By Sheila Bayliss
The first mindfulness retreat I went on, I got a bit of a shock. I was expecting a cozy week of blissed-out relaxation and freedom from the pressures of day-to-day life. But a retreat isn’t necessarily about getting away from your difficulties – for me, it can be about giving myself space to really be with them.
Maybe you love the idea of a meditation retreat, but it’s not likely you’ll have the time or the funds to actually do it.
Some of the benefits of a retreat are available to you right here, in your daily life. No, I don’t mean the extra time for meditation, or someone else cooking for you. I mean the opportunity to just be with your own difficulty without running away.
So why does being on retreat help us deepen our mindfulness practice, if not just because of all that peace and quiet? Because in daily life it’s just too tempting to run away from what feels hard, and on retreat we’re less likely to do that.
Meditation, in a way, is just really being with our experience, whatever it is – be that relaxing, overwhelming, or frustrating. In our daily lives, we’re constantly running away from things – mess, failure, vulnerability, boredom, emptiness, uncertainty, sadness – instead of being with them. Being in the present moment doesn’t mean only doing that when the present moment is enjoyable (sorry!).
But cultivating this ability will do wonders for your resilience. How can you ever know what you’re really feeling if you never stop to pay attention?
What I brought back from the retreat wasn’t quite what I expected. It was a deeper learning that distraction prolongs stress, by stopping me from fully processing feelings. I’ve found that I’ve been able to keep some of the retreat spirit alive since I got back home. Having brought this new awareness back out into the world with me, I’ve begun paying even more attention to my suffering. Rather than running away from difficulty, I take the time to be with it more. Which tends to mean I allow it to fully ‘arrive’, and then it passes by again sooner than it would have if I was busy trying to ignore it.
Now when difficulty comes up, I’m quicker to recognize it as an opportunity to explore my habitual responses and develop resilience and self-compassion. Then I can respond with curiosity and kindness. (And if you’re wondering if this really works – it helped me thrive in a situation that I’ve avoided for years out of pure fear).
Here are a few ways to recreate a little retreat spirit without going anywhere:
Reduce distractions – keep your phone on silent and out of sight when possible (a hard one this, I know – an ongoing ‘practice’!)
When difficulty arises, notice it and make room for it – then be with it (but go at your own pace, and consider learning more about self-compassion to help support you with this).
Try silent periods – turn off the TV for a tea break, make up a ‘silence’ game with your loved ones, get creative. Do some short sitting meditations to experiment with increasing your awareness, or allocate some time to ‘just be with’ your difficulties.
Talk to the people around you – instead of fiddling with your phone or watching TV (and be kind to yourself if this feels hard).
Sit with a cup of tea and just notice how you are, what’s in your experience right now – notice any urges to do something.
It can be so tempting to think of mindfulness as something we can only practice when life is stress-free. But the irony is that when we bring this mindful awareness to our chaotic, imperfect lives – it can help us to thrive right there, in the eye of the storm.
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Reading this post brought peace as I found validation in my own mindful practices. Frequently I am asked “how can sitting in silence really help you hear more?” Such a wonderful experience that in fact it does, as I explain my journey and my reasons why.
Your readers may be interested in this Huffington Post article on meditation: http://goo.gl/WM8NLh
Great article!
Have you done a Vipassana meditation retreat? I thought it was the most difficult thing I had ever done but also the most rewarding. I felt so blessed and grateful to be able to spend that much with myself, my practice, my challenges and not run away. I’m doing a second one soon!