Retreating with Others

Women who create such ritual retreats together, listening thoughtfully to each other’s voices, have the transformative potential to change the world.

Virginia Beane Rutter, Woman Changing Woman

Sharing a retreat, especially a self-created retreat, is an intimate process, for it is in sharing silence and solitude that we can encounter true intimacy. Even if you are simply near each other for safety’s sake, you are setting off into the unknown together. You are acknowledging in the presence of another that you have needs and yearnings. It is important that you feel completely comfortable with the person you retreat with. It will kill your retreat if you feel restrained, polite, or unable to pursue certain activities or even thoughts because of who is accompanying you. Look for someone you feel at ease with and can be vulnerable around, someone who has respect for silence and the interior world. “No retreat is better than one you don’t want or can’t manage,” advises therapist and group leader Marcie Telandar. Choose carefully, and be certain you have plenty of privacy and free time.

That is, of course, if you wish to be alone. If you yearn to retreat but are more drawn to the idea of being with people than being alone, you may wish to attend an organized group retreat.

See Resources: Books Listing Retreat Centers, Leaders, and Adventures for help finding such a retreat.

If you wish to set up a retreat with others, first decide with whom you might like to retreat. If you have a close friend who is open to the process, you will create a different kind of retreat than if no one comes readily to mind and you decide to approach three women in your book club or temple. If you have an ongoing women’s group with whom you would like to retreat, your retreat is going to be different than retreating with a group that has no shared history.

What if you can’t think of anyone to retreat with? You can retreat alone at a retreat center and use a retreat coordinator as your support. You can attend an organized retreat with the hopes of meeting one or two like-minded people to continue a retreat practice with in the future. You can join an ongoing class, church, study, hiking, art, or meditation group and perhaps meet someone there who is interested in doing a retreat in the future.

After you have chosen someone to ask but before you do, decide what your intent for organizing a shared retreat is. It may be to reconnect with a friend, to deepen the connections with an ongoing group, to learn from other women, to have support for and reflection on your own process, to jump-start yourself into new behavior or out of a rut, to be able to afford a cabin or hotel, to feel safe in nature, or to do certain kinds of work (like working with dreams) for which you want another person. Deciding why you want to retreat with others does not mean you are the group leader. This will be a leaderless retreat or, rather, an all-leader group. Each person is responsible for herself. Instead of controlling or leading, you initiate a direction, then each woman takes an equal amount of responsibility getting things ready for herself and her role in the group. Keep it simple, surrender to the inevitable changes and snags that happen when other people join together, and powerful things can happen.

If you want to lead a retreat, be clear that you will not have the same experience as the other participants. It will be hard work, and you will invite projections from others. It can be hard on friendships. Tread lightly, and investigate your reasons for wanting to lead. Do you want to be the expert, the spiritual guru? Or do you believe it won’t happen if you don’t do it?

Give a few minutes’ thought to how you see people supporting one another on this retreat. Some examples of shared retreats:

See Deep Listening Circle later in this chapter.

• Driving to the country and renting a cottage with a friend. Coming together for dinner each evening and for a deep listening circle. You should feel comfortable when being silent together or when passing in the hall, and there should be room around the cabin to hike and be alone.
• Four women from the same church retreat together to learn from one another. One woman loves poetry and bring selections to work with. One woman is well versed in reading tarot cards. Another has led a dream circle. One woman is experienced in voice work and singing. Each woman plans a short, simple segment of the retreat on the theme of self-knowledge, leaving long in-between times for solitude and self-directed work.
• Three friends from a twelve-step program retreat together to offer support for starting new projects and goals. They use deep listening circles, brainstorming, and barn raising to overcome entropy and fear about getting a job, getting out of a relationship, and starting a novel. They spend about half their time working on their intentions alone.
• Two old friends meet to renew their friendship and themselves. They spend some time together playing, some time apart working on the states of their beings, and a little time in circle catching up on the state of their friendship, on what needs clarification, and on gratitude.

