Issue #99: The life lesson I learnt on my yoga retreat (that has nothing to do with yoga) pt. ii

Learning to communicate, and stop hiding. With a guest appearance from my inner child.

New year, same place. I began 2025 in exactly the same way as I did 2024: waking up at Suryalila, a yoga retreat in southern Spain, after a night dancing around a bonfire. I was even in the same bed – shout-out to my roommate, a fellow returner, for letting me claim the cosy corner spot for the second year in a row.

I find repetition comforting (perhaps because I’ve never watched the film Groundhog Day to the end). Comforting, like playing a favourite song on repeat, or buying the same lunch every day from the falafel stall near my workspace. It allows me to relax, confident that I know what’s coming next.

I may have returned to the same place as last year, but I felt far from stagnant. Instead, my second trip to Suryalila helped me realise how much my priorities have changed over the past 12 months.

In December 2023, on the same retreat, I was quiet and reflective. I had recently been through a family bereavement, together with a significant career setback – the shockwaves of which I was still absorbing. Even before I arrived, I had decided on the shape of 2024, the year to come. It was to be a year of germination: protecting myself and my energy, and retreating from anything that felt scary. That was reflected in the way I acted on the actual retreat. I defaulted to a self-belief I tend to have in group dynamics: that I’m only allowed to exist on the periphery. That I am a peculiar flavour, like pickled onion crisps, that rarely appeals to the majority.

Cosy fireplace conversations; the light-filled yoga dome, overlooking the Spanish countryside; gathering outside; sunset under the pagoda; delicious vegetarian food; blue skies; yin yoga; new friends.

Returning on 28 December 2024, I felt differently. Don’t get me wrong – I still read and/or journaled for at least an hour a day (there were many hours to kill between yoga sessions). But I let myself be part of the group dynamic. I spoke to almost everyone, I laughed more than I had all year, I let my natural extroversion guide me. Instead of rushing to my room to read after meals, I lingered around the table or by the fire, permitting myself to be one of the gang.

I spent 2024 in a protective cocoon of my own making. Predominantly, it was spent reading novels or trying to write one (to quote the Simon & Garfunkel I first listened to as a teenager, I have my books. And my poetry to protect me. I am shielded in my armour. Hiding in my room. Safe within my womb. I touch no one and no one touches me.) Even during my six-month creative writing course, among fellow bookish people, I was slow to join the post-class pub sessions (although I’m so glad I eventually did).

It’s not like this behaviour was right or wrong. I benefitted from it. I found pleasure in what

milk fed

writer Caitlyn Richardson calls the quiet rebellion of a little life. But what I didn’t do was open myself up to the trial of new interpersonal relationships (with the exception of my writer friends). I didn’t allow myself the evolution that comes from being around other people.

So when I was finally among a crowd again, on this year’s yoga retreat, that evolution came all at once. I realised, simultaneously, my desire to be seen and heard by others – and, conversely, my fear of that happening.

Which gets me on to the tough lesson I learnt about communication.

I am absolutely delighted to have abs in this photo. Also: a mountain.

For context, here’s something interesting about the retreat: I was the only British person, and one of only four native English speakers, in a group of 30 people. Such is the way of the world that we all defaulted to universal English anyway. While everyone else conversed in a second (or third, or fourth, or even fifth!) language, I faced some hard truths about how I articulate myself in my native one.