Seminar-camp “The Power to Be Yourself” / June 2013, the Kaniv Sea

About the residential seminar-camp “The Power to Be YOURSELF”. 20–28 June, the Kaniv Sea

More than anything I value those times and places that give Adventures.

For me they are sources of Power. They are vivid events or meetings. Vivid, not comfortable-familiar-syrupy. And it may be fear or delight, or something new that I do not expect from myself at all.

And this is what makes life worth living.

Such a door from the everyday into the unknown became for me

the camp “The Power to Be Yourself”.

Hello, Adventure! I look into your eyes with wary curiosity. And, of course, I learn most when my eyes are closed. It is not sleep, it is a blind practice. In nature, beside the fire and the precipice, it takes your breath away!

I have gone through blind practices many times, but once again I was convinced: nothing ever repeats!

Our names stayed somewhere back there, in society, behind dozens of turns of the forest road, and it even felt strange to recall that my name is Yulia and not Golden River. In fact I had set out to be dead for a while, in order to rise again more alive. I succeeded, I felt very strong, reviving feelings. And also I wanted to Go away, in order to Come back. To go into the forest for a day and a night.

And to learn something new about myself.

And I learned: I am, and the World around me is priceless!

Thank you to everyone who was there! Complete Brake, Beloved Girl, Egoist, She-Wolf Not-a-Fox!

Golden River

I wanted to go to the CAMP the moment I heard about it, it happened at the Fairytale City festival a month before the appointed date. Desires to get to an upcoming event with such force (be it a seminar, a trip, or training in a new extreme sport for me) had happened to me before, and I knew what it meant – something wonderful would happen in this place, and a part of me would change.

“- I have a theory too. A theory about moments. Moments that make an impact.
– My theory is that these moments, these flashes of such intense tension,
can turn a life upside down, showing who we really are.
– You see, each of us has moments that we live through together with all the people we have ever known.
– And it is exactly such moments that turn into our story.”

The film “The Vow”, directed by Michael Sucsy

Two weeks before departure I received by post a list of the things I needed, and at that moment 99% certainty turned into 90% fear… Would I be able to, would I manage or not, how hard would it be for me emotionally and physically, and was it worth changing anything at all – I could change even what I like about myself, but most of all I was afraid that during some practice I would not withstand the force and intensity of my released emotions and would “jam” from pain, be emotionally “paralysed”, and no one would be able to help me.

I shared these fears with Yulia (Perfect Emptiness, Golden River) (it was from her that I learned about the upcoming trip), who had already accumulated a solid amount of seminar experience. She did not try to persuade me or to calm me down, I heard from her several stories and snippets from previous trips. At some moments I listened detachedly, at some it became even scarier, and at some I laughed out loud. The most important thing I understood for myself then was that no one knows what the CAMP will be like and what its result will be for me, but the people who would be next to me have enough experience to support and enough speed of reaction for each participant, and I would not be left alone with my stirred-up blocks.
On the day of departure, at the meeting point, the first person I got to know was a girl called Lena (Satisfied Egoist), we turned out to have a lot in common and it so happened that we went through the blind practices as a pair. On arriving at the place itself we pitched our tents and sat in a circle to get acquainted. There another participant made a vivid impression on me – Yuliana (Complete Brake) – I was won over by her kind sincerity and her Barbie-doll looks, but the most important trait, which, I think, disarmed everyone, is her ability to make fun of herself. Her honest confessions often caused tenderness and general laughter.
From the very beginning of the CAMP I decided to “work” to the full, and so, switching on my straight-A student, I started to do the practices with fanaticism. The stress here should be put on the word “do”. I was fixated on it, like a worker at a machine, slogging away to manage to fulfil the plan, and best of all to overfulfil it.
From my parents and those around me I had acquired notions and templates of a “correct” life, and my striving for independence, my resentments against those same parents, my personal complexes and other “stoppers” in my thinking had formed templates of my behaviour, which I evaluated as “wrong”.

That is how I was tossed about in life: if I want to “teach someone a lesson”, I behave as I want, which means – “badly”; if I want to be liked, I behave “well”. Only good is not always good, and bad is not always bad. And while I was doing this, I forgot to live as I really wanted, guided by my inner sensations. My situation reminded me of an old chestnut about the old Jew who, before his death, confessed that in company he drank tea with 3 spoons of sugar, and at home with 1, though all his life he had liked it with 2. Where could energy come from, when it all went on those around me, on a sense of guilt, on the “hooks” of the past.
And I was shown this. At first gently, in a friendly way. And when I “switched on” my own: “Oh, I know I’m bad, but everyone here feel sorry for me, and I’ll belittle myself even more and enjoy all your attention” – they made it clear to me, and not ambiguously. Is it hard to see the real me? No, it isn’t hard, what’s hard is when others see me like that. Everything I had tried not to show, all those sides that I considered unworthy in myself – all of it came out. The masks were taken off.
I went there to take them off, although at the beginning, perhaps, I did not fully understand it. I am still unpacking the material that was given to me at the seminar, even now, when 2 months have already passed and I am writing these lines, I discover new meanings in the experience I lived through.
Now I see myself as more whole. I have learned to feel myself. Not always. But it is there now. I do it when I have to make an important decision, when I am simply standing before a choice, when I am in turmoil… I understood that following emotions and following feelings are quite different things (earlier it seemed otherwise). Now I am sitting at work and thinking how much simpler everything has become. And there is no need to “try”, on the contrary – to relax, to trust. And as in the song by Alexander Kashin, which became the anthem of my trip: «Соберусь, ударю в струны, все узнаю наперед, предназначенные руны вечно врут, не врет лишь голос твой.»
Natasha (Fox Not-a-Fox, She-Wolf Not-a-Fox), girls, thank you all so very, very much, and I hope that we will meet soon.

With love, your Alyona (Beloved Girl)