Monthly Archives: September 2018

A SILENT MEDITATION RETREAT IS INDEED AN ENDURANCE EVENT

I was counseled that a Silent Meditation Retreat is an Endurance event and so it is. Let me compare:

In the days, weeks and months prior to the event, there is periodized training that culminates in show-time. Mentally and physically the upcoming event takes center stage and preparations are made to ensure the best possible performance.

Tapering ignites anxiety and eagerness, doubts and concerns, anticipation of the as yet unknown. Bags are packed, gear or tools are checked and double checked. An endurance athlete may well have run the marathon, raced the ultra distance trails or cycled the century route before, but each time is always a confluence of new conditions.

Then its time to begin. You want to either turn around and run away, or explode over the start line. The gun goes off and you’re in it. There’s no turning back and at this point you really don’t want to. You’re a trained athlete/meditation practitioner so you get right down to it. You find your pace or position. You begin – not too fast at first, not too aggressively – to build your momentum. As an athlete, you kick out that initial anaerobic rush and level off in what will be a sustainable aerobic pace. Meditating, you find stillness, perhaps begin your practice with the help of a guided technique, then settle more deeply into stillness.

But let’s take this analogy to a slightly different place. Lets consider the endurance event, say a timed century (been there/done that-many times) with an entire week of silent meditation and Yin yoga practice (been there/done that as well).

Kelly Brush Ride, Linda Freeman through the covered bridge, Middlebury and Addison County Vermont, September 12, 2015. Photography by Caleb Kenna. Coincidentally, as I write this post, the KB ride is coming up in a few days. It was my first century, and about 6 years later possibly my last and definitely my fastest (over 2 hours faster!). It is a ride and a cause dear to my heart and epitomizes my cycling soul.

Mile 0-10. Ouch. That first hill really hurts. I’m breathing so hard – will I ever catch my breath? Ahhhh, a downhill….

Day .5 -1. OMG this is awful! It is so so hard! What was I thinking to actually choose to do this? What time did you say it was? Day one? Really?

Mile 11-40. OK, I want to push a little harder here. I am determined to better my time and send better stats to my coach. Raise those Watts a bit and lower the HR and continue the drive across the top and into the downhills…. Commit.

Day 2: I don’t think I can do this. I want to go home. I hurt physically and my head is tired from moving so very slowly from minute to minute. Simply waiting for the bowl to sound at the end of each meditation period takes more energy than I possess. This is so truly a friggin’ sufferfest…. But, I did Commit.

Mile 41-60. Are you kidding me? Is that all I’ve done? I’m getting tired! I keep forgetting to drink enough. My butt hurts. My mind is wandering. My right gastroc is threatening to quit on the next climb, maybe today is just not my day…. But, recommit.

Day 3. This is it. If it doesn’t get better soon I can’t guarantee the results. Even my stomach hurts. I decided to fast from the noon meal until breakfast. Maybe that will help. And then – there was small group. It was the turning point. I’m not the only one. Meditation can also mean to “just sit”. Recommit.

Mile 61-80. Just do it. Do not give an inch. Technique, fueling, breath. Do not lose focus. Watch that white line.

Day 4. Just do it. Take hold of what is happening and move forward. Do not entertain doubts or self-criticism. Watch that strip of grass when walking down the path.

Mile 81-90. Rededicate. Power into the climbs. Pass anyone you see ahead. Breathe. Stay centered and calm. Focus on each pedal stroke. This is not the time for an adrenalin rush.

Day 5. Rededicate. Patience. Interest. Awareness. Be not tempted to look to the finish. Continue one moment, one step at a time.

Mile 91-100. The race is won or lost right here, right now. Give it all you have, leave it all on the course. Replace whatever might be frantic with pure, beautiful strength. Dig deep. Then fly.

Day 6. This is it. There is renewed energy and my practice goes deeper, more spiritual, more comfortable yet more demanding. I don’t want to make any mistakes. But wait, that’s wrong. Refocus and give it all I’ve got which might be translated as release, open, but DO be aware of absolutely everything.

Post race: It takes a few minutes, but then there’s the rush; the joy of knowing that I have done my best and that I have indeed bettered my past performance is overwhelming! I personally am sensationally energized after an event. I want to laugh, change out of my sweaty kit into a dress and Birkenstocks, hang out with family or friends in attendance, and finally pack my beloved bike, find some good coffee and enjoy the long drive home alone.

Day 7. After morning meditation, the lifting of silence and the return of our cell phones, it takes a few minutes, but then there’s the realization that I did it!

