This post was originally published on this site.
Every day, the forty of us who signed up for this retreat met up in the Arena, an expansive indoor space that was formerly used for horse-riding, for our two-hour workshop with Gabby. I had expected planned lectures and maybe some time for a Q&A or two, but what I didn’t expect was a simple conversation with an invitation to share, let alone the vulnerability and earnestness from our group during the sharing. I didn’t expect the variety in age or the variety in profession (small business owners, jewelry designers, financiers, teachers). What everyone had in common was their belief in Gabby, in her ability to guide and cut to the core of their pain or uncertainty. I certainly didn’t expect to be so deeply moved by what people were willing to share to a group of near strangers.
Over the course of our sessions, I did the journaling, the meditating, the visualizing, the listening, and I felt myself allowing emotions to surface that I usually tried to avoid. A 20-minute meditation felt like a blink of an eye, and I felt calmer than I had in months (maybe years). But I couldn’t bring myself to share in those moments. Instead, I went off after to find my own joy in wellbeing—to meet the rescue horses on property, to be free of my phone on an afternoon hike, and to put the wellness in wellness retreat by getting a massage at the Edge Spa.
Every Auberge property is unique—only the towels and sheets are similar–and so, too, are their wellness offerings. For example, this specific retreat with Gabby Bernstein was one-of-a-kind, the location hand-selected by Gabby herself. Also unique to The Lodge at Blue Sky? The traditional Shoshone Sweat Lodge.
So I’m sitting there in complete darkness, dripping sweat, and listening as one, two, three and then more of my companions share painful stories from their pasts or bright hopes for their futures. Outside of the thick walls, I’m surrounded by trees, moose and elk, the peaks and valleys of the Wasatch range. Next is my turn. You know how this ends—I spill it all. “You came to cover this,” Gabby told me at our last session. “Instead, you got covered.” And I had been—by the sense of calm and peace I’d felt during the retreat, by a new openness to spirituality, by the sunrises, the purple mountains, and the open sky blanketed with stars. Consider me covered.
