Silence and meditation are all consuming passions for me at the moment. We have a Silent Yoga Retreat coming up soon (22/3 – 24/3/24) and as always, where you put your attention, all sorts of interesting phenomena start to be revealed.

The most obvious, and not unexpected response to this Yoga Retreat, was the early uptake of places by my more introverted, nonconformist students. A whole weekend immersed in yoga, breathwork, meditations and wisdom shared from ancient teachings – all performed in Silence. How divine for some and terrifying for others! 
It got me thinking of how exhausting constant communication can be for both introverts and extroverts. All of us need some time away from the 24/7 barrage of incoming noise to regroup and collect our thoughts. Conversation with others is like a game of chess. We correlate and adjust our behaviour according to how others act. This communication dance becomes fairly automatic, but every second we’re watching for and responding to others’ cues and deciding how to act based on social norms. We must compel ourselves to listen, to show interest, to check inappropriate comments. We must be proactive but also defensive:
at any time, someone may insult, embarrass, confuse, or manipulate us, and we must keep our guard up against these potential attacks. And we must do all this, while making our efforts seem effortless! Even when you’re around those who allow you to “be yourself,” social interaction demands great vigilance and requires a high level of energy and control.
We are social animals, and talking with others is important for fun, community, and mental health, but ceaseless immersion in society is exhausting and drains us. We need time away from the noise to identify what we want and what we believe in, without being influenced by the expectations of society.
Welcome to Silence! When you go silent for a while, it could be a few hours to a few days, it’s a little alien in the beginning. You seem to be chatting to the person in your head a lot, usually ruminating on negative thoughts. And then that voice shuts up and suddenly, the sky is bluer, the trees jump out at you in every conceivable shade of green, the birdsong is sweeter, and you start to feel a rising joy as you realise you were part of this technicolour world all along. In fact, it’s inside you, you just had to go quiet for a while.
When we can go silent and inwards, we affirm our independent identity and existence, and we temporarily reject the law of the herd. Extroverts may need less, and introverts more, but neither group can entirely do without. It’s no wonder the greatest inventors, greatest minds and greatest spiritual beings are huge fans of silence, meditation and going inwards.
Margot Wagner
Yoga Under the Bodhi Tree
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