I am grateful for the week I spent as a support person at a Quest for Life retreat.
The name of the Retreat was called Healing Your Life. This program was for people who have faced one of life’s Ds – diagnosis, divorce, death, depression or disaster. All 22 participants were dealing with different challenges. These included physical abuse, sexual abuse, chronic illness, grief, PTSD, cancer and bankruptcy and marriage breakdown. The group was very diverse and they were all looking for a more peaceful and joyful way to live their lives.
I was very grateful to be part of the team. All the participants lived at the retreat for five days and were provided beautiful food, restful accommodation and support from the two senior facilitators, a senior support person and a junior support person ( me).
I was very grateful for the opportunity to watch the change that happened to all the participants of the retreat. The process that happened at Quest was not about changing the person. It was about changing the person’s perspective and helping them to regain a sense of control over their lives.
Petrea identified in her book Quest for Life that on her retreats participants don’t often talk about their cancer, chronic pain or whatever has brought them to the retreat. More often they talk about the areas of their lives that aren’t working well or are causing them pain. The difficult times the participants have experienced or are experiencing, force them to change the way they experience life. The spirit with which these people live their life becomes what is important not the length of their life. This was definitely the magic that I witnessed.
The process of the retreat seemed to be what was instrumental in the participants transformation. They were away from their normal routine, they were allowed to rest, they were nurtured by the non – judgemental nature of the facilitators, they were given beautiful , nutritious food and clean filtered water and they were given numerous tools to use in their lives. These tools included the role of meditation, living mindfully, taking charge of their thoughts and feelings, practical strategies to communicate better, learning to respond rather than react, and managing their lives more skilfully. All the skills that the participants learnt allowed them to produce new habits by developing new neural pathways in the brain.
Dan Siegel explains that it is possible to Change your Brain :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4tR5Ebc4Mw
And this is what changing your brain looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NA_o1jOjsQ
I believe that the participants all started to produce new neural pathways and thus changed their brains. This was done because they all the information that they were presented was seen with their eyes, heard through their ears and felt in their bodies. I was grateful to not only witness these changes but these changes happened to me also.
I am so grateful to have been able to witness the joy that came into these people’s lives in a week. All the participants were so courageous. They participated in the retreat, they shared their stories and they committed to living their lives more joyfully.
Until next time
