What are the different ways to approach a retreat?
Taking time out:
- To reconnect
- To deepen your relationship with yourself
- To consider a new foundation of eating in more obedience to your own body
- To rebalance your sleep patterns.
Perhaps it is a treat:
- Not cooking your own food
- Not washing up
- Not staying in your own bed and home are also very much looked forward to.
The Universal Medicine Lennox Head Retreat offered all of that and more this year.
I had not been for a few years so I approached this year ready to fully embrace all that was on offer. The days started at 5.30am and finished at 6pm with space to take walks, head home if you were staying locally, rest, catch up with friends or do some work. It was an opportunity to make space for deepening the relationship with yourself, without leaving your life behind: your life was still being lived and therefore, this made the retreat very practical.
There was something worth noting from the outset that I didn’t really clock till the end and that is the ‘holding’ feeling, a ‘beholding’ of the space that started just before the retreat and began to lift on the last day, but I will come back to that.
The whole week consisted of short presentations and group work. There was no sitting back and letting the work be done for you. Well, there was if that was what you chose, but what a waste of time, money and energy! I suspect you would have had to work very hard to not want to get underneath the topics we covered because they were so applicable to everyday life and supporting us to make sense of the nonsensical in our lives. To deepen this experience and get a wide variety of reflections and discussion styles, you changed groups every time and therefore had an opportunity to meet many different people from many walks of life.
The topics are nothing fancy – they are unpacking our version of ‘normal’ so we can question whether they are contributing to the tension we feel or not and can decide if we still want that pattern of behaviour in our lives. It encourages curiosity and discernment. At every turn we are encouraged to consider the part energy plays in our movements, our choices and our behaviour.
No question there were challenges but everything felt possible, and as such, everything I had thought of as ‘normal’ needed to be on the table for consideration again. After all, that is what a retreat is about, isn’t it – re-connecting, re-considering and laying new foundations?
At the end of the retreat, as we were all saying goodbye, I happened to say to someone how easy it had been and how I could stay discussing this for longer. They casually said, “That is what life is for, isn’t it?!” Well, of course it is and as I shared at the start, there was no abdication of our responsibility for our own life and wellbeing on this retreat: but I had clearly considered it a cocoon from the pace of life I lived as my normal and had to recognise that I don’t have the same depth of discussion and conversation in my life as I had had that week, and clearly wanted. There was nothing to say I couldn’t take that back into my life if it was something I had found expanding and confirming and luckily for me, there was a common factor which would make it possible – me!!
I realised that you don’t just leave what we have connected to in a retreat and go back to an old way of living – that is like wearing the same clothes for years on end without washing! When you take an opportunity, invest time and money, create space to be curious and feel what life is like out of those clothes, then the thought of putting the old clothes on again elicits only one response… Uh, No!!!
So, what changed on the last day? Do you remember the ‘holding’ feeling I shared at the beginning? Well, that started to lift and there was a distinct feeling of realising it was time to take more ownership of the whole package and put it together, making it applicable to each of our lives. This was not for anyone to live for us, this was for us to bring into our movements, or not – no attachment or drama either way.
I watched as Serge Benhayon and Natalie Benhayon said goodbye to us, in full awareness of the challenges we would face but equally knowing they had not once held back in offering us everything they too had been offered, to understand why life presents the challenges it does and to show there is another way. That reflection in itself was a lesson in offering participants true freedom – it was all given and if you never went to anything by Universal Medicine again, you still had all you needed to understand how to live life with Love and vitality.
That afternoon I walked home and felt different. I could feel the energy that had held the retreat as a space for consideration had lifted. It hadn’t gone but there was now a realisation that it was for me to say yes to rather than for it to be there as part of the retreat. I wondered if this is what people who have always had a deep connection with God felt as their normal. It hadn’t been my normal for many years and yet, in that moment, there was NO question left for me that I was held by Love and that I was very much part of that Love.
As the days turned over and I went ‘back’ to my day-to-day life, each day was about re-imprinting the same routine to offer myself a deeper rhythm more in line with the rhythms I had felt when I had offered myself space during the retreat. The lack of space and the feeling of being sucked into time was palpable yet not a foregone conclusion. There was now no question I had a choice to build movements that did not lead me down an automatic set of behaviours to find myself back in my old unwashed clothes.
It felt like growing up and a stepping into responsibility, seeing how much more there is to life than what we see with our eyes. I felt like I was given a whole picture and from there had an opportunity to see as an adult what I knew as a child but had shut down because no one really spoke about such things as energy.
The greatest gift the retreat has given me – and it’s crazy that it is not basic 101 –is that it is always about energy before it is about anything else. The key is going back to the awareness we had as children and re-developing it so we become discerning and build a relationship with our body that will be the marker of all truth – our truth.
Or, of course, we can also go to a retreat, enjoy, rest, discover, rebuild and go back to the way we were living before till we get another holiday or retreat moment. No one says we can’t do that. It just doesn’t seem to make much sense to me anymore.
By Lucy Dahill, MPH, Youth Worker, Researcher, Presenter, Sydney
Further Reading:
Awareness and why we avoid it
Inspired by Universal Medicine… Just Being Me
Before and After the Universal Medicine Lennox Head Retreat
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
Absoulutely Lucy, energy first, then understand what energy we are aligned to so we can make a will-full choice to align to God.
I totally agree with what you are sharing with the world Lucy
“It was an opportunity to make space for deepening the relationship with yourself, without leaving your life behind: your life was still being lived and therefore, this made the retreat very practical.”
Serge Benhayon does not hold back from expressing the truth of life and exposing the lies and corruption we are all a party to. When he exposes the lies it is felt in everyone’s body so you don’t actually have to participate in the retreat because on an energetic level everyone gets the retreat as it is a vibration that is felt by everyone on this plane of life and on the astral plane they can feel the energy shifting too.
