Tony Wiederhold
Revised Dec. 23, 2022

All of our retreats begin with a casual arrival period where participants may get acquainted with the space and each other and share some food and drink. Just before beginning silent practice, we offer a Retreat Orientation, where we review the retreat guidelines described below, cover safety and logistics specific to the retreat site, and answer any questions people have. Please take a few minutes to become familiar with these guidelines before attending a retreat.

We welcome practitioners of all experience levels at our retreats. That said, if you do not have a regular meditation practice, I recommend reading this document carefully to understand what retreat practice entails before registering. 

What is a retreat?

Our retreats are periods of continuous silent practice, including seated and walking meditation, mindful movement, and and mindful eating, where one brings the spirit of silent zen practice to an entire day or multiple days. They are wonderful complements to daily meditation practice. Participating in a retreat is a practice in simple living that is free of distracting activities. It offers you the opportunity to become intimate with your experiences by allowing yourself to be honest about the thoughts, feelings, and sensations in your experience. By practicing turning towards thoughts and seeing what is underneath them — stories, assumptions, habits, impressions, feelings, sensations, and lots of other things — you create conditions for clarity, ease, and peace of mind.

Here is a typical one-day retreat schedule:

7:30am Arrive and enjoy breakfast
9:00am Retreat orientation
9:30am Quiet movement practice
10:00am Quiet seated and walking meditation (25 min seated/5 min walking)
12:00pm Lunch
1:00pm Quiet seated and walking meditation (25 min seated/5 min walking)
3:30pm Writing
4:00pm Closing circle
5:00pm Depart

We’re here to support you. Your practice lifts up everyone.

We design our retreats to be supportive spaces where all you have to do is practice. We provide delicious, fresh vegan meals, drinks, cushions, mats, masks, sanitizer, and other supplies. We do ask that retreat participants bring a bowl, spoon, and mug to minimize the amount of trash that we generate. 

Our Retreat Volunteers practice with you, guide practices, and do lots of things behind the scenes to make the retreat as smooth as possible for everyone. They are sincere, compassionate people who care about the well-being of others, are excellent listeners, and have practiced meditation diligently for years. Their bodhisattva (humanitarian) spirit shows up in all aspects of their lives. 

Your presence and practice in the group supports everyone else’s practice, too. Your attitude of care, grace, and consideration for others is reflected in how you conduct yourself in the retreat, even when observing silence. This has big effects both inward and outward.    

Meditation practice is not trying to like everything all the time. It is also not about becoming an unthinking, unfeeling robot. It is a practice of facing whatever circumstances you are in with honesty. While practice does create the circumstances for courage, ease, and peace of mind, it can also bring awareness of unpleasant thoughts and memories, intense emotions, and uncomfortable body sensations and the grief that comes along with those experiences. These can be overwhelming under certain circumstances. If you find yourself struggling with your experience or in distress during a practice, please take a break, do what you need to in order to care for yourself, and ask one of our retreat volunteers for support.

Silence

We practice silence after the retreat orientation and continue through the end of the final sitting practice. For multi-day retreats, silent practice is continuous over the multiple days of the retreat. During this time, please refrain from speaking, making eye contact, reading, writing, or looking at your phone. Choosing not to distract yourself in these ways reveals a lot of mind-stuff, like habits and tendencies. Do this not only for yourself but also out of consideration for your fellow practitioners. How you carry and conduct yourself has being effects both on them and on you. Practice silence even while eating or walking to and from the bathroom. When you’re eating, eat. When you’re walking, walk. When you’re peeing, pee. 

Dharma Chats

At some retreats, participants will have the option to have a 7 minute 1:1 dharma chat in a private setting with one of our Practice Leaders during the sitting and walking meditation portions of the retreat. This is an opportunity for you to clarify, articulate, or ask about some aspect of your practice, a circumstance in your life, or something you are experiencing. You are welcome to share whatever you like and welcome to not share what you want to keep private. We’re here to listen and reflect, not to offer unsolicited advice.

Dharma chats will start after the first sitting period, beginning with the next person counterclockwise from the timekeeper.

I’ll ring a little bell. If it is your turn, bow, get up, and head to the location indicated during the retreat orientation. If you choose to pass, just bow. Hopefully the next person sees that you didn’t get up and realizes that it is their turn. If not, nudge them.

Circle Etiquette

Please help keep the practice space, mats, and cushions clean. Do not wear footwear while sitting on the mats and cushions. Keep food, drinks, and outside shoes outside of the practice space. 

We’ll arrange the mats and cushions in a rounded rectangle, which we call the circle. We’ll demarcate the practice space. Do your best to keep this space extra clean. Our experienced retreat participants and Retreat Volunteers will take certain spots so that you can follow their lead as we transition from practice to practice. At some point before the retreat orientation, we’ll invite all participants to claim an open spot in the circle. It’s ok to bring your own cushion, meditation bench, or chair. Err on the side of ease and comfort.

