– reflections as an organiser and facilitator

6.-12.4.2025 Sunshine Coast/ Australia

“What do we actually mean with ‚silence‘ in the context of this Retreat?“

It was such a rich and rewarding experience to co-organise this Silent CI Retreat with Alec Kohl. I felt the urge to share insights and findings from my process as an organsier and facilitator of an event that takes out our main way to communicate information: the spoken words. It gave me much more clarity what silence means to me. I learned things about myself and what to do better next time.

I hope this text is an inspiration for people who get involved in events that invite silence, first of all organisers and teachers. But some reflections might also be inspiring for people who just want to participate in a Silent Retreat.

Reading part 1 first might be helpful to get an idea of the setting, flow and athmosphere of this event.

What do we actually mean with “silence” in the context of this Retreat?

We had some ideas in the beginning that atracted us to do a Silent Retreat, but we very much wanted to find out more about what „silence“ would actually mean for us in this context.

1. No speaking – more trusting

The first answer is very simple: silence as „no speaking“. We had the wish to have the core part of the retreat without any speaking, not even for the facilitation.

For all events I am engaged in as an organiser and teacher there is the question which information is essential for people, so that they feel safe enough to dive into the world of the sensing and moving body with others. On a Silent Retreat this question has it’s extra challenges, because we can’t easily share new information, once we commit to not speaking.

I think it was a good choice that we used spoken words for the first 1.5 days for the facilitation. So we could implement the structures of our days in silence and introduce reoccuring elements of scores and a sort of ‚essentials vocabulary‘ for our dancing together.

We had a long list of all the information, that felt important to share with the participants and devided it in chunks: info mail 1, info mail 2, personal welcoming tour on arrival, first circle, first underscore … We tried to minimize the information for the first gathering in a circle, so that we could start together with a sense of calmness instead of information overload.

We were also aware that many things we often share on these gatherings are obvious. It helps me to remember that people who come late to classes but who are in a good presence can tune into what’s happening surprisingly well and figure things out without being told.

Alec has the amazing capacity to trust the people who come to events he organises. „They are grown up, they are smart, they will figure it out.“ He likes to put more emphasis on ‚agency‘ or self empowerment. „If you have an idea how something could be done better then just do it the way you think it’s better. Trust your impulses instead of asking for permission.“

I was more busy with what could go wrong, especially with what to do when people are really struggling. I was grateful that Alec reminded me in the preparation to invest into trusting instead of putting too much energy into worst case scenarios. Not easy for me. Very interesting. A major part of my job as a teacher and space holder is to create spaces, where people feel safe, at least safe enough to bring their awareness to what’s happening in the moment. It is maybe the skill that I developed the most in the last 30 years of teaching. It is very multilayered, subtle and mainly invisible. I enjoy this Papa-like care taking. Often it is just the right word at the right time. And that’s exactly what I wasn’t able to do on this event where we explored silence.

Writing this now makes me understand that this was one reason that made it harder for me to drop fully into the experience. In the breaks I often had a very busy mind…

Interesting: CI is so much about learning to trust – starting from the physical level. When can I give my weight? How much? How can I sense that my partner is ready and ok to take my weight? How am I able to communicate that I can take your weight, that you can trust me? Through my entire journey with CI I carry the belief that things we experience through the body will have a beneficial impact on other areas of life, finding more groundedness, a deeper connection to self and others, being heard and seen, sensing and articulating boundaries and maybe as the most important one growing trust in myself and others.

And now I had to learn how to trust others to take care of themselves or when to ask for support and when to offer it.

We grow trust by giving trust and seeing if it works out. Trust usually doesn’t just come to us. Growing trust is based on taking small risks in a smart way. Maybe that’s what I did in this Retreat.

An amazing part was, how our volunteers stepped up to each challenge. They had their areas of responsibility and took it so beautifully, calmly with creativity and cooperation.

2. Teaching without spoken words

I was in charge of the facilitated offers. From the second full day onwards I had to do it without spoken words. Oh my gosh. How much I missed the spoken words!

One reason is the effort to prepare. I need to be very clear in what I want to offer. I need to be able to make it visible. Long demonstrations. It has to be clear enough so that people can spend some time with it. I can’t just quickly add another information when people are getting to the end of their curiosity. I am not used to precisely preparing a class. So, I wrote down the progression of an exercise or score. Draw something, put some key words down, etc.

Without using spoken words I feel I don’t have the ability to go with the flow. I can’t just observe the space, feel the energy, see what’s already alive and enhance it by a few little words. With words I know so well how to keep things going and to develop further without cutting what’s alive.

