Five Reflections From HHH Retreat (March 2018)

Posted by Vinit Gujarathi on Mar 15, 2018

I was talking to a a noble friend and I was telling him "I learn few things in each and every retreat, sometimes a few things are reminders, sometimes I see blind spots, sometimes I see inspirations and a few other times I also see the unknown". On listening to this, he said why don't you write about your experience and what you learned in the retreat and it made sense. This blog is dedicated to the experiences and learnings from the recent Head-Hands-Heart retreat that I was part of.

One value that I learned from the volunteers was "Trust"
There was deep trust in all the fellow volunteers, when a thing was said that it will be done, everyone else fully trusted that it will be done. I was so moved by it. Through out the retreat so many things happen and the task list is filled with lots of to-do's but even the tiniest of the things were take care of, it was amazing to see and learn that from volunteers.
I also realised that when there was trust shown, I felt even more responsible. When I was talking to a friend about this lesson I learned, we also talked about a fact " May be everyone was so busy that no one had time to re-check and may be you thought it to be trust". I answered that it could have been the case, but when I was given a task I never did before, 6 out of 11 volunteers checked on me if I need help, and when I said, " I got this" they simply smiled gave a thumbs up and trusted the work and this was "Trust" this was not because no one had time. I feel blessed to have been able to see the value of trust at a deeper level and I am already thinking "how will this help in critical situations in life? "

Gentleness :
I learned in the retreat how important it is to be Gentle, there was a situation when I was talking to a participant and I said something very simply and very lightly however it landed in the person's head as he should do it and when he expressed that he did it only because of I said so, I was reflecting on the fact that " For me I could have said it as passing thought, but if it still feels like a push to the other person, then it is still a push and so my responsibility does not only lie in how I say things but also in how it is received ". Its a very subtle dynamics and I saw a tiny glimpse of it and I think I can work on it.

Deep listening is healing :
In this retreat, a lot was shared about deep listening, when a participant was sharing intimate thoughts with the group, the energy felt as if everyone was tuned into the value of deep listening, for me there was no sense of pity or anger towards any character in the story but there was sense of holding space for more things to flow and as I was articulating this thought about deep listening in my head, someone in the popcorn sharing very beautifully shared "Deep listening is actually healing for me, I don't want to give solutions to someone when they talk about things, but when I deeply listen with the virtue of holding space I am healed a bit" and this was another aha moment in the retreat.

Application of "Saying Yes when I can" :
From my learnings of previous retreat, I was very mindful of saying 'yes'. I didn't want to say 'yes' in the excitement of the event and I really wanted to understand in my head where can I be of service and where will my 'yes' be actually a dis-service. There were things I wanted to say 'yes' to but in my heart I knew that it would be difficult to jump into many things and that really helped me, I did few things, but I was happy that my heart was into what I was doing and I was happy that I could finally apply something that I learned in the previous retreat.

Invisible laddering :
I could see invisible laddering in the retreat, I was laddered in so many ways and that brought a little more clarity on how laddering could be done and more so, how can it be done more invisibly. Thank you invisible ladders :)

Every retreat is so unique in its own ways, and this was unique one as well. I don't want to write that this retreat was most memorable because I felt that even after the last retreat, lol. Well, memorable or not, it was great to be a part of this one. I want to take a moment and thank everything, the tiniest of it, that conspired me to be in this field of love and in this field of possibility :)

Posted by Vinit Gujarathi on Mar 15, 2018 | permalink


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  • Vidhi wrote ...

    Thank you Vinit for sharing this.Its such a beautiful reminder for us all to keep thinking of smallest value which we find in day to day living, and sometimes we tend to ignore that.