One New Thing #11: Personal Retreat to Virginia Beach
One New Thing #: 11
What: Personal retreat (like a business or work retreat, but just for me!) to VIrginia Beach
Where: 87th Street, Virginia Beach
Cost: $222 ish for 2 nights, 3 days via Airbnb (had a $40 coupon)
Fave thing: Having a bathtub for two nights, walking the beach, BEING BY MYSELF
This personal retreat wasn’t supposed to happen.
I was supposed to be in Portugal the day after I returned from Puerto Rico. But, as the universe would have it, the Coronavirus (COVID #19) outbreak had just started to really take hold in the US. The day before, 3/11, Trump instituted a travel ban on Europeans coming into the US. The day before that, some things were getting cancelled, but not many. The week before, it was just a thing happening in Italy.
Seemingly overnight, by Thursday, 3/13 the situation had rapidly changed. Not wanting to go to Portugal and get stuck over there (as has actually happened to quite a number of people traveling abroad at the time of writing this, 3/17), we canceled our trip.
So, like a flash, when I realized I basically had a week where I was going to be out of town and had paused all work - I could take advantage of this down time and should!
While in PR, I received a clairvoyant reading that really encouraged me to find a different way to create. For as long as I can remember, I have operated with a very masculuine, do, achieve, succeed style of energy. And it’s worked. It’s gotten me a lot of places and a lot of success. But I’m realizing that it’s not the way I was meant to work - everyone from my acupuncture doctor, to massage therapist, to Melissa in my reading - has commented that my body DOES NOT LIKE the stress of how I’ve been.
The idea of a personal retreat landed hard in my head and I couldn’t get it out. I got home Thursday, booked a place Friday, and took off Saturday-Monday.
What was the goal of my personal retreat? I had a few, but they boiled down to:
Being by myself
Reading The Big Leap
Doing everything the opposite of what I would normally do and figuring out how to take that back into “every day life”
Of course, I wanted to go into it with even an agenda for how I would relax, but I resisted. I made a few notes of how I wanted to spend the time that included: books, walking, yoga, beach, baths, etc.
Here’s a breakdown of what I did during my retreat and why I highly recommend you book one.
Saturday
3:30 PM - arrive, get settled in, pull cards and set intentions for the weekend, sage the house
4:30 PM - RUN A HOT BATH! Finish my fun, sci-fi book
6 PM - Make dinner, start reading The Big Leap
7:30 PM - IN BED
Sunday
6 AM - wake up, turn off my snooze alarm
7:06 AM - jolt awake and jump out of bed to see the sunrise, only it’s raining, so I stay in
7:15 AM - Make coffee, do morning pages, breakfast, mediate, book a hot yoga class
9:30 AM - head to Torch Yoga for an hour of a REALLY intense yoga class that honestly made me cry and feel like I was coming home. I haven’t been doing regular yoga classes and turns out, I missed it! I also made a point of staying in savasana until I was one of the last 3 people in the room. I wanted to push pass the discomfort of what people would think. There were a few things in this class that let me know I had booked the right one: we did a TON of heart openers via camel pose - my acupuncture doctor has recommended heart opening stretches. And the instructor played Dance Monkey - if that’s not a sign I’m on the right path, I don’t know what is. Jk, but truly! I had just talked about this song, and I thought it was a really funny little joke between me and the Universe.
11:30 AM - driving back home I had another flash of intuition that said a beach plunge would be nice. I initially fought with that idea because: what would people think? Why would I do that? It’s freezing AND windy. Eventually I reminded myself that cold plunges are so good for your health/body and who cares what people think? I also knew that I needed to do it immediately after I got home or I would NOT. Turns out, I was the only one on the beach. A really fast run, jump in and run out and I was done. It felt SO great and while it was cold, it wasn’t as cold as I thought.
12:30 PM - make lunch, TAKE A NAP. The yoga class wore me OUT.
2 PM - up with some coffee and back to The Big Leap
5 PM - Finished the book and took some crazy notes and had so many revelations
6 PM - went on a beach walk, came back, made dinner
8 PM - took a bath, listened to a podcast
9 PM - bed!
Monday
6 AM - up, coffee, morning pages
7:12 AM - beach walk for sunrise. I still can’t believe I polar plunged beacuse it was SO incredibly windy
8 AM - breakfast, journaling, pack up, book a second yoga class for later in the morning, check out
9:45 AM - my 2nd and final (for now!) class at Torch Yoga was a power / stretch style of class. It was really great and of COURSE we did heart openers and the instructor encouraged us to “forget the pressures of time” which was something I had just read in The Big Leap and one of the main reasons behind booking this personal retreat.
11 AM - drive home!
If you asked me what I accomplished on this trip, it wouldn’t look like my usual response of: “I made this, I did this, cleaned up this, created this, etc.” and that was exactly the point.
This world presents us a CONSTANT influx of ideas, media, content, other people’s opinions - so much so that we rarely have time to tune into what makes US tick. What works for US. What FEELS right in our body and what aligns with our unique purpose in the world and the work we are supposed to create.
That was the goal of this retreat and in that sense, I accomplished SO MUCH.
I have a clear idea of things I want to cut out and reduce in my life (certain group chats - no offense!, teaching fitness, book clubs) and what I want to start: a full day of creative work flow - no schedule, no tasks.
I’m sure there will be some bumps in the road as I navigate what seems like a radically different way of living that what is “normal” or “expected” but it’s SO different from my past way of being (up at 5 AM, gym rat, go go go), that quite possibly, it’s the way things should be - for me.