One thing I learned for a possible next time is to establish a few key symbols or gestures. The most important one would be: „keep on doing what you are doing while looking at me“. It sounds so simple, but I think we need to practice it. It’s not easy to keep the dance connection alive while carefully looking at the teacher. Directing my eyes is compromising my three-dimensional dance. The other symbols I would introduce are „change roles“, „change partners“. The hardest one was „continue what you do and develop it towards dancing“. Whenever I tried it, everyone would look at me with irritation and stop dancing until we ended up laughing.

For a next time I might want to try the use of minimal language … not sure, I am just wondering when the silence is serving us and when are we getting lost in trying to serve the silence. I need to remind myself how much I enjoyed Ella’s silent Yoga classes in the morning. 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. I notice that I use more mimic and gestures when teaching without words. I am somehow more expressive. 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. As a participant I’d probably prefer the teaching without words :)

3. Letting go of words – beyond the spoken ones

I remember that in the preparation my co-organiser Alec Kohl had the wish to reduce any kind of words as much as possible, knowing that words will be present even if we don’t speak. We had an info board that uses words so that we know what’s happening during the day and if there is anything else everyone should be aware of. The facilitation sometimes benefits from written instructions. And of course some of our thoughts are verbal. I imagine that the more words are floating around the more of our mind activity will be verbal. My unspoken wish, that I couldn’t even articulate before the Retreat, was to have a stronger presence of images, more awareness for feelings and other non-verbal products of the mind’s activity guiding and enriching our journeys. I have the believe that non-verbal expressions of the mind are closer to the body and heart, and that’s a state I am very curious about.

So, we tried to reduce written words as much as possible. Keeping the schedule simple. Things people were struggling with were addressed first in written words via the „worry box“ to us organisers. We wanted to only share the most essential things with everyone on the info board. We also decided to not have people share their deep findings on a wall. And also wanted to avoid others replying to those with adding their thoughts to it.

4. Reducing dialogue and conversation

One thing that is often connected to words is not really about words: Dialogue and conversation. It happens in the dance without spoken words and even without a verbal mindset. These kinds of dialogues I am very happy about for a Retreat like this.

But I realised that I had a longing for not going into dialogues outside of the dance. No conversations!

We agreed that little written notes were the better alternative to using spoken words if there was no other way to communicate certain things with another person. But through that words became present in our shared space and sometimes this ‚writing notes‘ and replying became a substitute for spoken conversations. It does something to the body-mind state to be in or around conversational interaction. I wonder what it is. Conversation can pull me away from myself. Maybe I try to explain myself instead of just being myself. I want to have reassurance from someone else, I give responsibility to them instead of trusting myself. Something like that…

But of course, sometimes we need to figure things out together instead of everyone doing what they think is right or getting paralysed by not knowing how to solve a problem. Our idea for a next time would be to have a designated spot outside of the shared main space, where we go with someone to quickly whisper what needs to be communicated. Then the shared spaces can stay without dialogue-ish interactions.

The main clarity for my longing for a non-conversational space I found when we invited words back in. Learning through failing!

After a first name round, a small group sharing and a faciltated sharing in a circle we gave this prompt for the lunch break:

„You can talk to others, but only sharing gratitude, or giving insights into an experience you had with this person.“ The other person would only gently bow and say „thank you“. No further response. No conversation. The idea was to hold what you received, let it move and sink in. I strongly believe in this proposal. And I actually would love to keep this arrangement until the very end of the retreat. No conversations. No direct responding. Expanding our capacity to be with what we got exposed to, to hold it, to hold very different things next to each other.

In the time passing when we don’t respond surprisingly often the initial urge to reply dissolves. It is also possible that a clear response emerges with time. Then I can share it with the other and have them take my words in without directly responding.

We didn’t demonstrate our proposal. We didn’t share the importance of the ‚non-responding‘ heartfelt enough. I guess we weren’t so clear about it either. That was a ‚big‘ mistake. At lunch people started having conversations. It was loud an chatty for my sensitised ears. Good conversations probably, but it felt like an explosion. As if we had never been silent. What a learning experience!

At our next gathering we invited silence back. Luckily we could easily get back into the non-verbal world we had been establishing for the last days.