I can hardly believe that I actually remained silent for the better part of a week. Yet that was the easy part. Oh! The meditation! Those incredibly long minutes were surely equally as strenuous as the most serious climbs on my bike. Yoga practice was a gift. But the meditation. All that thinking and processing and practice and awareness….I want to laugh and talk with my new friends. I want to wear my red threads on my wrist forever. I want to take home everything I can – incorporate meditation in my daily schedule, reclaim those sweet spots of stillness, practice loving kindness – all these grand ideals and down to the pragmatic – what was that amazing natural cleaner I used when I did my work chores and what cookbooks did Steve and Tim suggest?

Take home: For the athlete and the meditation practitioner – what we do, even once, we DO own. That experience can never be taken from us. How we use that, and what we choose to do next, is up to us.Mt. Moosilauke, 4802′, NH. 2018

SILENT MEDITATION and YIN YOGA (post #2)

AM I MEDITATING?

“Am I meditating?” That’s the question I asked part way through a week long Silent Meditation Retreat. A group of us circled to share and ask, briefly breaking our silence. Meditation is whatever experience you have when you come to the practice to meditate. Sitting, walking, generative (guided), recollective (receptive, reflective), Yin, random moments during the day – all are types and times of meditation. Kindness, Attention, Tolerance and Patience – what we bring. Everything teaches.

DISCLAIMER: I do not pretend to offer guidance or wisdom within the sentences of this post, but I do hope to share with you, the reader, some snippets to ponder or practice, small gems that I brought home.

STATS:

https://joshsummers.net (Josh Summers)

https://freeportyogaco.com (Terry Cochburn)

https://www.spiritfireretreatcenter.com (Steve, Tim and, of course, DK)

August 27 through September 2, 2018. Daily schedule: 6 a.m. to lights out at 10 p.m. UNPLUGGED for the week! Sitting/journal, breakfast, work period, instruction/sitting/journal, walking meditation, sitting/journal/walking meditation, 12-1 lunch. Work period and time for a walk. Sitting/journal or small group discussion, sitting/journal/walking meditation; 4-5:45 p.m. Yin Yoga with Terry. Dinner and time for a walk, Dharma talk, sitting/journal, done. 24 hours: tea, meditation, wandering indoors and out.

SILENCE: This was the easy part. Go figure. When it was finally appropriate to speak again, the words came slowly and quietly until they built momentum culminating in a rather enthusiastic closing breakfast!

STILLNESS: Finding a comfortable seat is the start. Settling into stillness may be both the beginning and the ending of a practice. If that’s all we do, we have meditated. For me, the physicality of stillness, recognizing that it is not really passive but active in its own right, makes it an achievable component of my personal practice. As the week wore on I was better able to identify that very second when I slipped into stillness. Perhaps it was only a second, but it was real and I knew it. From my journal: “There is a definite moment when I slide into the sweet spot of the right dynamics, right alignment, to rest in stillness. It is purely physical and I recognize it when it happens. All of these physical experiences and qualities surely have a perfect counterpart mentally, emotionally and spiritually!”

MEDITATION: Throughout the week we meditated for blocks of 30 minutes the techniques of our choice. Generative meditation is guided, controlled, and can be helpful at the beginning of a sitting; receptive allows thought to wander, develop, return or resolve, tolerant, yielding; conflicted happens in any process. “A meditation retreat is like a massage for your psychic knots!”

While a sitting leads to mental processes, walking shifts focus to movement and embodied experience. I found attention to the mechanics of walking meditation, placing one foot in front of the other, led to balance and centeredness, easily seguing to the mental and emotional. Walking and sitting reinforce each other.

Josh guided us to use our schedule, silence and intention as the framework of our retreat. Through meditation we might develop awareness of our inner world and use it to benefit daily life. Repeatedly we need to remind ourselves to bring qualities of interest and awareness to everything we’re doing.

Meditation is part of a larger tradition. As we learned more about a few basic precepts of The Buddha, we also learned that Dharma is a collection of teachings that remind us of our own unique awareness and are easily inclusive of multiple spiritual paths (Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, etc.)

Coming to sit/walk in meditation forces all of us to confront the habit patterns of our minds. Stillness reveals what is below our consciousness. Movement masks pain. And then there are the big four: Kindness. Attention. Tolerance. Patience.

During one of my morning sittings, I began in prayer. I recognized gratitude, as I am so richly blessed. One by one I visited each family member, friend, client, naming each and blessing each. (Loving kindness may sound a bit hokey, but the concept is pervasive! How our world would change if a practice of loving kindness could insinuate itself into community, business, education and politics!)

