What five days in Sintra taught me about stopping the performance 🌿

Hi there ,

 

The past four weeks have been one continuous wave of learning, activation, and upgrade. I'm still integrating most of it — but I'm ready to share the first piece.

 

Sintra, Portugal. A five-day retreat called Pathways to Flow, organised by my Embodied Vision tutor Relinde Moors and her long-time energy and Qigong teacher Darryl — a hilariously giggly Scottish man who radiated pure Buddha energy. 🌿

 

I'm amazed by how powerful somatic exercises and movement can be. I absolutely loved that most of the retreat was not about speaking but about being, feeling, and moving.

 

By day four we had a session so intense it genuinely felt like a ceremony — without anything.

 

Three things shifted for me there:

 

Being okay with experiencing nothing. For three days I stood in qi flow after Qigong and felt nothing, while others around me moved and made sounds. The practice: be okay with that. Don't perform, don't force it. On day four, my hands lifted without me doing anything. The qi moved my body. There is a difference between believing something and knowing it in your body.

 

Sitting with a trigger instead of running from it. Someone said something on day two that triggered I'm not good enough in me. I didn't escape it this time. By the last day, what unfolded between that moment and the conversation that followed it was a beautiful orchestration — exactly what needed to happen, in exactly the right order.

 

Standing in front of everyone with no performance left. Our final exercise: each person stood before the group and shared what they felt. When my turn came, I stood there with so much love in my heart and no performance left in me — speaking from my heart, knowing that I am good enough, accepted, and loved as I am.

 

 

I also received the most unexpected gift of the retreat — something I've been developing daily since returning, and which has already created magical synchronicities and encounters. I'll share the full story, including the automatic writing prompts from my last day and a step-by-step guide on developing your own inner guidance, over on Substack.

 

👉 [Read the full piece on Embodied with Nele]

 

And if it resonates — subscribe while you're there. There's much more coming. 💛

 

Nele