See Retreat Plans: A One-Day Retreat with a Friend.

Approach the people you would like to retreat with, and propose your basic idea. Do so when you have a few quiet moments to talk. Start with the general idea. “I want to retreat, and I want some company and support. This will not be a group retreat per se because a lot of the time we will be alone, working on our own. But we will come together at previously agreed-upon times for previously agreed-upon activities. We might choose to support one another after we’ve returned home.” Then describe your idea: “On this retreat, I hope we could rent a cabin in the state forest, support one another in feeling safe in nature, have a morning dream circle and an evening ‘state of our individual retreats’ circle.” Be sure to say you are not the leader and that your idea is only a starting place. You might want to have this book on hand to refer to or for the others to flip through. Offer two or three possible dates. Although you will most likely need to meet again, making time to do your retreat will almost always be your biggest obstacle, so address that issue right away.

Once everyone has agreed to retreat together and you have set the date, decide the following things:

• Shared intention. If you haven’t already, form your individual intentions (you could do this at your planning session). Then complete this sentence: “What would support me in exploring this intention is….” Read this aloud and fashion an intention that supports all. Remember to frame it as a question. For example, three friends retreated together. Their separate intentions were:

I intend to ask myself, How can I rest and hear myself think? What would support me in exploring this intention is help overcoming my critic and slowing down.

I intend to ask myself, What is missing in my life? What would support me in exploring this intention is someone to bounce off what I come up with.

I intend to ask myself, How can I better foster creativity in my life? What would support me in exploring this intention is doing projects with others to get my creative juices going and talking about my fears and blocks.

Looking at what was important to each, they came up with this intention:

On this retreat we intend to support each other by listening, meditating, painting, writing, and affirming one another.

It is important to remember that the majority of your retreat is done alone. It is very easy to get into doing everything together, but that may not allow you to hear you own wisdom and may require more proficiency in group process. Leave about 50 percent or more of your time for solitude.

• Structure. Avoid a precise schedule, as it may create tension and conflict. Instead, flip through the book and make a list of the practices you want to do together. Add additional ideas. Scratch off anything that doesn’t fit your intention. If necessary, use the deep listening circle to further prune the list. Then, only if necessary, decide what you will do when. For example, if you want to visit a nearby beach, what time? Or if you will do a dream circle, roughly what time will you meet? Make your mantra “Simple is best.”
• Where? Avoid retreating at a participant’s house. While convenient, it usually leaves the woman whose house it is feeling like a hostess, running and fetching. If this is the only location available, discuss ways to minimize the burden on her. The place you choose should fit everyone. No one should feel unsafe or stressed about money, nor should it be difficult to get to, involving much travel. Nothing brings out the worst, and the best, in people faster than traveling. Keep it to a minimum and plan exactly what arrangements you do make. If you are planning a retreat in the world where traveling is necessary, discuss how to minimize stress and how to maintain retreat space. Good places to retreat: rented cabins or vacation homes, especially in a state or national park; private land where you can pitch tents; retreat centers; a friend of a friend’s house, shack, or cabin; a mobile home.
• For what amount of time will you retreat? Does anyone need to be back at a precise time?
• Who will bring what? Look over the activities you will do and put together a list of supplies. Keep in mind expense. Use what is easily available, and precisely share material costs.
• Where will you meet, when, and how will you get there? Leave a window of arrival time so latecomers won’t irk others.
• What you will eat, who will bring what, who will cook? Potluck meals are good, as are precooked food and, if possible, having dinner delivered and making very simple meals for breakfast and lunch. Be aware that preparing food together invites conversation. Do you want this to be a social time? Do you want to bring wine? Sweets? Meat? Do you want it to be a time of silence?
• Chores. Who will do what? Plan your retreat at a place where chores can be kept to a minimum, and where no one will be worrying about damage to an expensive couch or wondering who will wash the sheets.
• Interruptions. How will you prevent interruptions from the outside world? What will you do if they happen? If you will be completely away from civilization, how will you be reached in an emergency?
• How will you open and close your retreat? You may wish to create your own ceremonies before, after, or around the shared one. Many shared retreats begin by sitting in circle with each person talking about her intention, hopes, and fears for the retreat and her hopes for group work. I remember just such a moment at the beginning of a wilderness trip I co-led. Each of the twelve women spoke about her reasons for coming and what she hoped to get out of the week. There was a palpable energy generated. Later, a local Anshiabe woman who had come to lead the sweat lodge said to me, “God was in the room. When you feel that pressure and stillness pressing down, God is there.”
  
