Just recently I went on my 2nd Chi Kung, Meditation and Kung Fu retreat. Basically we packed lots of warm clothes and headed up to the Pocono mountains for a weekend.  Once there, we kept busy training, meditating, journaling and sitting in the woods to reconnect with nature.

There were points when we would spend time with others walking or sitting in meditation outside in complete silence. If you think about it, how often do people spend time together as a group without having the need to constantly be saying something. I found those moments to be a rare pleasure.

Knowing you are all there for a common purpose, sharing an experience without exchanging any words is a refreshing change from every day life. It was in those quiet moments when it felt like it was a true retreat experience for me – a chance to recharge. The unhurried pace, the utter lack of the usual demands and pressures. Even being told when to move on to the next thing meant leaving the worry about time and schedules to someone else. I got to just ‘be”. That was a gift.

Fully engaged with a heightened awareness is the only way to describe one particular experience I had on that retreat. I can’t get into the details unfortunately, but suffice it it say that it was an eye opening experience.

If you’ve never gone a retreat like this I strongly recommend that you do. It is wonderful experience and doing it for the weekend really helps you to “get it” in a way that just a few hours outside does not.

Happy Trails.

Well I just got back yesterday from a really great experience. I went on a retreat with my kung fu classmates and teacher for the weekend.  We started out the evening going into the woods to find a spot that “called” to us and got sat for awhile. Our mission was to really take note of our surroundings including sounds, smells, sights how we felt while sitting completely quietly. We also needed to explain why we picked that particular spot and needed be able to find it again as we would be returning there early the next morning.  Each time we did this we wrote about our experience. So after that first afternoon, it was then onto a quiet dinner and then working out for a couple of hours. We did some great partner work that got our blood going and did some really good focused, repetitive kung fu. Loved it. We then went to sit quietly outside on some benches in the dark. It was COLD let me tell you.  After a while, body temperature cools down and you felt it.  I had to do the breathing techniques I was taught that I know also helps me to keep warm to keep warm. It worked though. I was cold but never shivering.

Up at 5:45 and awoke to very cold morning. Not easy to sit at our spots for an hour but we all did it. It was worthwhile in a way that is difficult to convey if you never really sat in nature listening to the natural rhythms.  Really tuning in to the animals, the change from dark to light the sound of your own breath. It is not my intention to get overly personal here with what my own thoughts were while I sat. I can only encourage you to try it and discover what it is like to fully plug in to your senses. You see we did have periods where we did meditation on the retreat but this was more about awareness training. Fully engaging your mind.  More on the kung fu retreat to come…