I’m sitting on the bed, laptop set up on a pillow situation. Afternoon sun streaming in Freya curled up beside me. Mark has his youngest son staying and the on-again-off again-still-being-re- organised second bedroom is currently the den of an 18 year old young person.
New furniture will be arriving next weekend and the apartment might finally look like we both haven’t just moved in. (and I will get my glorious ‘office’ back)
Adding to the freshly moved in shamble is my tiny mint green suitcase on wheels lying open full of yoga pants, swimmers and duster throw-overs. I’m off to a yoga retreat on Wednesday for 4 nights and I am having a hard time not bursting with the excitement of it all.
If you’ve been here for a while you might recall me heading to Bali for a month in 2017 to do my Feminine Embodiment yoga teacher training. (Think “normal” yoga meets feminine embodiment practices, Taoist longevity practices and somatic experiencing.) My teacher is the creatrix of Tigress Yoga which I have been practicing now for well over a decade.
I will be chatting about some of these longevity practices in my Webinar on the 5th of October that I shared with you last time.
Read about it here and send it to a practitioner you know.
Anyhoo if you’ve been here for THAT long then you might also recall that time I went to Greece and the island of Amorgos for a similar yoga retreat. That one was centred around the same type of yoga (Tigress Yoga) and was also SILENT!
Yup silent and this is the bit that I wanted to share with you. As it might just be the piece that I am looking forward to the most.
As a card carrying introvert I require ALOT of silent solo space to recharge.
Daily walks with Freya on the beach without podcasts, early nights in bed just quietly reading on my own and regular personal practices keep me topped up nicely. Mark is also an introvert (with a bit more band width than me) so he gets it.
We love silent time together doing our own thing. Silently :)
The silence is something my girlfriends and clients have questioned the most. My extrovert ladies are just a hard NOPE “there is no way that I could possibly not talk for 4 days straight” said one girlfriend on Saturday night.
Other women have recognised the appeal when I explain to them that the intention of this retreat (like many retreats) is to really nourish and spend time with yourself; to top up the tank and enjoy cultivating energy that is for my use only!
As much as I have no doubt I will encounter gorgeous women on this retreat, I want all of us to keep all that yummy well rested retreat energy for ourselves. (not sitting up all night chatting with Kylie about her recent divorce and wild teenagers and her new found love of hiking … because lets be honest I do that for a job already!)
As women we constantly create and generate and give to those around us. We are the heart hub of the households we run. Our instinctual creative life force (regardless of whether you see yourself as creative) has been harnessed by our dominant culture to be relentlessly ‘of service’.
So to do something that actually intentionally redirects that energy straight back to yourself is quite the radical act!
What makes this so different from other strictly vipassana style retreats is that while we are silent in the form of chatter and conversation, the yoga and breath-work will be anything but!
Tigress yoga and Sacred Female Yoga has at it’s heart a sounding and breath work practice that invites women to feel it all and, in a way that feels natural to you, give it voice;
A sigh, a laugh, a much needed cry.
Never forced, never performative.
Always an invitation to be with what is present in your sensory experience.
And always in a held contained safe space.
Gone are the days where forced cathartic practices that blow your nervous system open were the best practice.
This is gentle and invitational.
And this week I know will be no different.
Quite possibly as my teachers practice evolves we will be invited into the evolution.
And I cant wait!
I’m sure I will have more to share on the other side.
KK
x
Oh and my next post will be for paid subscribers covering the most requested topic that practitioners were interested in hearing about in my webinar.
I wonder if you can guess what that topic was?
Ahhhh yes. I am now perplexed when an event designed to facilitate wellness and connection brings with it all the bells and whistles that stress our nervous systems! Which leads me to ask this ... is there room for me in your green suitcase?! I’m currently feeling a tad ‘overpeopled’ after delivering three keynotes in three days, then hosting eleven 12yo boys for a birthday party over the weekend, only to be greeted with an unexpected pupil-free day today! My talking-with-people brain feels fried to the point of crispiness, and I wouldn’t mind telling everyone to kindly fuck off and let me live like a monk for the next week. Or three.
Have fun, dearest! Look forward to hearing all about it. 💛