  Each woman might bring or plan one element of the opening ceremony. One group of five women declared their theme as renewal and their intention as “On this retreat we intend to support each other by letting go of control, risking being silly, and listening to each other.” They decided beforehand to dance their opening ceremony. Someone brought music and a boom box. Someone else brought rattles and feather boas. Another woman brought ostrich feathers to balance on their palms while they danced. It evolved into an hour and a half of dancing, singing, and crying, ending with each woman shouting out her intention and then all dancing in a circle around their retreat space.
  
  Give thought to your closing ceremony, too. Be aware that the tendency is to skip this part or minimize it. Be sure to allow enough time. Don’t hurry this part.
• Ground rules. How will you avoid and deal with chatter, nervousness, the need to goof off and blow off energy, emotional crises, differences of opinion, and hurt feelings?
  
  Decide on a way to maintain concentration and silence. The most common problem with women retreating together is the desire to make one another comfortable and, in so doing, chatter, lose their own centers, or, fall out of calmness. This comes up especially when women are being silent together, holding the tension of a spiritual moment, or in ritual. Doing what ritualist Lucinda Eileen calls “turning the circle” helps maintain the retreat container. Examples of this are each woman pressing her fingertip into her neck and feeling her heartbeat, taking three deep breaths together and letting out a big “Ah” with each exhale (good for nervous energy), or focusing her attention back on a focal point, perhaps a tree, shrine, or flower arrangement. By consciously holding the energy, each woman’s experience will deepen. Together, choose a way to help this happen. (One way is to bring a bell or chime. When someone feels the energy is scattered, she hits the chime and calls for everyone to center.)
  
  Decide on times when you can blow off energy and be silly together. Not every moment on retreat must be solemn. Great laughter and silliness are indispensable. But decide how you will channel that energy so that it doesn’t become a way to avoid transcendent moments or intense feelings and so that no one steps on someone else’s concentration. Set aside time for group play. Work with clay, do Getting Juicy, get physical, or tell jokes and bawdy stories. Don’t try to stay in ritual or serious space together for too long; an hour is a long time to maintain focus.
  
  Call a deep listening circle when you need support for crisis or if you feel you are not being heard. An unplanned benefit of a shared retreat can be to learn how to speak from your heart to someone who has hurt you and to speak up when you feel misunderstood or unclear about something. Sometimes the logistics of a retreat can create just such a moment. Bring it into a circle and see what comes of it.
  
  If you find yourself in conflict or feeling off base, use What Will You Do?: Check-In as a group. Anyone in the group can call for a check-in when she feels it is needed. Everyone uses the same question, perhaps “I feel, I need, I want” or “I am feeling” or “I need to be supported by….” Sit in circle. Each person centers and checks in with herself. Then share what you found in circle. Keep going around until a direction or resolution has been reached. You can also use this check-in to open a deep listening circle and to encourage self-responsibility.
  
  Reading over this list can make a group retreat sound pretty overwhelming. It need not be. Keep stripping your plans to the bare minimum. Retreat with only one or two people. Spend most of your retreat exploring at your own pace.

