Brotherhood was a key theme. There were lots of hugs and eye-staring sessions that gradually shifted from awkward to deep, lingering and real. After one meditation that led us towards our inner child (me: grimacing kid with a bad haircut on the first day of mini rugby), we were encouraged to see each other’s inner child too. I found myself staring into the left eye of a 50-something hard-drinking, cigarette-smoking steel-business owner who uncomfortably reminded me of my first boss. Yet I felt simultaneously like his son and his protective father. I could see his first day at school and feel his chilly relationship with his dad, all sense of competition replaced by a new sort of empathy.
If any residual scepticism was left, it was blown away by a trauma-release meditation on the final day. Somehow, Matt the psychotherapist sent Broughton Hall’s Avalon yoga studio into great wave-like raptures of belly-sobbing and primal screaming, as the resident peacock peered in, possibly entranced or bemused. Some men reported hallucinations and out-of-body experiences. One rugby coach, who had arrived with a policeman’s manner of solid but stiff dependability, now had the air of a man who’d been left in a glade of butterflies with a bag of LSD.
A new sort of man hugJonny Hunter
Our final act was to take turns as King: to declare to the group who we were, and who we wanted to be, and to ask everyone: “What do you see in me?” I sat in that chair, with a plastic gold crown on my head, and looked around that grand drawing room as the hands raised. For someone like me, who prefers to deflect rather than confront, this should have been the stuff of feverish nightmares. But my voice wasn’t small any more. As I looked around the circle, all I saw was respect and acceptance; and all I felt was an alien sort of safety. In the gentle eyes of my new brothers, I had found an unlikely and wholly new sort of love.
Men Without Masks runs five-day retreats from Tuesday 16 May, Saturday 9 September, and Friday 1 December in 2023. Other services include a 10-week online group programme, one-day retreats and a 10-day retreat in Peru, as well as private coaching and mentoring. menwithoutmasks.com
