My first meditation "retreat"

Not According to Plan
So I did a home retreat over the course of the weekend beginning friday through to Sunday. I had intended to do saturday and sunday as full 18 hour days of meditation but I hit a hiccup along the way that completely derailed me. By home retreat, I mean that I was to spend all of my time meditating in my room only taking breaks to go to the bathroom. Eating and stretching between bouts of sitting and walking were also to be done in a meditative manner. I also had contact with a teacher (Shinzen Young) on the phone during part of the process. His home practice program is only supposed to go for 4 hours but I wanted to do a longer retreat. He gave instructions and answered questions at certain periods. This is a very valuable resource to have considering that I was mostly on my own. I succeeded with this up to the 2nd day for quite some time but had very powerfully disorienting experiences that made me afraid to continue with the practice. What was supposed to be about a 40 hour retreat experience dropped down to about 17 hours. That's still more than I have ever done though and the results were ultimately pretty amazing.

Day 1: Easy and Enjoyable
The first night was quite nice, mindfulness of breathing exercises, expansion and contraction. We ran through a few different basic breathing practices and chose to work on whichever we felt was best for us. After the guided portion, I completed 4 more sessions of alternating 30 minutes sitting and walking meditation.

Day 2: Disorientation, Distrust, and a Hint of Ego Death
The second day I started with a walking meditation outside and then alternated sitting, walking, stretching and laying down meditation. Yes I learned to meditate laying down without falling asleep! That was a nice way to take a lot of the difficulty out of holding a posture for awhile. I ultimately wanted to break through the pain of posture at some point but the longest sit that I did was about 45 minutes. If I experienced too much difficulty, I switched to a laying down mode. If too sleepy, walking. If too stiff, stretching. It was nice to use my options and not be too dogmatic about it. I was mostly doing a choiceless awareness technique that had me noting my inner and outer sensations. I experienced the world as a set of vast, changing sensations. Honestly though I spend most of time focusing out rather than in and I knew that was a weak point for me so by the end of this period I started restricting my focus to inner sensations, creating equanimity there.

When the guided session rolled around, we did a sort of twist on the usualy mindfulness technique. We used a zen koan idea to turn our awareness back on itself. I usually am using my attention to attend to objects but the instruction was to turn back when I noticed the intention to turn toward any sensory experience. I did this probably 100s or more more times for all my different sense categories, turning awareness back on itself. The usual sense of self as being in the head somewhere behind the eyes was starting to be slowly picked at. Thus my disorientation and fear of ego death arose. It just freaked me out. We alternated with the normal see hear feel technique, then went back to self enquiry. Again, profound confusion. There is really nowhere to turn to to find a self when one really looks, it's just sensations all the way down. The technique is supposed to bring confusion and disorientation and we are supposed to have equanimity with those feelings. I, however, did not trust my meditation technique anymore because it seemed to be causing some distress, I felt like I needed to get out and just be done with the whole process, to go back to the normal way of feeling like the decider and doer of my own actions, of having a complete sense of self, not a partially degraded one. So I stopped that night and went to my partner's house for comfort and solace, and something normal but I didn't feel normal at all. Just scared and slightly unhinged. I thought I had maybe bitten off more than I could chew.

Day 3: Reconstruction
The next day I felt much better, much more calm about things. The official program that day was all about reconstructing oneself with positive emotions and resful states in the body. I still felt distrustful of meditation in general but I finally came around to understanding that I needed to trust the technique to find solace in my own mind, that I could deal with bouts of fear and ego death with equanimity if I could just continue to apply the technique correctly. Also I probably needed to spend some more time with reconstructive techniques in order to balance out all the hours of deconstructive techniques I had done. So that's what we did, I found rest and profound comfort, love, appreciation over the course of about 4 hours. I also got to speak with the teacher. He reminded me that I am in control and that the fear was to be expected, and more importantly, not to take on more than one can handle. I was trying to lift way heavier weights than I was ready for just yet. I feel like such a noob with all of this but I know if I had been at a residential retreat where I could speak with a teacher one a one a little more regularly, I would have gotten through my crisis much faster. Such is learning and the pitfalls of the DIY approach. But I have come back with experience!

Also I forgot to mention I learned a new walking meditation technique that had to do with 'moving without intention" which is something I have been working on with parkour pretty regularly so it felt very natural and freeing compared to the Mahasi style walking I have been getting used to.

Learning
The main resulting effects over the last few days have been a much deeper sense of ease and fulfillment with life. My mind has felt less sticky, less prone to getting perturbed by anything at all. Also the habit of meditating starts to do itself whenever I am not directly attending to something which is nice because it means I am not just ruminating randomly. But I can feel the effects starting to wear off, the mind attaching to things more often, getting caught up. It's pretty fascinating to see the differences and it motivates me to continue to turn these state changes into full-on trait changes.