Deep Listening Circle

“Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker. When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening, our spirits expand,” writes Sue Patton Thoele, author of A Woman’s Book of Courage. To be listened to in such a way on retreat provides a very strong container for your emotions, allowing you to push yourself to new heights and depths, to be more courageous and steadfast. When you articulate what is happening in your inner life and you see that others care enough to listen, your journey becomes more real and precious. To hear what others are dealing with helps you feel less alone and less sorry for yourself.

The purpose of sitting in circle is to be heard without judgment, advice, or intervention. The simple tool of sitting in circle can profoundly enhance your retreat and even change your life. These guidelines are based on the work of Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea of Peer Spirit.

You can use circle for just about any situation. Christina Baldwin, in her amazing book Calling the Circle (revised edition, Bantam, 1998), gives examples of business, community, family, and spiritual circles. On retreat, the focus most often will be on what is happening for each person on the retreat. You might also focus on your intentions or dreams, on discussing a particular practice you all did, or on a topic you set before the retreat. A circle, Baldwin reminds us, is consecrated space that contains our stories and provides a “place” for telling them. In consecrated space, there are basic guidelines which help us know what to do.

The basic guidelines are:

• Arrange your seating in a circle.
• Everyone places something in the center that designates the Divine to her. This creates sacred space and sets a context for relying on Spirit to guide you. “Each person places ultimate reliance in the center and takes their place at the rim…. Attention is always held within the perimeter of the circle. Attention focuses at the edge when people are talking and focuses at the center when there is silence or the need to remember guidance,” writes Christina Baldwin in Calling the Circle.
• Open the circle with a simple ceremony. Reading a quote, singing a song, sipping water from a shared cup, or meditating in silence for a few minutes centers each woman and helps her to speak from her heart.
• Decide on your subject or restate what it is. “What is this circle about? What do we want to accomplish by sitting together?” Often on this kind of retreat your subject will be what has been happening for you in your solitary work. Use a talking piece, something you hold in your hand to remind you to speak from your heart and to remind everyone else not to interrupt.
• Take turns speaking about the subject at hand. Say what you think and feel about what is happening for you in this moment. Use “I” statements. Speak through any tears or laughter that arises. Avoid talking just to hear yourself talk; concentrate on what you are saying. Using a timer is often a good idea, as it ensures everyone equal time and limits the resentments that can arise when someone talks longer than others.
• While someone is speaking, everyone else listens from the heart. This means listening without thinking about what you are going to say next, not passing judgment in your mind, and making no interruptions. No comments at any time unless they are specifically asked for. And even then, comments are offered only after the woman speaking is finished. Cross-talk, chatter, and advice ruin the spirit of circle.
• Close the circle with a simple ceremony. In my ongoing women’s group, someone reads a paragraph about a woman’s life from Judy Chicago’s book The Dinner Party. Dennie LaTourelle, leader of the Aluna Community in Santa Barbara, ends her circles with each person appreciating someone else in the circle. A prayer round, in which each person prays aloud for herself, others, and the planet, is another venerable way to end.

Guidelines to remember and agree to before you begin:

• What is said in circle never leaves the circle. Confidentiality allows people to speak their minds knowing that they will not be gossiped about later.
• The circle is a practice in discernment, not judgment. No one’s view is right or wrong; it is simply different. You can listen and speak without having to be in agreement.
• Each person takes responsibility for asking the circle for the support she needs.
• Leadership rotates. Every woman helps the circle, and the retreat, by assuming small increments of leadership. Take turns calling the circle together, opening the circle, facilitating it, minding the timer, and closing the circle.
• Each person takes responsibility for agreeing or not agreeing to participate in specific requests. One person can say, “I don’t support this action, but the group may proceed if it chooses.” Each woman has the space to not agree or participate in everything. This creates trust in the group and in yourself.
• No interruption.
• When troubled, frustrated, or fearful, someone in the circle may call for silence, a song, a time-out, or holding hands and breathing together to reestablish the focus on the center and to remind participants of the need for spiritual guidance.
• No violent language or threats of violence. If you address conflict, everyone must agree to remain respectful.
• Ask before touching. Everyone has a different personal history regarding touch and may have had painful experiences of intrusion. Sometimes, among women, it is assumed that hugs and back pats are automatically okay. Ask one another first.

