81. What I heard on my silent retreat

The voice coach goes silent! Funny, I know. In this episode I share my experience at a weekend silent retreat and explain why I'm going back for more.

Transcript

Hello, hello! This is the episode you've been waiting for. I'm going to give you the full report of my silent retreat. Now, if you haven't been following my socials or on my emailing list, you're probably wondering what's going on. You're thinking, "Hang on. This is a public speaking podcast. Why are we talking about silence?" And yeah, the voice coach going silent, it's poetry, isn't it?

So a couple of weeks ago, I took a weekend off to go on a silent retreat. Why did I do it? Well, it was like, my mind had so many different tabs open. The inbox was overflowing, and I had no idea where the bloody notification dings were coming from. So I was feeling very full. And also, I was... kind of getting into a bit of a hamster wheel feel. And if there's one thing that I fear, it is mediocrity and mundanity. I don't even know if that's how you say it, but I fear the mundane. For me, the idea of a routine of get up, go to work, do this, go to the gym, go to sleep, wake up, rinse and repeat. That is just absolutely terrifying to me. And often when I see other people living lives that way, it causes me anxiety because that's just like not living to me. And I was starting to feel like I was on a little bit of this hamster wheel, even though I absolutely love what I do and what I create. I want my life to be exciting and interesting. And this silent retreat really created a pattern interrupt, a chance to reset it. Also put me out of my comfort zone.

Now I'll start by saying, it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. So when we got there... And by the way, I did it through a company called Find My Calm, gorgeous woman called Kara, Find My Calm. I will put the link to her website in the show notes. And we went up to Maleny. The property was absolutely stunning. And for the first couple of hours we could talk. So I was talking to the other people there, and even we went around the room and introduced ourselves and why we were there. There was about 10 of us. And then, when we left to go to dinner, that's when the silence began. This is where it got interesting. So we'd gone from talking to each other to going into this sort of kitchen area, sitting side by side at a table, not speaking. And of all things, guess what we were eating— soup!

So can you imagine? Like soup's awkward at the best of times, let alone when you've just been plunged into silence. And so it wasn't just speaking that wasn't allowed, there was also no eye contact and no non-verbals. So it was a little bit of an adjustment to make. It was really interesting. Like the first two questions that came to my mind was, "Oh my gosh, how am I going to know where to put the plates? And how am I going to say, ‘Thank you’?" It kind of really tells you a bit about yourself when those are the things that you worry about. So as we go through, I'll read you a little excerpts from my journal. I won't read you everything. You'll definitely be thinking I'm bonafide crazy if I do that. But there's a couple of pieces here, which really speak to the heart of how I was feeling at the time.

And so I've got here: "How will I know where to put the plates? How will I say ‘Thank you’? It's funny. The two questions that come to mind, right before going silent, we worked so hard on creating human connection through acknowledging eye contact, conversation. When silence reigns, it's like no one else exists. Eyes down, very Handmaid's Tale in a way. Sitting at a table, eating dinner without ever acknowledging the girl to my left and the girl to my right. It just flew in the face of everything I wanted to do. But in this world where silence reigns, where silence is what people pay for, feeling uncomfortable is the price you pay. Here, those niceties, 'Please', 'Thank you.', 'How are you?', 'Did you have far to come?'. Here, those niceties are naughty. More than naughty. They ruin the very thing people want. They sabotage the calm we're here to find. They risk the big breakthrough we're here to get. They interrupt the reset. And so feeling rude and weird is a small price to pay. Where silence reigns, so does our soul. And so when you go silent, you really start to realize the power of words: word weight, and also word waste. How many words do we waste? I mean, imagine what if we had like a word quoter? At the silent retreat, it was really easy because there was no words. Therefore there was no choice, but it got me thinking, what if you had one word a day? What would it be? To whom would you say it? What about two words?"

