It is Tuesday. The retreat ended on Sunday. I am writing this from my own kitchen in Casablanca, with a cup of tea that is too cold, because I keep getting up to do small things and forgetting it.
The women have all gone home. The riad is being cleaned. A. is, I imagine, in her own kitchen above Imlil, doing her own version of what I am doing now — sitting in the after-quiet of a retreat, and letting the body recalibrate.
I want to write about the after-quiet, because it is a part of the practice that I do not think gets enough attention.
What the after-quiet is
For the first day or two after a retreat, I am useless. I do not mean that in the dramatic sense. I mean it precisely: I cannot do the things I usually do. I cannot answer emails efficiently. I cannot make small talk. I cannot remember what day of the week it is. I cannot follow a recipe. I cannot listen to music. I sometimes cannot finish a sentence.
This used to alarm me. I would force myself back into productivity within a few hours of getting home, and the body would protest, and I would push through, and the protest would surface a week later as a cold or a bad night's sleep or an argument with someone I love.
I have learned, over many retreats, that the after-quiet is not a failure to bounce back. It is the body's way of integrating what happened. The retreat did real work. The work needs time to settle.
The retreat is not the days in the riad. The retreat is the days in the riad, and the days afterwards when the body is still listening.
What I do now
I do not schedule anything for the first three days after a retreat. No meetings, no teaching, no large meals. I have learned to let other people know that I will be quiet, and that this is not a personal slight, and that I will be back to normal by Thursday.
I drink water. I take long baths. I do not practise yoga in any formal way, because the body has had plenty of yoga. I do small physical tasks — laundry, sweeping, repotting a plant — and I let them be slow.
I eat simply. I keep my phone on aeroplane mode for at least the first day. I write a few sentences each morning, in the notebook I keep for these things, but I do not push the writing.
By Thursday or Friday, I am usually back. The world resumes. The integration has settled.
A small note for the women who came to October
If you are reading this, and you came to the Atlas in October — first, thank you. The week I spent with you was one of the better weeks of my year. The conversations on the slope under the fig tree are still in my body.
Second: if you are home now, and feeling raw, or porous, or unable to do the things you used to do, please be soft with yourself. The rawness is the work. It is the body finishing what we started together. It will pass, and what remains will be quieter than what was there before.
Drink water. Sleep a lot. Cancel things. Cry if it comes. Write only what wants to be written.
✦
I will see some of you in April, in Lisbon. The rest will arrive in their own time. The mountains do not rush. Neither, anymore, do we.
— Ghizlan