coming back from ista cyprus: what touched me, what opened, what stayed

I’ve just come back from ISTA Cyprus 2025, and I’m still in that soft, strange space where the body is processing much faster than the mind. Cyprus was warm and pleasant, the kind of weather that makes your muscles relax without asking permission. But it wasn’t the island that marked me. It was the people, the honesty in their eyes, the way strangers arrive with this rare intention of genuinely working on themselves. That alone creates a field you don’t find anywhere else.

I’m still in my integration phase, so I don’t yet know what will remain in the long run. But certain moments have already etched themselves clearly.

One of them was the workshop by Michal maayan don, an exploration of Dark Love that didn’t try to shock or impress. It invited us to meet our deeper, more hidden desires with presence instead of fear. It worked through the body more than through words, the kind of experience where you feel something shifting quietly inside.

Maria Gomez offered something precious about boundaries, especially about what happens when they haven’t been honored. Not the theory of limits, not the ideal version, but the real-life moments where we need to repair. How to come back to each other, how to speak, how to listen, how to stitch the thread again. That honesty touched me deeply.

And then there was Nimay Sunra. His workshop on the couple was one of the most tender moments of the festival for me. He spoke about those invisible distances that sometimes appear between two people who love each other, those small fractures made of fatigue, ego, fear. He showed us how to rebuild a bridge, how to find our way back when the connection feels fragile. His vulnerability made everything he shared even more real. For me and for Nastia, it brought us back into a space of presence we had been missing without even noticing.

The rhythm of the festival had its own beauty. Days spent diving into oneself, evenings spent meeting wonderful people in full vulnerability, nights that never felt long enough. You end up tired, yes, but with that exhaustion that comes from living fully, not from numbing yourself.

I won’t go into more detail about the workshops themselves, because these experiences are meant to be lived, not explained. I can say that the assistants created a container filled with care, that the spaces were beautiful, and that even though the food was not the highlight of the week, it didn’t matter. I found a little restaurant nearby, and every morning I went out to pick up fresh croissants for Nastia. It became our gentle ritual.

If there is one thing I would do differently next year, it is to stay one extra night. Not rushing to an airport, not squeezing seven hours of flying into a body that had just opened so much. Giving myself the grace to land slowly, to breathe, to integrate.

ISTA Cyprus 2025 opened unexpected spaces in me. The rest, I will discover in the days to come.

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