The deep listening circle may be used in a number of ways on retreat. Here are several.

Dream Circle

Convene a circle first thing in the morning. One woman tells her dream. A fragment or dream from another time is fine, too. After she is finished, each woman in the circle relates what she felt and saw when listening to the dream, using the sentence “If it were my dream….” This is not interpretation but each individual’s reaction to the dream images and emotions. So you would not say (even to your closest friend whom you know better than yourself), “When you talked about the overflowing toilet, I thought of your marriage.” Instead, “If it were my dream, the overflowing toilet would feel like a blockage. When you told the dream, I immediately thought of everything I feel guilty about, everything that feels undone. I also worried about how I was going to get the shit out of the carpet.” Stay with your feelings. Use “I” statements. After everyone has had a turn, the woman whose dream it is has her turn. “If it were my dream….” Then she expresses any “Aha!” experiences she has had listening to everyone else’s reactions. Some discussion usually follows. Then on to the next woman’s dream. This is not a quick process, but doing it every morning of a retreat, especially a long retreat, can be very enriching.

Affirmation Circle

There are a number of ways to affirm one another using the circle.

• End a circle by appreciating each person for something she said or did during the circle or recently on the retreat. Examples are “I appreciate you for being so honest about your struggle to love your stepson” and “I appreciate how well you listened to me in this circle.”
• With larger groups (of at least ten), have half the group sit comfortably, eyes closed, breathing deeply. The women sitting concentrate on opening and receiving. The other half stand behind the seated circle, each person placing her hands on the shoulders of a woman sitting. Each of the standing women thinks of two affirmations she would like to say to the women sitting, affirmations that would support them in the work they are doing on retreat. Examples are “I choose to have the energy to find work I love,” “I choose to find time for myself in my life,” and “I choose to accept this divorce and still love myself.” Notice the affirmations are stated as “I” statements. This gives them a powerful immediacy, as if the women sitting were hearing their own voices speaking positively to them.
  
  Each of the women standing leans down and whispers one affirmation into a woman’s ear. Then the standing women move to the right and whisper an affirmation in the next woman’s ear. Everyone keeps going until the women standing arrive back at the women they started with. Go around the circle again, whispering a new affirmation. When finished, silently switch positions and repeat the process. The standing women sit, listening and receiving. It helps to play music softly in the background.
• Have each woman write down three to five affirmations she wants to hear, each on a separate piece of paper. One woman passes one of her affirmations to the right. The woman on the right looks her in the eye, slowly says her name, and repeats her affirmation aloud to her. For example, if I am sitting in circle with Randi and Maggie, I hand Randi one of my affirmations and she says to me, “Jennifer, you are a capable and loving mother.” Then Maggie does the same. Then Randi and Maggie repeat in unison, “Jennifer, you are a capable and loving mother.” Then the woman who has been affirmed has a chance, if necessary, to be her critical voice and say all the nasty things she has thought while being affirmed. Then the women in the circle respond with another round of the same affirmations.
  
  Then it is Randi’s turn. Keep going around the circle until each woman has heard all her affirmations echoed back at her and has had a chance to whine as her critical voice.
• Share a boasting session. Each woman stands up and boasts about herself. Boast, brag, gloat, swagger, proclaim everything that is wonderful about you in the most glowing terms imaginable; crow, show off, relish yourself. In this circle, interruption is permitted in the form of egging a woman on to new heights of bragging. This is a very difficult exercise for most women to do.

