Within each of us, there is a silence, a silence as vast as the universe. We are afraid of it. And we long for it. And when we experience that silence, we remember who we are. Creatures of the stars, created from the birth of galaxies, created from the cooling of this planet, created from dust and gas, created from the elements, created from time and space, created from silence. Silence is the source of all that exists, the unfathomable stillness where vibration began, the first oscillation, the first word, from which life emerged. Silence is our deepest nature, our home, our common ground, our peace. Silence reveals, silence heals. Silence is where God dwells. We yearn to be there. We yearn to share it.
Gunilla Norris, Sharing Silence
Think of the suggestions in this chapter as the primary colors of retreating, the fundamentals of contacting your authenticity, of hearing your true self. You can paint a masterpiece using only these colors, you can mix them together to create new and ever more astonishing shades, or you can use them as part of a multimedia collage. You’ll want to include a bit of them on just about every retreat. They can be used alone, with another practice, and as transitions between home and retreat time or between retreat practices.
Prepare
See the basic list in What Will You Do?
Being
Maureen Murdock’s definition of being in The Heroine’s Journey perfectly describes the heart of a woman’s retreat, the sometimes arduous but greatly rewarding process of self-acceptance. “Being requires accepting oneself, staying within oneself and not doing to prove oneself.” To be is to live, for a moment, as a spiritual virgin, one-in-yourself, existing in a true relationship with yourself. When you are being, you are free of the need to do, to move, to plan, to improve, to prove, to accomplish, to strive, to push, or to criticize. Being is where you contact your authenticity, not with your rational, verbal brain but with your body, your intuitive feeling nature, your instinctual self.
Being is most often associated with meditation, with Ram Dass’s declaration “Be Here Now,” with following your breath or repeating a mantra to enable you to remain in the present moment. While I believe strongly in the need for and power of meditation, being present is different from just being. Being is about existing in a nondoing state, listening for guidance from our authentic self, scanning our body’s subtle tightenings and expansions for information, and breathing with—sitting alongside—who we are in that moment without moving to criticize or improve. Meditation techniques can calm and center us so we can hear our authenticity apart from our din of worries and obsessions, but inherent in meditation is doing, the doing of calming the mind. Being is about accepting whatever is there.
In the end, being is almost impossible to describe. It is not a destination; it is never a goal to check off. The edges of being are outlined with self-trust, feeling soft, open, accepting. Yet it is a discipline. When you start to feel an emotion, you don’t jump up to go for a walk or get a handful of crackers to munch. You breathe and sit and feel.
It is easy to forget how to be. We may lose this ability early or late in childhood. What Carol Gilligan and Lyn Brown are describing in their research on adolescent girls losing their sense of self is, among other things, girls losing their ability to be.
The longer you do, the harder it becomes to simply be. A friend and I were playing with our children when one of us leaped up for the fifty-seventh time within three minutes. “I can see why mothers never bother to sit down at all,” I said, meaning it feels easier to keep going, to do the dishes instead of stopping and checking in with yourself, to rush to return phone calls instead of really talking to a friend, to start another load of laundry rather than sinking down for a rest in the humid spring grass. Over time, to keep going is less frustrating and less scary than stopping to be. In addition, people in many cultures look askance at just being. You are being lazy, you are wasting time, you aren’t productive, what’s the end result, how will you get ahead? The reasons you should not retreat are the reasons you should not be. Combine the two (being on retreat) and you could be in for an anxiety-guilt cocktail with a critical-voice chaser.
See Courage and Living Your Retreat Every Day.
Being is not a state you stalk but one you invite. Everything about a retreat invites being, once you get past anxiety and guilt. Being is the blood and air of your retreat, the feeling place you want to reside in. There are millions of ways to foster being—walking, meditating, breathing deeply, talking to your authentic self—but in the end, being sneaks up on you. You set up a conducive environment or you do something that helps quiet your mind or you relax your body, and you wait. You don’t try to define it or study it or grasp it. You just hold the tension of wanting to leap up and, for God’s sake, get something accomplished. You observe how your body feels. You give up expectations. You hang out.