Other things I learned and re-emphasized:

Try to find a comfortable place to do your retreat, no point in making it more uncomfortable than it needs to be. My room got very hot at during the middle of the day and added some unnecessary difficulty. That said, it is wonderful to have a place of my own to train my mind. I feel very lucky to have it.

Be willing to change posture, position as needed to facilitate technique (unless breaking through a posture is your specific goal).

Laying down is a wonderfully restful technique that can be done without falling asleep.

There are many different styles of walking meditation, it just depends on what you are trying to do

Having options to change technique on the fly makes the practice more interesting and dynamic. One can proceed based off of "Interest, opportunity, or necessity" as Shinzen says

Anything can be a meditation! Being mindful is a certain way to pay attention and my goal is to get myself to a place where mindful awareness is my default, while discursive thought is optional.

Trust the technique. It has worked for me in the past, to create peace and equanimity in my body/mind especially in the midst of powerful emotions. It just takes time.

Meditation is a numbers game!

Keep the momentum going, concentration can fade quickly if fragmented by daily life stuff or whatever

Don't freak out, a vast resevoir of peace and joy is always on tap if need be

It's worth every second to help make oneself a little less sticky, a lot less crazy.

Also just because I know I used some confusing terminology, I mostly drawing from the Unified Mindfulness system of meditation by Shinzen Young  and some things from The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa which is a shamatha-vipassana type of approach. Both systems are but Shinzen's is a little more updated/easier to understand while Culadasa's is a little more traditional.

Divide and Conquer Strategy

This is coming straight out of the Unified Mindfulness practice. Something I posted in the some weight loss forums I have been visiting.

Another meditation technique.

This one requires focusing in and labeling 3 different strands of inner sensory activity

“See” will note mental imagery

“Feel” will note emotional body sensations

“Hear” will note mental talk

As sensations arise in these three different categories, note them by mentally saying these labels with a gentle, matter of fact inner voice. If they are really intense, focus on just one category for a little bit: just see, just, feel, or just hear. Dividing them up makes them more manageable and you’re less likely to get overwhelmed. Do this before, after, or even during a meal and it can make the cravings dissolve right away (depending on how much you practice). Let me know what you guys think about this. It works incredibly well for me. Hope it can help others  