If we do another Retreat like this I would like to try to keep the whole time non-conversational, from arrival to leaving. Dialogue-ish interactions would be limited to the dance. I wonder how that would go. There seem to be conversational needs building. A bunch of people had a laughing feast one night, that was fed by playing a game and dialoguing through written words, gesturing and miming. They had amazing fun and to a certain degree I enjoyed this outburst of energy and direct interaction. But it filled the communal space and beyond, where not much else could co-exist. We’ll have to think about an outlet for this kind of high energy for a possible next Silent Retreat.

5. Silence to hear inner voices more easily

I very much hope we’ll do another one at this beautiful, non-perfect, nature embedded location. One initial wish for my experience of these days in silence didn’t become true. I had hoped to be more in touch with these gentle, quiet inner voices that I often don’t hear in my usual days with a faster beat. I guess calling these voices intuition is going in the right direction: to follow an inner impulse, because it feels true even though I can’t make sense out of it. Having generally less stimulation does open all senses more in my experience. From what I heard also others could listen to their inner voices more easily and follow them.

I think it was mainly being in the facilitator’s and organisers role that made it more difficult to really dive in. Especially with the responsibility for time and being busy with what needs to be done and adjusted.

On the last of the completely non-verbal days I had decided to start the underscore in the morning as usual but then to move the dancing outdoors onto grass, under trees with some logs, rocks and benches to play with. Nice idea! I was curious about this kind of opening up together for the new possibilities, coming from a state of being well connected with each other. When the moment came to do it the dancing was magnificent. The quality of sharing time, space and life met my visions why I wanted to do this whole thing. I heard my inner voice „just keep dancing inside, it can’t get better with that change.“ But I had announced that we’d move outside at some point, so I felt I had to do it. Usually I have this guideline for my teaching, that the really precious moments have priority, no matter what the plan was. That’s why we are here and do all this!

Anyways, I made us move outside … and the magic evaporated soonish and our shared dancing fell apart. It wasn’t a drama though either. Everyone was in touch enough with themselves to do what felt right. But this experience was a good reminder: in doubt I follow my heart and not my plan.

I want share one more failure, my low-light – which still happened to be a highlight for many people. We decided to go for a bush walk – as one morning session – to a giant fig tree and spend some time there for a sit-spot and to go into movement from there. We had announced it on the info board as a „walk to a tree“ and listed what to bring, like water, sun protection, hiking shoes or barefoot… And we invited people to open their senses for this walk through nature.

What we didn’t say was that we had three hours time for the whole thing and that it would take 45 min walking to get there. Alec led us. Soon it became obvious that some people took in the invitation to walk with open senses more serious than others, more serious than we had planned. So, some of us walked extremely slow, discovering all sorts of fascinating things that nature has to offer when we start paying attention. „That’s exactly why we are in nature!“ said one voice in me, while another, much louder voice shouted „Hurry up! Everyone else is waiting. Like this we’ll never get to the glorious tree … and back.“ I was so stressed. I felt other people got annoyed that they had to wait so long, again and again. And the slow people could feel my passive aggressive vibes walking closely behind them. I hated to not being able to communicate easily what needed to be adjusted.

Luckily I was the one who suffered the most. Only very few people didn’t connect so well to the basic idea, but most of us were super happy, inspired and grateful for this experience.

Another big learning for me: 1. Being more aware which information is crucial for entering a shared experience. 2. What I think people are experiencing is first of all an assumption and might have more to do with me than with them. 3. In a loving and caring setting like this people are pretty ok with things not being perfect. They are grown-ups and make their own choices.

Resume

A core part of my drive to do this silent event was the wish to get closer to my intuition, these subtle inner voices that come from a place that is truly me but not easy to access. I wished to get in touch with this inner knowledge for more clarity in my dance as well as in all non-scheduled times and also in my facilitation. I mainly failed with this one. I guess that organising and facilitating keeps the sense-making part of me too busy. Having to be aware of time, structure and direction makes it difficult to open up more for the subtle voices inside.

And still I clearly want to do it again. Providing a frame for others is definitely rewarding. And the quality of dancing that happened, especially in terms of connecting as a group was at certain times deeply satisfying for me. There was a magic, freedom, sweetness and wildness that I am longing for. Space for lots of different alivenesses far beyond trying to fulfill what dancing CI should look like – while still having CI as the driving force for it all.

Alec is pretty clear that – in a potetial next Silent Retreat – he wants to step away from responsibilties once the silence starts, so that he can dive more fully into the experience. It makes completely sense to me.

And still I think that I can contrribute to create a better space than we did at this first try while also diving more into the experience. After the next Silent CI Retreat I might know if that’s possible.

And I think that these formats are good for humankind, it’s maybe my way to contribute.