Sometimes I like to contemplate a single word and see where that leads. For example, patience. I am impatient. I want to do do do. I want to hurry up and achieve. And what does this say? It says I am afraid that I do not have enough – not enough time, resources, fitness, years to do all that I yet want to do. In relationship, if I am impatient, I do not have enough tolerance. So, perhaps patience presumes abundance. Nice, eh?

I might begin a sitting watching my breath, listening to sounds, squirming until still, thinking about a word … and then the meditative flow carries me off on its current, meandering here and there and perhaps finally pooling. The journey is mine to receive, investigate and relate.

JOURNALING: Used as a tool, journaling allows us to find our own language. Start with what we remember and then reflect upon it, connecting with our experience. The act of writing imprints, develops and expands. What is literal or factual transitions into creativity and ultimately that which is functional.

Towards the end I wrote: “The fabric of my life is richly textured and more profoundly beautiful for it. The tears have been stitched, the holes mended, the rough edges smoothed. Though the bones have at times been broken, they have healed stronger than before.”

TEACH: A teacher is a spiritual friend. The ‘teacher’ is everything that is happening. If you let it, everything will teach. At this Retreat I was in the company of teachers. In fact, we are all teachers in some respect, each of us giving generously of ourselves as parents, coaches, leaders, managers, advisors, trainers or whatever. And we each, at some point, desperately need to refill our depleted reserves. Thus we seek to be taught.

Thank you, my Yoga Teacher and friend, Terry Cockburn.

Thank you, my Meditation and Yin Teacher and friend, Josh Summers.

Oh, what a privilege to teach and to be taught.

TAKE-HOME: “If we lose something, it was never ours in the first place.” It is not about holding on or letting go, but to cultivate openness to receive all experiences in their totality. Learn to be at peace with that. Daily practice? Different way to look at our relationships, our jobs, our words and reactions, our self-talk? Loving kindness? Perhaps I cannot claim intensity and drama within the context of each sitting; perhaps I cannot claim to have “gone deep” or to have become “enlightened.” Hey, I only did this for one week and those experiences are not so cheaply purchased!

But I will say this, my life IS changed. How so? I do not even wish to define that now. I will wait. I will continue to seek that sweet spot of stillness, if only for a few seconds. I will practice. I will study. I will do all with the presumption of abundance. And gratitude.

(and with my fellow Retreat attendees, I will near the end of each Meditation session with Ring the damn bell!)

SILENT MEDITATION and YIN YOGA (post #1)

Silent Meditation Retreat with Josh Summers and Terry Cockburn, Spirit Fire Retreat Center, 8/27-9/2/2018.

Late August in Vermont 2018

Oh how I resisted coming to this Retreat! For several months I prepared – read, practiced Yin, listened to Podcasts, emailed Terry, took care of clients and stressed-stressed-stressed about leaving Sophie. In fact, the very morning I dropped her off at the kennel, I would have cancelled if I could have.

The drive to Leyden MA was beautiful, as was the weather. [And I will tell you right now, if you ever want to attend a retreat or take your retreat somewhere, run do not walk to Spirit Fire Retreat, https://www.spiritfireretreatcenter.com. You will fall in love with the Center as well as your new BFFs, Steve and Tim, who quite possibly literally and spiritually make the difference.]

Terry (https://freeportyogaco.com) warned this would be the hardest endurance event I’ve done. It was. It was so damn hard. The early days gave new meaning to sufferfest! But endure we did.

One night near the end of the week I journaled: “I am learning and evolving. Though the days have crept by, I do hope the practice has been enough and will become a part of me. But practice may be the key concept here. As Josh (https://joshsummers.net) counseled, ‘practice what you teach.’ And silence? It is so much easier in reality! As a group of individuals who had, for the most part, not even known each other’s names, the connection we shared was woven in a web of silence, a life-line of silence, so much stronger – and immediately so – than the polite chatter of new relationship”.

Reviewing my journal I note that early entries were hectic, worried, stressed, grasping for intention and some kind of significant practice. I noted physical discomfort, even pain. I blamed the restlessness on too much of the excellent coffee, but when I tried cutting back, it made no difference. Skip to the last full day: “I have found all 3 sittings this morning to be ‘energized,’ meaning no fatigue or struggle, balanced, grounded – far from the early days as restless or ‘itchy’. Equanimity: a warm embrace of what is going on.”

Perhaps each of us everywhere sincerely wishes to make the world a better place for our having lived in it. Even if our individual efforts appear futile, collectively? … who knows? I love that Josh gifted us with these words: “Our practice is a form of social action.” And so it is.