Being comes in snatches, wavering states of at-one-ment interspersed with white-knuckled fear or control or worry or mindlessness. With practice, being does become easier. There is no perfect state to attain, no one to compare yourself to, no master degree in being that is rewarded. In that way, it is much like meditation practices. You just do it.
You can foster being by collecting some of the following ingredients.
Environment
Certain places encourage being more than others. It is easier to be on a porch looking over the ocean than in a taxi stuck in a traffic jam in downtown Manhattan. Yet wherever you are, you can find or create a good being place.
You already know what kinds of places, sounds, textures, lighting, and temperature help you relax and center. For me, it is bed. For Diane, it is the bath. For Jodie, a creek. For you, perhaps the crook of a tree, the ocean, or curling up in a blanket watching a sunset. Name places that trigger being for you. Recall what you enjoyed as a child, what smells, places, situations absorbed you. If the smell of lavender does it, keep lavender oil on hand. If a whiff of suntan lotion and the beat of the ocean do it, but it is the dead of winter in Indiana, get a heat lamp and coconut oil and a tape of the surf, draw a warm bath, and see what happens.
I Am Enough
One of the most wonderful beliefs more and more women are embracing is “I am perfect in my imperfection.” There is a joyous acceptance of the limitations of self and life. By letting go of endless self-improvement schemes (even if just for a few moments)—of thinking that if you weighed this or owned that, then everything would be all right—you let go of the need to ceaselessly do. You invite being into your retreat.
Find a comfy spot. As you inhale deeply and slowly, repeat silently, “I am not all things,” and as you exhale slowly and fully, repeat “I am enough.” When other thoughts barge into your mind, bring yourself back to the words. Use the words I am enough like a stream of water to wash away frenzy, comparison, the need to go anywhere. When you are ready, let go of the mantra and float. When you tighten back up with thoughts of “I should be getting ready for my hike” or “After this meditation I should get ready to go back” or “What exactly am I supposed to be feeling?,” return to your breath and the words. You will dance in and out of feeling like you are enough. Fine. Unlike certain types of meditation, the point is not to empty your mind but to simply pause and feel. No judgment, no goal, just keep returning to the words when you feel the need.
Here are some more centering phrases, inspired by Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh.
Wrap Being Around
Float being in the midst of another activity. Choose an activity that does not frustrate you, does not demand much attention, and does not feel like work. Bird-watching, quilting, knitting a sweater, beading, shelling peas, making tortillas or cookies or bread, building a sand castle, gardening (if it doesn’t feel like work or an improvement project), tracing an image, weaving flower garlands, arranging flowers, walking barefoot outside, watching the moonrise or the sunset, stroking a cat, getting on a bus with destination unknown, centering clay on a potter’s wheel, floating on a still lake in warm sunshine—the list is (mercifully) endless. Immerse yourself in something enjoyable with no purpose, no goal, no stopping point, no clock ticking, and see if being comes calling.
When You Can’t Empty Your Mind
What do you do when you want to be but you can’t get there? You feel too hyped up, too frantic, too jumpy, too too.
Check your caffeine and sugar consumption. The java and sugar Jones are not conducive to being. Drink a lot of water, eat a little protein, and cut down on your coffee or doughnut intake when you know you will be retreating.
Do something physical. Combine exercise with the meditation “I am enough” or counting your footsteps as you walk or listening to classical music on headphones. (I used to love to ride my bike fast very early in the morning with Beethoven’s Fifth pounding on my headphones. It left no room for chattering monkey mind.)
See The Smell of Your Own Sweat, below.
See Resources: Audios.
Breathe. Being is intimate with breath.
Ask yourself, “What am I avoiding feeling?” or “What am I feeling right now?”
The Smell of Your Own Sweat
I often begin a retreat slightly frantic. If I’ve had to drive, I may feel bloated with highway haze. I almost always feel greedy for the coming experience, hyped up; I can’t wait to relax and feel good, which of course makes relaxing impossible. So I begin my retreats with movement. A little yoga, a slow walk, and dancing what I am feeling are my favorite ways to make the transition.
