Winter Retreat 2013, day one

So…  at 5:45 this morning as I drove over to the Sanctuary…  it was 70 degrees outside.  Yes, I knew it might be an unusual day before I even got to retreat place!  First day of winter in Virginia and it is warmer than some summer days…

I am still in retreat mind, so not being ultra creative right now, nor do I feel like structuring my post.  So enjoy this piece meal format  🙂

Om Ah Hung practice was nice.  So was the Zapchen stretching.  I ate a bowl of oatmeal before leaving home (meaning I had two breakfasts), but nothing like gaining some healthy weight when on retreat, right?  Delicious (!!!) food while on retreat so far.  Many choices for lunch and breakfast was a mixture of mashed squash and aduki beans – whoa!  Does food taste better on retreat or is it possible to have sweet food like that without sugar?  Wow!

After breakfast, went down to the river trail.  It has been wet over the past couple weeks so the roar of the river is right there!  In fact, you can hear it easily from the Sanctuary.  Very calming and meditative just to sit on their porch and soak it in!

But…  the rain clouds were hanging low all morning and therefore we started to get soaked on the trail.  I ran back to the safety of the Sanctuary.  Rain walk river clouds run.

After breakfast, we read through the Ganges Mahamudra text… which is extraordinarily over my head and I have not received teachings on it yet…  so when trying to contemplate it, I started to doze off.  After nearly falling off my cushion – oh did I mention I only got 4 hours sleep last night?  I lay down.

Woke up an hour later having slept through the 10 minute break between hours…  And I felt like a brick wall.  Thick, dense, hard, stubborn, resistant.  Not the greatest feeling but I am very happy my body felt safe enough to rest down that deep.  ZZZZZZ

Oh wow – then the highlight of the day was just after lunch.  We do a Zapchen session then (some movement or some breathing or some energetic awareness or some humming).  In fact, this session was all humming because we worked from Julie Henderson’s Hum Book!  And I learned how to do a new treatment when the outside person tracks the person lying down as they hum through their body.  It was so potent.

I will say more later if I remember (can someone remind me – say in a week or two?)  🙂   Let’s just say my kidneys released some wildly old stuff and it felt like a hurt-so-good kind of discomfort in my gut as it released.  I am happy to be moving toward more permanent alignment and liberation!  Even if it is not always comfortable getting there.

Later as I was resting down again, I had a dream / vision where I was putting my foot down and standing my ground.  Whoa!  Maybe that kidney humming organ treatment from earlier was starting to work already!

Then a dream dance drama therapy (from Continuum) session.  We worked someone’s (else’s) dream.  Ask me if you want to hear more – I think I would send that out as a private email.

Thanks for reading!