Seeing more, hearing more, feeling more—building capacity to hold more

6.-12.4.2025 Sunshine Coast/ Australia

It felt courageous and adventurous to offer this one week long Retreat with access to nature on the Sunshine Coast of Australia. I had never been in any ways involved in a longer silent event beforehand. And I had never taught a class without using any spoken words.

I had some very positive curiosities towards it for a few years mainly through the experiences of my ex-partner at a silent CI Retreat in Georgia. And I had the trust, that I am pretty ok with silence.

Alec Kohl a friend of mine and a core member of our local CI community came back from a long Europe trip and his highlight was the Silent Contact Retreat in Norway. He was so clear that he wanted to do something like this at home in Australia. And I felt „when this is happening here I definitely should be on board.“ The „should“ was my first impulse that grew towards a „want to“.

We phrased our vision like this:

„90 per cent of our communication is nonverbal, thanks to all the little signals we send through our mimic, body posture, and adjustment of orientation and distance.

When there is silence, all our senses wake up to feed and support us. The nervous systems have it easier to talk to each other to create safety and connection. Usually, we don’t notice it. Within the silence, we might sense more of this profound human intelligence.

People who attend a silent CI retreat often appreciate the sense of clarity. We can hear our impulses connected to our needs more quickly and directly. Some encounters feel surprisingly like a talking dialogue, and later, it is hard to believe that no words were needed.

There is a sense of being present and alive on a journey while feeling held by and embedded in a group.

It is a setting where we build up resilience to move through uncomfortable situations, grow trust in our capacity for inner processes, and be more fully human.“

We both had never done a Vipassana Retreat. In my understanding silence in those meditation frames is connected to bringing the awareness towards our inner world. Eyes are usually closed when meditating, eye to eye connection is avoided and interactions with others are minimised.

Even though we were interested in a heightened inner journey we were longing for something very different. The dancing is so much about interaction and letting others close. We wanted a sense of travelling together, seeing and supporting each other.

Silence. Such a clear word. But what does it actually mean in this context?

It was a journey to find out. „We are not here to serve the silence, we wish the silence to serve us“ … was a general attitude for us.

Already in the planning we were clear that the silence we were looking for is not about „no sounds“. We weren’t interested in shutting down the voice completely. For an embodied way of dancing and being alive the voice is an integral part of our sense of wholeness. The voice is like an extra limb of the body. Sighing, laughter, crying or moaning are part of the dance. We wanted to embrace these more involuntary engagements of the voice. At the same time we were not interested in improvising with voice, rhythm or singing. Apart from one Jam with live-music we didn’t have any music at the Retreat.

We loved the idea of silence as a non-verbal time, not only in the dance. From the arrival onwards we encouraged everyone to reduce language to what’s really needed and being aware when chatter habits want to kick in. We used spoken words on the arrival day and the next one for sharings around the question „What can you let go to be more fully here?“ and generally ‚to tune into essence‘. For the facilitation we used these first one and a half days to implement the structures of our days. From day three onwards we went without any spoken words, including the facilitation.

A taste of our days in silence

In this text I want to give a taste of our days in silence. The reflections from my organisers and facilitators side I will share in an extra text.

Our space

I love our mornings. We start at 7am with yoga class. But in a way it starts before that. The space needs to be prepared. The Retreat takes place at a nature adventure school camp with one big industrial kind of tent structure with a concrete floor that we morphed into our dance, eating and living space. I am grateful for the experience how love to detail and the efforts of many collaborating people can create such a wonderful space. We borrowed Karate mats for the floor, which was a delight, and divided the hall with fabric into two parts. We left a kind of doorway to enter the dance space from the communal & eating area. I love that we have white table cloths on our eating tables with beautiful Ikebana flower arrangements and simple extra decoration on it.

The space has one problem: Due to the high humidity in our week the day starts with condensation water dripping on our sacred dance floor. So we have to cover it over night with huge tarps and uncover it in the morning, placing towels on the spots, where it was still dripping. It becomes a shared silent morning ritual of some dedicated people to get the space ready for the yoga session.

Yoga in the morning without words

From the second morning onwards Ella Kedem guides us without words. I love it. Copying her shapes, seeing her creative effort to make us understand what she wants us to do. I see more of her than I would have in regular verbal facilitation. The beauty of imperfection is tangible, vulnerability, generosity and trust is present. The amount of information we can give without words is limited. There is less detail … but more self responsibility. I get more in touch with the reality, that as a teacher we have limited influence on what people actually do and get out of our offers. Even with spoken words. How do I know what you make out of my words? With the silence this is more obvious and so we have to invest into trusting that everyone will find their way making the best use out of the offers for themselves. With all our potentially different interpretations we are very much together in this.

