When you think of a Retreat, what do you picture in your mind?
As a Yoga teacher my priority, for example, has always been peace. I usually prefer teaching in offstream, tiny places to mainstream and touristic spots.
I also happen to love better waterside venues, both because l am a swimmer and because water is such an important element for our balance. Even better if it's salty, crystal clear and a few meters away from my front door.
Now, that's the only "luxury" item l wish for when thinking of a Retreat. The rest can be as basic as it gets, as long as it's clean and quiet.
At the end of the day, a Retreat is supposed to let you bare naked with your own ghosts to discover what you can do with them. The less cluttered with "options" the better for its real purpose. Which is, essentially, looking within.
This is why l keep being surprised when l see what Retreats have turned into these days. Anything but having to face your truth. They mostly look like another kind of holiday with a slight spiritual twist and little left of the authentic meaning of going on a journey inside yourself.
We travel broad distances to simply carry being busy with things and possibly stick to the same comforts we are familiar with.
But what would happen if you truly had no distractions? If your only "job" for a week or more were stopping all usual activities and pay attention to how you are?
How would it sound having to only show up for your Yoga practice and Meditation sessions, to eat less and better, to have zero o little contact with the world spinning around you? Would you still invest in such an experience?
I personally feel it's time to give back to the word RETREAT its original meaning. Especially in terms of real content.
A Retreat cannot be LUXURY, to begin with.
The keyword should rather be SEMPLICITY. The simpler we keep it the higher will be the chances that it will truly benefit us. We are already constantly surrounded by activities, things, information, to do-lists, so much so that we struggle to let go of them even temporarily although they are proved being our main cause of stress.
Taking off the layers we have been covering ourselves with for a lifetime does not happen overnight. Yet, becoming aware of them and recognizing the many "escapes" from ourselves we are engaged with is essential.
To embark on a Retreat has to do exactly with this awareness. And also with the desire to see what happens when we let go of our clinging.
As we all know, our mind is pretty much like a wild child. It runs all over the places unless you give it something specific to do. And even then, it can be here with you and at same time be somewhere else interacting with its own fantasies and train of thoughts.
It is hard work, l don't deny it. And probably it never ends either. So, why shall we put our effort into training our mind as we are supposed to do during a real Retreat?
Because our relationship with ourselves changes. Because by stopping and observing our thoughts just as they are we gradually learn not to identify with them any longer. We start seeing that they come and go incessantly, like photograms of a movie, yet we are not them. We are the ones who inhabit our bodies and observe those thoughts. The judgments, the blame, the sorrow, the disappointment, the anger, the pain. They are all still there but now we can choose what to do with them. We breath deeply and take some distance from all that. We give ourselves the chance to pause when something uncomfortable arises. Loss, despair, fear. You name it. You stay with it. You don't push it away, because that is not healthy or useful. You give it your level of care available at the moment and that's more than enough. You learn that by pausing and observing your perspective becomes wider, your view clearer. Like when standing on top of a hill or a mountain you look down at the non stopping flow of thoughts and emotions and you don't get so caught in them as you used to.
This is what we learn, during a Retreat. To step back, both from external daily distractions and from our continuous internal chatter. And to do so, we don't need a five-star venue with all sorts of extra comforts to make us feel better about ourselves, because part of the journey within will anyway include some discomfort that no steaming bath can fix. The earlier we come to terms with the truth that we cannot run away from ourselves the easier it will become to choose wisely our next Retreat.