Teachers Table - Go on a virtual retreat

Greeting, greetings, greetings, Hi, hi. Just so happy to here. You can do it like a teacher, okay, class come on, and again (upbeat music) So it's been a few days after the retreat, I'm taking my time to reflect and process and just think about the retreat experience, I look forward to talking to the other teachers and just hearing their experience. So to come together and to see them again, it's nice to feel connected. (upbeat music) It was important for me to do this retreat at this point, just to, you know, step into a space of pure vulnerability, I just have a lot going on at home right now, as far as like both my parents contracted COVID, my father went to the hospital, and like, literally my father actually almost passed away from COVID. Then on top of that, just everyday stresses, you know, with family and kids, and being a father and a husband, so I just felt very, I was in a space of heaviness, I just felt very heavy. As a teacher and a practitioner, retreat is really important to actually face and go inward, and it's interesting the word retreat, because you can think about it in different ways, you can retreat in the sense that you're stepping away or quietening the inputs, the noise, but also it's a retreat, so you're treating yourself to some nourishment, to self care, to compassion, whilst facing the full gambit of the human condition that arises on the cushion. Going into the retreat I felt really, the way I describe it is being on autopilot, I was just going through the motions, especially socially, 'cause I had just had my birthday, and so my extended family wanted to get together and they're a lot, they're just a lot. Noisy. Yeah, in so many ways, and love loving, you know, like showering me with love, which is so wonderful, and I had this kind of plastered smile on my face the whole time, but I felt a disconnect, I went into the retreat wanting to reconnect, like literally merge my brain and my heart, so that I could feel embodied and not so disconnected. I was in a brand new apartment, in a brand new country, away from my family, and I always get really overwhelmed with like gratitude of like look at where you are, like a lot of the time, I just think about the different decisions, actions, choices that I've made for us to all be here, you know, together, think about how many things I said yes to, how many things I said no to, so I was very overwhelmed and feeling all the feels. So my word coming out of the retreat was unscrambled, so my word going into the retreat was scrambled, I was so over stimulated, like even the way I packed the car, like everything was just thrown in, and then when I came out, like I...