Anyways, Ella holds the space beautifully with grace and humour.

Morning Ritual & Underscore

We have one and a half hours for breakfast and for whatever we want to do until we gather again. We meet under a tree, sitting together in a circle, seeing everyone and closing our eyes. We get a sense of how and who we are today, the ‚me‘ within that ‚us‘. Then we spread out and find a spot or being found by one, where we stay for 15 minutes. We use the „sit spot“-practice that I got introduced by Jo Lin and her rewilding community at the CI & deep nature connection Retreats in Newcastle. I wouldn’t call it a meditation. For me it is a practice to open my senses to the outside and the inside. A journey of curiosity and non-attachment. Being moved, potentially feeling more as a part of the environment than being an observing stranger. I see, hear, sense … inside and outside … with a resonating body.

On our way back together we bring something with us. Every day has a question that is connected to where we are in our journey through these days. We use the seasons of the year as a support. The colour scheme of the decoration shifts a bit accordingly.

• arrival day: What can you let go to be more fully here? (autumn)
• first full day: Tuning into essence (winter)
• first day in silence: Where can you grow? (spring)
• second day in silence: Where do you shine? (summer)
• third day in silence: Which insights have been ripening? (autumn)
• re-inviting words: With which resources did you get in touch? (winter)
• departure day: What is your vision? (spring)

The question and season of the day might influence what we bring with us from our sit-spot.

We gather in front of the dance space. Above the entrance there is the question of the day. We stand around a little altar with a flower arrangement and some written words that invite a flavour for the day. One after the other adds what they found at the sit spot to the arrangement on the altar. I find it so beautiful to see everyone, how they make their steps, their timing, what they bring and where and how they place it. It is a wonderful group composition that will last for this day. Once it’s complete most of us need to wash their feet in tubs that are placed next to the entrance to the dance space and dry their feet with a towel. I love hearing how the damp bare feet take their first steps on the supportive, soft floor. The underscore has begun. Pre-ambulation happens naturally, this moving through the space with an awareness for self, each other, the space and the environment beyond. I love the ease that is in the space, everyone seems to be able to be ok with what is. There is no rush to get into the first proper dance. I often feel a lot of self containment as a general flavour for our being together. Generosity with time, no urgencies, less needs to reproduce what we might feel we should do or experience. I have amazing morning dancings. With so many days of so much dancing I can more easily dive into longer dances, of course duets, but also trios happen a lot, constellations shift beautifully, subtle, weird and wild qualities emerge and dissolve.

Space for self & co-regulation

I am happy with our regulation area. Many of us can’t dance for six hours a day. And still we want to be in the space as a part of the group experience. One side of the dance space has three areas next to each other. One for resting solo, where people respect that I want to be alone. Another one for co-regulating, where I go if I am open to rest and watch with others. And in between those two resting areas the crafty space with paper, pens, crayons, books, wire …

„What is your contribution to the space?“ is a helpful question for me as a variation of Nancy Starck’s „You are always in“. When I am not in the space dancing I am still contributing.

Meal times & breaks

We have a very long lunch break of 3.5 hours. I eat slower when I don’t speak. I taste and sense more. And still, eating takes less time when I don’t have inspiring conversations. To not follow the natural impulse to talk to someone when eating feels a bit weird for me in some moments. I notice that I make different and more conscious choices where I sit compared to other retreats. Alec invites us to practice being more authentic, deconstructing the social norms a bit, like to not smile back if I don’t feel like it, wondering how long I meet someones eyes… I enjoy witnessing myself in these subtile experiments.

In the non-eating times it becomes very easy for me to just sit somewhere, maybe next to someone or alone. I am not sure what everyone does but I am pretty sure that no one gets bored. Resting, drawing, writing. There is always something to see, to sense, something that moves in me, thoughts, images, feelings. I can always move, walk, play. It becomes less and less artificial to not talk to each other. I appreciate that I can stay in my own world of perception with less external interruptions and social demands. I have the impression that there is a deep ok-ness in the group with the silence, even with moments of challenging processes. Nothing needs to be created, no need to consume, to be entertained or distracted by exciting or disturbing news.
Still now, three weeks after the Retreat, it seems to be very easy to me to see beauty, to notice the depth and three-dimensionality of sounds that surround me, to appreciate the „beyond me“.

