Meditation Bootcamp

My experience at a 10-day silent meditation retreat was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Here's what it was like.

Space soldiers mediating.

Meditation is a hot topic these days, and with the addition of so many meditation apps, its popularity is the highest it’s ever been in the West.

And that’s a good thing. Research shows that meditation has many benefits for the mind and body, calming us down emotionally and making us feel more connected spiritually — and, of course, it calms the body, allowing us to relax all parts, specifically our muscles.

I’ve been meditating for a long time — on and off for thirty-five-plus years, and I’ve studied and practiced many styles, from simple relaxation to the more complex styles originating in the East.

Then about ten years ago, I attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat.

Yep. Ten days of silence and meditation.

10 days of no talking (except with the teacher when necessary).

10 days with no phone. We had to surrender our phones and laptops.

No Internet.

No TV.

No radio.

No magazines or newspapers.

No lounging in a comfortable living room.

No… NOTHING!

Just silence and meditation. For. Ten. Long. Days.

10.5 hours a day. That’s how many hours we could meditate if we chose to, the allotted time. Spoiler alert: I could only go, on average, 6.5 hours a day.

It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

Let me set the stage for you.

First of all, it was a beautiful Buddhist-style (Vipassana) center in north Texas. The food was vegetarian. Quite tasty, I might add. We ate 2 full meals a day, then fruit and tea at dinner time.

I had a very nice private room and bathroom. The walls were stark white. No hanging pictures or knickknacks for decorations. Just a plain comfortable white room with a bed.

There were separate dorms and cafeterias for men and women. A large Meditation Hall connected the two sides, which is where both genders gathered for required group meditations and lectures - but were separated by sixty feet or so. Men on one side, and women on the other.

Each meditation session was an hour long. Not twenty minutes, which is what I was accustomed to practicing.

The days were filled with group meditations, individual meditations, lectures, food, rest, walks after lunch, then sleep. There were three required meditations in the hall. Outside of the lectures and group meditations, you could meditate in your room or the hall. It was your choice.

Here’s how the days went:

4:00 am: Wake-up Bell

4:30 am — 6:30 am: Meditate in your room or the hall - your choice.

6:30am — 8:00am: Breakfast.

8:00 am — 11:00 am: Meditate in the hall.

11:00 am — 1:00 pm: Lunch and time to walk or rest.

1:00 pm — 5:00 pm: Meditate in the hall for one-hour intervals.

5:00 pm — 6:00 pm: Tea and fruit.

6:00 pm — 7:00 pm: Meditate in the hall.

7:00 pm — 8:15 pm: Lecture.

8:30 pm — 9:00 pm: Meditate in your room.

10:00 pm: Lights Out.

Needless to say, this was a big adjustment for me, as I’m sure it was for most of the fifty other men and women attending.

The first 3 days.

These were the hardest in terms of getting comfortable: finding the right sitting position, finding the right cushion, and getting past the aches and pains in my back from sitting upright for hours.

Everyone fidgeted a lot, moving around to adjust positions, trying to get comfortable. There were strange noises, including farting and burping. At times it was quite entertaining.

I certainly had monkey mind, where thoughts jump around like monkeys in a cage, swinging and jumping from branch to branch. It was certainly very hard to slow my mind down.

Key epiphanies during the first days.

As my body began to relax, I was able to realize the contrast in how tense I was - and had been for quite some time. And, I hadn’t a clue as to the level of tension I had been engulfed in and carrying for years. As the days progressed, my body slowly relaxed. By the end of the 10 days, there was such a dramatic difference.

Secondly,

I realized that twenty minutes is not nearly enough time to meditate. It takes twenty minutes for the mind and body to only begin to slow down - and calm down. That was huge to me, due to the fact I had been meditating, on average, twenty minutes at a time for years.

4th Day.

On the fourth day, my mind and body began to settle in; I could sit for an hour without moving or fidgeting. This is the day, as I recall, they taught us their meditation technique, which is to focus on sensations in the body.

For the next so many days, I tried different things. I attempted to meditate every single opportunity which amounted to 10.5 hours.

I couldn’t do it. I fell asleep too often.

4:00 am wake up.

Yep. 4:00 am!

Wake-up consisted of someone walking the hallways and ringing a bell. You had thirty minutes to either go to the hall to meditate or sit up in your room to meditate. At first, I tried meditating in the hall. Too early. Then tried it in my room. Still too early. I kept falling asleep. So, when I heard the bell, I’d just go back to sleep. But then… they’d come knocking. So, I learned to beat the system.

