I WENT TO A SKETCHY TANTRA RETREAT IN PORTUGAL, HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED.

I think it’s important to try new things, especially in the world of retreats and wellness. I’ve tried to seek out at least 2-3 retreats and high level workshops every year to expose myself to things that will hopefully help me both personally and as a leader in wellness. 

Recently I decided to take a last minute adventure to Portugal to attend an event that was framed as a “tantra and co-living retreat.” I’ve been intrigued by tantra but always found it to be taught in the west as a way to bypass emotional connection en route to what amounts to shallow feeling sex parties. At its core, tantra is meant to weave the spiritual and the physical with an emphasis on intimacy but the events I’ve attended never felt that way. 

I’ve gone to these “temple” gatherings in San Diego and while I wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable in this setting, it never really felt like it was for me. Nothing felt “sacred” about getting naked and trying to create intimate encounters with relative strangers after a brief introduction and ice-breaker.

So when I said yes to this experience what was I thinking you ask? I was thinking, maybe it was some prejudices I had or my ego standing in the way. I was thinking, you ask people to challenge themselves, here’s an opportunity for you to practice what you preach. I’ve also been trying not to let past experiences dictate future actions and if I’m honest I’ve been a bit starved for intimacy and physical contact so I dove in, paid my deposit and booked a flight to Lisbon. 

After 24 hours of travel, three planes, two buses an uber and three mile walk, I was taken to a room shared with another guest. Since I had asked for a private room I was already feeling like things might be just a little bit off. The host apologized and then asked another guest if he would switch. The guest agreed and so I placed my things down in the private room and joined the first activity. 

We all sat in a big circle as two of the facilitators openly argued with one another about who was leading what and for how long. One got frustrated and proceeded to drop into a childs pose and began yelling in front of the whole group. I had arrived late and then was asked to introduce myself after the mild temper tantrum by the one facilitator died down. I speak in front of groups all the time but to say this was awkward would be quite an understatement. I felt like I was back in middle school giving a book report on a book I had never read. 

After that group circle I went back to “my room” only to discover that my stuff had been moved back to my original room. Apparently the man who had been willing to change had a change of heart and without checking moved my stuff. My roommate was nice enough but he loved to talk and talk about things I had no interest in. Despite trying to clearly indicate I was in need of space and rest, he would chat about land he had bought, his history with psychedelics and heavy metaphysical topics that my weary brain had no capacity for. 

Activities were randomly decided on and scheduled with no real sense of when or why things were happening. By the time our first “temple” experience was beginning, I had lost all faith and trust in the facilitators and the experience they were guiding. 

I showed up and did my best to immerse myself in the first workshop, a massage exercise where participants were told to give feedback on their comfort level using a green light, yellow light, red light system. Basically we were systematically testing where we could touch and not touch. Like I had in temple experiences in the past, I didn’t feel uncomfortable, but this didn’t feel fun or enlightening. 

The workshops that followed were similar in their lack of structure or guidance. An experienced retreat leader who wasn’t even listed as a facilitator started to step forward to take the reins but by that point I had begun to mentally check out. I recognized how the lack of structure and cohesion created a feeling of uneasiness for me and kept me from feeling safe in any of these containers they were trying to create. One of the facilitators took a liking to a participant so before long they were kind of off doing their own thing. The lead facilitator who I had originally contacted about the retreat was spending time taking photos by the pool and I never heard from her again except to ask me for the balance payment to which I declined. 

After three days of a seven day retreat, I exited early in the morning and hopped a bus to Lisbon. I decided to take the next few days to have my own adventure and reflect on my experience. My biggest takeaways were, 

There’s always an opportunity to learn. We should never doubt our experiences because we are where we are for a reason. The only failure is a failure to learn. In this case, I learned from a participant's point of view some very important things about how I can create clarity and safety as a retreat leader. On my bus ride back to Lisbon I sat next to a young man who had taken the bus all the way from Marseilles to look at a boat he was considering buying to sail around the world. At 25 he had a very enlightened view of what was important and shed light on his generation's urgency to mitigate climate change and shift how we treat the planet (it’s why he took a bus instead of a plane to Portugal.) That four hour bus ride and our conversation might have been the highlight of the trip. It was invigorating and gave me lots to think about. 

Agreements are important. I was so enamored with the IDEA of what this retreat could be that I really lost sight of asking important questions and getting clarity on what it actually was going to be. I am challenged with this sometimes. I get SO excited about the possibility of something that I miss the opportunity to ask important questions. 

It’s ok to say NO. I’ve often been the person who takes the road less traveled. When I became a yoga teacher after leaving corporate more than a few people thought that was nuts. Move to California? Nuts. Going to where? Bali? Nuts. I was the only person who left this retreat early. Others definitely voiced some displeasure about how things were laid out but I had the confidence to say, not for me. Where we place our energy is so sacred. Being unwilling to give your energy to things that don’t serve you is a superpower.