Facilitated Offers

We have two more movement sessions per day. From 4-6pm a facilitated offer and from 7:30-9pm a group score that leads into a Jam. I am in charge of the facilitated offers and have to do it without spoken words from the second full day onwards. Oh my gosh. How much I miss the spoken words! I’ll share more about journey with the facilitation in the reflection part. Just this much for now:

I think I would have loved to participate in the facilitated offers. As Ella in her morning yoga I have to use more mimic and gestures when I explain exercises. There is a different aliveness in the expression and that’s often also funny. The moments of failure are painful and hilarious. It is a very creative process, more vulnerable. More self-responsibility is needed from the participants. Alec teaches one class when I am sick and I witness how others step up, when an explanation isn’t clear enough. Like a group solving a riddle. Wonderful! „We are all in this together!“ is the spirit. And also the capacity seems to grow to go with the imperfect and make sense out of it while exploring.

The evening Score-Jam finishes pretty much on time at 9pm and most people go to bed rather soonish after a cup of tea to be fresh for the beauty of the mornings. Sometimes someone lights a fire. I have never loved the smell of a fire so much. I wonder if the silence opened up my sense of smell. I lie on a bench and get lost in the stars as the biggest „beyond me“ that I can find.

Inviting words back in

On the last day before departure we invite words back in, also for the facilitation. Ella speaks again in the second part of her yoga session. Something collapses in me, a disappointment or sadness is present. I see how her words give extra information, inspiring details, maybe meaning. But the mystery is gone, a secret bond, the co-creation: „you offer – I make sense out of it“. This presence in the body, the aliveness in the struggle to explain and as the receiver to be fully there, embracing lovingly all those efforts with gratitude and inner spaciousness.

I am also grateful for the words coming back. We end the morning underscore with a name round. Names hadn’t been shared in the beginning. It is very beautiful to witness people organising their tongue and lips … and hearing their re-awakened crusty voice. We have a first verbal sharing around our experiences of the silence, highlights and lowlights, and later on we share in one-on-one meetings about moments that we had with the person we are facing: Expressing gratitude, naming things we noticed or uncertainties that we are sitting on. Vulnerability and courage are invited.

Alec and I learned a lot about this process of reconnecting to spoken words, meaning „we will do it better next time.“ I will share more about it in the reflection part. The question is: „How can we keep the impact of the silence alive in us until we leave the Retreat and take it with us into our next realities? How can spoken words support this process and when do they catapult us back into chatter habits that weaken our presence?

As a whole…

… I am extremely grateful for these days we journeyed together. I am amazed now, four weeks later, how vivid my experiences still are and how much I enjoy having all the images, sounds and encounters coming to the surface again. As probably everyone on the Retreat I had my moments of doubts and struggles, deep personal questions …

I grew trust that we can hold more within us than we usually do. I am living my life with the idea that if I experience something wonderful it grows bigger when I share it with others. Same for the other direction: There is a german saying „shared sorrow is halved sorrow“. That’s probably true to quite a degree. But it was an experience of self empowerment, that I have the capacity to give value to my experiences myself. When I share them immediately with others they sometimes almost loose their intensity. As if I ticked a box. Shared it – all good – next thing. Without the option to share my experiences it is as if they stay longer alive in me. There was also trust growing, that I have can deal with things myself that move in me, better than I thought. I can hold very different things at the same time, light flavours next heavy loads. Holding doesn’t mean fixing them, it is not a stagnant thing. Holding them, so that they can be alive, move and change. I have the assumption that many of us felt similar.

Being in this limitation experiment together made it probably easier. We all get triggered. We all have things to carry and to move through. Only rarely there was the need for some of us to talk. Being held while being in touch with difficult stuff was helpful, even though the other didn’t know what I was chewing on.

And I loved to have the dance as a field to generate experiences as well as to keep things fluid, that otherwise might get stuck in my system.

With all these inner movements and processes the main flavours from these days in silence that are in me now are very peaceful. There is inspiration, aliveness, a sense of connection, support and sweet courage. Compared to other events I can see and feel my co-travellers more clearly in front of my inner eye. Connections have grown. I am excited to see these people again in different contexts.

I feel very strongly that I want to do another Retreat like this again, even at the same location with its challenges. I would love to see how it will be if we put in our learnings and new curiosities.

As mentioned a few times already: I will share my reflections from my organiser’s and facilitator’s side in an extra text, that will probably be more interesting for people who are organising events and teach themselves.

But I imagine some things will also be interesting for others. I will share more about my findings around the beginning question: “Silence. Such a clear word. But what does it actually mean in this context?”