Inhabiting your body joyfully and mindfully can be a challenge for most women. It is sometimes easier to pretend you are a large head and everything below your neck doesn’t exist. But inhabiting your body, viscerally realizing that you are spirit incarnate, is a most important task, intimately linked to becoming at one with yourself. To most of us, inhabiting the body is our Achilles’ heel. We are okay as long as the scale says a certain number. We are okay as long as we get to the gym a certain number of times per week. We are okay as long as we don’t have to stand naked in front of a department store mirror under fluorescent lights. We are okay as long as we can float somewhere above our bodies, a little detached, separated from our bodily processes.
But we are missing so much by perpetuating this mind-spirit-body split. One of the most healing things you can do on retreat is to connect with your body, with the sweet, grounding smell of your own sweat, the reassuring movement of your muscles. This opens the gateway for a body-centered stillness, the organic experience of “I am not a spiritual being saddled with a body, I am spirit in a body with a mind, and all are valuable.” Allowing yourself to be in your body without judgment or ridicule can open the feminine heart and still the rapacious critical mind like little else.
Choosing Movement
Ask yourself:
There are countless ways to use movement on a retreat. You can do a movement discipline that you have been studying, like yoga or Sufi dancing. You can take a class or an entire retreat in a new form of movement. You can put on music that beckons you to turn inward while moving, listening to what your body wants to do. You can walk in nature, swim, bike, roller-blade, canoe, run, scull, do ballet or gymnastics, jump on a trampoline—you name it. The important distinction is that you move exactly the way you want and that you do it within the context of your retreat.
You won’t be doing what you want if you feel compelled to do aerobics because a day without exercise is a day you will eat only 300 calories. You will be allowing a punitive should to enter your retreat.
What connects movement with your retreat is being mindful while moving. Bring your attention to your intention, again and again, while moving. Imagine you are dancing your retreat question. Be open to any ideas, images, or feelings that surface as you meld movement and your retreat question. By doing this, you open a passage for nonverbal, body-based wisdom to enliven your retreat. Muscle holds memory, muscle holds wisdom. Liberate memory and wisdom by being conscious while moving.
Moving with Others
Meditative movement has the oldest association with retreats. Hatha yoga, tai chi chuan, walking meditation, some martial arts, some forms of dancing, the Japanese tea ceremony, a rousing tennis game, or a round of golf can find a place on retreat. It is all in how you approach and make use of your experience. It is challenging to consider interacting with others or even competing on a retreat. Competition is about as far from a traditional retreat activity as you can get. But I think of my good friend Zahra, who finds her spiritual sustenance in playing tennis with friends. There is room on retreat for these activities, if they feed you.
If you do meet with others on your retreat, say for a game of tennis, you need to extend your retreat container. If you spend time chatting, explaining your retreat, or even deflecting a compliment, your retreat will be diminished or destroyed. If you feel you must be polite or if it will be stressful to get to where you play (dealing with traffic, parking, and so forth), you might want to forgo this. To extend your container, you may wish to talk to your teammates before your retreat about what you will be doing. “I am taking three days for a retreat over Labor Day weekend to rest and think. I want to play tennis each day with you, but I want to meet and play in as much silence as possible. Would that be okay?” Or you might say, “I’m taking a day off and I want to play racquetball. I might be sort of quiet, so don’t worry and don’t try to joke me into talking. I just want to show up, play hard, and be comfortable being quiet.” These kinds of requests can challenge friendships and open up all kinds of discussion. Sometimes friends you play sports with know you only in a limited way. Bringing up the subject of a retreat can bring new areas of your life into the relationship. Think about this—can you trust this person to support you in this way? Perhaps instead of sharing your intent, you can extend your retreat container by repeating a mantra or meditation poem silently to yourself. The meditations listed under I Am Enough and repetition of words like love, peace, well-being, trust, centered, calm, serenity, and courage are effective choices.
