Who did I meet at the Silent Weekend?

You probably have a hard time imagining what the Silent Weekend is. It sounds maybe esoteric, maybe weird, maybe like nothing extra happens. Unfortunately, and thank goodness, this is something that is difficult to describe in words, and also difficult to  people. That's why I'm writing this - I went through this weekend and left it completely convinced of its meaning. I strongly believe that it's something that everyone should do once in a while to discover places they never get to in everyday life.

At the beginning we gathered as a group, Berrak and Naima explained the basic instructions and rang the bell to start the silence. The silence was divine. I'm a little introverted, and knowing that I don't have to get to know people verbally and make small talk, which I'm not very good at, really pissed me off. After a while we started the first exercise, which was qi-gong with Naima. It was my first experience with qi-gong, and my office-twisted body reacted with surprise and pain to the slow and precise movements. My mind somehow had nothing to fall back on, everything was so slow and graceful. I watched the other participants as they moved gracefully and suddenly the feeling that the whole thing really pissed me off slowly crept into me. Where is the comfort that was promised, where is the peace of mind!? Everyone looked happy and focused and I was getting more and more maddened. I kept thinking, “Jesus Christ, what must it be like! I absolutely hate it!”, and I was convinced that after this exercise I would go to Berrak and apologize that I couldn't survive this. I had been angry and irritable every day for the past week or so, and now it seemed I had reached the very peak of my rage. Then suddenly there came a moment when it could no longer be tolerated. Something in me said, Come on, it's bothering you. If it's crazy to you, you don't have to pretend you're in Zen. and I allowed myself to flood my entire body with that rage. At that moment, something broke. It's hard to describe, but it was as if the frozen surface broke and I fell under it - into an inner world that was inaccessible until now. Despite the group of people around, I found myself in some inner solitude, where it was just me as an adult and me as a little girl. And she told me without hesitation that she is the one causing the anger, because I don't pay attention to her in the same way that my parents used to pay little attention to me. Wow. The next two hours, alternating between qigong practice with Naima and somatic body work with Berrak, I spent in an inner dialogue with her, asking her questions to which she had very quick and wise answers. I understood where most of my anger and frustration was coming from. Each additional exercise that worked in silence with the body helped to move and explore new parts of the body, new territories and new sensations. With each subsequent exercise, I slowly became more in touch with myself and the inner girl. She answered a lot of things I needed to hear that day. She told me, for example, that I can no longer blame my parents for not caring enough. It is already my responsibility to take care of myself and her, of those empty places that everyone carries inside. I'm an adult now and it's my duty. She also told me that the way I am able to take care of her shows the kind of care I will be able to give to my future daughter and that I better take good care of that relationship. It all made a lot of sense. When we were about halfway through the day, the dialogue with her stopped. I spent the remaining day and a half of the entire weekend in deep joy and enjoying my own existence, movement, music, other members of the group... Something in me was fundamentally relieved. Thanks to that, I started to be able to perceive the other participants of the weekend. During the pair exercises, I was amazed at how you can see a person like an open encyclopedia just by moving. From the movements of the hands, I sensed without words what kind of person was sitting across from me, I had never experienced anything like that. During the exercises, where there was more dancing, I felt a deep compassion for others, a total human belonging. A new surprise and knowledge awaited each exercise.

If I have to evaluate it somehow, I think that I would never even smell a similar experience in the daily rhythm. Those two days were an essential space to slowly dive as deep as I needed and experience a very therapeutic experience, where my body and my own inner wisdom became the therapist. I am very grateful to both Berrak and Naima for this experience and I fully trust their work. I am incredibly grateful that they dedicate themselves to this dimension of life and help others experience such adventures. Sometimes I wonder if I didn't make it all up, if the inner girl wasn't some kind of dream... And then I always tell myself that if so, I made it up damn well. :)