My first Silent Yoga retreat was 2 years ago. It was such a success that I decided to alternate a talking and a silent yoga retreat each year. There was some resistance. Noooo! We’ll be bored, be sad, go crazy, two whole days with my own thoughts! I wrote a couple of emails talking about the value of silence and how important silence is for self-growth. I mentioned the reality TV stars who fell apart once the TV show was over. The most astounding thing was that these young people had LOVED the relentless scrutiny of their lives by the public and when that dried up, they slumped into depression or suicide. We also met Jo Blow who would rather give himself electric shocks just to bide the time than to sit happily for a period alone, with his own thoughts.
Did you know we are all encouraged to be permanently distracted, multi-tasking and shallow. We spend so little time on any one subject that we never form a real opinion, we just mouth someone else’s. Not many people read books anymore. How exhausting – it’s so much easier to scroll through Instagram and take in bite size bits of information while we watch pretty images. This has been a carefully guided demise of the human mind for the last 50 years. A society of mindless, distracted, addicted persons are easy to manipulate, sell something to, or influence. How on earth do you make good decisions when your mind is fluttering from place to place and everyone else is doing the same?
And of course, there was fear that we might be overwhelmed by our own sad thoughts, and the weekend retreat would disintegrate into a morbid rumination of all the horrid things that have happened to us. Well, the good news is – not a chance. Why? Well, you’ll be busy for one. We don’t have to kill 4 hours between classes on my retreats, 1.5 hours max and then we keep going – learning and growing from this amazing science called yoga, pranayama and meditation. And if the sadness and the regrets come up, let them. You are all amazing, courageous human beings and why not embrace the darkness in the company of others who are all walking a similar path? Once you turn to face the shadow there is nowhere else to go but up and into the light.
We live life through 3 energy centres – head, heart and abdomen. The forces of Thinking, Feeling and Willing. The more these centres are aligned in a person, the more that person will be able to manifest their soul’s purpose or dharma. So how do we do this? For the head centre, this means we must be able to concentrate, go silent and pay attention to our thoughts without distractions. If you can’t go silent how on earth are you going to identify which thoughts are truly yours and which ones are external, imposed or habitual? Which thoughts are true? Every truthful expression brings us closer to our essence, every dishonest one leads us further away.
For the heart centre this requires us to feel everything, all our emotions without projecting them outwards. We must embrace these emotions like we are holding a child. Without judgement, without resistance. By embracing the gift of that emotional energy, we can illuminate our entire being.
The will centre is activated by action and movement. Cultivating the discipline to follow through on decisions you have made is essential. Without the will forces, any thought or intentions stays just that. Just a thought, frozen in time, no action, no change in the world. During our Silent Yoga Retreat we will experience all these energies: your thoughts, your feeling and your desire to act upon those insights.
Fabulous stuff! I hope you can join us! Love and namaste Margot