Movement to Let Off Steam
Sometimes on retreat the emotional pressure can become so intense that you feel you must get away from yourself. Movement is a healthy way to deal with these feelings (usually better than eating or watching TV). Try to choose consciously by saying to yourself something like, “I need to tune out for a while. I’m going for a run.” Then, immediately after your moving distraction, write, paint, or reflect for ten minutes on how you feel.
Movement as Prayer
Body prayer is prayer using your body. The definition of prayer is, of course, up to you. I use body prayer to move me closer to the Divine, to get me out of my head, to help me express gratitude, and to give form to happiness and grief when these emotions threaten to spin me into behavior I do not like.
See Reviving Your Spiritual Direction: Imaging the Divine.
Here are a few examples of body prayer. These work very well as transitions between retreat activities and as warm-ups to spontaneous writing, painting, and other sedentary activities.
Under the Beloved’s wings I take refuge.
God (or your image that conjures up a protecting Divine presence) encircles me in Love.
I am embraced by the Divine.
I am safe in the arms of the Goddess (or your image that conjures up a healing Divine feminine presence).
I am utterly safe and known by the Divine.
Surrender to a Higher Power
The Dance of Life
The Struggle to Know
Coming Home
Being in My Center
Opening to Mystery
Breaking Open to Love
Burning with Life
Trapped in Quicksand
Letting Go of ______
Leaping Through the Fire of ________
Pushed and Pulled by _______
Clinging to ______
Spiraling Through
Pausing in the Stillness
Swimming in Grief
Safety
For many women, hiking in nature is an excellent choice of movement but one that can feel too scary when done alone. I take my 110-pound dog along for protection (you can borrow a dog). Other women hike with a friend, arranging ahead of time to meet and hike silently, with a hug at the beginning and end. Being silent with a friend is often a very challenging and extremely fruitful retreat practice.
See Retreating with Others.
Divine Landscape
Creek, oak, ocean, mountaintop, arroyo, mesa, cloud, earth, valley, vista, sea, rock, tree: home. The natural world refreshes like nothing else. The immensity of nature puts your own struggles into perspective, helping you to feel both insignificant and vital, a blink in the eye of God and a universe in your own right. “I listened to the chorus of constant surf and the birds and thought, ‘It’s okay to be tiny and not take myself seriously,’” said Diane of a retreat she enjoyed in a friend’s miniature cabin overlooking the Pacific.
Being in nature is most conducive to being yourself. The longer (or the more actively present) you are there, the more pretensions, useless behaviors, and worries are peeled away. In the face of all that immensity and simplicity, in the face of the sure cycle of life and death, the size of your thighs or the self-hatred you feel for having an affair just isn’t as important. The truth about how you need to be and what you need to do is revealed like an agate ground smooth by a river.
Nature as Mirror
This retreat practice was modeled on a retreat in Jubilee Time, by Marie Harris. It can be part of a long retreat, or each session can constitute a mini-retreat. If you do a mini-retreat, allow an extra few minutes for your opening and closing ceremonies, and relate these to nature.
Choose a time three or four times during the course of one retreat to be in nature. Early morning, afternoon, early evening, and perhaps night work well, but whenever you can be sure to get away will work fine. Choose how long each session will be—from five minutes to several hours. Choose a place to be. Your porch, a rooftop, a backyard, a park, any place out-of-doors where you can feel and see the natural world will do.
Set a timer or alarm to remind you to retreat at these precise times.
At the chosen time, go to your place and sit. Reflect on your retreat question. Pose it to the crow, the breeze, the peony. Watch for answers reflected there. Be in nature and listen for insights, but don’t straitjacket them into logical, cause-and-effect sense. If you like, write, draw, or photograph what you feel, sense, see.
This exercise can be repeated over several consecutive days on a long retreat.