Beating the system.

I learned that when they rang the bell, and I turned my light on as if I were awake, I could go back to sleep without getting the dreaded and annoying knock on the door, which felt like a bang on the door at 4:30 in the morning. Thus, I could sleep until time for breakfast at 6:30.

As time went on.

I got into a pretty good routine where I could sit an hour at a time with limited problems. It was still extremely hard to meditate for so many hours. But as the days went on, the more my mind and body adjusted and surrendered allowing me to simply “BE.”

It’s amazing how clueless we are about our bodies and minds. We don’t realize just how distracted, tensed up, and stressed we are until we step away and out of our everyday routine. We’re like frogs in boiling water (Wikipedia description of metaphor).

As the days went on, there were ups and downs. My emotions started coming up. My body was detoxing, and so was everyone else’s. On the 4th day, the smell in the dormitory halls was rank! OMG! And yes, it’s common at these retreats.

I’m out of here!

From about the 3rd day through the 8th, people would disappear, meaning leave the retreat, which is also common. One: it’s very hard physically. Two: it’s very hard emotionally.

On the 4th day, emotions and unrest began to kick in for me. But, it wasn’t until the 8th day that I couldn’t take it anymore. I had packed my bags that evening and was walking out the door.

Caught leaving.

I don’t know what it was. I don’t know why I felt the overpowering compulsion to leave. But I did. I just felt I had to get the hell out of there. “I was done!”

The tech caught me leaving and asked if I would talk to the teacher. I agreed. I told him it looked like inclement weather and I was worried about the roads; and that I didn’t want to get trapped there. I also mentioned I had learned all I needed to meditate in the 8 days. He talked me into staying. After all, I only had a day left, after which we were allowed to talk and reminisce.

My Epiphany #3

The teacher listened patiently to my reasoning and justification for leaving. He mirrored back to me my basic message of, I’m done. He then probed and asked questions relating to the number of times I had said that in my life regarding everything: jobs, relationships, projects… everything.

I was awestruck. He nailed me. As I began to ponder the many times I, at some level deep down, had said, I’m done, I got emotional. It dawned on me that this was my mode of operation most of my life. I couldn’t believe it.

No distractions meant I was left with ME.

Being in a stale environment with no distractions while sitting quietly and attempting to meditate, as well as actually meditating, allowed buried emotions to bubble to the surface. In other words, it allowed ME to come up. My pains. My fears. My traumas. My doubts. My guilt. My shame. All of it to rise.

There was nothing to distract me. No phone. No Internet. No discussions about politics, work, or projects. Not even small talk. There was nothing but ME left. And I freaked out.

It’s absolutely amazing to observe how the mind operates. The more it is busy thinking, doing, solving, and caring, the more it’s disconnected from our emotions, for the most part. That’s why we have workaholics and busy freaks.

Funny stories.

Keep in mind, all 25 guys had not said a word to each other, so we obviously didn’t know names. To entertain myself, I gave most a nickname. It’s been so long I can’t remember most, but I do remember one who wore a hooded sweatshirt, I named Unabomber. As we walked casually, I’d say to myself, there’s the Unabomber or there’s such and such.

On the afternoon of the 9th day, we got to speak. There were introductions and conversations about our experiences. It turns out that most of us nicknamed everyone as I did, which I find very interesting regarding the nature of the mind.

Another story: there was a guy who was a busy entrepreneur from California. He was a smoker and had decided to quit at the beginning of the retreat. About midnight four days in, he started jonesing for a cigarette. Remembering he had tossed them into the dumpster, he found himself dumpster diving in the middle of a Buddhist center at midnight. He managed to find them. Then realized he didn’t have a light. Panic! That led him on a desperate search for a match. He broke into the cafeteria (although it wasn’t locked) hoping to find a match. He didn’t find one but did end up having a huge bowl of cereal.

In Closing.

While this experience was extremely hard, I’d love to do it again and probably will. It’s so easy to get caught up in the busyness of life: work, kids and responsibilities. They’re all stressful. A metaphor that comes to my mind is, life kicks up a lot of dust, and periodically we need to sit down and do nothing, allowing it to settle so that we can see what’s out there again, what we look like in the mirror, and what’s up ahead.

If you have thought about a long meditation retreat, I suggest you do it. Just do it. Don’t overthink it. Just do it.

It calms the mind, the spirit and the body. It’s a gift to ourselves.