Over Easter Jonna Rivers and I completed our first week-long singing retreat: ‘Sing Release Transform’. We worked with a varied programme of beautiful songs, natural voice, movement, meditation and visual arts to go deep – using the music to help everyone explore their inner worlds. It was an extraordinary experience of tears, laughter and sharing, with wonderful moments of group synergy, but what stood out most to me was when facets of people hitherto unseen appeared in all their strange and colourful authenticity. This happened in particular whilst using gibberish. It was no longer like being in the presence of human beings but of creatures with a far broader spectrum of being. Something akin to being in a room full of incredible, intense artworks, or music of another culture entirely. Alien and yet with a clear internal structure and congruency. I have spent the past decade imagining carrying out this kind of work and here, as we just tickle at its edges, it is humbling to witness not only its transformational potential but how it reveals so much about the great breadth and movement that life itself is. It was beautifully clear that every experience; intense, light-hearted, painful or joyful as it may be; flowers into magnificence when it is offered acceptance and expression. In such a space, the difficult experiences are the nutrients in the soil.

The Spring sun surprised us by shining throughout the week, flanked before and after by the refreshing, cleansing, earth-kissing rain.

DON’T MISS OUT: Sing Release Transform’s life-changing and magical camping weekend, limited numbers, 21st-23rd July 2017. See lifebulb’s events, contact us or book here.

This week’s Laughter Yoga: Are you connecting to your breath effectively?