And so, I'll take you through three things that I really took away from the weekend, but that's the first one. The first one is the power of words. If we talk about economy of words, I work with lots of people, helping them put their presentations together for conferences and speeches and TED talks, and things like that. And we really do drill down into the words that we use. Words are like currency and what are they worth? What is the value if we were to ration them, if we were only allowed so many? Hmn. So I don't have any answers for you on that one, but that was definitely something that I was thinking about. And I thought it was a very, very useful lesson to come through for me, especially as a speaking coach, right? It reminded me of the power of pause as well. But you can actually say so much without saying anything.

Now, a little bit of a funny interlude. So after we had our dinner on the Friday night, we had a beautiful session of Yoga Nidra, and Yoga Nidra is, it's basically a meditation that you do before going to sleep. And even though the food was absolutely to die for, it was delicious, but it didn't really agree with me. My tummy was feeling a bit... And I was really, you know, wanting to be close by a toilet. Now that's just not a great feeling to have when you're trying to relax your whole body lying on the floor and you know, trying not to ruin anybody else's calm. Even though I was feeling I was going to have to dash out the door at any moment, you know, it's like the usual crap wasn't coming out of my mouth. So it was finding another way. Anyway, good news by Saturday, I was completely fine. This brings me to the second thing that I learned, not about diarrhea. Don't worry about that. It's the way that silence heightens your senses. Often when we eat food, we're doing something else. Whereas this was really mindful eating, I was really tasting flavors that I'd never thought to taste. I was savoring all the textures. I could hear so many more sounds when you just go completely quiet. The sounds you can hear are incredible. We were in a beautiful part of nature, so it was mainly bird sounds. But there were also planes. And if you really listened, you could hear cars in the highway, in the distance. All of these sounds that you just never would have heard if you hadn't had gone quiet. The touch of different things, you really felt not just the breath in your body and the feeling of your fingers, touching each other or what it might be. You could feel the comfort of the chair you were sitting in, the texture of the grass. Your sight was enhanced. I mean, I remember noticing things even on the second day that I had walked past heaps of times and never noticed.

I started seeing things, noticing things. And of course you can smell more. So all of those other senses really came alive. And what I think is so valuable about having those senses heightened. Well for me, anyway, it makes me feel like I'm really in the present moment. There's that great quote by a Chinese philosopher. I believe he says, "If you're depressed, you're living in the past. If you're anxious, you're living in the future. If you're at peace, you're living in the present."

If you're depressed, you're living in the past. If you're anxious, you're living in the future. If you're at peace, you're living in the present. And I've definitely had feelings of depression in my life. And probably more so than that is anxiety. It's me always thinking ahead, always planning. If you're constantly worried about tomorrow, you can't enjoy today. And so by dropping into the body and by having all those senses heightened, I really could feel at one with the present moment. And that gives you an incredible sense of inner peace. You can't put a dollar on inner peace, I'll tell you that much!

All right. Let's have a look in my journal. See what else I can share with you? Hmm, no, no, no. Not safe for work, not safe for podcasting. And, that's something I should mention as well. We could write, we could read, we could sleep. We did do yoga. So it wasn't one of those retreats where you have to sit and do nothing. And so I found the time passed quite quickly. Now, over the weekend, we did a lot of meditating. And I really, really loved it because I have wanted to get into meditating. And I've tried, I've got that app called Insight Timer. And I do the guided meditations. I've been going okay with it, but the issue is, I'm still on my phone with it. At the retreat, I handed in my phone. I think everybody else just had willpower, but not me. I had to give it away. So it was really nice to be in a meditation, where somebody was leading it. Kara was leading it. And she could just, ding the bowl. I'm sure there's a proper term for this, not dinging the bowl, but you know what I mean?

And so you could just go into your own space and you knew that you just had to listen for that sound. This is something I feel challenged with meditating on my own, is I feel like I need to have some kind of time guide or some kind of guidance. Uh, but how do I do that with also not being connected to technology? I don't know. Maybe I go old fashioned and get a CD and a CD player. I dunno! At the moment, I'm still sticking with the app and I'm a lot better at just tuning into the words and having all my other notifications, not coming through to distract me. But one of the tips that we learned too with meditation, which I really loved was this concept of beginner's mind. And beginner's mind is treating everything as if it is the first, the last and the only.