Soothe
The poet Mary Oliver implores, “You only have to love the soft animal of your body, love what it loves.” A woman’s retreat beseeches you to inhabit and venerate your body, gratify your senses, indulge in healthy self-nurturing with glee. One of the themes underlying a woman’s retreat is soothing yourself, self-nurturing at its most basic and delicious. Massage, a lavender-and-grape-fruit-oil bath, an afternoon nap, lemon tea and raisin toast: comfort has to be a part of your retreat, especially if you are tackling a difficult issue or if you are retreating because you are hurt, bruised, or wearied.
Choosing things to soothe yourself is usually easier than allowing yourself to enjoy the soothing you select. Perhaps more than any other retreat practice, taking time to enjoy yourself, to luxuriate, to take pleasure in filling your own physical desires can seem reckless, dangerous, immoral, not worthy of your precious time off. But if you had listened to that voice, the same one that demands that you exercise five hours each day, never let your dirty laundry pile up, and write a thank-you note before you’ve unwrapped the gift, you never would have considered retreating in the first place. Brava for choosing retreat! Now keep going: dare to utterly enjoy yourself!
What would it be like to give yourself exactly what your body needs? What would it be like to eat a cherry so slowly it dissolves on your tongue? Or to drink tea as an offering of love to your throat? To create a still life with lilies in your mother’s antique vase, a favorite photograph of you, three lemons and a red apple, all draped with a silk scarf simply for the spiritual pleasure of creating beauty? To pause long enough to truly choose what you want to do, to ask your authentic self, “What do you need to be soothed, to feel good?” To ask your body—even each individual sense—what it needs. To do so is to embrace yourself with a lover’s touch. It may take quite a while and many gentle attempts at self-soothing; it may even feel impossible at times; but as you keep asking, “What do I truly enjoy?” and “How can I love the soft animal of my body?” you invite love into your life.
Shadow Comfort
Soothing yourself can become tricky, however, when shadow comfort or addictive behaviors get tangled up in your plans. For example, what soothes me best is eating. Sometimes food is just the ticket, and I can eat in a way that is conscious and nurturing. But often I eat to stay busy and distracted, and I eat things that make me feel bad. How can I make better self-care choices while on retreat? By listening to what my body really needs and by daring to give it to her and enjoy it while I do. When we wholeheartedly treat ourselves well, leaving no room for guilt, we can short-circuit the need for shadow comfort. The need to smoke, overeat, or watch mindless TV comes from a place of deprivation, neediness, and boredom. If we can honor ourselves by enjoying our soothing, savoring it, smacking our lips, being extravagant in our enjoyment, we may find ourselves making better choices.
I’m not suggesting it is easy to change addictive behavior. I know what it is like to live with an addictive personality, to be driven to behavior that is self-defeating, even self-destructive, although it may masquerade as self-nurturing behavior. However, the rarefied air of a retreat does provide a break from the compulsive nature of addictions. Because you are not in ordinary space and time and are freed from stress by the retreat archetype, it is easier to not pick up the cigarette, to eat with care, to not shop. Yet it is important to avoid the expectation that your behavior will change permanently. We all know it is never that easy.
I hope it is clear that I am not advocating playing the ascetic. Healthy self-nurturing does not involve denying yourself all familiar comforts. If you do so, you will feel virtuous and pure during your retreat, but soon afterward the needs and habits you’ve been repressing will spring up and cuff you on the shoulder. (I’ve made it through this type of a retreat, but soon after I’m devouring a bag of something dark and sweet.) Instead, provide for your needs by kindly indulging yourself in ways that affirm you and support you in your retreat process. Plan ahead of time what comforts you must have. Then you will not have to leave your retreat to drive to the store for a package of double-chocolate brownie mix or make a kamikaze shopping assault on the mall. When you give thought to your comfort needs ahead of time and build-in ways to indulge yourself, even if that means a tiny dose of shadow comfort, you’ll feel safe enough to stay in the retreat container and be more able to integrate your insights and energy into your ordinary life.
Ask yourself:
And a good question to use on retreat when you need soothing:
Some favorite soothers:
But avoid these: haircuts, facials, manicures, or body wraps. Anything that feels like maintenance or like something you do to please others doesn’t have a place on retreat (facing myself in a salon mirror is not soothing). In general, avoid beauty salons on retreat; they tend to awaken feelings of inadequacy.