How I got into mindfulness practice

This is an exercise I did for a teacher training course I am taking but it was a lot of writing and thinking so I feel like I should put it up: ● Why did you start practicing mindfulness? Were there problems you were hoping it would solve? I started practicing for a variety of reasons. I have always been inspired by Shaolin monks from old kung fu movies and the Jedi from star wars so my interest in meditation started very early in my life. I always knew it was something important even if I didn't fully understand it. It became something I naturally gravitated to as I got older and some of the "adult problems" set in. I wanted to lose weight but was having issues with controlling my behavior and emotions around food. I am a transgender woman and have persistent gender dysphoria. I needed something to help me be emotionally stable so I could progress with all the other things I had going on. I had issues focusing on prep work for grad school and the writing projects/interests I wanted to pursue. My attention felt split and I wanted the control, precision, and concentration that I had when I did my parkour practice. I wanted to experience spontaneous states of flow and calm arising without it being dependent on throwing my body around on concrete. I work as a caregiver and needed to have more compassion for the person I was taking care of in order to not give into frustration or boredom with simple tasks. My second job is as a parkour/gymnastics instructor mostly with children and I needed to have a lot of patience to overcome frustration there too. Looking back it seems that I have a sort of complicated life but all of these things have been massively improved and made manageable with mindfulness practice. ● How did you learn to practice mindfulness? A course? Working with a teacher one on one? So not counting my random misguided attempts as a teenager, I started actually practicing concentration meditation on the breath after reading B. Alan Wallace's books on shamatha and watching his videos on youtube a few years ago. I would do it before and during work to keep calm and patience. I was inspired by the idea of having strong directed attention abilities, a "mind like a laser" as he says. I have always been inspired by the idea of having above average mental/physical abilities, like a superhero or Jedi or a monk. Why merely settle for being an average human when you could be super? My pursuit of self actualization was mostly in the physical realm and intellectual sphere but I was just starting to get an inkling of the the contemplative life. I went to school for philosophy but found that the intellectual pursuit didn't help me solve my problems with gender dysphoria or food related issues. In fact, I just became more confused and helpless by the endless intellectualization and doubt. I wanted to live a philosopher's life, not just read about one. Still I kept consuming podcasts and watched videos on Buddhist meditation practice. Stuff from Buddhist Geeks and the Secular Buddhist Podcast. I found some of Daniel Ingram's work on Dharma Overground. I listened to dhamma talks by Gil Fronsdale, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Ajahn Brahm, and Ajahn Amaro explaining Buddhist doctrine. I somehow came across Shinzen's "5 Ways to Know Yourself", a precursor to UM. It made so much sense because it perfectly encompassed the various strands of Buddhist philosophy and practice I had spent so much time studying. He took all those strands and made them very clear. I listened to his "Science of Enlightenment" audiobook several times over and did the same with the "5 Ways". I alternated back and forth between Shinzen's work and the early sources of Buddhist wisdom in the Pali Canon. "In the Buddha's Words" by Bhikkhu Bodhi, the "Guide to the Bodhisattva's way of life by Shantideva, and "Old Path White Clouds" by Thich Nhat Hanh are just a few among countless books I keep sucking up like a sponge. Concentration practice was nice and made me feel good but didn't last very long or help with deeper issues. I knew I was supposed to do more insight practices eventually so I climbed up into a tree one day and decided to give vipassana meditation a try. I was immediately overwhelmed with sensations, like I was being rained on. I didn't really know what to do with that until I found Shinzen's work. My practice was sporadic for a year or two until finally a more consistent practice with mindfulness became a thing. I started practicing with one of my housemates just 10 minutes per night and I learned that I could use micro-hits during all the deadspaces in my day (waiting in line at the store, sitting at the doctor's office, etc.) I at some point realized that my progress is really just a numbers game and have sought to up my amount of daily practice by getting as much in when and wherever I can. I have actually been tracking my time and I average about 30 minutes a day currently but some days will be two hours of formal practice, other days not so much. The more I do, the better I feel. ● What were some of the challenges you faced and how did you overcome them? Boredom and impatience came pretty quickly in the beginning. A part of me could not see how practicing meditation was going to make me happier or better at anything. A part of me thought it was just a waste of time. I got over these issues by, as Gil Fronsdale would say "becoming really interested in them". So I recognized the resistance I had to meditation could immediately give me feedback on the nature of that resistance and just being uncomfortable in general. Seeing how my mind would resist helped to dissolve the resistance and help me continue without any problems. Now I rarely feel bored or impatient with the practice. Consistency was difficult for me because I felt like there was so much to "figure out" and I could be spending time on intellectual understanding instead of just groping around in the dark, gazing at my navel. But I was receiving better calm, focus, and understanding from sporadic bursts of meditation and when I realized how I was being affected in a positive way, that reward gave me the trust that I would receive even more benefits with more practice. Dullness and sleepiness are still problems I am contending with but I seem to be making a lot of progress with them by noticing earlier and earlier when dullness sets in. As soon as I notice, I straighten my spine. If that doesn't work, I open my eyes. I then switch to subvocalizing my labels for noting until the dullness subsides and I am back on track. If all else fails, walking meditation works 100% of the time. ● Before practicing mindfulness did you have ideas about it that later turned out to be inaccurate? Write down what these were and how the discoveries you made through practicing changed your ideas. The Stoic Repression of Emotion Spock, the Jedi, and the stoic greek/roman philosophers all gave me the impression that repressing my emotions was the goal. My choice was to be a cold, unfeeling robot ruled only by reason or a complete emotional wreck, a slave to my passions. Similarly the concept of No-Self in Buddhism had me equating it with "no personality". Any form of aesthetic affectation or personality quirks were to be looked down on and seen as a reflection of my untamed mind or attachment to selfhood. I got over this by seeing the expressiveness of the the Dalai Lama or Thich Naht Hanh or other monks from the various traditions. Clearly there was a middle ground where people were free to express their emotions and personalities but they were also FREE OF the negative aspects of these things. Also Shinzen's conception of radical acceptance of one's emotions giving a person the ability to choose what to express just blew my mind. In my practice, I found this idea to be completely true. I became more honest about my feelings with others, I let myself laugh fully, and I became less caught and therefore more in control of my emotional regulation. I could have my cake and eat it too, so to speak. Mindfulness is not deep enough. I felt that the sentimental sounding mindfulness practices espoused in articles and material coming from the "new age" section was just too shallow compared to the grander claims of Buddhism, of the enlightened sage. B. Alan Wallace and others had me thinking that the basic practices given out in your typical mindfulness program don't really lead into deep insights or massive meditative milestones like stream entry. These practices are just for stress, reduction, just being a little less anxious. I think this is true to some extent still but after investigating the various Buddhist paths and comparing it to the framework of UM, it's easy to see that the shallow end of the pool benefits along with the deep end are both there. UM has something to offer anybody, even those who want to go really deep with their practice. ● What have some of the rewards and benefits of mindfulness been for you? My gender dysphoria has decreased immensely. Being misgendered in public or by my friends and family no longer crushes me like it used to as I now have a strong buffer between others and my reactions to what they say. I have managed to finally have the resolve and control with food craving such that I have been able to lose weight at a steady pace after years of failing. I work with children on a daily basis and the depths of calm and patience I can bring to my instruction has only made me a better, more compassionate teacher. I used to get incredibly frustrated but I now feel privileged to work with children. I am also a caregiver for a quadriplegic man. The job requires a lot of patience, compassion, and somewhat tedious work. I have learned to enjoy every second of it mindfully. My relationships with my parents, friends and partner have all improved dramatically. I am not so caught up in my own problems and can be available for those in need. ● Can you remember 1 to 3 defining moments on your journey with mindfulness? Moments where you had a significant insight, or you made a shift in your relationship to it, or you had a particular experience that brought home the power of practice? It could be as simple as that moment you started practicing consistently or a time you really found yourself able to be in the present moment. Write these down and explore at least one in detail. I often would find that I had solved a problem for myself mentally with UM and it was easy to see how others would have the same problem and be completely lost. Usually it was an emotional regulation problem or an attention issue. This immediately made me feel total compassion for them because I know now intimately what it's like like to be completely caught up and what it's like to not be. As I spend less time in useless rumination or negative ideation, the more I see how others problems stem from there. I take the bus to work every day so this sudden compassion for others who are struggling has become a daily occurence as people on the lowest end of the socioeconomic ladder have endless emotional difficulties. Instead of being annoyed or aversive like I used to be, I have found myself coming to aid other people when I can with hardly a second thought. This is not something I expected at all. My relationship to pain has completely changed. The first time I sat for an hour and felt excruciating pain through my left leg, I stopped to stretch it out only to find that I was perfectly fine! Slowly I learned to be with the pain and experience it as a vibratory, flowing sensation. More importantly it became completely manageable. I would even welcome it since it is such a strong sensory object and it combats dullness. So my relationship to all pain has dramatically changed because I get more interested in it rather than just getting overwhelmed. I'd rather not experience pain, but I know how to deal with it if I have to.

