Escaping the World - in silence…

Today is Tuesday, December 7th at about 11AM, and I am half way into my second retreat that is called "Escape the World". We are escaping the world today, by being in complete silence; Silence with yourself that is, without talking to anyone and/or "consuming" any kind of media. However, they do encourage us to write, which is why I saw this as the perfect opportunity to catch you up with what happened so far.

Our "Fresh Start Cleansing" retreat ended on Sunday and it was very touching. It is astonishing to see how a random group of people can become so close during the course of one week. We said our good byes with lots of tears in our eyes, and most of my newly acquired friends taking off back into the real world with the exception of Mark (Canada) and I, who were in for another 5 days of retreat adventures. Soon after we had parted ways the new retreat group arrived and one could tell right away that is was a completely different atmosphere. "Escape the World" is a yoga retreat combined with meditation and spa treatments, but a lot more free time whereas we had our talks with Mark during the previous retreat. Looking back now, I can tell that the talks that we had with Mark about superfood, detox, fasting, emotional health, etc. every day at 11AM, is what brought our group so close together. Moving on I was anxious to see what kind of individuals wanted to escape the world for 5 days, and to my surprise once again, 13 women showed up. I'm not going to lie to you, but I did expect the odd nice looking, toned male Yogi for some eye candy after 7 days of lots of estrogen, so I am starting to think that the universe is saving all of this eye candy for my journey to Surfer's Paradise once I'm back in Australia…..

Anyways, I also had to switch rooms, thankfully, and no longer fear walking back to my room in the dark, because I do not have to walk through the "jungle" anymore to get to it. My previous room was tucked away in the lower part of the facility, which required trekking down a rather dark path away from everyone else, passing frogs, spiders and god knows what else. This time, I am sharing my room with someone. Her name is Helen and she lives in Singapore. Originally, she was born in Java, another Indonesian island west of Bali, but lives in Singapore now due to her work. I haven't really talked to her much even before we went silent, until I needed to talk to her today when I couldn't. In order for us to "enjoy" and facilitate our silence when sharing a room with someone, everyone has a schedule as to when to eat and where. Well, mine said "Enjoy breakfast in the privacy of your room", meaning that Helen would be eating in the dining room this morning, when I come to discover her slurping on my juice sitting comfortably on our balcony… Now, how do you communicate with someone when you are in complete silence? You don't. In spite of this, I decided to give it my best shot and grabbed my schedule to show her what it said. I thought that they might have made a mistake with our schedules, and we might as well try to figure it out now rather than once lunch and then dinner rolls around. Helen looked at my questionably with her straw still in her mouth while I was trying to ask her with hands and feet what her schedule said, so we could compare. I must have not done a really good job since she got up confused, straw still in her mouth, and started pointing to the dining room, indicating that she was going there. I waved her off and gestured that it was no problem and that I will go up there to eat.

It is now almost lunchtime and I still don't know what her schedule says…

Speaking of food, I was pretty excited to go back on a "normal" diet until I had my first dinner in front of me. Sesame encrusted snapper with saffron rice, sweet potato chips, a little bit of sautéed spinach and carrot cashew salad. Every thing smelled really good and I couldn't wait to try it until the waiter put it in front of me and I could hardly eat it. The way I look at what I put into my body must have changed quite significantly over the past week and I had a very hard time biting into the fish and didn't even touch the rice or sweet potato chips. After having enjoyed so many fresh vegetables, fruit and other living food, food that still has life in it due no or minimal heat in the cooking process, that I wasn't even interested in the cooked stuff. Believe me, I felt strange and a bit odd, but I listened to my body and still am only slowly starting to try the "normal foods", because I just simply feel so great from last week.

4:30PM

Still silent. Another tricky thing when you are being silent is going to the spa. I just got back from my treatment and limited my communication with the staff to "Yes, no, please and thank you." Our guidelines stated that it was ok to speak to the staff, the important thing being not to have any conversations. How about with yourself? It happened to me twice already, but as soon as I say the first word I automatically stopped since, after so many hours, hearing your voice seemed strange.

SO, lunch was in the dining room for me according to my schedule and I am happy to announce that I feel like my hunger has come back. Well, there was salad yet again, but I cleaned the plate including dessert. Yesterday, Mark and I decided to go out into the real world for dinner since the group was going to the purification ritual at Tirta Empul, Bali's most sacred spring pools, and we had done that the week before. Ironically, we were in search of one of the three raw food restaurants (hold your seats everyone, Helen just picked up her schedule! - Looks like she will be heading to the dining room for supper…) in town called KAFE. I was slightly craving raw food…. Dinner was yummy and raw carrot cake was for dessert. I do have to admit, that particular dessert is definitely not the same as the real one, but still tasty.

The next thing on our schedule today is restorative yoga and some more meditating, poor feet of mine haven't gone numb this often ever, and then dinner followed by hitting the sack almost immediately after, because wake up time tomorrow is 4:30AM to head up to Gunung Batur, one of Bali's volcanos….

20:30PM

I'm almost caving…. I've been starring at my book for a while now, but still managed to keep my hands off of any "media", so here I go writing some more. Helen did indeed go to the dining room for dinner and I had a lovely meal on our balcony. Beforehand during yoga, I was fortunate enough to receive about 10 wonderfully itchy mosquito bites, keeping me from relaxing for the entire 90 minutes. My appetite, however, is still building up, but it seems that somehow I am not yet meant to indulge or the universe is trying to send me some signals since dinner was a handful of curried coconut shrimp in a banana leaf (devoured all of it) with rice (couldn't care less) and - arugula salad (same old but makes me feel good). The more I was looking forward to dessert until I saw in front of me: fruit salad. Namaste to that, I'm off to bed.