Six months ago I silently accepted the news that my friends had attended a beautiful yoga retreat in the nearby Ovens Valley. I was silent because a retreat was something I'd been wanting to do for a while, and yet I didn't even know that this particular one was happening. It was a moment that lead me to re-evaluate my priorities (I wrote about it here) - a direction-changer that gave me the push to allow it to happen next time the opportunity arose.
Fast forward to today. After attending many of my friend Amber's classes at The beauty of Yoga, I'm now at the end of Amber and Erin's second Women's Wellness Weekend, a.k.a. the Yoga Retreat, in Freeburgh near Bright. And it's been a lovely, inspiring weekend.
Riverbed Homestead, the site of our retreat, is an older farmhouse that's been restored. With polished wooden boards, handmade wooden furniture and lots of light coming through large windows, it's the perfect location for a journey of inner discovery.
We are surrounded by sloping farmland and bushland on close-by hills, which add to both the spaciousness and intimacy of this place. It also a great place to witness the cycles of nature. On our second day here we watched showers, brought by dark clouds, make their way across the valley towards us on the verandah of the homestead. In these ways this weekend has been dramatic and sacred at the same time.
But, being me, I've also been called to analyse this phenomenon called a retreat because I like to look at things from a different perspective, but also because people from all walks of life, and many nations, take a retreat from time to time. Sometimes it's planned like our weekend here, and sometimes we are forced into retreat by illness, depression, pain.
Personally, after experiencing the kind of retreat that comes with depression, I prefer the wellness kind!
So I started thinking more about that word RE - TREAT:
- RE - to do something again
- TREAT - to give something to yourself or others.
This weekend then d about returning to a state of giving to ourselves - giving compassion, care, respect, connection, community, clarity, love. A state of turning within, back to that home that exists inside at all times. We just need to treat ourselves and listen in again.
And if I take this further, as I am wont to do, I now return to the outside world filled up with these treats, and can give them freely to others. For my family, a retreat for me is a retreat for everyone when I come back a more relaxed and clear Mama.
It's funny, isn't it? How, by being selfish, we can then give more to others. Like the yin and yang of yoga, when we look within everyone benefits.
Xx
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