Soliloquy Circle

The soliloquy circle is the format my women’s group uses. We select a topic, then discuss it within a deep listening circle. We each get three to five minutes to speak. After one woman is finished, questions are allowed, and then it is the next woman’s turn. After this initial round, we follow with shorter rounds, adding ideas that have occurred to us or responding to what others have said but, again, without interruption. The act of articulating your thoughts about a subject and being heard as you do so brings clarity, insight, and self-compassion. Hearing other women’s thoughts, sometimes very different from your own, engenders an expanded worldview and, with it, tolerance. The goal is never group therapy or a group bitch session but a clarification of values and ideas from a personal point of view.

On a shared retreat, each woman can bring one to five topics, written on small pieces of paper. Put them in a cup or a hat, and draw one to plunge into. You could also brainstorm topics that relate to your retreat theme or intentions.

Here are some of our favorite topics, which would work well on a retreat:

Creativity

Death

Heroes and Sheroes

Looks

Feminism

Women’s and Men’s Roles

Sex

Random Acts of Kindness

Ten Years from Now

Friendship

Purpose

Suffering

Shame

What Is God?

Adventure

If I Had Five Other Lives to Lead

Truth

Trust

Integrity

Courage

Love

Grace

What Is Enough?

Inspiration

Surrender

Power

Adventure

Peace

Gratitude

Faith

Healing

Balance

Self-Care

Forgiveness

Retreating Together in the World

When you are going to share a retreat in the world, get together before you start and plan a way to help one another hold and protect retreat space. Sometimes just being together will make you feel set apart from the everyday world, but small gestures like wearing the same pin, being silent together (or almost silent), whispering a centering word to one another from time to time (peace, breathe, and at-one-ment are examples), and imagining before your retreat that you are all surrounded by a cone of brilliantly hued light will help.

Afterward

Part of the magic of a shared retreat is supporting one another through the integration of your retreat into daily life. It could be as simple as when my dear friend Barbra and I retreated together one day and, at a family dinner that evening, we kept winking at each other. It could be exchanging a weekly postcard or a phone call of encouragement. It could be deciding to meditate or pray together at the same time each morning for one week.

If you want to give more elaborate attention to supporting one another as you carry your retreats into daily life, you might try the contract and buddy system we used on a week-long retreat I co-led. Each woman committed to two things she wanted to accomplish for herself. Then she committed also to one Act of Beauty, as Brooke Medicine Eagle calls the commitments she asks people to make “not for myself alone, but that all people may live.” She says, “Acts of Beauty…extend our personal wholeness into the world by giving the gift we came to Earth to offer…. We are in this world not only to lift ourselves and grow but also to share our gifts and talents with others.”

After deciding upon a worthy, concrete goal to be completed by a certain date, each woman also declares what she is willing to give up if she doesn’t meet her goals. Partnerships are formed to support each woman through calling and writing to check her progress and to offer encouragement. For example, you might commit to finishing thirty pages of a novel within three months, and if you don’t, you will give away half of your book collection to charity. You might commit to giving free haircuts at the homeless shelter once a month for one year or you will halt yoga classes with your favorite teacher for six months. You might commit to reading one book about marketing and making five cold calls within one month or you will attend a Toastmasters meeting and give a speech. Notice that the commitments are concrete, adequate time (but not too much!) is given, and the stakes are commensurate.

SAMPLE CONTRACT

I, _________(YOUR NAME), love and honor myself enough to bring the gifts of this retreat into my life. I pledge to do so through the act of __________________________ by _______________ (DATE). By signing my name below, I agree to this contract with my whole being. I freely offer to give _____________________ away as evidence of my commitment to this action and to myself.

____________________

Sign and date

After support is no longer needed, be willing to let the group end. Often a shared retreat is so much fun and so spiritually nourishing that you will want to hang on and keep the group going. Do you have a purpose in doing so? Does everyone have time and the same level of commitment? It isn’t fair to form an ongoing group out of what was presented as a one-time experience, and trying to prolong the experience often doesn’t work. The last thing retreat leader David Knudsen said to our group after a three-week intense retreat and wilderness trip was, “What you are looking for isn’t here at Northwaters. It is inside you.” Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, just click your heels three times and go home.