June 8. Thursday.

And so the Transcending the Personal Retreat begins. It is really heartwarming to be in the presence of these wonderful people.

It feels a little tricky with half the group coming back from other trainings of mine, and half being new. But a beautiful feeling developed in the first morning. Then Gabriela and I felt a little drop in the afternoon. I’m not exactly sure why—it don’t think it was because Richard and Michael showed up in the afternoon and missed the opening circle; it might have been because I had the group jump into a deep listening activity before we had fully processed the morning small groups about reckoning with exactly what the personal is and what it does to us.

I love this retreat format; we all had the afternoon off and came back together from 6:00-8:00. So a few of us went to the beach. It was so sunny and beautiful, and not too hot (although Sayed thought it was). Gabi and Fredrik went swimming. I fell asleep on the beach after talking with Lise, which I really needed, because I woke up really refreshed.

That evening Gab and I broke off from the crowd to debrief and plan for the next day, ate at a restaurant overlooking the sea, with the near-full moon coming up and the beautiful blue colors; it was truly gorgeous. It’s tough for us to attend to the work we need to do because we keep catching up on personal matters, since we haven’t seen each other for six months and are real good friends. Got to bed later than I wanted to. A bunch of our group was still at the bar partying.