December 8, 2018 Ladies Mini-Retreat
Purpose: Get in touch with (as deep as possible) grief/feelings using image of vulnerable child inside and allow the feelings to surface and then surrender them to ocean for healing. This is a trial run at a "do it yourself" retreat. If all goes well, we can continue to experiment with different approaches.
Background
- Winter is a time of retreating to our roots as the trees do. Letting go of the fruits and focusing on healing and building our core foundation.
- Grief was traditionally processed through the "container" of ritual/ceremony, which we have mostly lost in our culture today. We are too busy to slow down and feel, and when we do feel, we run to food, drink, shopping, TV, internet, etc. to "anesthetize" / numb out the feelings. This leaves us flatlined because without feeling the depth of our sorrows, we won't be able to feel the soaring highs of our joy. I know for me personally, this really resonated as I'm soooo flatlined, it is hard to feel any excitement or joy for anything in life. And what is the point of life if we can't experience the joys it has to offer - if we walk around with our head buried in our worries and not even noticing all the miracles. However, without allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and opening up to experience and process the "negative" feelings, we can't gain access to the pure joys of life. Charles Eisenstein relays a story of meeting a woman (I think she was an older woman activist in South America). He was impressed by the pure joy she conveyed despite the massive environmental and societal damage to her people that she was fighting for. He asked her how she could be so joyful with so many worries swirling about her, and she said "I cry everyday." Tears - water - are the healing force for our hearts. We must let these rivers flow and not dam them. Let them flow mighty like the Colorado, Amazon, Nile, Ganges, Yellow, Rhine, Thames, etc.
- Our inner wounded child or Shadow can show up in times and in ways that are less than desirable. We walk around trying to protect our "thorns"that can trigger us at any time causing us to lash out or react in a way that we later regret or is somehow less than ideal.
- We will call this Shadow/ Inner wounded child to sit and have a conversation. By giving ourselves permission to call this "baggage" to the surface to be addressed - to meet the needs of that inner child in a loving way - we can move towards resolving and setting free this baggage and thereby moving a step closer to Wholeness.
Preparation
- Please try to journal ahead of time or have in mind an intention for healing/release/grieving/acceptance/surrender and try to begin calling to mind (pre-processing) what is needed.
- Be ready with an intention or quote reflecting your intention.
Materials (I will supply all)
- Drums, bells, speaker - (if anyone has one that you can play with your hands), please bring
- Rocks, chalk
- Journal (I have one for each of us)
- Paper, crayons, pencils, pens
- Beach, ocean
Procedure
- Remember this is a safe place to feel any and ALL feelings. No one is looking at you, nor judging you. This is a confidential space and anything that happens in the Sacred Circle, remains in the Sacred Circle of participants. Anyone can chose to share their own experience with others, but we won't share others' experiences.
- We will begin by relaxing. Taking deep breathes. Feeling the cool breeze and the warm sun, hearing the ocean and the life surrounding us, focusing on our breath. (5-10 min)
- Music has a mystical impact on the human psyche. Drums or similar musical instruments are found in most cultures throughout the world. Music opens us up to connect to one another and will prime us to get in touch with our deeper self. I'm going to play some drum music and we can get playful and play along with the music. (5-10 min)
- We will then take turns briefly sharing our intention for the day.
- A few more deep breathes, and we will begin to relax again and start tuning into our Shadow and /or inner hurt child. Tune ourselves into that young, innocent, vulnerable child within us. Today our child is feeling sad, grieving. For what is our child grieving? Ask yourself, "Why are you sad/or insert a better description for the feeling?" Perhaps there are expectations our young child had that didn't work out the way she wanted in life (e.g., family life, career, children, politics); perhaps the damage to the environment weighs on this child that loves the Earth and it pains to see the Earth hurting; perhaps we miss our parents or we wanted our parents to be more than they were capable of being; perhaps someone has mistreated us; perhaps WE have mistreated ourselves and not set boundaries and not loved ourselves unconditionally. There is so much available to mourn that we probably aren't even aware of how much pain and sorrow we have locked away deep, deep down. We need to try as best we can to pull it up, up, up to the surface from the deepest depths where it has rested for so long.
- We will spend a few quiet minutes with our eyes closed and as we get in touch with these feelings. When we are ready and as the thoughts and feelings surface, we can open our eyes and our journals and jot down whatever we feel as notes, pictures, etc. We will have colorful crayons, pencils, and pens available to use. As these feelings come up, tell the child it's ok to feel this way, ask her if she needs anything? Is there an unspoken need that hasn't been met? Is there a Truth that needs to be spoken or a boundary that needs to be set? (~ 15-20 min., but really should take our time because this is critical to the process)
- When we are ready, we will take our rocks and speak a summary of our experience in the previous step to the rocks, thereby transferring these feelings to the rocks. We can also color the rocks with chalk as a reflection of those feelings. (~5 min)
- We will take turns again sharing a brief summary of what our rocks heard (only what we feel safe to share - no pressure). This step ties us together. (~5 min)
- We will then walk down to the ocean with our hearts and rocks carrying our grief/sadness/disappointments. We will then ask the Ocean to accept our sorrows (on the rocks), to wash these sorrows from our hearts, to free us of these heavy burdens that weigh us down, to use her healing power to help us be whole. With mighty thrust of intention, we hurl the rocks out into the ocean, feeling the release of our burdens and the freedom and joy welling up.
- We then close the ceremony by rubbing our palms together rapidly, thanking our Inner Child for sharing with us, asking her not to be a stranger. We bless our child by holding our head in our hands, telling her everything will be okay, confirming she is Loved Unconditionally, we will be treating her better in the future, and giving her/you a big Hug!
- Back to the house to eat & chat! :-)
