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My Seven Days in Silence – A Series

by delucaw1 in Tips

My idea of a ‘perfect’ vacation is a beautiful setting complete with yoga, meditation, yummy food and the opportunity to learn and grow.  The Chopra Center offers an annual retreat at Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, CA. It’s called Silent Awakenings. It’s literally adjacent to Pebble Beach, for some context.  We spend seven days in silence. No phone, no TV, no online YouTube cat videos, no social media, and no talking! It’s a complete digital detox.

I literally found the Chopra Center by accident.  At the time, I was working at Cisco. Not surprisingly, I was burnt out.  I also had global clients. And, that year, I was traveling back and forth to Europe quite frequently. I was in dire need of a vacation, and the thought of being on another long flight just didn’t appeal to me.  I looked for yoga, beach, spa relatively close to home (at the time) in Northern CA. The link for Perfect Health was near the top of the list of search results.  “Experience the pinnacle of well-being at our total mind-body healing retreat.”  Who doesn’t want perfect health, right! So, I signed up immediately.

I learned to meditate, practiced yoga twice a day and experienced a ‘western-ized’ version of panchakarma. Panchakarma is a Sanskrit word that means “five actions” or “five treatments”. This is a process used to clean the body of toxic materials left by disease, poor nutrition, and environmental toxins. Perfect Health was my introduction to the 5000 year old ‘science of life’, Ayurveda.  In summary, it was a game changer, for me.

The effects were so profound that I wanted to learn more, so I immersed myself in a year long study; that was over 8 years ago.  Not many know this about me, but I’m a Chopra Center Certified Perfect Health Instructor. I teach many of these teachings and tools to my coaching clients.

So, why the silence?

Every so often, as teachers, we are required to keep up with continuing education.  This retreat fulfills my continuing education credits. And, silence scares me. And, even more, frightening is not being able to talk.  Who was it that said ‘do what frightens you’? That said, there are many benefits to being silent. Many are health-related (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01731/full).  For me silence brings answers. Sometimes they aren’t the answers that I really wanted to ‘hear’, but at my core, I know they are the right answers.

Ways to incorporate silence into your busy life:

• Cultivate a meditation practice.  One of my teachers, Davidji, taught us RPM and RAW.  RPM is Rise, pee, meditate and RAW is Right after work.
• Drive to and/or from work with the radio and phone off.
• Begin your meetings with 2 minutes of silence (and breathing practices).
• Decide to eat a meal in silence (include the family too) and/or wash the dishes.
• Walk the dog (yourself, your baby) with no music, book or phone conversations happening.
• Sit outside and watch the sunset.
• Shower, shave or get ready to leave the house with no music, news feed or conversations.

In summary, I challenge you to be silent today!  I’ll be sharing in subsequent blog posts about my learnings and insights.

We only have a finite amount of time on this planet, and you can choose how to spend that time. Are you ready?: Click HERE for Success

I wish you much success in your career quest.  Yours in balance, learning, growth, and harmony.  – Melissa DeLuca, CEO