Thank you for receiving it, Ocean...

Por Giglia Canessa

When I stop and reflect on my journey, I feel like a little bit like the footprints you've made walking along the beach, untouched by the sea. It brings me back to feeling the weight of my body on the sand, allowing me to name each step that has led me to lovingly bear what it has meant to live in a body as changeable as mine, so sensitive to all external stimuli.

Today I'll share a part of what has been, and it hasn't been small, always vigilant, always trying to escape the suffering of physical pain or weakness. One of the many things I've had to overcome has been gaining weight "just because"... Although "just because" also means keeping so much bottled up because there was nowhere to release it or no one to release it with. With that background, choosing to be a dancer and yogi wasn't difficult; it was as if it were an obligatory step, and although I loved it as a commitment, it sealed within me that senseless demand, without exploring why it was happening, only the need to master it.

And then came the torment: the daily pressure to have a perfect body, teachers who imposed thinness based on "health," and anything related to eating was forbidden. I absolutely had to be thin, and eating was a sin. One step after another, my soul was forced to live through the conditioning of pain, dissatisfaction, and the feeling of not belonging to my own body—a conditioning imposed on women for millennia. And of course, it had to be part of my journey after coming from a culture so unloving of the achievements of a quiet, good, and obedient girl—obedient at home, obedient at school, obedient to the discipline of others, where the stereotype definitely didn't align with my essence.

So worried with my body yet without feeling it, breathing it, loving it, only with the "perfection" of a truth that carried a stereotype that didn't correspond to my healthy and radiant body. I breathe. So much of my past is what I'm telling you about that I can't help but reject it with all my heart, but living it gave me the leap to everything I'm experiencing now, and I want to share it with you at this retreat.

Then I imagine myself back on the beach and see those first imprints in the sand... that should no longer be on my skin, nor in my memory, and I ask the sea to kindly take them away forever. And the ocean, in its powerful and magnificent medicine of deep purification, takes everything away… There's so much more to tell... but above all, I want to ask you: would you like to come with us to ask the sea to take away all those traces of your memories?