When you arrive at your seat for orientation, stand in front of your seat on the inside of the circle and bow to it. Turn around and sit down facing the inside of the circle, bow to the circle, and settle into your sitting posture. More on posture below.

1. Always walk around the outside of the circle. Please refrain from crossing the circle at any point during the retreat. 

2. When seated, please find ease in your sitting position and refrain from moving. Be mindful of the effects of sudden movements on your fellow practitioners. If you absolutely must move, bow first to thank your neighbors for their understanding. 

3. Do your best to leave the practice area only during walking meditation, during our scheduled breaks, or if it is your turn for a dharma chat. If you need to get up to leave the practice area during sitting practice, bow before getting up and walk behind other practitioners out of consideration for them. 

Seated Meditation (Zazen)

The majority of practice is comprised of 25 minute periods of seated meditation practice followed by 5 minute periods of walking meditation. We face the inside of the circle for the first and last periods of sitting and face outward for all other sitting periods. 

The following is an abbreviated version of our How To Meditate page. Please refer to it for more and reach out to us if you have questions.

Posture

A big aspect of seated meditation is practicing ease, and that starts with posture, or how you arrange your body. 

• Sit such that you can let your leg muscles relax while keeping your torso light and upright. Allow your ears to float above your shoulders. Do your best to find ease and effortlessness. For some of us, that means sitting cross-legged on a cushion. For others, sitting in a chair on the edge of the seat with the feet on the ground is the way. Some use a meditation bench or turn a cushion sideways and take a kneeling position. Choose a way that allows you to sit with ease.   
• Notice where there is uncomfortable compression or uncomfortable stretch and if you are squeezing (activating or contracting) muscles to avoid those sensations. Allow the squeezing to soften and readjust your sitting position to lighten those uncomfortable sensations. 
• To help keep your back relaxed, you might try lifting your sternum, or rolling the shoulders down and back, or squeezing the belly button in a little bit. Every body is different. You’ll learn what you need to do to stay upright, yet relaxed. 
• Notice how breathing relates to this sense of lightness in the chest and back. 
• Place your hands in a comfortable place. I rest my hands in my lap, left hand palm-up resting in my right hand with the thumbs lightly touching. 
• I recommend sitting with eyes open. You can try eyes open and eyes closed and observe the effects.
• When you notice that you’re leaning one way or another, or feel muscles tensing up, or have otherwise drifted away from your light, easy posture, just reset. You might notice that this drift away from ease in the body is connected to similar drift in the breathing and the mind. This is totally normal. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, or a bad meditator. It just means you’re a human being.

Back Tapper (Whacker)

Occasionally during seated meditation, one of our Retreat Volunteers will come around and offer to tap you on each side of your upper back using a keisaku, a flat wooden stick. This is optional. We’ll show you in the retreat orientation how to signal that you’d like this pleasant smack on the back. Here’s a picture of Sarah practicing her back tapping technique on Lauren from our New Years Day 2022 Retreat.

Breathing

Breathing in, this is breathing in.
Letting go, this is breathing out.   

Breathe in and out through your nose. You might notice that when you breathe in, you feel a little squeeze just below your ribcage, downward pressure into your belly, and stretch on the belly wall as it expands. When you let go, your breath returns to the air effortlessly. Notice how breathing in relates to the sense of lightness in your upper body posture. Notice also that letting go releases your breath to the air. Notice how letting go of the breath relates to letting go of tension in other parts of your body, and how that affects your relationship to tension in your mind. Sitting with ease, breathing with ease, and being at ease are related.  

It is not necessary to breathe in any particular way when meditating. I don’t typically put any special attention on breathing while sitting. At the beginning of meditation, I inhale to the top of my breath — the point where breathing in deeper involves a lot of effort — hold for a couple of heartbeats, and release. I might repeat that a few times before releasing my attention from my breath. This helps me relax when I feel upset, agitated, or nervous as well. 

Allowing Your Thinking-Mind To Rest

Sitting practice is not for striving. It is not working on concentration. It is not reaching for any particular experience. It is not focusing like a laser beam. Thinking includes the stories you tell yourself, such as explanations, conclusions, justifications, narratives, and other ideas. These thoughts come from somewhere. Underneath them are feelings — reactions you have to inputs from the senses, including the mind. Allowing thinking to come to rest means allowing the thought-maker to coast to a natural stop, like a bowling ball rolling into sand. You can also think of this as setting them aside, or putting them down, as if they were a backpack full of rocks. You might notice that there’s a little bit of physical strain and muscle tension related to thinking. Allow this tension to soften a little bit and all of the things underneath the thought reveal themselves. You may notice a reluctance to acknowledge what is there. Allow yourself to unclench and be at ease with whatever is present and you may find that there is something under that, too. The Japanese Zen Master Dogen wrote, “Sit solidly in samadhi and think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? This is the art of zazen.” 

