Put the phone down, open the door, and spend some days in the moorland. Eat there with frugality, like receiving a few of all the Earth’s gifts. Walk by the river and honour the stream and the moon. Dance as if responding to the resonance of the stones below your feet. Be in awe of your existence. And, when you are called, help others embrace each other and start a tango in nature.
This is an abridged list of invitations I leaned into during a New Year’s retreat in Dartmoor. Keeping it as a list is perhaps the easiest way to share what I learnt.
1. Put the phone down
Thanks to the minimal use of technology during the retreat, I managed to get out of the loop of passive consumption of social media content and movie channels. The pull of checking the news and my feed is still there. How often do I choose distractions over Her? As I land back home, I’m making changes that make it easier to see nature instead of screens.
Someone shared with me a quote stating that no gardener ever made a rose. One can only tend to the conditions in which it has a chance to grow.
2. Open the door and honour the stream
I see the river Dart from my living room, and that’s a privilege I enjoy daily, but the decision to open the door, go out there and feel the elements is a different matter. Being in Dartmoor, in particular, exposed me to unimaginable beauty. Keeping with the group and the retreat schedule was important, but I sometimes wanted to stay alone for hours in the magical spots we visited.
3. Eat honouring the gifts from Earth
This was a detox retreat. We had one smoothie for breakfast and another for dinner, and only a veggie soup and salad at lunchtime. It was enough to keep me hungry for days. We had the most loving juicer and cook in that place, and that’s what I miss the most after coming back home. I don’t have the necessary equipment and culinary skills to keep myself afloat on a diet like that, but I learned what is good for my body and what doesn’t serve me anymore.
One habit I would adopt is eating mindfully, cooking with love, honouring every ingredient, and eating slowly, taking in every flavour. Given the overabundance of Earth’s gifts, it feels just fair.
4. Dance to the resonance of the stones
I didn’t dare to take a morning plunge into the cold waters of the Dart as the rest of the group did. But I was immersed in the landscape and sensed the resonance in the ground. One evening, I stayed behind on one of the tours and returned to the house alone. There was a little piece of land covered in grass where I felt the invitation to lie down. I stayed there facing the stars above me, feeling the support of the underground granite in my back and being one with the sounds, the wind, the strong waters and my breathing.
That memory of wholeness has stayed with me and has become an inner resource I can recall whenever I need to ground myself.
5. Be of service
On the third day of the retreat, I was invited to introduce tango to a group of non-tango dancers.
That ultimately pushed me out of my comfort zone, as I am not a teacher, and my tango repertoire is limited.
But I said yes to the nudging and framed the exercise by saying I was only sharing what I believe is the essence of tango: the possibility of experiencing connection and the sweet intimacy of an embrace.
It was a nerve-racking experience, but I learned that I can be of service. Despite my fears, I am already slow-cooking an offering for my community. I will need inspiration, and today, it comes in the form of a rooster crowing and celebrating every sunrise in Dartmoor. Without his particular note, we might have sensed the gap in our mornings.
In a nutshell
I brought these memories, small rituals, and tools with intuitive possibilities. The breathwork sessions and sound healing journeys were remarkable.
Not everything was heavenly, though. On the first day, I arrived with no reverence, only criticism, as I judged everything and everybody.
One morning, when I was feeling empty and down, I received perhaps one of the key lessons of the retreat: I shared my feelings in a one-on-one exchange with someone I wasn’t close to. And she only said:
“That is okay.”
The ice melted away.
Today’s challenge is forming new habits, and I am already learning that I cannot create the next version of myself. I can only tend to the conditions for it to grow.
And I need others to co-cultivate this garden.
Stay attuned
Jesus Acosta
Aluna Healing
At the White Lady Waterfall
Lana Lanaia and her team were generous in their teachings and held us with care and wisdom during this retreat.
For Calling the Spirit Back From Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet
For the Divine Mother of the Universe
This devotional episode of The Emerald podcast honours the goddess as the animating power of creation.
The Divine Mother of the Universe
She’s what? An empowerment tool. An archetype. A self-help course. A political symbol. Something that is invoked to bring more creative energy or material abundance into our lives. Something that, in an individualistic modern world, always seems to have a whole lot to do with us. Yet the goddess, traditionally, is much more than this. She is the animating power of the universe itself, felt in bodies, realized in states of deep conjunctive rapture, accessed through ritual protocols, alive in trees and stones and living geography, alive in song, alive in the myths and stories of her, alive in sound, alive in longing, alive in trance, alive in the states of consciousness realized by those who feel her.
