Dunya is a beautiful soul with an amazing body and eyes that reflect inner peace, serenity, and tranquility. She has been facilitating this type body movement for many years which makes her a knowledgeable and experienced teacher. I was thrilled and excited to be there and felt great appreciation and admiration for her.

At the start of the retreat, my friend Jennifer showed me the menu for the entire period I would be there. The lunch and dinner menu consisted of a variety of grains, veggies, and water. The breakfast menu sort of concerned me. Could I stand eight days of oatmeal, raisins, pecans, sunflower seeds and oranges every single morning for breakfast? I did not want this to be an issue because I was there to relax and get away from the familiar scene back home. So I decided that it was going to be ok with me to have the same meal every single morning. At least I was not involved in the preparation of it.

I was ready to relax to let go and take it as it came, one day at a time. The first day, part of me felt angry for no reason at all. I just felt angry during a segment of the class. We had danced and done all other sorts of body movement activities and all I could feel was anger. There was a writing period after a segment of body movement. I wrote, but felt no desire to share with the group; luckily sharing was optional this time. I exited the class with this out-of-the-blue anger of mine hoping no one noticed the shift in my mood. I went and sat at the dining hall wooded benches and waited for lunch to be served. I took a nap outside on the grass shortly after and felt better.

This was the first time in thirteen years that I had taken the time to do something for myself for this length of time. While I was growing up, as the oldest female of a family of eight, the majority of the time I had to take care of someone else's needs before mine. Back in those days I was helping with the laundry, cleaning up the kitchen, sweeping, moping, organizing drawers or running errands for mom. I felt like a utensil sometimes and I was angry because mom used to say that she needed help with all the housework, I did not feel like doing it, but I did it out of guilt and obligation. I wanted to play sometimes but she use to say, "el que-hacer nunca se acaba", meaning "house work is never over". I felt I had to sacrifice my play time to do this "house work", stuff that I learned to hate.

In my young adult years, I went from being a daughter to being a wife. It was a repetitive and similar pattern to that of my early childhood years. Once again I felt like a utensil. I was trying to get all house chores done, take care of a husband, work outside the home, plus raise a child then later another one, and me well I sort of did not exist. I was busy trying to please everyone else by taking care of their needs that I forgot I existed, too. After ten years into the marriage I decided that it was time for me live my own dreams and to have fun doing so. My husband then did not agree with me, so I was please to agree to disagree with him and move on with my own life. I decided that I counted too and that from then on I was going to take care of myself. Now I realize, that during the retreat, that was were all my anger was coming from. It was coming from those parts of me that I stuffed down with anger for doing something I did not want to do, felt obligated to do, or guilty if I did not do it.

Dunya's Dancemeditation retreat helped me release this bottled-up anger I had stored inside for many, many years. I am forever grateful to myself for taking this time to take care of me. By not having had any expectations of what I wanted to happen during this retreat I opened myself up to heal any part of me that needed to be healed at that time. I am thankful to Dunya for her warmth, strength, and support during the entire retreat. I am grateful to my Higher Beings that assisted in getting me to the retreat as well as to the human vessels who made this possible for me.

Now that the retreat is over, I am re-committed to take excellent care of myself by making movement a part of my meditation practice, eating healthy foods that replenish and nourish my body, and by taking time to laugh, dance and play. I highly recommend Dunya's Dancemeditation retreats to anyone with the desire to love themselves first and most before anyone else in their lives by taking excellent care of themselves, especially to those that have never even thought of this being possible. Take loving care of yourself.