Silent retreat leader's reflection
Noble Silence retreat 2025 - a leader confession
Silence practice has been a bliss to my journey.
when I first attended a silent retreat, I never knew how powerful this practice can be, and since it had a very powerful impact on my journey I took the decision to avail it to my students.
in 2020, I offered my first silent retreat, leading such a retreat is not easy at all, knowing that the concept is not well known in our culture and community, the risk that no one will sign up for silence was my biggest fear. But I decided that I have nothing to lose, I will offer it and open the door for it and see how it will go.
Deep down in my heart, knowing how deep this experience can be for a lot of people, how practitioners can be very vulnerable, I wasn't sure if I will be able to lead it, so I decided to offer only 3 days, I was learning what to do and not to do, I was learning more about my triggers and how do I guide practitioners through silence, how sometimes I get frustrated of people breaking the rules and try to cheat, but I also witnessed practitioners transformation noticing the difference of where they stood energetically the first day they step in to this experience versus when they got out of it. And what a privilege to witness this:)
I learnt that in the first couple of days we are struggling and fighting ourselves, resisting everything that show us and it can be very intense, those couple of days are the most critical part of the experience, you might feel tempted to quit and break your silence thinking its not for you, or you get through it and pass the most critical phase, then the following few days practitioners start to settle in, surrender a bit more, calm a bit more, and things become a little bit clearer and calming, then the storm might rise again, starting to notice things that cause pain maybe, and then again we sink into silence, calm a little bit more and find complete surrender. Only then we can see clearly things we have been avoiding to see, or things that was just hiding.
So I realized that 3 days is a joke, as the real journey start right after those 3 days, so in my second round I gained more confidence that I can lead more than three days, so I offered 5 days and 9 days of silence.
In all the following rounds I started to learn the patterns where practitioners go through, I started to learn that my role as a leader is holding a safe space for them, its not my job to find them solution (solutions are always there deep down inside everyone of us), my main role is to guide them through practices that can help them go through this journey, to guide with kindness, to hold the safe space with compassion.
I learnt that those who cheat have their own struggle, I am not part of it, but I am responsible to not let them spoil other practitioner's experience, and to help them get the best out of this journey even if they don't fully commit to silence.
Holding a safe space for practitioners is to provide them with a personal space where they can smile, cry, sleep, or collapse without feeling judged or having anyone that feels sorry for them. they are surrounded with a lot of love and kindness, yet respecting their own space.
I learnt what tough love is. As a leader to this kind of practices, one of my roles is to kindly bring practitioners on track by reminding them to focus on themselves, to not communicate with anyone but themselves, could be far away of being cute, but it is very much needed.
I was once told that your teacher is not supposed to be cute, nice or to be your friend, your teacher is there only to help you find your own answers and that can include some tough love.
In this last retreat I realized that as a leader, my energetic field change from one group to another. The amount of information to be given to a group of practitioners are not the same, every group has needs and capacity.
I realized that every single person in this retreat in all rounds, have something to teach me. And I am so grateful to the lessons I learn through all the practitioners I crossed path with.
I learnt that we are all in the same journey, just with different realizations and stages.
I learnt that connections happen in silence is much more powerful than those that happens through words.
Silence is my greatest teacher, and I am so grateful I have met such teacher.
