The Silent Scream

What do you get when you combine two caffeine addicted chatterboxes with a silent yoga retreat? A twisted ankle, strained hamstring, and swear words that would make a sailor blush. Welcome to our nightmare.

I am one of those annoying people who fills awkward silences with inane chatter.

It could be about anything: the weather; the kids; something on the news.

So it’s with great horror that I discover my dream yoga retreat will be interspersed with mandatory periods of silence.

Compounding the problem is my companion – the verbose, witty, call-a-spade-a-bl**dy-shovel Ernestive.

Little Miss Chatterbox can’t shut up for two seconds, let alone two days.

What, no coffee?

We arrive at the beautiful, Balinese-style retreat in the Byron Bay hinterland excited, energized – and dying for a coffee.

An ethereal vision in white floats towards us wearing a beatific smile: Sue Hawkins, former television producer, now ‘Sudasi’, yoga guru.

“No caffeine here, I’m afraid,” she laughs “Chai tea?”

She leads us to the vegetarian buffet as a second wave of shock passes over Ernestine, one of the world’s great carnivores.

Thankfully the food is absolutely superb, featuring spelt pasta with cashew nut pesto and spicy Mulligatawny soup.

We peer cautiously at the twelve other women sharing this intimate experience.

Are they all new age nutters or, like us, tired mummies looking for a break from the kids?

Suddenly, a bell tolls and, lemming-like, we follow the guru to our lovely one or two-bedroom cabins on the edge of the National Park.

Unseemly bodily functions

Sharing a room with a girlfriend is fun when you’re a teenager but, as a woman in my early 40s, I’m plagued with worry.

What if I snore? Would the combined effect of lentils and chick peas for lunch produce an unpleasant olfactory after-effect? Maybe I would pass wind loudly in my sleep and wake us both up?

Another tolling of the bell snaps me out of my reverie. Squeezing our middle-aged bodies into tight lycra we set off, as fast as we can without chafing, for the yoga studio.

Some women here have never done a yoga class; others, like Ernestine and me, have been practising for more than a decade.

This encourages us to show off, something which is fundamentally against the Buddhist principal of dropping one’s ego.

Subsequently, Buddha punishes me by straining my hamstring during a particularly difficult pose.

It’s rather unedifying to be stuck, upside down, legs akimbo, in agonizing pain, when I actually want to beat my head again the wall for being an idiot.

I calm down enough to enjoy a session of Yoga Nidra, a meditation where each part of the body is ‘relaxed’, from the tip of your toes to the top of your head.

“Now, this retreat involved periods of silence,” our guru intones, “so I want you to walk back to the food hall, enjoy dinner without making eye contact with anyone, then go straight to bed.”

Sounds of silence

My first response is to giggle. Clearly, I’m not very emotionally mature.

Oddly enough, the hardest thing isn’t the silence; it’s the lack of eye contact.

It’s rather difficult to negotiate your way around a buffet table, from steaming pot to condiments tray, suppressing the urge to use proper manners.

After an hour, though, I begin to enjoy the silence. It ceases that internal dialogue of “what should I say now?” or “what will they think of me?”

Equally odd is how comfortable I feel with Ernestine, wandering back to the cabin and quietly going to bed.

That is, until four hours later when I’m woken by the sound of a dull thud.

“Sh*t!” Ernestine yells. “Oh, sh*t, I just spoke. Sorry. Sh*t!”

“What?” I whisper hoarsley.

“I’ve twisted my ankle falling down the stairs,” she groans. “Should I go to hospital?”

That tips me over the edge. I start sniggering, then chuckling, then guffawing, as Ernestine writhes and curses on the floor.

Staggering over, I turn the light on to look at her slightly swollen ankle.

“I think you’ll live,” I smile.

We make a pact not to tell the guru who, no doubt, would drag us by the ears and hurl us over the escarpment into the ocean off Tallow Beach where, equally without doubt, we would be eaten by sharks.

Ego is a dirty word

The following morning, we put ego aside and enjoy an invigorating, uplifting yoga class.

Next, a session of Sufi dancing, a twirling meditation practised by the Dervishes in some Islamic nations.

By lunchtime, we’re well into our second stint of silence, settling into our inward journeys.

As a reward, we’re treated to an excursion to the Byron Bay markets where we stumble upon our guru enjoying – quelle horreur – a cup of organic coffee.

“Ah, we all have one vice,” Sue admits, revealing herself to be human, after all.

Our families arrive that afternoon to find us as relaxed as jellyfish.

Ernestine isn’t too scarred by her swollen ankle, but caffeine withdrawal has resulted in a fierce headache.

I smile sweetly at the children, instead of yelling – a red letter day indeed.

Two days is not enough. Next time, we will embrace the serenity and treat ourselves to Vipassana, a ten day silent retreat.

We’ll just have to choose a cabin with no stairs….. v

More information

Sue Hawkins now runs retreats in Byron, Bali and Vietnam

www.byronbayyoga.com

Yoga Retreats in Australia and New Zealand

Samudra Retreat

Dunsborough, south-west WA