Sacred Solitude

As I settle myself to write this article, I notice how I am drawn to create a space that supports me in connecting to my conscious (pr)essence, withdrawing my attention from the past and future narratives and grounding myself in the body, mind, heart coherence of the NOW moment.

I take a long, slow breath and retreat inwards as I imagine my breath carrying my awareness from my mind and all its stories of human-doingnesss to my heart centre and the sensations of becoming an energy of beingness. A few more breaths and moments of sensing my body moving in resonance with the background music, I sense my mind becoming a quiet witness to my heart opening and the intuitive nudging of consciousness flowing through, guiding me into alignment with the power and purpose of the vibrational state and frequency that I call SoulBeing; an inner space of sacred solitude and yet also a space of connection and union of all life-force energies. From this viewing point the breadcrumb trail starts to reveal itself, allowing me to place my hands on the keyboard, trust and commit to the next action taking root.

As I journey with these words I realise that different forms of retreating have served as a catalyst for the most transformational times in my journey from human-doing to human-being to what is now a season of Soulbeing – moments of pause and retreat where life re-awakens us to our true nature, the lifeforce within that nudges us towards remembering:

• the power of our heart,
• the power of our spirit,
• the power of our voice,
• and to live these in the power and choice of our actions.

While not all retreating looks and sounds like what I have just described above, symbolically the process is similar, no matter what form of retreat is most relevant, most accessible and most supportive of the intention to;

• allow pause from the habitual doingness of life,
• create space for rest and reset,
• reflect on who we truly are,
• remember what we are here to be,
• understand how we serve our highest good,
• and serve the highest good of all.

A Cherokee prophecy says:

“Our stressful past is based on a disconnect between the ‘clever head’ and the ‘loving heart’ resulting in imbalances in our lives and inequalities in the world.” For me this describes the need for what retreating offers our often exhausted, fear-filled and separated-from-true-self, mind and body.

I see retreating as a space that allows a process of the reframing of the self; as the one who is learning, the one who is understanding, the one who chooses and the one who is in their own authority. And as the one who stands in their own knowing takes root and unfolds, we are called to say “yes” to the dynamic balance and integration of our whole self again; “yes” to the needs and desires of body and brain, in alignment with heart and soul consciousness.

In the fear-driven, competitive, linear, goal-orientated nature of the external world’s systems, structures, demands, rules, measures of success and conformity, it’s totally understandable that humanity has lost its connection to the subtle nudges and guidance of the inner intelligences and life-force energies of the heart and soul. I’ve heard it said that the heart and soul’s ‘voice’ is like a flute playing its melody in front of the full-blown force of the brass band of the mind. Imagine the cacophony, how that might sound, making it impossible to hear the flute’s gentle notes.

Continuing with a metaphor of music, sound and an orchestra, you may have noticed that before a concert performance begins, there is a moment of pause and silence. The lead violinist plays the note of ‘A’ as tonal frequency to which the entire orchestra tunes their instruments so that each instrument resonates harmoniously, creating a shared expression of sound and quality of experience for all who are impacted by the music. In essence, that moment of pause, presence and intention to attune to an aligned frequency of expression could be an analogy for how retreating serves us electro-magnetic vibrational beings who are most fulfilled when we can journey through life to the soul notes of our heart song through the instrument of our mind and body.

In our human body, the heart, aside from being a pump, is our vibrational life tuning fork, our organ of coherence. It is through the vibrational state of our heart’s organising signals such as love, compassion and gratitude, that we soften our mind’s need to dominate our body’s action and strengthen our trust to surrender to the harmony and natural flow of guidance from our soul. Pausing and retreating inwards, consciously connecting with our breath while embodying a practice of heart energy regulation, can literally bring body and mind into coherence with heart and soul.

Travel, workshops, holidays that take us into experiencing different environments that enable different physical and mental experiences can also serve as a form of retreating.

An example of this is when I reached a pivotal point in my life and chose to step away from a 20-year career in corporate. I was making a good living, had started and grown my own business, had achieved all the material measures of success and yet by 1999, was running on empty… my heart and soul were just not in it. Added to which I was yearning to have a child and it just wasn’t happening.

In the year 2000 (age 40) I stepped out of the corporate world – as did my husband – and together we bought round-the-world air tickets, a couple of backpacks and headed off for a seven-month retreat from life as we knew it  The unfolding future was a mystery with just a bold vision of ”I want to put the soul back into business’‘ on my return. I didn’t know what that looked like nor how it would happen but knew that the working world and all the people it was impacting, were operating in survival mode.

That travelling experience encompassed all aspects of the art of retreating. When facing new-to-you places and experiences, there is a corresponding inward journey that is triggered as the routines, responsibilities and regulations of normal life fall away. Sitting in the Amazon jungle one day I realised that I knew who Liz Cunningham, MD was and how she functioned in the world and yet couldn’t have told you what truly made her heart sing. Three months into that trip/retreat, I was calm, peaceful, loving the adventure and the Universe played its card… we found out that I was pregnant.

Twenty-four years on, retreats in many forms have been the vehicle for my own spiritual growth, leadership and delivery of the original vision of putting the soul back into business. That original heart and soul sparked vision has now alchemised into bringing heart and soul back into the busy-ness of life for all of humanity with a special focus on ‘Womanity’.

Liz Cunningham: Heart leader, soul mover, free spirit

For the last 30 years I have followed where my heart has led me, embodying love over fear as the consciousness for thought and action, allowing the inward work to unfold for me first and then answering the spirit nudges I receive to share outwardly this understanding of: 

• Living, leading and shining the power of heart and soul intelligence into the busy-ness of life;
• Blending the energies of human doingness and beingness into a vibrational consciousness of self as both spirit and matter, as participative creators of our internal and external reality;
• Harnessing the power of our energy-for-life to support making the choices to continue learning from our past-history as we live into the expansiveness of our future-mystery. 

Dance with Life classes, Womanity circles, retreats and 1:1 sessions rooted in emotional intelligence (EQ), heart energy mastery, healing somatic dance and divine feminine wisdom are the containers through which I share SoulBeing insight and activations with Womanity.