Spontaneous Writing
Spontaneous writing is an excellent way to elbow your way past resistance, boredom, and lack of direction and get into the VIP party room where the really interesting stuff is happening. In spontaneous writing you choose a subject or a question and write about it for as long as you like without stopping. I find using a watch or timer gives me a structure to work with, but if that feels too rushed to you, then decide at the start how many pages you will fill up without stopping—three to five will push you without depressing you.
When I have that feeling of running around in circles unable to concentrate on anything, I stop, grab my journal, and write across the top of the page, “I am stuck because” or “I don’t want to” or “I am feeling.” Then I write without stopping for ten minutes. First I write about what a slug I am, then I write about what a waste of time doing anything remotely spiritual is for a slug like me, then I graduate to writing about how sluglike I feel, and then, if I keep going, often a small miracle happens and I start glimpsing something besides being a slug, something beyond my self-loathing. I almost always learn what I need to know and where I need to go next. At the very least, I feel less sluglike when I’m finished.
Other people prefer to simply write, keeping the hand moving, seeing what subjects emerge. See what works for you.
Whatever method you choose, write without editing, without stopping, without reading back over what you have written, without giving in to the voices that say, “This is stupid, I’m not coming up with anything new, how much longer do I have to go, I hate writing, blah, blah, blah.” Just spill what is inside you onto the page as quickly as you can. Avoid thinking. Stay in the moment, even if that moment is nothing but you whining. Don’t imagine you know what is going to come reeling out of your pen. Complain, rant, bitch—but keep your hand moving.
Experiment with writing with your nondominant hand, with clustering, with writing around and upside down on the page, with combining movement and writing or sound and writing or meditation and writing.
See What Will You Do? for an explanation of clustering.
Use spontaneous writing whenever you feel bored, stuck, tired, afraid, worried, excited, close to a discovery, or in need of contact with someone else. Use it to calm down before a retreat. Use it as a mini-retreat every morning.
Some sentence starters:
I am feeling…
I see that…
I am avoiding…
I am ready to accept…
I remember…
If I got really quiet, I would see that…
I believe…
I’m afraid…
I am…
I love and appreciate…
I hate…
I acknowledge myself for…
I feel gratitude for…
Spontaneous Drawing
It has been said by Freud and other people with beards that the psyche communicates in symbols, that when we think in pictures we are given direct access to the preverbal, emotional state, which when tapped into can deliver up pure psychic gold.
In spontaneous drawing, the less formal training you have in art and the less you get caught up in how the images look, the better. This is often very hard to do. We live in a very visually sophisticated society. We learn to compare ourselves to others at a very early age. Many of us had art teachers from hell. In spontaneous drawing, you are not making art. You are communicating with the forgotten, shy, enigmatic parts of yourself, the nascent rumblings of your truth. There is no need to plan, no right way to create, no rules to adhere to.
You can use spontaneous drawing without a subject in mind or to explore a specific question or issue.
Get your paper and art materials. Arrange them where you can work comfortably and in good light. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Open your eyes and select a color. Notice what color your hand wants to move toward. Notice how your hand, your arm, wants to move across the paper. Follow your inklings of images. Put them on the paper. Don’t stop yourself because you see only a blob or because what you see in your mind’s eye is beyond your ability to render. Stay open. Try.
Create without caring about the result. Ask yourself, “What would I draw if I didn’t have to worry about how it looked?” and “What would I draw if I didn’t have to worry about hurting anyone? What would I draw if I weren’t afraid?” If you wish, do lots of drawing quickly. It helps to work with materials that are inexpensive so you aren’t worried about cost. Tempera paints are ideal.
If you are stuck, pick up a color, any color, and move it across the page. Scribble and breathe and forget about being profound or producing something that makes sense. Offer up your resistance, control, and desire for a certain outcome. Ask yourself, “What do I least want to draw right now?”
