My friend Cathy Ballard and I have been talking about doing a silent retreat for a couple of years now. I first got the idea from a friend of mine who spent a silent weekend at a monastery in Argentina on her own. I really liked the idea of it, because you didn’t have to participate in the religious ceremonies, you could just hang out on your own and be silent.
I started looking for places like that in the UK, but couldn’t find anything. I didn’t want to go to a group retreat, and I didn’t want something that would be like a spiritual retreat. I just wanted to go somewhere and be silent and give myself the time and space to go within.
So after multiple conversations on the topic, Cathy and I decided to book an Airbnb in Bedfordshire and create our own silent retreat. We found a secluded house to rent with lots of garden space and farm fields all around, and we planned our long weekend retreat from Friday to Sunday.
We planned a series of activities, including silent meditation, art journaling, energy work, guided meditations, meals, mindful walking, free time, and more. This makes it sound like we were busy all day, and we were, but it was a very peaceful and relaxing plan, with plenty of time to go within and do the inner work that we both love.
On the first day, we sat down to set our intentions for the weekend, for the inner work we were planning to do. Neither of us had actually thought about this beforehand, but it wasn’t hard to find our highest priority to focus on. We spent a few minutes journaling to see what came up.
For me, it was:
Release. Let go
— of anything that’s blocking my growth
— of anything that prevents me from seeing my clear path forward
— of anything that no longer serves me
— of fear
Love myself + accept myself deeply and truly
Let go of worries of what others might say. Let go of the need for approval.
Love. Love and acceptance. For who I am. Right now. Today.
Light. Open up to more light. Let the light burn out the darkness of fear.
Energy. Accept the energy that I have and open up to receive more. I am now allowing this right now.
Allow. Allow the love and light and acceptance.
I journaled about my first day. I journaled about everything that came into my head. I drew oracle cards and did card spreads on specific topics. I journaled about the concept of limitless possibilities. I journaled about believing I’m good enough.
We stuck to our schedule, and if something came up that affected the schedule, we wrote notes to each other. We weren’t allowed eye contact. We weren’t allowed gestures or any other kind of communication. We were meant to stay focused on our inner work.
The silence triggered my crap, as I suspected it might. Spending a weekend with another person in silence brought up so much for me. Mostly, it brought up stuff around loving and accepting myself and believing that I am good enough. I’ve worked on that topic before, many times, but on this weekend I became aware that I’ve still got more work to do, which is always good news! We can’t do the mindset work if we aren’t aware of what we need to work on.
The I’m not good enough belief came up in so many ways, most of them ridiculous, and we had a good laugh about it when we shared our experiences at the end of the weekend. I didn’t even realize just how many times this came up for me until I did some art journaling around it on the second day. You want to know what came up for me?
The mind crap:
- My meals weren’t good enough. Cathy made a delicious chili with rice on the first night for dinner, and I had just prepared salad for our second dinner. My mind went straight to the idea that my salad wasn’t as good as her chili because it wasn’t cooked. Really?!
- My art isn’t good enough. We were doing art journaling, which is basically intuitive painting which brings up topics to journal on in writing, or at least that’s how I do it. My paintings aren’t supposed to be works of art; they’re supposed to be intuitive and useful in bringing up the inner stuff. But they often look like something a six year old painted.
- My meditations aren’t good enough. We both did guided meditations, and I feared that mine weren’t as good as hers. Seriously?!
- My salads aren’t good enough. Salads are one of my favorite things to eat, and I made some pretty awesome salads for the weekend. Yet I feared they just weren’t good enough, for various reasons…like, I used frozen corn in one of them, rather than buying and cooking corn on the cob like I usually do and then cutting the kernels off the cob. Tragic, right?!
- My cake isn’t good enough. We popped into the Co-op on our drive up to the Airbnb and I picked up a small lemon cake to have with tea. And then I was afraid that Cathy wouldn’t like it because it was a Co-op brand cake and maybe she was used to eating posh cake.
- My mindful walking isn’t good enough. We did a bit of mindful walking out in the garden and the surrounding farmland, and at one point I passed Cathy as I was heading in to use the bathroom. I realized that she was walking much more slowly than I was, and I realized that maybe she was better at it because she was walking more slowly.
- My celery isn’t good enough. Yes, you read that right. My celery isn’t good enough. I didn’t bring organic celery; I brought regular celery. And I was afraid it wasn’t good enough.
Can you see how ridiculous these fears of not being good enough are? Yet this is the kind of stuff that comes up for me all the time in business. I know this, and I’ve worked on it. But it took making a list of all the things I felt inferior for during the weekend to realize just how deep these feelings spread into all aspects of my life. I ended up making a list of affirmations by reframing these into the positive.
So now I have a new mantra for whenever my self worth issues pop up: My celery is good enough. It’s perfect because it symbolizes just how ridiculous this fear of not being good enough can get.
As we grow and as our business grows, we reach new levels of mindset stuff to work on. As Denise Duffield-Thomas said when I interviewed her for the second time on my podcast, “new level, old devil.” Meaning: the same issues or topics rear their heads again, in a slightly different way. That’s why we can do lots of work on a specific issue, and clear the energy blocks and beliefs around it, and then see it come up again in a different way. It’s not that the mindset work didn’t work, but rather we’ve triggered a different aspect of it.
Another huge thing that came up for me was receiving. I’m great at giving to others; not so great at receiving. It was a huge challenge to receive delicious home cooked meals and not be able to say thank you when they were served. I just had to receive, without a word.
The thing is, if I can’t receive something as simple as a delicious plate of smoked salmon and eggs on a bed of pretty leaves and seeds, how can I receive other things? Like business income? Like new clients? Like testimonials? Like client referrals? This stuff is all linked.
Keywords from the retreat
I came up with four keywords that will serve as the focus for my inner work in the coming weeks and months:
- Love myself. HEW™ is all about self love and acceptance, and it’s clear to me that I really need to focus on this when working with myself.
- Accept myself. Same for acceptance.
- Receiving. Like I said, I’m great at giving, not so great at this.
- I am good enough. That’s pretty clear. My celery is good enough.
I’m so grateful that I gave myself the time and space to explore these issues. As I said, I’ve worked on this stuff in the past, and it’s coming up again for another round of work. I’m really pleased that I allowed this stuff to come up again, so I can work on it. Like I said before, if we don’t bring this stuff up to the surface, we won’t know what we need to work on. And this is high priority stuff for me.
Sound like fun?
Have you ever thought of doing a silent retreat? Cathy and I got so much out of it that we’d like to invite a small group of women along with us when we run our next one, which will probably be in September. If dedicating a long weekend to deep inner work sounds like your kind of thing, let me know.
The details:
- The pricing would be around £495 for a fully supported experience
- Includes two nights accommodation
- All meals are included, which are prepared by us…no cooking for you!
- Meals will be mostly plant-based + fish
- Maximum 5 participants + Cathy and Holly
- You’ll get your own room for privacy and alone time
- All group activities are optional: you can choose to join or not
- If you prefer to go off on your own and do your own thing, that’s fine, too