A Universal Medicine retreat is an offering to recharge the energetic batteries.
When we start to unpack life at the retreats in small groups we realise that what we consider normal is not normal at all. And for many, it is a relief to feel this as we have been led to believe in something that is not true and goes against what our bodies feel all the time. So is it possible that is why we check out of life with the plethora of distractions at our beck and call because we know that what we call a normal life is very far from our truth?
Each Universal Medicine Retreat builds on the one before adding to the immeasurable bounty that is available through our Loving discussions in the workshops about what has been presented by Serge and Natalie Benhayon.
I guess the only way to not know that there is a totally different way to live life is to basically ignore the fact that it is possible.
Yes we rush rush rush through life and rarely offer ourselves moments to stop that are not just about relief from the rush. These retreats are about changing momentums as well, I find that, as well as getting a deep rest, I also address the patterns that got me to a place of feeling over tired or stressed in the first place.
“I realised that you don’t just leave what we have connected to in a retreat and go back to an old way of living – that is like wearing the same clothes for years on end without washing!” A great analogy Lucy! There is so much on offer at every moment during a retreat. They sure are life-changing opportunities. It’s up to us if we take advantage of them once home again.
“The greatest gift the retreat has given me – and it’s crazy that it is not basic 101 –is that it is always about energy before it is about anything else. ” I can never remind myself of this too often. I watched the last set of the Wimbledon final this year for the first time in ages and watched it being aware of the energetic interplay with the crowd and the players. Fascinating!
I begin to understand that we live in a sea of energy. This is quite hard to understand at first because we cannot see the effects that our movements have, and so it is easy to dismiss the responsibility that every move we make has an affect on everything else. It’s a bit like living under water. But when I stop to consider something as simple as what we can feel when someone is angry; we tend to tip toe round them or not confront them because they can blow up at any moment; then this does explain how we can feel something, because it unsettles us and can make us feel nervous or anxious. And this to me is what all the Universal Medicine courses and retreats are about: the fact that we live in a sea of energy and therefore we have a choice to move in a way that is harmonious with the whole, or move in a way that is disruptive which is abusive and so affects everyone. Is it possible that because we are so sensitive to movement, that when it is not harmonious we harden and go into protection, erect a barrier in an attempt to keep out the offensive energy? What everyone who participates at these retreats gets to feel is that there is a different way to live, that we are very sensitive beings, but we can live in a way that supports us to read the sea of energy and by reading it we are more able to stay steady and not be caught up in it. This has been my personal experience.
I have had non supportive sleep patterns most of my life, so the retreats offer me the support to get a sleep rhythm that is supportive on a grand scale.
I used to think that a retreat was an opportunity to ‘escape’ from the world. However, since attending the Universal Medicine Retreats I have discovered that they are a time and space to gain understanding and skills to deepen my/one’s commitment to the world.
I’m realising that at the retreat everyone is given everything, as in what’s on offer is so much awareness and it’s totally the choice of each participant what they make of it and take away. This is no different to everyday life too, just what’s offered is made so clear. It’s an amazing opportunity for growth and then continued evolution if you take it home.
What’s on offer are the building blocks of a different way of living and a lot of this does have to do with opening up to the fact that we are very aware and sensitive people. We have dulled ourselves so much that life seems to be boring when actually it is very alive and vital. When we tune into this vitality we lose that Zombie mentality everything changes as we reconnect back to the awareness that has always been there.
This was such a gorgeous blog to read this morning. A group of friends are planning a mini retreat to deepen our connection, and I took much from the blog about the preparation for the retreat and whether I choose to incorporate the learning into my life post retreat. Thank you Lucy for the inspiration.
We have the opportunity to really deepen our relationship with ourselves at the Retreat. It is time out from all the distractions at home, and a real treat. And then the best part is that we take it back home and start living what we have learned.
Yes , learning from what we have been given at a retreat and living it back home. An opportunity to re-set our daily rhythms too.
Perhaps the majority of retreats we have on offer don’t work long term because they are entirely based on making you feel blissful at the time of the retreat, but there is no focus on everyday life & how to maximise every moment & live your mundane in joy.
Yes, or at least a break from life’s stresses without reference to life, so that when you return nothing has been prepared for – just like what I’ve experienced and others have also said, that coming back from holiday after a couple of days, it’s like you feel you’d not been away at all. After these retreats, on return to regular life, I don’t feel like I’ve crash landed, more like grown wings,with a few adjustments, ready to fly
Ah absolutely, with a new foundation, new perspective and a body ready to go!
I love that – ‘grown wings… ready to fly’ -So beautifully expressed. Even a one day or a few hours with a higher initiate inspires me to be more.
Thanks Lucy, it’s a very common thing to have an experience but not let it change how we are in life, but go back to how we were before the workshops, retreat, etc. It’s a great description here of what we can do to allow the changes to establish “I had a choice to build movements that did not lead me down an automatic set of behaviours.” Sometimes we can feel that the experience was provided for us, not realising we ourselves are able to live what we have just experienced. I feel for me it’s about allowing a change of mindset and opening up to what’s possible in my day to day living.
I’ve been on lots of different types of retreats in my life. The Universal Medicine retreats are like no other. For me they are like an annual service where I get to see what needs to be changed and I get all ready to go back out on the road with a different way of being that’s going to support me for the road ahead.
Yes, just like an MOT, we need a service check for our bodies and our lives. The retreats offer us this. What we do with it thereafter is up to us.
Taking time out to deepen and expand our sense of love and truth is very well worth it – it is a game changer, and I love that.