This thing you’ve dreamed up.

by Jane House

Yogi and Euphoria leader of past Portugal Yoga & Writing Retreat

I love this idea I've heard passed around that the moment you decide to take a journey of any kind, that journey begins to work on you. Because you've decided to SAY YES to big adventure, the adventure starts to re-organize your days at once, as if you are being prepared to meet this thing you've dreamed up and placed on your calendar.

Last week, I could feel this phenomenon happen in my body around our June 2022 Poetry of the Body retreat in Portugal. We launched the retreat, a good handful of people signed up (great people)...and something lit up in the very center of my body. It felt like the stuff of life itself. Or, maybe it felt like coming back to life after a long, long, treacherously long covid slumber.

What is this thing, this light, this excitement, that makes us feel so awesomely human? So alive? I heard David Byrne say this about performing again after a yearlong break,

'I realized that these experiences changed me as a person. I realized that there is something about this coming together that works as a sort of collective ritual going that is somehow healing for me, and also for everyone involved.' I feel this way about our dream of Poetry and The Body in Portugal, with you.

This invitation to become part of a group that is larger than just "I" is a potentially life-changing, liberating experience.

Friends, have you watched the youtube video about our spot? Cocoon, in Portugal? I have viewed it several times, trying to imagine the magical group of people we are already gathering in this exquisite place. To be far away together. To be on farmland, near an inspiring coast together. To eat delicious, fresh food together. To SAY YES to the wonderful opportunity of dropping into our imaginations and into our bodies together. THIS is the dream that's working on me.