So as you breathe in, you imagine that breath is your first breath, your last breath, your only breath. As you breathe out, first, last, only. I thought it was such a powerful concept, how different we would approach things. Think about if every kiss, every phone call, every workout, every client was our first, our last, our only... how would we approach that? That was definitely a technique that will help me with my meditation and also just take into my life. I think it's a beautiful way to be more grateful. And yeah, a beautiful way to be more grateful. That's pretty much it.

So the first big takeaway was power of words: word weight, word waste. The second one was the other senses being heightened, and the power of that. And the third thing I really took away was just a much higher level of self-awareness. I feel like I'm pretty self-aware as it is, but I think all of us can always become more self-aware. And it got me really thinking about, you know, what am I filling my life with? What am I spending my time doing? Am I doing things, forming habits that enrich me, make me feel better, feel happier, improve my life, improve other people's lives? Or am I filling it with distractions?

And I did come home with like a bit of a practical list of things that I'm going to do. And I'll share those with you now because, hey, I'm a bit of an open book. Yeah. So for me, the changes that I want to make practically, is leaving the phone outside the bedroom. So I'm really bad at looking at my phone right before going to sleep. And then looking at it as soon as I wake up. So I really want to keep my phone in the kitchen overnight. I do want to have a few alcohol free nights, at least three now. By the way, come to Voice and Vinho. That will not be an alcohol-free night. You know, I'm not going to give up wine, because I really do enjoy it. But at the same time, I have to be able to not have a glass of wine every night. That's just ridiculous. And that's a problem. So I'm going to be more strict on that.

I, of course, am going to meditate daily. So I've created a little space in my house, which is sort of in the entranceway to my apartment. It's not my office. It's not my living room. It's not my bedroom. It's just this dedicated little area that I'm going to make as my meditation zone. And that's been working well. The next thing I want to do is schedule in nature at least once a week. So I live in the inner city in Brisbane. I really, really love living where I live, but there are times that, you know, days will go by without my feet ever hitting soil or sand. And that's just craziness. So I really want to schedule in nature time, whether it be a bushwalk, whether it be a beach trip, it's something that gets my feet in nature.

And the next thing I want to do is book a longer retreat. This was fantastic, but I think I can challenge myself more. I feel like I only scratched the surface. I got to the stage where my mind was calm. I want to get to the stage where I am going crazy. Where I am jumping off the metaphoric walls. You know, I want to really get to that stage where I am like about to scream, and then see what I do. So if anyone's got any tips for a longer silent retreat that I can do, let me know. Because I am currently on the lookout now. As you can imagine, it's quite hard, in my diary, to find a chunk of seven days where I haven't already got something booked in. And as far as voice goes, it's something I've always believed in, but believe even more now. You've really got to get your inner voice on side. If you want to connect with others, you need to connect with yourself. Connect with your body. Connect with your breath. Connect with the vibrations, and then you can connect with others.

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was a workshop that we did with "oms". You know, "oooooommmmm". That was pretty bad. But we did that for 20 minutes. And just feeling those vibrations was so calming. I really, really loved it. We do similar exercises to that, in my membership and My Six Week Voice Makeover. And it was really nice to come at those exercises from more of a spiritual angle. Because it's true. If we want our voice to connect with others, we must first connect with our own voice. And how do we connect with our own voice? We drop into the body. We feel the breath, we enjoy the buzz... And we listen. And it's in that silence that we can hear our own, like internal GPS, our own navigation. Checking in with, are we aligned with our soul's purpose? Are we doing what what we want to do. For me? Yes, I am. I am definitely doing what I want to do. I love what I do. You guys know that. And that's also why I want to do a longer retreat because while I came out of it feeling very refreshed and like I loved every minute of it, I didn't quite get to the depth of my mind that I wanted to. So that will be the next thing to do.

Amazing. So that's it! I'd love to finish this episode by reading one of my favorite poems, it's called "The Journey" by Mary Oliver. This poem really sums up the power of listening to your own voice.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life that you could save.