It was almost directly after the 8-day Radical Honesty intensive in Italy. I was not so sure if it is good to continue travelling so soon after my arrival back from Italy. After all I can say it was the best thing I could do.
Starting my journey
On the 4th of May I started my journey first with the train to Aachen. From there I wanted to hitchhike to Utrecht to visit my good friend Vincent.
It was kind of difficult to come to the highway entry by walking. Because normally there was no access by walking. I went down next to a bridge and walked on the grass next to another street for 100 meters.
I stood there for half an hour until a woman took me almost directly to Utrecht. A second car took me in the city centre.
I talked to Vincent in whatsapp and we met in the Wilhelminapark, a beautiful park close to his parents house (where we stayed the whole time as they were in holiday).
This was the only time during my stay when I walked more than half an hour through the city (the most of the time we were by bike). It Is a really beautiful city and I enjoyed to walk there and ask nice Dutch people for my way.
When I met Vincent
In the evening Vincent and I had cozy picknick in the park before we drove to Rika Hopperlaan where the house of his parents is.
The next morning we prepared some breakfast and took it to this awsome slow coffee place. I love it . It has just space for max. maybe 10 people if the weather is good and they can also sit outside. And it is sooo relaxed. I loved it. We were just sitting there. Drinking delicious slow coffee, Eating our breakfast, talking with people, playing chess and just enjoying doing nothing.
I think we were sitting there for around 4-5 hours. At some point, I was just breathing deeply, breathing out making sound and felt a tingling in my head. It was just beautiful.
After having a delicious dinner on the balcony, we went to a fullmoon circle of rainbow brothers and sisters. Again I felt a tingling when we were singing and making noises. This time in my whole body. We were singing and talking until long in the night around the fire.
On Saturday morning we signed up to a breathwork session with Joost. He did an amazing job and he is still quite young.
Spontaniously we decided to spend the afternoon in the beautiful nature of Reinaue. We went swimming and enjoyed the beauty of nature.
Extatic Dance x 3
Sunday morning we did Extatic Dance with many locals in a park in the middle of Utrecht. Vincent has 20 silent disco headphones that we used, so everybody was hearing the music trough headphones. Extatic Dance is a dance without rules or steps. You are just invited to move however your body wants to move. Or do not move at all. What ever you want.
After dancing we went to the slow coffee place again. I felt that I can be myself there, just being. Thank you Jonathan. And on this occation I tried a vegan cake meditation inspired by Gabriela I met on the 8 day intensive in Italy. In this meditation you watch the cake, smell it, take little bites with full awareness, feel the sensations in your body and be in the here and now.
Sunday evening and Monday morning, Vincent was busy with private thing.
Monday evening we continued with Extatic dance. This time Vincent was the instructor and it was the first session he gave. It was great
Really dancing extatic
Tuesday morning it continued and we did his next Extatic dance session. Now it was really extatic, because it was a dancing in the rain and there were only the three of us. Vincent, Jolene and me.
She just came back from a Tantra Temple weekend and it was her wish to spend time in nature. So it was perfect. We took some of our clothes off and painted our body each other with mud.
If I had known, that the mud would be so easy to remove when we took a bath in the river after, I would have put more in my face 😉
I really like Jolenes femineity. It felt so open and welcoming. I felt that I just can be myself and talk with her honest about everything whats going on in my head. And this without introducing her into radical honesty before. Actually we talked about it before. I imagine, when I talk with someone about the 8 day intensive radical honesty workshop, this is almost like I say: “Let´s be more honest with each other.
Back home
The next morning hitchhiked back from Utrecht to Germany. Other than on the way to Utrecht where almost all the way was one car, I was taken by several different cars. And I was very lucky it did not rain.
I will be very happy if you share your opinion on this article or your own experience in the comments!
And of course it is very interesting if you share what touched you, what resonates in you or what is alive in you while you read this lines.