Maggio 2023

The retreat in May 2023 was our very first retreat ever.

We had a vision and with this serving as our beacon we chose to describe our retreats as a purifying experience. Purification was to be at the heart of the retreat. We put together a plan to achieve this purification within a short period of five days.

We were keenly aware of the challenges inherent in bringing together people who do not know each other for 5 days to share an intimate time and space with one other. With this in mind, we organised the retreat to combine the dynamics of a group while ensuring each participant could also retreat to their own private sphere. And then it all started: 7 participants, Tobi, myself, a beautiful location, a well-thought-through concept and months of preparation to make sure we would be ready for any and all situations and needs that could arise at our very first retreat.

What we couldn’t do anything about, however, was the weather. At the time of the retreat, a large part of Italy including Puglia was hit by heavy rainfalls and flooding. For a brief moment, it looked like the retreat would literally go under in the deluge. Four participants departing from Cologne-Bonn airport were confronted with a long delay in their travel itinerary. Their flight was ultimately re-scheduled to the next morning and they ended up spending the night at the airport! They were contemplating calling it all off and just staying home, but the four weary travelers were then somehow able to motivate each other to persevere and wait for what turned out to be more than 12 hours for their flight to Bari.

It was worth it. If they had gone home that night we would never have shared this retreat experience with each other. An experience of learning, rethinking and transformation marked by a good feeling and hart-hitting efficiency and results at the same time. We would never have had all those light conversations about things like the fastest, most coveted cars, bloggers, the funniest and dodgiest holiday anecdotes. We would never have been introduced to the expression "Heckentier", not to mention all the hilarious inside jokes, i.e. renaming "downward dog" to "flying dog". Then there were the more serious conversations about personal matters and weightier issues - physical symptoms, physical pain and weakness, questions, doubts, fears. There were tears of joy, tears of sorrow, moments of personal progress, plenty of sweating, relaxation and such a good, healthy, delicious cuisine that it was not long before the proper etiquette of leaving a bite of decency was cast to the wind and we were all scrambling to grab the last piece! In the end, everyone achieved what we were there for: purification and a reboot.

It is indeed a lofty goal to purify oneself and reboot within a short span of five days and to achieve a tangible change in lifestyle and actually measure the effect. This usually requires a plan that is pretty strict, quite rigorous, rather unpleasant and geared to make one recoil and abandon the whole idea. But what if purification and rebooting could be turned into a method to bring about such a nice, pleasant feeling that you don’t ever want it to stop? A method that makes you think, "why don't I live this way all the time?" A method that activates your body's mechanisms to initiate what it wants and needs, from healing to losing weight, gaining weight, strengthening muscles, ... This is what we did.

And we are elated that it turned out to be an effective approach that we shall adopt at all our future retreats.

This approach is based on a keen understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the body, which serves as the foundation for all our actions and activities during a retreat: our food and nourishment, our physical activity, and our treatments.

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