The more you practice spontaneous drawing, the easier it will become to enjoy the process and to bring forth something you can learn from—not necessarily on an intellectual or literal basis, but always on an emotional one.
After you are finished drawing, dialogue with the image or journal about the creative process.
Stories
Kristina is a mother and an actress; she had recently moved from a city to a small town and had just stopped smoking.
My intention on this retreat is, “How can I begin to contain my energy in a more mindful, tolerant, and graceful manner? How can I breathe more?” I am looking for a way out of my habits and patterns that no longer serve me or my goals now that I am living in this new place.
I woke up and the first thing I thought was, “Find your natural rhythm again.” I stretched and did some sun salutations as I looked out to the ocean. Every time I started thinking, “I ought to…” I took a deep breath and said, almost spontaneously, “Containment.”
I free-associated with the word and image of containment, using clustering and drawing. At first, I got stuck because the quality of containment almost has a negative association for me, something I would never imagine of myself. Then I realized there is strength and economy of movement in the quality of containment. I did more movement to music and ended up with one hand covering the top of my head and one hand over my heart with my head bowed. I determined I could do the few errands I felt I had to do to get ready for the holidays with mindfulness and in silence.
I drove to town in silence (instead of listening to music like I usually do). I was slow and methodical in everything I did. I found myself breathing deeper and tuning in to my body. Tension lessened. I got a few funny looks from shop owners when I pointed to my mouth and shook my head after they asked, “How do you want to pay for this?” or “Can I help you?” But in general, my foray into the world was very pleasant and relaxed. When monkey mind kicked into gear, I reminded myself, “Keep yourself contained” and “Save it for what matters.”
At home, I ate some soup I had made very slowly, savoring each bite. I had been craving fruit and ate that slowly with great enjoyment. I was suddenly aware that I almost never eat fruit—I had the embarrassing revelation that I always give it to my son instead of eating it myself. Oh horrors, might I be filling my own cravings through him? Or am I so busy making sure he gets a balanced meal that I only eat to satisfy my hunger and never hear my own nutritional longings? I felt ashamed and sad and also angry at myself.
I was tired and I went into my son’s tent, crawled into a sleeping bag, and meditated for a full forty-five minutes. I wept a little. I missed my old friend, the cigarette. Not that I craved one, but I felt a void. The prospect of going inside myself for silence and inspiration—instead of to that thing (the cigarette) that physically sets me outside and separate from those that need me—was scary territory. I became quiet and emptied of all concerns.
I worked in clay and felt myself come alive again, doing what I love. I made a person with five hands and inside that person was another person, looking out from a womb/cave, smiling and still. I took a long, silent walk on the beach. A meditation walk. I asked the possibility of this mindfulness/containment to come into my body and build a nest. Very clearly I saw that this is an absolute necessity for the next version of my life, an inner adjustment to this move.
For my closing, I made a nest of rocks and shells as an altarpiece to signify and symbolize this new gift/change in my life.
I celebrated myself with a lavender bath, a fire, and a glass of wine. Doing nothing, nothing but being.
For Long Retreats
Include a little of everything. Punctuate your retreat with a practice like Divine Landscape: Nature as Mirror. Or use body prayer or a walk combined with the meditation Being: I Am Enough as a transition activity. Do an exercise from Soothe if you start to feel sad or lost.
For Mini-Retreats
When you are feeling the need for retreat but aren’t sure what to do, simply set aside a half hour to do one activity from this chapter. Write, draw, be, or move. Remember to do an opening and closing ceremony.
For Retreats in the World
Being, movement, spontaneous writing, and even spontaneous drawing can all be done with other people around or on the spur of the moment. Carry your journal and pen, colored pencils, and an eight-by-twelve sketchbook with you in a bag or in your car so you can take advantage of moments alone.
For Retreats with Others
When your retreat includes other people, you can deepen your practices together by starting a group retreat with a movement class or hiring a massage therapist to come to your retreat location or doing spontaneous writing or drawing in the same room (without commenting at any time on one another’s work) or visiting remote places in nature together.