In my previous post, I had to stop halfway because I hadn’t finished describing everything I wanted to say. Now, let me continue from a different perspective on my retreat.

I described the emotional ups and downs I experienced during my retreat. I likened it to surfing. I’ve never surfed myself, but I’ve watched many others do. You lie on a surfboard, waiting for the waves to come. A wave starts to come, and you think, “I’ll climb on top of this, I’ll get in,” but suddenly the wave throws you down. It hits you so hard that you barely recover, but then you lie down again and wait. Then another wave comes, and this time you climb on top of it and enjoy it. You think, “Ah, I’m back to my senses, it’ll always be like this from now on,” and you wait again. You lie in the calm water for a long time, waiting for the next wave. Then, boom, another huge one comes and knocks you over again. But in the end, you reach the shore. No matter what we experience, no matter what comes our way, the shore is always there.

That’s the summary of my 5-day retreat.

I also wrote that I wanted to run away on the evening of the third day. What brought me back to my senses that night was this incident and paragraph:

“In Zen teachings, there’s a story about a man and his horse. The horse is galloping, and the man riding it seems to be going somewhere important. Another man standing by the side of the road shouts, ‘Where are you going?’ And the man on the horse replies, ‘I don’t know, ask the horse.'”

This is also our story. We ride a horse, not knowing where we’re going, and we can’t stop. The horse is the energy of habit that pulls us, and we are powerless. We always run, and it has become a habit. We constantly struggle, even in our sleep. We are at war within ourselves, and we can easily get into a fight with others as well.

(Taken from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, *The Teachings of the Buddha*)

That night, there was only one reason I wanted to escape. To avoid spending another night in that room, facing my greatest fear: loneliness… but instead of following my habits, I stopped the horse. “I want to get off your back and walk my own path,” I said. The next morning, I woke up in my worst state, but I was happy that I hadn’t run away and that I had overcome it. Now my fear no longer frightened me; it simply sat beside me, accompanying me. When it bristled like an angry dog, I learned to stroke it and calm it, and I brought it home with me.

In silence, all emotions are exposed, in our hands. In our daily lives, when we’re upset or angry about something, we say, “I’ll go for a walk, eat two chocolates, call a friend,” and we think that by doing these things we’re shutting down the situation we’re in at that moment. But in silence, in nothingness, by being alone with yourself, you make all your emotions your companions. You have to see and embrace them all alone. That’s when even resentment, hatred, and anger come out from within and join you.

I also want to talk a little about my dietary experience during my retreat. The hotel had a fantastic food service. Warm cakes and cookies were delivered to my room every now and then. I wrote about how low I felt on the first day. I just wanted to sleep all the time. And coincidentally, I was sitting next to the table where these foods were placed. I’m usually a very strong-willed person, but even though I was full, I couldn’t stop myself from eating fruit. In the end, I couldn’t resist and ate two salty cookies. But after that, I was about to explode. Why was I eating these things? And on top of that, they contained gluten. I started to swell up like a drum, I couldn’t even sit down. I was sure it was emotional hunger, so I stopped eating right then. What I really needed wasn’t those foods, it was to feel connected to life and in touch. I couldn’t continue with that feeling of being overwhelmed, so I stopped immediately. All my other friends were going back and forth eating cakes and sandwiches. Yet we had just come from eating half an hour ago. I’m sure they weren’t hungry. I’m standing at the table like a giant 🙂 observing what everyone is eating, one by one :))

In the following days, I observed the same eating behaviors in most of them, and I thought, if even such conscious people are reacting in the same way, I need to talk a lot more about this topic. I will try to tell you more about mindful and intuitive eating and offer solutions.

Also, when in isolation, the body’s need for food decreases significantly. Because movement is reduced, the need for energy is also low… Therefore, the body doesn’t want to eat much, but because we are on autopilot, because we generally cut off contact with our bodies, we go to eat like a wind-up toy, without even checking if we are hungry or not. I will explain all of this in more detail…

And here’s something I’m sure of again and again… I’m a two-meal-a-day person. Three meals a day doesn’t suit me. Even after the second day, when I only had soup and salad for dinner, breakfast, lunch, and dinner just didn’t suit my metabolism at all. Even though I didn’t want to eat breakfast when I woke up, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to resist since the next meal was at 12:30, so I ended up eating breakfast every day. I intend to try fasting until noon in my next retreat 🙂

Another retreat experience ended like this, and I’m so, so, so happy I did it. I would have been incomplete if I hadn’t. I’m sure it will make a big difference in my life from now on.

Here’s to more retreats like this 🙂

Sending love to everyone…