Marching and Retreating - A Weekend

It felt odd, setting up for a nourishing retreat afternoon the day after marching and protesting. We had been planning our yoga retreat for months, but the urgency of the protest meant spending the day before it on the streets of Manchester with tens of thousands of others, instead of baking cakes and tweaking my yoga flow plan which is what I usually do the day before retreating.

Marching with my retreat co-host had been emotional and tiring. With barely a breath taken and with no real time to process, we were gathering again to enter a totally different space.

Until I realised that, actually, we weren’t.

In the beautiful, secluded building nestled in deeply autumnal woodlands, I gathered armfuls of firewood and roared up the stove. As I paused to drink a tea beside an old tree ablaze with late autumn colours, as I laid out plates and cakes and listened to the stream as I heated the outdoor urn, I began to see that the two events weren’t as jarring as I had first thought.

Both were a powerful gathering

Both were holding space for other people

Both were an invitation to find our inner voice and use it

Both encouraged humanity, compassion and love

Both centred on peace

Both focused on the commonalities not the differences

Both were a connection, a reaching out, a moving towards one another, not away

Both embodied acceptance and celebrated our shared human experience

People gathering can do powerful, transformative things

Women gathering can create supportive containers for one another

The energy gathered in collective spaces can ripple out to impact much wider spheres

There are many ways to gather and many ways to support one another

And, while I wouldn’t have planned to experience those two things back-to-back, with hindsight and a lot of reflection, it was, of course, absolutely perfect.