MY unedited notes after I left a retreat recently:
Just Left Spirit Rock:
How to deal with Anxiety:
Focus on your feet, and legs. Next, take 3 to 5 deep inhales and exhales. See if it helps you become more grounded.
Thinking back to way back when.
It’s like I was sitting there 20 years in the past at times on my retreat. There’s nothing like my first Spirit Rock retreat that I could ever compare. This one had some moments of exhilaration, anxiety, fear, sadness, and a whole range of emotions that take place, while almost nothing significant is actually happening. On the retreats, we are doing insight meditation, walking meditation, listening to dharma talks or lectures from teachers, and also, they teach loving kindness meditation.
Loving kindness helps counteract negative emotions such as anger or resentment. Lets’ say you are hiking and there are a lot of hiker on your trail, but you have become upset because they are being loud and there are so so many people there today. It’s your trail, you imagine that they are invading your space. This storyline or judgement in your mind can be counter acted with doing some metta on the people who are being loud on your hike. “May you be happy, May you be healthy, maybe you be Safe, may you life with ease. This is a genius way to counteract negative emotions, and it’s been a type that of meditation practice for thousands of years. Ideally, you would do some during the day but it’s really not that complex:
There is also insight meditation. This is where you are focusing on an object constantly for a period of time and you’re directing your attention towards that object. The most classic and common thing to focus on is your breathing. If you would like to try to do some insight meditation, you could just sit down for few minutes and try it. Let’s say you want to focus on your breathing for 20 minutes. Just sit in a chair or somewhere where you can sit up straight. Try to focus only on your breathing for 20 minutes or 10 minutes or even 30 minutes. Usually, on the retreats we are doing sits for 30 to 45 minutes at a time. You can do as little as five to 10 minutes or for me the minimum effective dose is around 20 minutes. But if you want to go deeper into your mediation and get more of a clarity of thought, you can do 45 minutes or 30 minutes which is what we do on retreat, or even longer if you would like. Now that you are seated in your sitting position, just try to sit up straight and focus on your breathing for the next few minutes. I’ll just let you know if you haven’t tried meditation, you’re mind will wander. It’s going to happen a lot. When you notice you’re mind has wandered off, just gently remind yourself to bring back your mind to your breathing, or if you’re focusing on an object, back to the object. The trick is this. If you do notice you’re mind is wandering, don’t take the bait of continuing to think more about the thoughts. This can lead you down to a rabbit hole for the next 20 minutes and before you know it, you are are thinking about all kinds of unrelated thought. It’s called associative thinking. Just Kindly remind yourself when you do wander, which is going to happen, to go back to your breathing. If it’s something important, you should remember it later. I can’t promise you will remember it though of course
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We are also doing walking meditation, and working mediation, and eating mediation on the retreats. The Buddha did a lot of walking mediation from my understanding. When I did my 10 day retreat in Thailand, our teacher talked extensively about the Buddha. This guy was an actual English speaking forest monk living in Thailand. I found his lectures to be fascinating and the retreat there while quite a bit tougher than the ones I”m used at spirit rock, was very interesting.
Waling mediation is big part of all of the silent retreats that I have been on. You will generally alternate
Finally, you will have a job assignment. Usually it takes a bout 20 to 30 minutes to complete.
It was a very amazing digital detox for me. Sometimes I feel like I came off of a another planet after I leave a retreat.
I was at the airport just people watching, in fascination with every little detail that I was noticing. The people in San Francisco seemed like they are in a very good mood today, or perhaps I was in a good mood and they are mirroring my relative chillness after my retreat.
