my life and now that I've been out there alone not alone, but you know, now with him I that that has been that feeling has been multiplied and I did not see that coming. I was pretty shocked. So, yeah, I there's no, there's no bigger sense or meaning behind me telling you that, but I'm really just giving you a little life update and appreciating that we hang out here while I'm driving home.

Speaker 1:

Again, it is 1.26 now. I'm tired Again, the very unfiltered, tired, messy me here. And since this episode is gonna air today, yay, it's already Thursday and there is a weekend full of joy, a 50-hour bhakti yoga teacher training on the weekend, and once again, I know that many who are in the training will listen to this. I cannot wait for us to start tomorrow. And, yeah, that's really my refueling pot. I know that I have a time of joy, of singing out loud, of getting into the wilderness ahead of me, and I am deeply, deeply, deeply grateful for that. So, once again, I'm returning home and what I thought I was searching for out there in the big, wide world is found right here my teeny, tiny, cute and charming little town. And this is it. This is it for this week.

Speaker 1:

I hope that you have a nurturing time. I hope that, whether you have a lot of joy or pain, suffering and heartache in your life at the moment, I hope that you have a home, a safe space and community. To let it come to the surface. You know, sometimes we do have to go to these underworld places and we all know that. We all have so many doors in and out of there and that is so important. We have to go in, we have to stir the pot, we have to sit with the uncomfortable, but we also have to get out of there again and celebrate, enjoy and love being alive. So with that, thank you for being here. I love you. I hope your week will bring you so much joy.