This entry was posted on Jan 25, 2023 by Charlotte Bell.
Going away on retreat provides you time to separate out of your day by day cares. However you may retreat at dwelling and make your day by day life a meditation. Whenever you retreat at dwelling, you develop into accountable for the issues that others maintain on residential retreats—meals, laundry, and so on.
To have fun the turning of the brand new yr, my partner and I made a decision to buck custom. As an alternative of partying till midnight and past, we customary a five-day meditation retreat for ourselves. From December twenty eighth to January 2nd, we practiced mindfulness from morning 6:00 am to 9:30 pm every day. The choice to retreat at dwelling was an ideal approach to start the brand new yr.
To be sincere, it’s not as if my partner and I’ve made a behavior of heavy reveling on New Yr’s Eve. We now have, through the years, attended gatherings and managed to remain up till midnight many occasions. However these events have been very tame. Additionally, this isn’t the primary time I’ve spent New Yr’s Eve in retreat. Method again within the Nineteen Eighties, I sat a number of 10-day silent retreats spanning from Boxing Day till January sixth.
Residential Retreats vs. Retreating at House
Since my first silent Perception meditation retreat in 1988, I’ve attended many, many extra. I really like the chance {that a} longer intensive residential retreat offers. The change of surroundings on the retreat heart provides you the chance to let go of day by day considerations and focus solely on follow. Over days and/or weeks of follow, it’s simpler to develop continuity. On a residential retreat, outdoors of a small “karma yoga” job you carry out every day, all of your time is dedicated to follow. Corralling the thoughts in sitting and strolling meditation all day lengthy naturally begins to increase into different day by day actions akin to consuming, showering and brushing your tooth.
Whenever you retreat at dwelling, you develop into accountable for the issues that others maintain on residential retreats—meals, laundry, and so on. This requires some forethought, each earlier than and through your retreat. For instance, I plan meals that can present simply reheated leftovers the following day. That method, I solely must coordinate meal prep each different day. My partner is answerable for the tech stuff. He units up the talks and directions we hear to 3 occasions a day. We select them from among the many wealth of inspiring recordings of our favourite lecturers on dharmaseed.org.
Why Retreat at House?
Whereas I really like residential retreats, and plan on attending many extra, dwelling retreats do have some benefits:
- You don’t must spend the weeks previous the retreat getting ready to be away. There’s no want for a cat sitter or somebody to regulate your house and backyard. Particularly in the event you’re happening an extended retreat of a number of weeks, there’s a LOT you must maintain forward of time. Retreating at dwelling eliminates an entire lot of planning and nervousness.
- The associated fee. Retreats are fantastic, and completely well worth the expense, however they’ve develop into costly when it comes to tuition, journey prices, missed work, and the above-mentioned those who you must rent to maintain your house and pets when you’re away.
- On dwelling retreats, boundaries between formal follow and your day by day duties start to blur. This occurs on residential retreats as properly. However intensive mindfulness follow at dwelling brings new life to your acquainted, mundane chores.
Bringing Mindfulness to Life
In latest retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Heart, writer and longtime trainer Joseph Goldstein has advised that we invert the standard retreat priorities. Normally, retreatants give precedence to sitting, strolling and all our different actions in that order. He proposed that we put our day by day actions first and sitting meditation final. Whenever you retreat at dwelling, this appears to occur extra naturally.
The aim of mindfulness follow is to not get “good” at sitting. In the end, the follow is supposed to result in larger mindfulness as you progress by way of your life. With follow, mindfulness begins to combine. It turns into the bottom from which you act. House follow is essential to this transformation.
In a future submit, I’ll share recommendations on easy methods to arrange a retreat at dwelling.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Observe and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third guide is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards in 2010.
