The facilitator’s retreat, led by Dada Vivek from Albany, New York and Dada Vishvarupananda from Washington D.C. brought together nine margiis and one acarya with the intention of learning how to be facilitators for future student or introductory retreats. Dada Vimaleshananda welcomed us in Ananda Vrati and helped extensively with the preparation of meals during the whole retreat, which started on June 6th and lasted until June 10th. Many of us who attended the facilitator’s retreat have attended at least one Student Yoga Weekend and have experienced the bliss that comes when people gather together to learn about spirituality and share their creative spirit. It was interesting to see that there was a similar vibration to the facilitator’s retreat, so that by the end of it, we all walked away feeling very inspired.
The morning of June 6th, the training formally started with a surrendering ceremony as a metaphor for our journey during the retreat as well as afterward, when trying to organize a retreat of our own. Starting with this ceremony allowed us to keep a clear focus on our goal at the retreat and as future facilitators, and also established a sense of community from the beginning of the retreat. Dada Vivek and Dada Vishvarupananda always incorporate ceremonies and fun exercises in the student retreats to allow people to have fun while sharing a spiritual experience. In many ways, this aspect makes the student retreats successful because people tend to remember those activities in which they had to dance, participate in a drum circle or prepare a little play for the rest of the group. While brainstorming and learning different activities that could be used at future student retreats, we were reminded of how much fun the student retreats are and started to get to know one another better, as often happens at student retreats.
Despite being similar in some ways to a student retreat, there were also serious topics that were discussed at the facilitator’s retreat. There was a focus on learning effective communication methods in order to establish a safe and comfortable environment at student retreats as well as to facilitate a discussion and be able to deal with any conflicts or difficulties that may arise at student retreats. Most of what we were discussing and learning we were able to put into practice during several sessions in which a few of us acted as the facilitators of small group discussions. By getting advice from Vivek and Dada Vishvarupananda, as well as sharing the positive and negative things that arose during the small group discussions, we were able to learn about things to keep in mind while facilitating in a group.
Learning about group exercises to break the ice and establish a collective flow, as well as learning how to facilitate a discussion prepared us for the last part of the retreat in which we had an opportunity to prepare our own workshop. We were all divided into groups, with each group having to lead a 15 minute workshop with the rest of those who attended the facilitator’s retreat. The topics ranged from learning how to be patient, PROUTist theory, building a sense of community and universalism. It was fun to participate in these workshops, which may one day be expanded and used at future student retreats.
We were all very inspired by the methods we learned for facilitating and by the fun experiences we shared that it was hard to restrain ourselves from discussing the future expansion of the introductory retreats to include weekends around themes and to advertise toward different populations. In the end, we established a more realistic goal of having several one-day retreats at each of the units, as well as increasing the number of Student Yoga Weekends in the fall to two. As LFT Shanti shares that for her “it was a very inspiring program, and I not only learned many things about how to facilitate or how to run workshops or retreats, I also really felt the closeness of the whole group (trainers and trainees)...that makes you do your best and feel from your heart, that, the time has come to use this for the world.” Overall, it was a very successful first facilitator’s retreat and I hope that one day some students who come to one of the future student retreats organized by the new facilitators can themselves attend a facilitator’s retreat.
