Just finished two days of silence, two days of being offline, two days of being in my own company, listening to my own body, moment to moment. Only two days and I am feeling so present, so connected, so full of energy that I am about to explode.

TWO DAYS. It is nothing. I ask myself, why am I not doing this more often? At the same time knowing that some people are never ever, in their entire life, retreating like this.

Many people come to our Yogiakdemin retreats – getting shocked, nervous, scared, irritated – when we, on the first day, are telling them that we will be in silence until 2 pm every day and in the middle of the week we will enter 40 hours of silence together. I am not at all judging these people, it is absolutely nothing wrong with them BUT it is something wrong with our society. How can it be such a “new” thing, such a big deal to be in silence for a few hours?

With this in mind, I am not shocked at all that so many people are having depressions, burn outs, eating disorders, disease, addictions to all kinds of stuff. Of course, this is the reality of our society when most of us never stop to listen to our bodies and inner voices. When the biggest fear of most people are – themselves. Because, if it isn’t yourself, why would you be so resistance towards being in silence? Some people say they are getting bored but for me that is even more sad, how can you be bored so quickly of being in your own company?

Isn’t it crazy that we are living our lives constantly doing things, being occupied, running as fast as we can, learning about so many things in the outside world, trying to build relationships with other people but what about the relationship to ourself? What about getting to know how our own body is functioning, how our inner voice is speaking to us?

I am definitely not saying that I want to live by myself, like an hermit always, but in order to appreciate the company of others and the activity of the society I need to shut everything off sometimes. To understand what is mine, what is yours. To arrive back into myself. I am curious, do you agree with me or maybe you don’t need silence to feel yourself?

Photo Mohammed Salik