Parkour and the 5 hindrances: Sense craving

I have been studying buddhism for the last few years and within the last year or so established a solid daily meditation practice. Traditionally there are "5 hindrances" that obstruct the process of meditation.

These are:
sense craving
Anger/Ill-will/Aversion
Lethargy
Restlessness/worry
Doubt

While I have found the dissolution of the hindrances helpful for meditation, it's clear that these hindrances affect other parts of our lives. I will start off with how the hindrance functions in meditation, then move on to explore how it can affect parkour training.

Sense craving refers to craving the pleasurable sensations we get from the world. So any set of outside conditions that bring us pleasure can count as sensory pleasure. It's not the world or the pleasure itself that obstructs us but our craving for it. One can enjoy certain pleasures without actually wanting them. The flipside of craving is aversion, not wanting things. In mediation we try cultivate the mind state of neither wanting nor not wanting. The more we can do this, the less swept up by the pleasures of the world we will be. This means not craving rich unhealthy foods or getting sucked into entertainment for hours on end. The result is contentment with how things are, equanimity. Oddly enough, equanimity is both the result and the antidote to sense craving. In Culadasa's "The Mind Illuminated" he points out that Unification of Mind is also the antidote to sense craving. What I have interpreted this to mean is that the ability to direct all of one's attention to a certain meditation object eliminates sense craving because there is no room left in the mind for other considerations. The ability to identify and redirect from the thoughts and imagery of craving help us to not get hooked by them.

For parkour practice, sense craving can serve as a similar obstruction. If we want to eat to excess, it will effect our strength to weight ratio, so our movement ability will suffer. If we spend our days bingeing on netflix we can miss out on consistent training. If we have resistance to train because we know it may be difficult, we have aversion in our minds and it hinders us from getting up to go out and train. If we spend all day watching parkour videos, we miss out on training. Our motivations can transcend the instinctual drives to seek pleasure and avoid pain which will foster being more in tune with what's going on with our bodies during a training session. Often people will overtrain for days on end because parkour is so fun and addicting. I think it is possible to view this obssession as a form of sense craving. It seems like an innocent desire but it can become an obssession that causes chronic injuries, muscle tightness and general restlessness.

I'm mostly talking about some of my own problems that I have had with overtraining and hurting my body. Even now I have so much work to do to get my body more flexible and supple due to overtraining. Nowadays I am seeing my parkour practice as a sort of skillful means by which to keep my body healthy and promote mindfulness and therefore my overall happiness. But I have changed my initial motivations for training since the fuel I was using often pushed my engines too far.