Sitting practice is allowing what is in your experience to come into focus and become clear, like a scene in a camera, or water in a stream. By allowing yourself to face whatever is there, by unclenching, and letting go of strain, you can see a clear, full picture. Sitting is an opportunity to practice turning toward whatever is present and being honest with yourself. Facing what is present and accepting it is, as Dogen wrote, “the dharma gate of great ease and joy.” This is being at peace.  

Sitting is also an opportunity to practice being gentle and kind both to yourself and to whatever guests (sensations, feelings, stories) arrive. Allow any tension or squeezing of muscles to soften a little bit, just like letting go of your in-breath and allowing the breath to return to the air. This tension in your body is related to suffering, the distance between the way things are and your ideas about the way things are. You can see whatever arises and all of the conditions underneath them.

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are a helpful list of things you might notice: 
1. body sensations (inputs; sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and mind-stuff, like memories, other stories you tell yourself, emotions, explanations, speculation), 
2. feelings (reactions to sensations; like and dislike, which can also elicit feelings; ever have a feeling about a feeling?), 
3. cognition/mental formations (habits, conditioning, impressions, discrimination, biases, ill will, willful ignorance, strain, struggle, etc.), and
4. phenomena/circumstances (how things are related to one another and affect each other)

Only you can know what you experience. Whatever it is, you’re doing it right.

Transitions

We use sounds to signal transitions from one practice to another. 

Moktak – Go to your meditation seat.

Retreat days are broken up into a morning meditation session and an afternoon meditation session with lunch in between. The signal to make your way to the cushion at the beginning of each session is from the moktak, a hollow sounding wooden bell. When you hear it, finish what you are doing and make your way to your cushion.

Three Bells – Beginning and End of Morning/Afternoon/Evening Sessions

The timekeeper will invite a bell to ring three times at the beginning and end of each major practice session. Each time you hear the bell, take a breath and let it return to the air with the fading sound. After the third bell at the end of sitting periods, bow to the circle. You might place your mind on the Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

When you hear the bells at the end of the morning session, you may get your bowl, mug, and utensils and head towards the lunch area.

Bamboo Clapper – Walking Meditation Transitions

The timekeeper will use the bamboo clapper to mark the transitions between sitting and walking meditation as well as transitions within the walking meditation practice. More on that is in the Walking Meditation section below. 

Walking Meditation

Walking meditation is a close cousin to seated meditation. While walking, do your best to carry your body with ease and quiet. Just like in seated meditation, breathe with ease. Continue to turn towards what appears in your experience. 

We walk on the outside of the circle in a counterclockwise direction. 

1. When you hear the timekeeper clap, bow, stand up on the outside of the circle facing your cushion, bow to your cushion, and turn to face the counterclockwise direction. Make sure that you have feeling in your feet and legs before standing up. It is easy to fall or sprain your ankle when standing up with a sleeping limb. Take your time. Life’s too short to be in a hurry. 

2. Place your left fist in your right palm and hold your hands just below your ribcage and continue meditating. Once everyone is up, the timekeeper will clap again. Start walking. Match pace and maintain space with the person in front of you. Notice what arises as you walk: sensations, feelings, mind-stuff, thoughts and ideas about things.

3. When you hear a double clap, quicken your pace. Maintain the space between you and the person in front of you.

4. When you hear a single clap, return to your original slower pace.

5. When you hear another single clap, continue following the person in front of you around the circle until you return to your cushion. When you get there, turn and face in the direction of your cushion and stand with light posture.

6. When everyone has returned to their cushion, the timekeeper will clap. At that time, bow to your cushion and recall how it supports your practice. Turn to face the outside of the circle (inside for the very last sit) and bow again.

If you need to leave the practice area during walking meditation, veer off in a quiet way. When you return to the practice area during walking meditation, rejoin your spot in line in a quiet way.

Breaks

You are free to excuse yourself from the practice area to use the bathroom or get a drink of water. Please be considerate of others. The ideal time to quietly take a break is during the walking meditation. Do your best to take care of business efficiently and return to the practice area ASAP. Maintain your silent practice.

After Silent Practice

After the last silent session in the afternoon (for multi-day retreats, this is only on the last day), we’ll have writing time. Please refrain from talking during writing time. After writing time, you’ll have the opportunity to share whatever you like with the group during the closing circle.

Thanks for reading! I look forward to practicing with you at an upcoming retreat. Please reach out with any questions or comments.

– Tony
tony@indycommunityyoga.org