When Daniela reached out to us earlier this year, she described her stay at Happy Buddha as “one of the kindest things I’ve ever done for myself.” Recovering from knee surgery and deep in burnout, she arrived at the retreat seeking stillness—and found more than she expected. We’re honoured to share her story.
I Chased the Matildas Spirit – and Found My Own
It was 2023 and the FIFA Women’s World Cup had come to Australia. Tillies fever had well and truly taken over. I’d never watched a game of professional live sport in my life, but suddenly found myself inescapably caught up in the thrill of women’s football.
It must have been all that hopeful dopamine flying about, because watching the Tillies compete, I thought that maybe I – who had not played any form of competitive sport since high school – could finally be an athlete too. (Keep in mind, I’ve been a faithful office worker for over a decade. Tillies delirium hit strong.)
I decided to sign up for a season of social netball with some women from work. I hadn’t been active in years, but I was ready to ease myself out of my ergonomic office chair and onto the court.
A mere five minutes into my very first game I was slammed into from the side by an enthusiastic Goal Defence, tearing my ACL and fracturing my knee cap. My dreams of one day kicking a ball around with Sam Kerr were destroyed. I would need surgery and a year to recover.
My recovery was slow. Six months post-surgery, any motivation I’d had early on was entirely exhausted. Daily physio required me to push through a pain barrier that my mind told me I should do anything to avoid. I felt I couldn’t trust my body or my mind anymore, and I wasn’t sure when, or if, that would change.
Around the same time, I caught up with a friend who had recently returned from a silent weekend retreat in the Blue Mountains. Not the 10-day Vipassana retreat you might have heard of, but a more relaxed option involving guided meditation, gentle movement classes and a few days of silence. They said I should try it.
Even though it might have seemed like a no-brainer, my exhausted mind and body couldn’t shake a sense of anxiety. I wasn’t sure that slowing down even more was what I needed. I worried I wasn’t far enough along in my recovery to sit comfortably during the group mediations, let alone attempt a downward dog, but something told me to book myself in despite my doubts.
I arrived at the retreat on a wet Friday afternoon in the middle of winter to a cosy house on a property in Wentworth Falls. Several guests had already arrived and made themselves at home lying next to one of several fireplaces. My shoulders, rock-solid from months of tension, began to relax.
After settling into our rooms, we met our guide for the weekend and introduced ourselves to one another. One guest was recovering from a stroke, another from a knee surgery like myself. New parents were taking a moment to themselves, others were grieving lost ones. One returning participant, who’d gotten so much out of his first time at the retreat, repeated the words of his first guide to us: no one needs permission to rest.
After dinner, we were encouraged to hand our phones to our guide before entering into silence for the rest of our stay. Early on in my recovery, my phone’s algorithm had cottoned onto the fact I was injured. My social media feeds exclusively featured content intended for athletes facing the same injury. The 60-second clips made the journey back to full health seem so easy. Meanwhile, I was still struggling to sit cross-legged. I couldn’t give my phone up fast enough.
The first evening concluded with a yoga Nidra session where the group was guided to a space between wakefulness and sleep. Here, between these two states, my mind slowed, and for the first time since my injury, I felt at ease in my body. The next morning, I woke from one of the deepest sleeps of my life. Without access to a clock or my phone, I found time stretched on endlessly.
The rest of the retreat featured various forms of meditation and movement classes. During a ‘sound bath’, instruments were played by our guide as we lay in Savasana pose (Sanskrit for a restorative yoga position, also known as ‘corpse pose’). In those peaceful moments, I had time to reflect on something very plain: lessons from the body come daily – and my body was finally learning what it needed to heal.
The final morning, in between all the rain that weekend, the sun came out briefly. I noticed some of the guests heading out to hike to a nearby waterfall, but I knew my knee wasn’t strong enough yet to join them. Instead, I lay back down into my Savasana. I didn’t need permission to rest.
Article and images by Daniela Baldry.
