66 TOPSaNTÉ Facebook.com/ TopSanteMagazine @ TopS a nt eUK
IN NEED OF NURTURING
I boarded the train to Castle Cary with
trepidation; the literature I’d received before
leaving spoke of luxury tents and heated
bathrooms, yes, but also of no alcohol and a
complete digital detox.
I desperately wanted this to ‘work’, but
doubted my own ability to fully engage, not
to mention my worthiness to even be there.
I needn’t have worried. Fellow retreaters and
I were greeted with a warmth that
immediately left me feeling oddly weepy. As
the days passed, I became increasingly aware
that we are so often starved of kindness,
whether from others or from ourselves, that
we are left feeling horribly depleted. It felt
deeply reassuring to be woken each day by
one of Fiona’s team members with a mug of
hot water and lemon, as did the lighting of
the wood burning stove in my tent each
afternoon and the delicious, plentiful meals
prepared for us three times daily. When was
I last so cared for?
SACRED CEREMONIES
Perhaps not every aspect of the programme
will be for everyone – blowing sound into the
face of a voice partner in a resonance
experiment may be excruciating for some.
Certainly there were exercises I connected
with more than others, but although each one
was entirely voluntary, I decided to throw
myself wholeheartedly into them all, for
woven together they created an experience of
deep calm, pure rest and a sense of wellbeing
that permeated every cell of my body.
The activities vary on these retreats
depending on the season, but I got to
experience mindful hiking, which, as a lover
the outside world, I adored. Breath and voice
work were trickier for me: my crippling
self-consciousness stifl ed my voice and
staggered my breath for quite some time
before I eventually felt myself relaxing into
the experience.
We made drums, stretching supple hides
over wooden frames, in a meditatively
personal process that took hours, and took
part in a fi re ceremony, during which we all
symbolically relinquished what no longer
served us, helped us grow, or made us happy.
I had hung back until the end, content to
contribute by way of drums and rattles to the
wall of sound against which the others
murmured and groaned into the fi re, but
when my turn came, I shocked myself with
the intensity of my tears and release, with my
sobbed words of lost love, lost pregnancies,Retreat founder Fiona Arrigo (second from right)
with participants on her Back to Nurture
women’s only retreat near Glaastonbury.‘I shocked
myself
with the
intensity of
my tears,
sobbing
words
of lost love...
despair and
self-doubt.
It felt
primal,
brutal
and also
freeing.’